What keeps us invested in the wrong mind, believing dreams can content us? It seems while our continuing problems, challenges and difficulties tire us, there are parts of the illusion which we consider the happier parts of the dream that tempt us. We still have some niggling hope that there is something here will satisfy us. The ego continues to entice us with substitutes for Heaven. These substitutes are called idols and are based on our belief that something lacking in us can be filled up with substitutes for God. We pursue these substitutes because we think they will address our cravings. These substitutes are also referred to as 'distorted miracle impulses.' (T.1.VII.1.1) Our distorted miracle impulses may be for food, money, sex, closeness, attention, and power. This is the miracle impulse, which has been distorted by our belief that we need something to fill up our feeling of lack.

Our attraction to guilt, pain and death is dressed up by the ego to make us think it is pleasure we are attracted to. If we really saw that our substitutes for the miracle were made to keep us in duality, and that what we are choosing is pain, it would not be hard to release these substitutes. But pain and pleasure don't seem the same in this world because the ego has dressed up guilt to look attractive to us. We are being asked to work with our attachments, preferences and investments so they can be loosened. The ego would have us keep these investments we hold about the world from our awareness so the miracle can't shine through. When we realize this is the way the ego keeps us in this game of suffering, we will increasingly let our attachments go.

Sex can be a big one in our belief that joining can come through connecting bodies. This is not to say there is anything wrong with sex, but to realize that what is behind the sexual drive is what we truly want---true joining and our reconnection to our Oneness. In fact, in the Urtext (which is the original of the material taken down by Helen Schucman before the edited material of the Course), Jesus says, "sex was intended as an instrument for physical creation [for producing new bodies] to enable Souls to embark on new chapters in their experience, and thus improve their record. [It is] not an end in itself." It is a misguided miracle impulse. Although sex was made for ego purposes, like everything of the ego, it can be used by the Holy Spirit for a holy purpose. Thus, it is all about purpose. We know by now that we do not under­stand what love is, often confusing and equating romance, specialness and sex with love. The best reflection of God's Love in this world is forgiveness. This is how we make space in our minds for the miracle to shine forth.

Jesus teaches that no substitute will ever satisfy the Son of God. Our illusions of security achieved through family, home, financial stability, our illusions of love achieved through special relationships, our illusions of safety achieved by taking vitamins, locking doors, buying insurance, and our illusions of specialness achieved by seeking recognition, attention, glory, all of them and more will never be enough. That is why we are never satisfied. "Yet you do not recognize them because you have raised their substitutes to such predominance that, when truth calls to you, as it does constantly, you answer with a substitute." (T.17.IV.3.2)(ACIM OE T.17.V.29) We keep on seeking and seeking, wondering why we don't ever feel the deep peace and joy only forgiveness can offer. We don't recognize that all of these substitutes are forms of fear.
 

Jesus asks us to consider how can any of these things satisfy God's Son? How can we ever want less than everything? Today I am asked to turn aside and ask myself if this illusion that tempts me today could offer me any contentment when "Heaven can be chosen just as easily as hell, and love will happily replace all fear." (W.272.2.2) Remember that all illusion in the Course is considered fear. Why is that? Think about it. Every illusion has a tinge of fear in it. If I have money, I fear losing it. If I have a special relationship, I have all kinds of fears about the person leaving, no longer loving me, hurting me and much more. Fear is behind our focus on safety. The body is a fearful thing in itself. It is small and vulnerable and fragile. But it is important to remember none of these things that we do in this seeming reality are wrong. This is not a course in behavior. Only what is being held in the mind needs to be addressed.
 

