19.Our Goal

Our goal is mastery.  Our goal is not to prolong life in this particular body.  Our goal is not to alleviate this body’s suffering.  Our goal is not to obtain something or do something in the illusion, the reflection, the nothingness. The ego will tempt us to have other goals, but we will remember that our goal is mastery.

We will obtain it.  That is the will of God.  Whether it is this incarnation or the next or the next.  Time is an illusion.  Age is an illusion.  Death is an illusion.  Only our fear makes these seem real.  As we move towards mastery, we will become less and less fearful of the illusion and its stories and stand more and more firmly in the Holy Spirit’s thinking.

In order to attain mastery we must dig up all our hidden beliefs, forgive them and exchange them for the Holy Spirit’s way of thinking.  Then we must collect experiences that will help solidify those new beliefs.  It is these spiritual experiences that will result from a serious study of the Course and its truth and a vigorous practice of true forgiveness and true prayer. These spiritual experiences, these holy instants, which the Course says we have not yet experienced, will be the fruit of our labor.  When we string enough holy instants together we have attained mastery.  In the mean “time” we study on.