Happiness is a Decission

Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? I know the first time I heard this question, I wanted to be happy. Like many, I had come to "realize that nothing works in this world--no economic system, no political system, no religious system." (Quote from Gloria Wapnick, The Complete Story of The Course, page 116. ) In the early 1980's I was stumping around in the darkness, when the first glimpse of light came after reading Gerald Jampolsky's book Love is Letting Go ofFear. Inspired, I went on to titles Goodbye to Guilt and Teach Only Love. I did find glimpses of happiness but, would fall back into the workings of my own world. Surely, I thought, I was just trying to play Pollyanna (Eleanor H. Porter.) . It was difficult for me to hold these glimpses of light while living with an angry fiancee in the National Guard, and my father was dying of cancer. When I look back, I realize that Holy Spirit teaches by contrast. I attended Al-Anon groups and began to try and "let go and let God" and "let go of my all old ideas."

Somehow, I found an Attitudinal Healing group an the local Unity Church. I drifted into a facilitator's training at the Life Center in Indianapolis with the crazy idea that I would use these concepts to help other's. I myself, was going through a divorce, having difficulty hanging on to a business, my son had been attacked and was in and out of mental health care, and felt my life was spinning out of control, and lived in constant fear. (I had no idea the feelings of coercion were the cause of rage, and that miracles and fear both came from the same source.) I was not at peace because God had given me "a very lofty function I was not meeting." (ACIM, Volume One, Text, page 50.) I continued to try and live the roles I thought that life had assigned me and search for happiness.

I purchased A Course In Miracles and hung on to lines "Chaos reigns until a decision is made" and "falling apart and falling together feel the same." Still, I lived in fear as I chose to do and think conflicting things. I did decide that despite what I was told, and believed in the past, I had a capacity to learn. I decided to go to college to study psychology and addiction. This is where I got the first "Ah ha" about projection. At that time, my significant other screamed I had "taken him hostage" because I objected to his smoking in my bedroom. I realized I didn't have to live in the projections of others. I began to realized that others where just as much a hostage of their belief systems as I was to my own, they didn't do these things to me on purpose, they just hadn't experienced anything different.

While in college, I studied Control Theory ( William Glasser); Glasser's premise was that we place pictures in our head, then we do everything in our power to make our life look like those pictures. My secular instructor did not comprehend "this is not a chair..." (ACIM, Workbook, lesson one.) But, un-mistakenly, I began to realize Truth when I knew it.

My next lesson was to go to work in the Department of Corrections as a substance abuse counselor. Still co-dependent my self, I tired to apply A Mini Course In Miracles (Gerald Jampolsky.) to my life, and groups I did with adolescent females. I was learning that I taught best what I most needed to learn myself. By repeated teaching of principals to others, they began to filter into my own life. "nothing real can be increased, except by sharing." (ACIM, Text, page 64.) But, I was still trying to live in the reality of others. To be happy, I had to choose my own reality.

I began to train as a Gestalt therapist and began to realize how we keep repeating old patterns. "The closed mind believes the future and the present will be the same...this establishes a seemly stable state that is usually an attempt to counteract and underlying fear that the future will be worse than the present." "Spiritual sight is symbolic...a correction rather than fact...a mean's of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of a miracle." (ACIM, Text, page 36) "The past is gone, it cannot harm me." (Attitudinal Healing )

Last year, I again began slip back into fear after an experience of violence, and disappointment . I then found myself on a bus headed for the Human Kindness Foundation. On the bus, I read We 're All Doing Time , and Deep and Simple. (Bo Lozoff). I had a wonderful opportunity to share with author Bo and Sita Lozoff, ex-offenders, and staff from correctional facilities around the country. I began to again find the peace that comes with surrender.

Happiness comes when I find others guiltless, and choose a world that is not governed by fear, punishment and death. Christ demonstrated the illusion of death by the crucifixion. The miracle comes from a shift in perception. Happiness IS decision!