Contemplating Joy
Reflections on love letting go of fear
You Are Not Your Past
These contemplations reflect love and fear as opposites, which is a theme from A Course in Miracles. Many publications have spun from A Course in Miracles, which was first published in June of 1976 by the Foundation for Inner Peace. The one most relied on here is Love is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald Jampolsky, published in 1979 by Celestial Arts.
Love in the world is tainted by fear. Love and fear are products of separation. Without separation, there is no need for love or fear. Both are illusions because separation is an illusion.
Love and fear are emotions of the me of the body. Like the body and its personality, they are transitory. They come and go. They are mercurial and changeable. They are passions of the body in a dream of this and that. You love this, but not that. You fear that, but not this. Your love and fear rise and fall with your desires and expectations. You experience pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow. These are the ways of the world. They are not your true nature.
Joy is your true nature. Joy is love without fear. Joy is real. It has no opposite. It cannot be described. Joy is eternal. To love in the world without fear is to express joy. Joy has no requirements, attachments, or conditions. Joy is you expressing your reality in a world of illusion.
To love without fear is joy. Joy has no attachments or conditions. Joy is a state of being in the world that reflects your true nature. Joy unites you with the whole of the all. Joy is your abundance. It provides for you now, in the moment, with peace of heart always. Peace of heart does not judge or hold out hope. It is now, not in the past or future. To desire love is to feel separation. You want connection. You want to feel whole. You want the embrace of love to overcome your thoughts of separation.
You can change your life by changing your thoughts about it. What you believe proves itself true. To change thoughts and the beliefs that go with them, turn within. To turn within is to remember your true nature. You are not your body or its personality. You are joy. Joy lies in the silence of the room within. The world cannot fulfill you. Desire and expectation are spun sugar. Their attainments do not nourish fully. Your satisfactions are transitory. They come and go. You seek more, and more is never enough. You cannot hold on to the ways of the world and find lasting fulfillment.
To find fulfillment, enter the room within. To enter the room within, change your thoughts and beliefs about yourself by stepping into the moment, releasing the past, and curbing your imagination of the future. Thoughts and beliefs exist only in your mind. Clear your mind of judgment and hope. Your perceptions are illusions that you have captured as thoughts and maintain as your own. They are not yours. They are not you. You are joy within. You are whole, complete, perfect, eternal as is. From within, you will know this each moment. Follow the path that is your natural way. You know the way from within. Your path lies not in the world but in your heart. It is a path of peace and joy.
The past is thoughts that you capture in mind and call your own. These thoughts are not your reality. Your reality is eternal. It has no past. This is hard to fathom in a world of separation where you see your body with its personality as real. The me of the body is not real. It is transitory. Reality is eternal and unchanging. The me of the body exists in spacetime as an illusion in consciousness of separation, and the past is a figment of your perceptions of separation.
Your thoughts from the past produce beliefs which become true for you. What is not true in your mind you see as false. You act according to these beliefs. Your actions become your life. Your life is formed by your thoughts and beliefs, which are the product of genetics, culture, and experience. Your life becomes one long perception of what you think it is. Changing your life starts with changing your thoughts. New thoughts bring about new beliefs which change your actions. Your perceptions shift and a new life begins. You live in a world of your own thinking.
Judgment keeps the past alive in your mind. Judgment is the dust that blinds you to joy. Judgment dwells in separation. It proves to you in false ways that your thoughts and beliefs are correct. Judgment keeps your circle of thought-belief-action perception intact. It keeps your world, whether pleasant or miserable, from falling apart. Judgment ties you to a world of separation where one thing is true, and another is false. Judgment, like separation, lies outside of the moment. It is in the moment where you stop judging and hold peace of heart in all situations. To live in the moment is to live without judgment. To live in the moment is to join in the unity of the whole of the all. To live in the whole of the all is to experience peace of heart always.
To live with peace of heart always, do not judge and do not hope. Stay in the moment. It is without fear. You cannot love from fear. Release the past and choose the moment. To love without fear is to express joy in the moment. To live in the moment is to be the joy that you are. There is nothing in the world that needs to change for you to know peace of heart in all situations. With peace of heart, you are choosing love over fear.
