LESSON 66 My happiness and my function are one.

1. 1You have surely noticed an emphasis throughout our recent lessons on the connection between fulfilling your function and achieving happiness. 2This is because you do not really see the connection. 3Yet there is more than just a connection between them; they are the same. 4Their forms are different, but their content is completely one.

2. 1The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the funda­mental question of what your function is. 2So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is. 3It is not a two-way battle. 4The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. 5He knows what your function is. 6He knows that it is your happiness.

3. 1Today we will try to go past this wholly meaningless battle and arrive at the truth about your function. 2We will not engage in senseless arguments about what it is. 3We will not become hopelessly involved in defining happiness and determining the means for achieving it. 4We will not indulge the ego by listening to its attacks on truth. 5We will merely be glad that we can find out what truth is.

4. 1Our longer practice period today has as its purpose your acceptance of the fact that not only is there a very real connection between the function God gave you and your happiness, but that they are actually identical. 2God gives you only happiness. 3Therefore, the function He gave you must be happiness, even if it appears to be different. 4Today’s exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth.

5. 1Begin the ten-to-fifteen-minute practice period by reviewing these thoughts:

2God gives me only happiness.

3He has given my function to me.

4Therefore my function must be happiness.

5Try to see the logic in this sequence, even if you do not yet accept the conclusion. 6It is only if the first two thoughts are wrong that the conclusion could be false. 7Let us, then, think about the prem­ises for a while, as we are practicing.

6. 1The first premise is that God gives you only happiness. 2This could be false, of course, but in order to be false it is necessary to define God as something He is not. 3Love cannot give evil, and what is not happiness is evil. 4God cannot give what He does not have, and He cannot have what He is not. 5Unless God gives you only happiness, He must be evil. 6And it is this definition of Him you are believing if you do not accept the first premise.

7. 1The second premise is that God has given you your function. 2We have seen that there are only two parts of your mind. 3One is ruled by the ego, and is made up of illusions. 4The other is the home of the Holy Spirit, where truth abides. 5There are no other guides but these to choose between, and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice but the fear that the ego always engenders, and the love that the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it.

8. 1Thus, it must be that your function is established by God through His Voice, or is made by the ego which you have made to replace Him. 2Which is true? 3Unless God gave your function to you, it must be the gift of the ego. 4Does the ego really have gifts to give, being itself an illusion and offering only the illusion of gifts?

9. 1Think about this during the longer practice period today. 2Think also about the many forms the illusion of your function has taken in your mind, and the many ways in which you tried to find salvation under the ego’s guidance. 3Did you find it? 4Were you happy? 5Did they bring you peace? 6We need great honesty today. 7Remember the outcomes fairly, and consider also whether it was ever reasonable to expect happiness from anything the ego ever proposed. 8Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit’s Voice.

10. 1You will listen to madness or hear the truth. 2Try to make this choice as you think about the premises on which our conclusion rests. 3We can share in this conclusion, but in no other. 4For God Himself shares it with us. 5Today’s idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as differ­ent. 6On one side stand all illusions. 7All truth stands on the other. 8Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true.

11. 1In the shorter practice periods, which would be most helpful today if undertaken twice an hour, this form of the application is suggested:

2My happiness and function are one, because God has given me both.

3It will not take more than a minute, and probably less, to repeat these words slowly and think about them a little while as you say them.