A New Direction

"The journey the Son of God has set himself is useless indeed, but the journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy." -- A Course in Miracles

Over and over I hear friends and clients with some version of the same story. We all seem to be perennially dissatisfied and looking to change directions in some aspect of our lives. Either our jobs or our relationships or our health... fill in the blank. Something feels 'off' and we want to change, improve, start over, do whatever it takes to find peace and freedom again.

The good news is that peace and freedom are at hand. The bad news is that we'll never find it by continually trying to change the outer picture. This is the useless journey we set for ourselves, over and over and over. So what is the journey of release and joy that is referred to in the above ACIM quote?

We have to let go. We have to reverse ourselves. We have to release all sense of knowing who and where we are. We have to release our attachments to people and things. We have to be willing to walk without a reference to past or future. This is the razor's edge of awakening that all traditions point to. It sounds pretty scary to the ego... like death, really. What is really funny is that all that is really lost is a false sense of self. What remains is the joy of our real Self, true Being. Peace and joy and freedom.

So the only journey ever worth taking, the only new direction that will ever give us what we really want, is this journey within. And it's the last new direction we'll ever have to choose.

"Always has no direction." -- A Course in Miracles