1. You have surely noticed an emphasis throughout our recent lessons on the connection between fulfilling your function and achieving happiness. ²This is because you do not really see the connection. ³Yet there is more than just a connection between them; they are the same. ⁴Their forms are different, but their content is completely one.
2. The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is. ²So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is. ³It is not a two-way battle. ⁴The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. ⁵He knows what your function is. ⁶He knows that it is your happiness.
3. Today we will try to go past this wholly meaningless battle and arrive at the truth about your function. ²We will not engage in senseless arguments about what it is. ³We will not become hopelessly involved in defining happiness and determining the means for achieving it. ⁴We will not indulge the ego by listening to its attacks on truth. ⁵We will merely be glad that we can find out what truth is.
4. Our longer practice period today has as its purpose your acceptance of the fact that not only is there a very real connection between the function God gave you and your happiness, but that they are actually identical. ²God gives you only happiness. ³Therefore, the function He gave you must be happiness, even if it appears to be different. ⁴Today’s exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth.
5. Begin the ten-to-fifteen-minute practice period by reviewing these thoughts:
2God gives me only happiness.
3He has given my function to me.
4Therefore my function must be happiness.
5Try to see the logic in this sequence, even if you do not yet accept the conclusion. 6It is only if the first two thoughts are wrong that the conclusion could be false. 7Let us, then, think about the premises for a while, as we are practicing.
6. The first premise is that God gives you only happiness. ²This could be false, of course, but in order to be false it is necessary to define God as something He is not. ³Love cannot give evil, and what is not happiness is evil. ⁴God cannot give what He does not have, and He cannot have what He is not. ⁵Unless God gives you only happiness, He must be evil. ⁶And it is this definition of Him you are believing if you do not accept the first premise.
7. The second premise is that God has given you your function. ²We have seen that there are only two parts of your mind. ³One is ruled by the ego, and is made up of illusions. ⁴The other is the home of the Holy Spirit, where truth abides. ⁵There are no other guides but these to choose between, and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice but the fear that the ego always engenders, and the love that the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it.
8. Thus, it must be that your function is established by God through His Voice, or is made by the ego which you have made to replace Him. ²Which is true? ³Unless God gave your function to you, it must be the gift of the ego. ⁴Does the ego really have gifts to give, being itself an illusion and offering only the illusion of gifts?
9. Think about this during the longer practice period today. ²Think also about the many forms the illusion of your function has taken in your mind, and the many ways in which you tried to find salvation under the ego’s guidance. ³Did you find it? ⁴Were you happy? ⁵Did they bring you peace? ⁶We need great honesty today. ⁷Remember the outcomes fairly, and consider also whether it was ever reasonable to expect happiness from anything the ego ever proposed. ⁸Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit’s Voice.
10. You will listen to madness or hear the truth. ²Try to make this choice as you think about the premises on which our conclusion rests. ³We can share in this conclusion, but in no other. ⁴For God Himself shares it with us. ⁵Today’s idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. ⁶On one side stand all illusions. ⁷All truth stands on the other. ⁸Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true.
11. In the shorter practice periods, which would be most helpful today if undertaken twice an hour, this form of the application is suggested:
2My happiness and function are one, because God has given me both.
3It will not take more than a minute, and probably less, to repeat these words slowly and think about them a little while as you say them.
✨ Inspired by the core message of the Course:
"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."
This lesson comes from (A Course in Miracles). Hemelbewus presents it in Afrikaans as part of a path of inner healing and forgiveness. The translation was done with great care and dedication over several years by Henri Theron, and brings the deep spiritual teachings of the Course to Afrikaans-speaking readers.
Lesson 66: My happiness and my function are one. (ACIM, W-66)
