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111 Miracles are seen in light.
Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.
MT: I feel slightly ill this morning, JC. I feel like I need to go back
to bed. And I notice the apprehension: suppose I'm coming down with flu,
and all of a sudden, the illness rules and I must change all my plans
for the week?
JC: Holy child of God, know this: there is nothing to fear.
MT: A part of me welcomes an excuse to do nothing for a week, this much
is true.
JC: You know that you are free to do nothing for a week, you don't need
illness for this. In fact, I recommend the discipline: take to bed for
a week as if you were ill, and practice doing nothing. You have put an
excess of busyness into your life. You long for a time to slow down. Call
it meditation, call it a retreat.
MT: I won't do it. I couldn't possibly do it! Surrounded with reminders
of Things to Do?
JC: Things to Do are extraordinarily unimportant. You give them meaning,
but one hundred years from now, will anyone remember that you failed to
water the tomatoes, didn't reply to Nina, didn't go on a hike or frequent
the gym? Didn't update the website for ID? Didn't send a card to Pat?
Didn't post daily on this board?
MT: Wow. You've got a point. It's only my overblown sense of self-importance
that says I must attend to these things. They are a preference, not an
obligation. I know all this, JC--deep down I know it. But I spend my days
behaving as if, and then the "as if" becomes the rule, and I
follow the rules like a bureaucrat.
JC: You have seen the bumper sticker: Question Authority. Especially your
made-up internal authority.
MT: What synchronicity! This quote just came in with one of Ron's posts:
"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting
concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many
projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the
violence of our times" -- Thomas Merton.
111 Miracles are seen
in light. Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.
MT: The ego-mind rushes to try to make sense of the words. Light? Strength?
The two images don't match. But I've learned enough of this Course to
know that you really mean it.
JC: I challenge the so-called reality you learned in your childhood home.
Not an easy task.
MT: Guess I need to remember that light does not make me into a babbling
idiot, and that strength does not make me into a bully.
JC: Light and strength are attributes of God, yes. Together they are offered
to undo your darkness and littleness. Because in the illusion you misuse
light and strength.
MT: Soften my heart and strengthen my spine, JC. That is my will. I want
to stand up to evil, but to do so while scattering the seeds of love.
JC: Evil does not need to be fought.
MT: I thought that was the function I was refusing to fulfill--to fight
evil.
JC: Bring clarity instead. The world desperately needs a way out of darkness.
That is your function, to use strength to bring light to the world.
112 Light and peace and joy
abide in me. I am as God created me.
MT: Good morning, JC. How did you sleep?
JC: I take the question is really a greeting. I do not sleep, because
I am not in a body. What do you think about the statements above?
MT: They are self-evident, JC. Of course light and peace and joy abide
in me. I glow like a 15-watt bulb right now, but I know the statement
is true.
JC: The body will do what the body does--get fatigued, perhaps suffer
from eating unwholesome food. Spirit hovers above it all, and knows all
is well in God's world.
MT: I used to make myself wrong about feeling bad, but you're telling
me it is of no concern.
JC: Or only very temporarily. If you are sitting on a cactus, it may be
well to remove it rather than to try to overcome the pain by spiritual
means.
MT: Well, yes, I can see that. To keep eliciting pain is a form of defiance,
a testing of God, a consciously selected miracle, and unworthy of a Son
of God. I am so grateful for the logic you installed in my head.
JC: Today, let light and peace and joy in. You are as God created you.
MT: I am as God created me. Thank you, JC.
112 Light and joy and
peace abide in me. I am as God created me.
I refuse to be the personality, I refuse to congeal myself into form once
more, I now return to my original state: a resplendent being of light.
Hesitation, pondering, fear, procrastination: I pay no heed to these today.
God Himself wills my return to Him. My return was written on the walls
that stand through eons of time. My return is proclaimed by the seagulls
that glide by the shore. My return is whispered in the wind and murmured
in the clear rivers of snowmelt. My return is witnessed in awed silence
in the desert, celebrated by lightning and thunder in the plain. I am
as God created me.
112 Light and joy and
peace abide in me.
I am as God created me.
