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231 Father, I will but to remember You.

MT: But do I, really? Or is this one of those affirmations that deny What Is?
JC: Well, what is your will? How is remembering God any different from eating lunch, taking a walk, or putting together a shopping list?
MT: It is far-ranging. It is at the starting point of my new thought system. These other things you mention, they are all superfluous. My body can do without food, for a while at least, and I can do without exercise and I can for sure do without shopping, but God?
JC: You've answered your own question. God is the hub without which there is no wheel. God is Life, the air you breathe, the water that slakes your thirst and refreshes your body.
MT: Let the memory of God return to me today. Amen.

231 Father, I will but to remember You.

Nothing else. Why should other goals attract? They are all delays and procrastination. I will no longer look back to what worked in the past, either. Experience, to be genuine, must be fresh, received anew every single time. The sweetness of God's presence--that is nectar. I will but to remember You.



232 Be in my mind, my Father, through the day.


MT: What does it mean, exactly, to have God in my mind?
JC: It boils down to a simple choice: are you with an idea, or are you with God?
MT: I don't know what it's like to be not with an idea. My world is made of ideas. Granted, they are mostly hallucinations and do not exist in reality.
JC: They are all hallucinations. You are no different than the mentally ill homeless man panhandling in the corner. The only difference between the two of you, and I repeat, the ONLY difference is that you can comment about the state you're in, and the mentally ill cannot. He's too deep in his state to talk about it. He has lost the ability to observe his condition.
MT: So being one with the mind of God is very different from being crazy.
JC: Oneness with the mind of God is the ultimate sanity. What you call "crazy" is a state of extreme fear, fear so deep that it splinters the mind into a thousand pieces. It is a mind in desperate need of healing. There is nothing glorious about it.
MT: What lesson should I learn here?
JC: To observe your mind. Is it still, or frantic with ideas? Is it jumping ahead of you, rehearsing past mistakes, making constant judgments? Or is it still as a deep lake in the moonlight? Think of the peace of a quiet mind. That is the peace of God.

232 Be in my mind, my Father, through the day.

Or the night . . . As I write this after 9 pm, I look back on my day. I realized something today. I participate in a tai chi group, and I love the "group" feel of everybody moving in unison. But I have a hard time learning the moves. Following the moves on a tai chi video, I am seized with irritation: what the hell, let me turn off the monitor! I can't do this anyway! I think it's my left brain rebelling against a right-brain task. The feeling takes me back to a right-brain drawing workshop I took decades ago. The left brain wants to get it all done, fast. The right brain doesn't know time and avoids effort. Yet miracles happen when one allows the right brain to function.

What does this all have to do with inviting God to be with me? Well, methinks that inviting God in is like learning tai chi. My ego doesn't want to learn the moves--or meditate, for that matter-- so it finds all sorts of excuses not to be present. Well, at least I know I'm doing it! I can no longer blindly follow the path of ignorance and irresponsibility.



233 I give my life to God to guide today.

MT: I feel quite scattered, so it's a joke, really, to say that I give my life to God to guide. It's more like, I give my life to the visiting grandchildren, to our plans for today. I forgot God.
JC: It's not reciprocal.
MT: God has not forgotten me, you're saying. But I'm not special to God. God hasn't forgotten any of us. He just doesn't get involved in our drama.
JC: If you only knew who, what God really is, you would see that personalizing God is laughable. The purpose of these later lessons is to contact God-Is. To do so you must abandon your old ideas.
MT: God-was replaced by God-Is. My shabby representation, the God made to my image, replaced by a vast, incomprehensible, omnipresent life force, the love that burst forth to create all that is. I like that. We're pretty small potatoes, really, but we get wrapped up in this pseudo-universe we make up, and it acquires a life of its own.
JC: But when you ally yourself with the omnipresent life force, when you let go of the little self, in that moment you are "as God."
MT: Thanks for the reminder! I needed it today.

233 I give my life to God to guide today.

I started having fun with the turmoil of my life. I am talking about J's outrageous behavior, which (I just realized half an hour ago) in some obscure way I actually enjoy. I enjoy it because I get to tell my story, to write and call people who exclaim, in chorus with me: Ain't she awful! So I go to bed tonight in gratitude for those who push my buttons and serve as fodder for my ego. What a life this is!



234 Father, today I am your Son again.

MT: Today I am your Son again. . . what does this mean to me? Today I enter my Father's house. My wanderings are over. I need look no further. I need no map, because I am at the door, and it swings wide open to receive me. What comfort in God's embrace!
JC: No questions asked. Teachers and guides and angels rejoice at your return. Now carry this feeling with you, whatever what you do today. You are God's Beloved. Welcome back! Welcome back!