Release joy into the world. Joy is your true nature. Let joy be your guide in all things. To live in joy is to know the whole of the all, which is consciousness in existence. You always have a choice between the me of the body and your true nature. Do you follow the way of the world or the way of the path? One leads to death. The other to the eternal.
You have the power to live with peace of heart always. Peace is found moment by moment without judgment or hope. Your world is as you see it. You are what you believe yourself to be. To see yourself as loveable is to be loved. Whether you think you are loveable or not depends on your judgment of the past. Without judgment, you are all things. Without hope, you are all possibilities. Relieve yourself of judgment and hope, then your true nature can follow its natural course.
Live in the moment. You do not know. That which I AM knows. Twia is not limited by the world like the me of the body. To follow twia, enter the room within. From within, you have eyes that see the whole of the all. To see the whole of the all is to know joy. To know joy, you love without fear. Without fear, love joins the world in unity. To hold the world in unity is to let go of the past, hold no expectations, and to know that you are that which I AM. There is no other. To know there is no other is to experience peace of heart each moment.
Choose peace of heart in all situations. To know peace of heart is to live from the whole of the all. To live from the me of the body is to be alone and afraid. The me of the body knows only separation. It tries to love but is fearful of its loss. It turns away from others to survive. It is limited by its form and fears oblivion. It struggles to survive, suffers in trying, and seeks love as the answer to both. To live from the body is to live in pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow as fear and love wax and wane over a lifetime. This is life as illusion, whereas your reality is joy. Joy is love without fear. To know joy is to live moment by moment with peace of heart. To bring joy to the moment is to live in the world from the whole of all and not from the me of the body.
Joy knows no opposite. It has no distinctions and cannot be compared. Joy is your reality. To know joy is to know your true nature. Your true nature is whole, complete, perfect, eternal. Joy cannot be separated. You cannot give joy or receive joy, for giving and receiving are the same. Joy is your abundance. You do not lack, nor can you gain. To be the joy that you are is to live fully in the whole of the all, which is consciousness in existence. To give love in the world without conditions, expectations, or attachments is to know joy and to accept the whole of the all as your home. There is nothing outside of you that can bring you joy. You are the love in the world that knows no fear. You are joy. There is no other.
Peace of heart comes from letting go of the past. Judgment and peace do not co-exist. Peace of heart comes with joy, and joy is without judgment and hope. Joy is love without fear. Without fear there is no judgment and hope. The past and the future become the moment. Joy is always present now. To live outside the moment is to entertain fear and the uncertainty and grievance that fear engenders. Until you release the past, you fear for the future. To live in fear is to live without peace of heart.
Love has no meaning. It is what you make of it. What you see as love is the love you give and get. You perceive the world from the past and act accordingly. What you think is true becomes true in your life. You live in a world of your own making that you can change. Genetics, culture, and experience combine to give you a message that the me of the body accepts as reality, when in truth it is illusion. You can change how you receive and accept the message. You can flip the switch and give new meaning to love and life.
Love and life have no meaning. You give them meaning from what you perceive them to be. What you perceive is determined by the thoughts you hold in mind. Your mind is a factory of thoughts producing perceptions and beliefs. You can change production by changing fuels. You can select either fear and ignorance or joy and wisdom. You have the power to choose. You can live a life of wisdom and joy without fear, or not. Thoughts you choose to hold in mind are not real, so they can be changed, and this change alters your meaning of love and life. Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Be neither happy nor sad. Notice your emotions without owning them. Be their witness while you hold peace of heart. How you believe yourself to be can change. You have the power to change your emotions by changing your thoughts. You are not your thoughts, so do not invest yourself in the ones you do not want. Do not make the past your future if you do not like how life has been. Do not judge the past. Do not hope for a different future. Enter the room within. Be in the moment without judgment and hope. Release desire. Drop expectations. Experience the moment as it is. Be its witness. Joy and wisdom will find you. They give you eyes to see differently than those of fear and ignorance. Be absorbed in the moment and your world will change. Let go of the past by being fully in tune with now. Now is your life, not yesterday or tomorrow. Remember, yesterday is gone and tomorrow will tend to itself. You are worthy of your full attention each moment. Days come and go. You are eternal. Follow the joy that is your true nature. Joy knows the way. Set yourself free to follow joy. Let peace of heart find its way at each moment in your life. It is your choice.
