Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and response." -- A Course in Miracles

Our experience of peace is like week-ends. We know that we have this little slice of time where we can (theoretically, of course) relax and experience relative peace. Or it is like coming home in the evening after a busy day, and simply letting ourselves be for a moment. But this peace is always sandwiched in the middle of non-peace, like the eye of the hurricane. The stuff on either side gets a lot more time and attention, and peace is seen as a necessary hiatus, like sleep, so we can jump back in to what's really important.

This way of experiencing the world is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. We know that no matter how beautiful or content we feel in a moment of relative peace, we have to return to whatever tasks and issues face us in our lives. It seems to just be the way of it. We have this myth of balance, that somehow if you experience too much peace you are just lazy (or depressed!). I wonder how many people have been clinically diagnosed with depression when they were simply denying themselves the time and space for peace, beating themselves up constantly for wanting to experience what is in reality more natural than breathing?

Waiting for the other shoe to drop is not peace. It is based on the upside-down perception that the world causes us, that we are at affect with everyone and everything. If we reverse ourselves, releasing our insistence that everything is as it seems, we find that not one thing the world says is true. It is simply a constellation of collective agreements that we treat as absolute truth. We are willing slaves to a thought system that is the antithesis of Who We Really Are. The Peace that is our True Self is not dependent on anyone or anything, and is equally present when we are doing or not doing.

There is only One Cause, only One Presence, only One Peace, only One Love. This One, our True Self, is effortlessly seen and experienced as absolute Peace and Wholeness the instant we are willing to look within for Cause instead of continuing on the treadmill and pretending to be buffeted by the world around us. Peace can never be found within a fictional personal sense of self or personal choices or relationships, and if we continue to look for it out there we will always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter a mind where Love and Perfect Holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions. And He will substitute the Peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the Truth of God for self-deceptions, and God's Son for your illusions of yourself." -- A Course in Miracles