You Are My Goal, Beloved One

The following is an adaptation of Lesson 287 of A Course in Miracles – Volume II: Workbook for Students.

The original text uses the metaphor of father for the Divine Presence. I use the metaphor of lover as expressed in the phrase “Beloved One.” As with the previous adaptations I’ve shared (see here and here), if this one resonates with you, feel free to make it even more meaningful by using your preferred images and words: “God,” “Allah,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” “Holy One,” “Mother.” I trust that they all serve as different pathways leading up the same holy mountain or, to use another metaphor, different gateways leading inwards to our center, the deepest part of which we all share. For as Henri Nouwen so beautifully reminds us: “In the depths of my being, I meet my fellow humans with whom I share [all things].”

Where would I go but into Your presence, my Beloved One? What could be a substitute for the peace You bring? What gift could I prefer before the peace of the Beloved One? What treasure would I seek and find and keep that can compare with my true Identity? And would I rather live with fear than love?

You are my goal, my Beloved One. What but You could I desire to have? What way but that which leads to You could I desire to walk? And what except the memory of You could signify to me the end of illusions and futile substitutions for the truth of Your Love? You are my only goal. I would be as You created me. What way but this could I expect to recognize my Self and be at one with the holy core of my true Identity.

Yes, You are my goal, Beloved One. Only You.

_____________________

I appreciate Marianne Williamson’s thoughts on Lesson 287, which she recently shared as part of her daily “Mornings with Marianne.”

There is a part in the Course in Miracles where it says that the most passionate love you have ever felt on this earth is but a fraction of the passion you feel for God. [This is because] there is a longing, a yearning for that from whence we came, and that from whence we came is our identity. Why? Because an idea does not leave its source and each one of us is an idea in the mind of God.

The first half of the Workbook is all about dismantling the thought system based on fear, while the second half is training us to substitute it with a different thought system, one based on love. In doing so, we are constantly affirming the holy perception, the true perception. And there is nothing more truer or more holy than our oneness with God.

The Course in Miracles says we achieve so little because our minds are undisciplined. We have goals that are all over the place, including the goal of holding onto our pain. But our pain is the ego’s peak experience. [We must strive instead] for singleness of intention – “You are my goal, my [Beloved One]. Only You.”

Say to yourself: My goal is to remember God. And in doing that I remember myself. Therein lies my peace. And from this simple place you dwell within the complexity of the world, but with much greater power and far more peace.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Meeting (and Embodying) the Lover God
• The Soul’s Beloved
• Aligning With the Living Light
• Be In My Mind, Beloved One
• Your Peace Is With Me, Beloved One
• Be Just In My Heart
• Beloved and Antlered
• “Here I Am”
• Sometimes I Wonder . . .
• Vessels of the Holy
• No Altar More Sacred
• To Be Held and to Hold
• An Erotic Encounter with the Divine
• Spirituality and the Gay Experience
• The Holy Pleasure of Intimacy
• The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace

Artwork: “Soulmates – Essence of Love” by Salem Beiruti.