The world as you see it can change by changing your views. Your thoughts make up the world you experience. Your world is an effect of your thinking. You think the world is real. You feel powerless against its forces. You have relinquished control over your thoughts and emotions. You perceive them as outside forces when in fact you choose the thoughts and emotions you wish to act upon. What you believe to be from the outside originates within you. Your world of pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow is a world of your own making from the desires and expectations you choose to follow. You can change your world by witnessing your thoughts and emotions instead of accepting them as real. You do not have to ride these ponies. Observe them as they frolic in the field that is your mind. Then turn within and accept peace of heart in all situations.
To suffer in the world is to accept it as real. And why wouldn’t you? It appears real. There is pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow. There is yesterday and tomorrow, with a brief stop in between called today. You have desires and expectations. Thoughts and emotions consume you. Add a bump on the head and a stubbed toe, and what could be more real than the world in which you live and breathe? Yet, it is an illusion, a thought of separation in consciousness. The thought is transitory. Consciousness is eternal. What is eternal, whole, and unchangeable is reality. Look at the world through the eyes of your true nature. There is no separation. Consciousness in existence is the whole of the all. Live through your true nature without judgment and hope. Hold peace of heart always. Your perceptions of the world are distorted by ignorance and fear. Let wisdom and joy be your vision from within and your world will change. What is real in the world is you and the vision you bring to it. You are that which I AM. There is no other.
Look upon the world as whole. See it as the whole of the all. Do not fragment your life with this and that. Fragments come at you from the past. Leave them be. Do not judge. Witness your thoughts. They are not you. They come and go with this and that. You are the whole of the all. Bring yourself to center. Quiet your mind. Enter the room within. Herein lies the joy that is your true nature. Joy has no judgment. See joy in all as consciousness in existence. Joy requires no conditions or expectations. It is not a desire to seek or attain. It is you. It is that which I AM. There is no opposite. Joy is whole, complete, perfect, eternal. Bring joy with you to the table. Then you can love all without fear. Replace judgment with joy. The past will wither. Moments of peace will expand. Look through eyes of joy and your world will change from this and that to the whole of the all, and you will live with peace of heart always.
In all the days of all the years, there is this moment, and in this moment is the whole of the all. Do not let the past or future dissuade you from knowing the eternal, for this moment is all there is. Time fragments. Words separate. To judge and hope is to open yourself to pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow as your expectations rise and fall. Without the moment, you live in a future built on the past. Joy, often hidden by time, is revealed in the moment. Be in the moment with joy. Rid yourself of judgment. Release hope to the wind. Accept joy in the moment as your true nature. There is only the moment. To live in the moment is to touch the eternal. To touch the eternal is to live with peace of heart always.
Once upon a time there was a past. It died. It no longer is the bane of your existence. It no longer obliterates the moment or predicts the future. You have the present moment to fill the gap. In the moment, the way opens before you. Old judgments have no use. New perceptions alter your beliefs. Your world changes. To be in the moment is to release joy. In the moment you can love without fear. You are released from Marley’s chains. Without the weight, you stand taller and breathe deeper. When you hold peace of heart in all situations, you are awakening to the truth within that is I AM.
You have the power to change your perceptions. Peace of heart is always yours if you choose. It is a choice, for peace lies within. The world brings pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow with the rise and fall of your desires and expectations. Every event can be seen through a peaceful heart. You can turn from the world and find peace within in all situations. Your thoughts and emotions are not you. You give them any power they appear to hold. What happens in the world can be filtered through the witness. Be the observer of events. Leave them to themselves. They are ponies in the field to be watched without riding. Do not dwell on the ponies. They are judgments and hopes. Stay in the moment. Experience the moment as its witness. Hold peace of heart. The world will change as you alter your perceptions. The unity of the whole of the all is found in peace of heart always. Choose unity over the illusion of separation. Change your perceptions and you will change your world.
You can change your thoughts. The thoughts you act on are your choice. How you act is your choice. You may feel overwhelmed and trapped, but your attitude in the situation remains your choice. You can choose peace in all situations. Put worldly ways in the bucket by the door and enter the room within. Release the world. Reclaim your true nature. New thoughts and new perceptions change beliefs. When beliefs change, the world changes. There is a world of joy in you. Choose joy. You are the one. There is no other than joy.