We spend our entire lives using yesterday to plan for tomorrow.
But what is it we are really doing?
This question has been close to home for us lately as we prepare to move to Texas. On the surface, it looks like planning. There are lists, timelines, decisions, logistics, and all the familiar details that come with a major life change. Boxes will be packed. Addresses will change. Calendars will fill.
Yet underneath the activity is a quieter question: are we planning a future, or are we consenting to the unfolding of something already in motion?
A Course in Miracles invites us to question the authority we give to time. The Course is uncompromising here. The past is not a reliable teacher, and the future is not something we truly create. Both are mental constructs, held in place by the ego to preserve a sense of control. What we call planning is often just the past, recycled and projected forward.
The ego says, “Based on what happened before, here is what we must do now.”
The Holy Spirit asks, “What is being offered here, in this moment?”
From the ego’s perspective, our move could be framed as a strategy. A response to circumstances. A solution to problems. From the Course’s perspective, that framing is beside the point. The form does not matter nearly as much as the teacher we choose to interpret it.
There is a line in the Course that changes everything once it is taken seriously: the script is written. Not in a fatalistic sense, but in a liberating one. If the “movie is finished,” then what we are doing now is not directing it. We are watching it unfold, live, moment by moment.
This is deeply unsettling to the ego, which lives by planning and control. But it is profoundly comforting to the part of the mind that is tired of carrying the weight of figuring everything out.
Seen this way, the move to Texas is not a gamble. It is not a leap into the unknown. It is simply the next scene.
Acceptance, then, is not about passively letting life happen. It is about releasing the belief that we are the authors of outcomes. We still take steps. We still sign papers. We still make arrangements. But we do so without the burden of believing that our peace depends on getting it right.
The Course does not ask us to abandon practical action. It asks us to abandon anxiety as our guide.
When planning comes from fear, it tightens. When action flows from acceptance, it relaxes. One says, “I must manage this or else.” The other says, “I will be shown what to do.”
In that sense, this move does not feel like planning at all. It feels like recognition. Like noticing where the current is already carrying us and choosing not to swim upstream.
The ego wants certainty about the future. The Holy Spirit offers certainty of purpose instead. And purpose does not require foresight. It requires willingness.
If the movie is already complete, then our job is not to rewrite the script. It is to watch without resistance. To participate without fear. To trust that each scene, including this one, is placed exactly where it belongs.
So we pack our boxes, not as architects of a future, but as witnesses to an unfolding. Not asking, “Will this work out?” but gently asking, “What is this for?”
And in that question, the anxiety of planning gives way to the peace of acceptance.