War with my circumstances.

War with my body.

War with the people who had hurt me.

War with myself.

I called it different things. I called it being driven. I called it being responsible. I called it standing up for what’s right. Yet underneath it all, I was at war. And I was tired.

I didn’t want to study war “no more.”

“A Course in Miracles tells us:

“Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is.”

That cracked something open in me.

We’re not here to accumulate more spiritual information.

We’re here to know peace.

Yet peace is the condition for everything else – the wisdom, the freedom, the joy, the wholeness. Without peace, none of it can land.

Here’s something incredibly helpful to understand: peace is always available. It’s still ours. The world hasn’t taken it from us. The hard people in our life haven’t taken it from us. Even the worst things we’ve done haven’t taken it from us.

We’ve put a temporary block on it. That’s all.

The block comes off the moment we say I’d like peace more than I’d like to be right.

That’s the whole path. That’s the whole curriculum.

Yet here’s where it gets tricky. We say we’d like peace, then we choose to argue. We say we’d like peace, then we choose to complain. We say we’d like peace, then we self-sabotage. We say we’d like peace – and we keep believing life is against us.

We oscillate.

We’re going one direction, then the other. We’re loving one minute, attacking the next. We’re choosing peace one breath, choosing war the next. We’re not heart-mind congruent. Always unstable and off-balance.

That’s the ego’s whole strategy. Keep us oscillating. Keep us inconsistent. Keep us split.

We can stop.

A Course in Miracles tells us:

“You cannot learn simultaneously from two teachers who are in total disagreement about everything.”

I had to choose. I had to say Higher Holy Spirit Self, I’m only interested in your voice, your teaching, your curriculum. I’m willing. I had to say it again the next moment. And the next.

Here’s what I’ve come to know: the faster path to peace isn’t faster because we’re racing through it. It’s faster because we stop oscillating. We stop arguing with the curriculum. We stop trying to keep one foot in war while reaching for peace with the other hand.

We just choose. In this now. And this now. And this now.

The volatile have no direction. The willing find the way home.

Here’s the gift: the Higher Holy Spirit Self does the heavy lifting of releasing the pain of the past. We just have to be willing. We just have to keep choosing. We just have to stop studying war.

If we’d like to walk this path in community, we’re choosing the other way. We’re choosing peace.

New Series: Change Your Mind About the World – with Alan Cohen, James Twyman, Michael Mirdad and Lisa Natoli – early-bird bonuses until May 22nd. Click here for more info.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE:  I Wrote the Script  What if waking up doesn’t have to hurt? This week I’m continuing in one of the most foundational sections of A Course in Miracles – “The Dreamer of the Dream” – and we’re turning from diagnosis to medicine. Why do so many of us secretly dread real spiritual awakening, afraid it would cost us everything? What’s the quieter dream I’ve come to trust the Holy Spirit gives us first, before the bigger waking? And what’s the single question I now ask myself that changed how I meet every painful moment? This is part two of a two-episode arc.

TODAY:  Sundays with Spirit – join for inspirational music and message. Totally FREE – all are welcome – register to get the zoom details for today.