What does God want for me? God wants light and joy and peace for me. Why
would I want anything else? God won't push his gifts on me. If I am not
at peace, it's because I'm trying to be something other than what God
created. What a gift, to take my place among the Sons of God!
113 I am one Self, united
with my Creator. Salvation comes from my one Self.
MT: This is going to be brief, JC. I need to leave the house in forty-five
minutes, and take a shower first.
JC: Brief is good. The Course can be summed up as: GOD IS.
MT: God is, and I am one Self with Him. But, salvation comes from my one
Self?
JC: You have looked for salvation in far corners. You have looked for
salvation where it was not. Now I am pointing out to you where to find
it, so you need no longer search.
MT: So it's not in having lots of money, a great body, being famous, having
a house up on a hill, paparazzi following me for a photo. Salvation is
in a mind that's sewed back together. One-pointedness. Having my priorities
straight: peace of mind comes first, love is the only way to approach
a brother, the first function of a worker of God is to accept Atonement
for himself. What a massive reversal of the way the world thinks.
JC: Be grateful that it is so. This is the way home.
113 I am one Self, united
with my Creator. Salvation comes from my one Self.
MT: I pray, God, let us be One!
JC: A noble prayer, but the decision is not up to God. It is up to you
to unmake a decision you dreamed up so long ago: to be separate from God.
Sacrifice and effort and thought meant to changing God's mind are to no
avail, because God's mind never excluded you from Oneness.
MT: Is the dream part of evolution? That we return to God better off for
having developed a separate consciousness? I like this thought.
JC: To see it in this way helps undo any guilt you might feel, and this
Course is, above all, pragmatic. There is profound learning to be had
in playing the opposites. The Prodigal Son is better off for having wandered
away from the Father. His faith is more solid from having been challenged.
I seek to spare you suffering, but once the decision is made and the carpet
of time unrolled, the Holy Spirit uses this experience, too, to bring
you closer to God. Do not ask for suffering, but when it seemingly happens,
know that it is an opportunity for learning, graciously offered to you.
114 I am spirit.
I am the Son of God. I will accept my part in God's plan for salvation.
Don't know what to say, JC. I have no questions. I feel removed from God
right now. Or from the lesson. Perhaps it's time to let go of the lessons.
My mind is jumping ahead to Starbucks and the bike and the garden. I feel
under the spell of my confused dreams just before I woke up. This is me,
right now. Am I spirit? I guess so. Feel quite material right now, a dim
15W bulb. Need to unkink my body, get appointments at the Studio, get
appt for bodywork. Want to let go of procrastination, but that too I procrastinate.
You can take this procrastination, the big P of my life.
JC: Your life is divided. Your self is splintered. Procrastination is
clear evidence of a splintered self.
MT (mildly irritated): So you've got a diagnosis, where is the remedy?
JC: The remedy is power. The power that God gave in such abundance, and
which you think you do not deserve.
MT: Power is the remedy for procrastination. I don't get it.
JC: You are a fan of Mahatma Gandhi, so let's look at him. Did he procrastinate?
Was he a powerful being?
MT: No and yes, of course. But he knew what the hell he was doing. He
knew who he was. I don't.
JC: So the need, as you see it this moment, is to know who you are and
to know what you are doing.
MT: Sheesh, yes. Right back to today's lesson. You have a way of doing
that.
JC: So you see the reason for today's lesson, do you not? Even if you
don't believe it right at the moment, there's a compelling reason for
it. It is your way out. Who runs your life, the default programming of
the ego, or the God in you? You rebel against your ego's shifting dictates
and pompous pronouncements, and why not? It has never served you and never
will. Are you willing to take your place among Beings of Light?
MT: Thanks for the redirection. I feel lighter. My bulb is up to 60W right
now.
JC: You can choose to fire it up to a floodlight.
114 I am spirit.
I will accept my part in God's plan for salvation.
I am not a body, and I have a part to play while I inhabit a body. What
is my part to play? From me forgiveness spreads its wings of peace over
the world of form, that it disappear and be no more. This is my function.
This is my life, my purpose, my love.
115 Salvation is my only function
here. My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.
MT: I've heard this before, so many times. Perhaps I shouldn't be doing
these lessons over and over? You don't recommend that in the book.
