Seek But Do Not Find

Seek but do not find. The ego keeps us searching, searching for fulfillment, transcendence, meaning, peace, and a place beyond the pain and disappointment, in a place where it knows we can’t find them. We seek but do not find because we are looking in the wrong place – outside instead of inside, with ego instead of spirit.

Peace and forgiveness occur in the heart and mind and nowhere else. Inside, with spirit enfolding me, I know all my searching has been in vain, because I know I was looking where they could not be found. It can be painful to realize this and admit I’ve been wrong my entire life. I have experienced peace and happiness can in the world, but enfolded by spirit I realize those occasions were only when I’d somehow chosen spirit first.

“Real choice is no illusion,” the Course says. “But the world has none to offer. All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. Seek not escape from problems here. The world was made that problems could not be escaped. Think not that happiness is ever found by following a road away from it.”

There is a real choice to be made, the only choice really, between the ego and spirit. Everything that keeps me from making that choice, all the clutter in my heart and mind, the fear, anxiety, anger, hatred, and blame, are of the ego, put there to keep me busy and obscure the real choice; to obscure the lucid expression of my oneness with spirit. The clutter can be cleared by paying careful, mindful, non-judgmental attention of my seemingly idle thoughts, realizing I allow them so that the real choice will be kept from me and obscure my reality as spirit.

My one function here, in the world, is choosing to remove the clutter and allow the love just beyond it to shine in, of itself. But I am not the one to actually do this, to remove the clutter and replace it, mine is simply to bring it and all the ego’s illusions to spirit. It’s my choice to be willing to allow my “illusions of purpose” to be replaced by my true function – forgiveness, to have the darkness of my mistakes corrected by the light of my spiritual reality. As I stop trying to resolve my conflicts and the world’s by doing external things, I come to appreciate that the only real conflict is the one in my heart and mind, between spirit and ego.

One of the difficulties in doing this is, as I identify with the ego, I think I really know what happiness is. “Humility, on the other hand, says that we do not understand what will make us happy, but there is one within us who does,” and s/he/it is always ready to bless and guide us whenever and wherever we are ready.