235 God in His mercy wills that I be saved.

MT: I behold what you do not say. You do not say, "God in His wrath wills that I go to hell." The words of Mozart's Requiem (guess that's the Catholic Mass for the Dead) brought up the image of long rows of abject "sinners" crawling before a judging God, begging for pity because they deserve nothing else. How did we ever get started thinking like this? But why the word "mercy," given that we were created sinless? Isn't "mercy" something offered to undeserving criminals? Something offered to the have-nots by the holier ones?
JC: I use the word on purpose. It has been misused by the ego. You can say "love" instead. No matter how far away from God you think you have gone, God is there still. No matter how many times you claim not to know Him, He knows you still. In your self-inflicted pain you may curse God, but He is still the immutable Presence in all you do. You cannot change the tides or move the stars from their place in heaven, and you cannot change what God is.
MT: And He wills that I be saved from the hell I made, because it does not exist.
JC: You cannot change God, and you cannot change the Self that God created. It is still there, always was, always will be, eternal and infinite in the arms of your God.



236 I rule my mind, which I alone must rule.


MT: So empowering, those words. I am the master of my mind. No more "look what the devil made me do."
JC: Indeed. This is the Second Coming, when the dawn of Christ comes to every mind.
MT: My mind has a way of running off, generating dialogue, creating situations, rehearsing the past and making up a future. It feels quite out of control. Or perhaps I'm just more aware of what it does.
JC: A still mind is the most precious gift you can give yourself. A still mind is open to God. It is open to a new perception of everything and everybody. Let your thoughts be still today. This is the last barrier you have erected between yourself and God.



237 Now would I be as God created me.

MT: Woke up agitated, JC--chasing around for solutions to problems old and new.
JC: Stay with the restlessness. Let it be.
MT: There is fear, and the mind hops around like it's on hot coals. Definitely not as God created me!
JC: No, that is not what God created!
MT: Must have been a bad dream.
JC: You wake from the dream, and it's as if it never was. Let it not linger.
MT: I can only be as God created me. The rest is a dream, and does not exist.
JC: Now listen to the ineffable music of the spheres. See the beauty around you, the beauty in you. This is all you need to see. This is all God intended for you.



238 On my decision all salvation rests.

MT: Why is it so difficult to contact God, then? How could I be so powerful as to keep God at bay?
JC: You are not convinced of the power of your mind. You have demonstrated it numerous times, and promptly forgot. Your life right now centers around your declining body. Your thoughts center around a non-acceptance of aging and a terror of aging, both. This is how you render your mind powerless.
MT: Perhaps I could just die and get it over with? Or have a near-death experience? I need strong medicine for this thinking malady. I am terrified of doctors and their CAT scans and scalpels and potions and pills.
JC: But you are capable of making allies of doctors, too. You were grateful for the competence with which your aching molar was treated, weren't you? Fifty years ago it would have been pulled on the spot. Two hundred years ago your body might have perished of blood poisoning. It is possible to employ medical professionals, instead of
making them into enemies.
MT: Yes. . . I mostly take an adversarial stance, and then I fear them.
JC: Doctors' and nurses' minds need healing too. They need it desperately. Helping is their profession, but they have forgotten what true help is. They have machines and technology, and still they see pain and death. Nothing in their training prepares them for this ultimate surrender.



239 The glory of my Father is my own.

MT: So no more us sinners praising God to beg for favors! I never liked that anyway.
JC: I said, "ye are as Gods."
MT: This journey in the body, then, is a journey toward our God-nature.
JC: A journey back, yes.
MT: Today let me be as God created me. Today I dwell in the paradise that God intended for me.

239 The glory of my Father is my own.

MT: So no more us sinners flattering God in pursuit of favors! I never liked that anyway.
JC: I said, "ye are as Gods."
MT: This journey in the body, then, is a journey toward our God-nature.
JC: We are rolling back the carpet of time.
MT: Today let me be as God created me. Today I dwell in Paradise, the paradise that God intended for me.



240 Fear is not justified in any form.



MT: To think that I spent most of my life in fear! My parents kept me in fear, even (or especially) fear of my own flawed nature, of being out of control and doing something terminally idiotic, having the "real" me show up--bad breath, boogers, slouched shoulders, what will the congregation think! Don't forget your lines, don't give away money you will need tomorrow, don't eat grapes with watermelon, watch out that others don't get ahead of you! Men--ah, men, they are after one thing only. Not to mention nuclear holocaust, osteoporosis, poverty, cholesterol, erosive esophagitis, the IRS, tsunamis, terrorists, global warming. And then you die.
JC: This is the dawn of a new day. There is nothing to fear.
MT: Bad things happen whether we fear or not, good things can't come in if we lock doors and windows and keep the sun out! I want my life, what's left of it, to be fearless. How do I do that?
JC: You teach it.
MT: Oh. I forgot!


 

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