“It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.” ACIM lesson 190
The above excerpt states that there is nothing “out there” that can impact one’s innate ability to be happy. There is nothing the material realm can do to affect the Truth of what one Really Is. This is because one’s constitutional position is that of Eternal Bliss and Knowledge. The ever present Self of Awareness is completely unaffected by the apparent “comings and goings” of “the small self”. Only the small self, or “false ego of the conditioned soul” (that which believes itself over Source to be life) is thought to be subject to birth and death.
The way back to one’s constitutional position is to surrender all thoughts, all beliefs, all concepts to the Supreme of the Self – because thoughts condition one to believe in the illusion of a false identity. When the false identity of death is released, in its place is what always was, and always will be – Oneness with Source.
Darcie French 