This morning we're going to talk about Lesson 185, or the beginning of Lesson 185, "I want
the peace of God." And right at the beginning of that lesson Jesus says, "To say these words
is nothing, but to mean these words is everything," and herein lies the tale. Nobody in his or
her right mind would ever say they don't want the peace of God whether they believe in God
or not. Everybody would want to live in peace. They would want to live in a world in which
there's peace, which there's no war, which people are not killed, ravaged by disease,
etcetera, etcetera. Everybody would say they want peace. The problem is practically nobody
means it, and the reason nobody means it is that we left Heaven because we couldn't abide
that peace. When in Chapter 23 Jesus tells us that the memory of God comes to a quiet
mind or—which means also a peaceful mind, if we are at peace we will remember God, and
if we remember God we won't be here anymore. If we remember God we'd remember who we are
as Christ and in that state of perfect Love and perfect Oneness there is no room for our
individuality, our separate self, our special self; there's no room for us, the way we define
who we are, and so peace then becomes the great enemy. Certainly we like peace as the
world judges it; peace means that you have defeated the enemy. So when there's peace
there's always someone who lacks peace. There's always a price to be paid. True peace, when
it reflects the peace of God in this world, it embraces all people all the time and without
exception. So when Jesus says to say these words is nothing; to mean these words is everything
he is speaking a profound truth there, that he's really trying to tell us—in fact the
whole Course is really trying to point out to us our profound identification with the
ego thought system. The problem is we don't think it's the ego thought system; we think
it's reality. We think there's a world out here. We think there are bodies here. We think
there are laws that hold here, as Lesson 76 kind of gently pokes fun at, and we think
that there are laws of relationships, where there's a winner and there's a loser; there's
a sense of sacrifice. If I want something I have to give up something in order to get
it, on and on and on, and these are the laws that define our world and this is what we
identify with and we don't want to give that up, because if we give that up it means we
give up our identity and our self. It means we give up our problems. We—it gives up our
past history of abuse and victimization, a sense of injustice, all of which go into define
us. But in the presence of the peace of God all this disappears and so we need to erect
defenses against this peace. In the section in the teacher's manual, "What is the peace
of God?" Jesus talks about how anger is like a veil that falls across this peace, which
means whenever we are threatened by peace—remember, peace means again the end of the ego thought
system, which means the end of our identity with the ego thought system. Anytime we're
threatened we have to erect a defense against it, and so anger is a major form of defense.
So we could rename Lesson 136 and say, "Anger is a defense against the truth," and we could
extend that further, "Specialness is a defense against the truth," and we could say specialness
and anger, anxiety, fear, depression, sickness are all defenses against this peace, which
of course would be the truth. And so just to have this awful pun, we would trade the
peace of God for a piece of God—p-i-e-c-e; that we all want to steal a piece of God and
make it our own and that becomes the substitute for the genuine peace, and that's what is
found expressed in that opening sentence in Lesson 185. There's no way of really saying
I want the peace of God unless I really look at within myself my desire not to have that
peace of God, all right? The first obstacle to peace is the desire to be rid of it; that's
the first obstacle to peace. "I don't want that peace." Again, that's what the beginning
of Lesson 185 is telling us, that we really need to look at with Jesus as our teacher;
really look at the fact that we don't want his peace. We don't want his course. We don't
want his message of forgiveness. We want our message of forgiveness. We want our piece
of Heaven instead of the peace of Heaven, and we would kill to maintain this separated
piece that we call ourselves. And the way that we keep and preserve this piece...the
ego piece...p-i-e-c-e, is to make someone else responsible for it. So I keep the separation
I stole from God and I blame somebody else for it. How could there be peace when conflict
is the name of the ego's game? How could there peace when I feel that I'm at war with everyone
and everything in the world? How could there be peace when I want to be at war with everyone
and everything in this world? That's the thing that we have to look at, and that's one of
the most important parts of Lesson 185 is to recognize how much we don't want that peace.
Only then can we say "no" to the ego, which then means I'm saying "yes" to Jesus and to
his course.