I choose to spend this day in perfect peace.
1. It does not seem possible to me today to choose only peace.I
²Yet my God assures me that His Son is like Himself.
³Let me have faith today in Him Who says I am God’s Son.
⁴And let the peace I have decided to experience today bear witness to the truth of what He says.II
⁵The Son of God can know no cares, and must abide forever in the peace of Heaven.
⁶In His Name I dedicate this day to finding what my Father wills for me, to accepting it as mine, and to giving it to all my Father’s Sons and to myself.
2. And this is how I choose to spend this day with You,
my Father.
²Your Son has not forgotten You.
³The peace You gave him still abides within his mind,
and it is there I choose to spend this day.
I In truth, everything I experience in the dream of the world depends on the idea I hold of myself. That is why the world I see is my own responsibility. And that idea I sustain about myself, in turn, depends on what I want to be—on what I wish to believe I am—for it is nothing but a belief.
My idea of myself is not my reality, which is unchanging. It is simply the expression of my will within the dream, the fantasy I choose to enact here. It is evident that I can use that fantasy to attack myself, to punish myself, and to suffer—but I can also choose peace and love. I am the master of my dream. I am free to dream whatever I wish, and I have the power to do so. I can believe in anything: in limits and helplessness, in being a victim of others or of circumstances—and so it will be. But the crucial question is: what do I want to do with my freedom, with my will, and with my power?
I choose to spend this day in perfect peace. And though it may not always seem possible to choose only peace, God assures me that His Son is as He is. Therefore, I can place my faith in the One who declares that I am His Son. The peace I decide to experience today bears witness to the truth of what He says. The Son of God cannot be troubled; he must abide forever in the peace of Heaven.
To choose peace is an act of will. It is the exercise of the capacity to decide what state of mind I wish to inhabit. Here, I do not have before me an embodied model to imitate, such as Jesus in person. That is why I need a mental model. The Course offers me this description of the Son of God and asks me to embody it as if I already were that. And in that as if lies the power: for when I evoke it—when I imitate those qualities—I discover that they were already within me, waiting to be used.
The mind is always telling stories—of sorrow, anger, fear, guilt—and the body responds with tears or rage as if they were real. I do this constantly, without realizing it. Then why not use that same capacity to evoke peace, strength, and love? There is nothing dishonest about it. The mental states of suffering are no more authentic than those of peace; all are illusory. If I can evoke a negative state and live it as real, I can also evoke peace and live it as true. This is the practice the Course proposes: a training of the mind, a Raja Yoga, an art of choosing thoughts and holding them throughout the day.
That is why today I commit myself to live as if I were already fully the Son of God—to embody peace even while my mind doubts—to exercise my freedom to choose again. For peace is not merely possible; it is already within me, waiting for my decision to live in it.
II John 1:7–8 “He came as a witness, to bear witness to the Light, that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but came to bear witness to the Light.”
John 18:37 “Pilate said to Him, ‘Then You are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say rightly that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.’”
Father, today I choose peace as my only goal. Help me remember that my will is one with Yours, and that Your peace is also mine.