Jesus is pointing us to the truth of our Being by helping us to ask in everything, "What is it for?" In other words, what purpose is being served? What we do for our personal safety and for our bodies is not what is important. What is important is the choices we make in our minds for peace or war, for forgiveness or attack, for Heaven or for hell. We might, for example, need to physically defend ourselves from attack in this world, but the mind training would require we defend ourselves while still holding a defenseless thought. Or we might try to be helpful by visiting someone who is sick because we think it is the right or spiritual thing to do, but in our minds we are experiencing a feeling of sacrifice. Thus, our minds are split and, "This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to you because the part of the mind that wants to do something else is outraged." (T.2.VI.5.3)(ACIM OE T.2.IV.77)
 

Ultimately, we come to realize there is no meaning and no fulfillment in the things of this world. No matter how much we try, how well we have made our adjustments to it, it will never be here. We finally get disillusioned by it all, and that is a good thing. If that was not the case, we would never seek the truth. We would never be motivated to see beyond the veil to the real world. While there are seeming temporary pleasures in the dream, we know none of them last and ultimately can only bring pain and misery. Everything we seek in the world reflects our belief that we can exist outside of the mind of God. Only the eternal can satisfy. Only the peace of God offers us real peace. Any temporary pleasure we seek is a choice for hell.

No, we don't see it that way. We think we are choosing something that will satisfy and bring us fulfillment of our dreams, but there can be no fulfillment here because we are asking for that which is not real. No real satisfaction is possible here. What we are going for is always out of reach when we seek the things of this world. The toys and trinkets of the world just keep the gifts of God out of our awareness. "Shall we continue to allow God's grace to shine in unawareness, while the toys and trinkets of the world are sought instead?" (W.PII.258.1.3)
 

Seeking is what we came here to do, which does not make it wrong. What is important, again, is not what we are doing, but what it is in our minds. It is all about purpose. The world can serve the purpose of the ego, which is to keep us rooted in this dream seeking for what will never satisfy, or we can turn it to the purpose of waking up to who we really are. Thus, everything we have made can be used by the Holy Spirit for our awakening. All it takes is our decision to bring our misperceptions to Him.

Today we are invited to ask ourselves throughout the day, with any illusion that tempts us, "How can this illusion satisfy me?" We are the Son of God, and as such we have never left our home in God. We are a thought in His Mind. We have never left our Source. Our true Self is the Christ, which has never left our holy home in God's Mind. The separation from God is only our dream. It never happened. We are still innocent. Nothing we think we have done to make ourselves guilty has happened. We are God's Son, perfect, radiant and complete. The things, which tempt us in the world, call to us "to stay and linger in a dream, we turn aside and ask ourselves if we, the Sons of God, could be content with dreams, when Heaven can be chosen just as easily as hell, and love will happily replace all fear." (W.272.2.2)  

"I am surrounded by Your Love, forever still, forever gentle and forever safe." (W.272.1.7) When we are seeking the substitutes, it is because we think they will deliver that kind of safety, love and peace. Our disillusionment comes when we see they never deliver what we had hoped. What is tempting you right now? Ask yourself if you think it will bring happiness and contentment to you. If we were aware we were asking for more guilt, suffering and sorrow instead, would we still be tempted to pursue these things and further delay our journey to God? It is a journey to the peace and joy that is our inheritance.

The things of this world we pursue always disappoint and they always will. We dress up our temptations to look lovely. In the Laws of Chaos, we read that we mistake the form for content. We pursue the sickly forms in the world, and all we get is the content of fear. "For how else could you perceive the form they take, with content such as this? Can any form of this be tenable? Yet you believe them for the form they take, and do not recognize the content. It never changes. Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and pamper it, and make it live? And can you be content with an illusion that you are living?" (T.23.11.18.4-9)(ACIM OE T.23.III.3)

In this Lesson today, we look at our temptations, our drives and our cravings and ask ourselves if we believe they can satisfy a Son of God. Can one more dream for my happiness I am holding onto really bring me the fulfillment that I want? Yesterday I sent off a box full of clothes to charity. As I was packing them up, I was stunned by how much I had spent buying clothes I did not need. It felt depressing to look at the motivation that went into filling a sense of lack. It is not helpful for me simply to stop buying. What needs to be looked at is my own feeling that I need clothes to dress up my feelings of unworthiness. When this is fully released, the behaviors just fall away. There is no sense of sacrifice.