JC: No, I don't. I leave it open. I knew most people would feel the need
to keep going through the lessons, as do you.
MT: The world is too much with me, and I forget the Thought of God.
JC: And today's thought?
MT: Let me look at my day. If I were more active, socially speaking, then
I'd meet more people and have more chances to practice my part.
JC: You are doing fine. If it were in your best interests to meet more
people or hold a full-time job, I'd show you the way. Your part, right
now, is to practice contentment. Your busyness is an ego device and unworthy
of a Son of God. When I walked the earth, I did not move about frantically
planning to be somewhere else.
MT: I need your help in being content. I'm always trying to change me.
I have a mania for self-improvement.
JC: Out of where you are, comes that which seeks to emerge, in a natural,
organic development. That is trust. Practice trust today.
115 Salvation is my only function
here. My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.
MT: I am fighting this process, JC. Is it a good fight, or a trick of
the ego? Should I continue focusing on the Lessons, or go on to something
else?
JC: Who are you, and what do you want?
MT: I am the Holy Son of God. I want peace that passes all understanding.
JC: From this reference point, how do you answer your two questions?
MT: Awesome! I just got in touch with a place in my mind, a place I visit
often, where I am thrown back into the agony of choice. There Hell is.
I've been there countless times before, probably on a daily or hourly
basis. I need to shut the door to that place, to throw away the key.
JC: Not so fast. Where Hell is, there is Heaven too, both creations of
your mind. The Holy Spirit will use every place in your mind, if you will
open it for, so to speak, a celestial cleanup.
MT: Visit my "hell of choices" place, then, and show me how
to see it differently.
JC: You go to that place and empty it out. See it as clean, empty, freshly
painted. Open the door to God and invite Him in.
MT: This is profound--to open the recesses of my brain. God doesn't solve
any problems I make up! Instead, God takes up residence in places free
of problems of my making.
115 Salvation is my
only function here.
My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.
MT: Woke up in a funky mood today. The ohming--it unsettles me. It's supposed
to deepen the connection with God, but it does the opposite.
JC: Please continue.
MT: I feel quite scattered. I couldn't even focus on the yoga poses. They
were so peaceful for so long, and now . . .
JC: What is the (imaginary) fear?
MT: That I've lost it forever! Peace will never come back!
JC: The state of agitation must be permanent! Agitation is forever, like
diamonds!
MT: I see what you mean. I wasn't born agitated, it happened along the
way. I am peaceful most of the time.
JC: What do you need to remember right now?
MT: I need to remember that I am one with God and my brothers. That peace
is my natural inheritance. That God is my last name, because I belong
in the Family. I am part of God's Cosa Nostra! : )))
116 God's Will for me is perfect
happiness. I share God's Will for happiness for me.
MT: The house is quiet, a fire lights up the room, life is good.
JC: As long as you know that quiet can be frightening, and that fire can
also burn.
MT: The duality of everything on this plane. So where is perfect happiness?
JC: Perfect happiness resides in doing God's will. When your will and
God's are one, nothing can disturb your peace. Walk the world with God,
and you will radiate joy to everyone you meet.
MT: I have met people like that. Arny, and a casual acquaintance whose
name I've forgotten! She, especially, sticks to mind. She was so present.
She was radiant. I wanted to be like that.
JC: She found the key a little before you did. You see the logic of the
two statements above, right? That if God's will is perfect happiness for
you, and if you share God's will, then you must be perfectly happy. It
also gives you a yardstick by which to measure your proximity to God:
if you are not happy, you must not be doing God's will.
MT: I am forever thankful, JC, that you did away with the wrathful God
of my youth. How I suffered under the burden of guilt and fear! I would
not wish that on anybody else. It crushed my spirit. I was born playful
and free, and then darkness descended on my soul, and I did not question
darkness. Darkness was truth, a harsh reality that I must accept in order
to carry on my miserable life.
JC: Welcome to perfect happiness. Those days are gone, and now you can
be free again.
116 God's will for me is perfect happiness. I share God's will
for happiness for me.
How could it be otherwise? I want to be happy. God wants me to be happy.
End of story. The story is always about trials, and I give up my story.
I erase the book of my life. I am ready to live happily ever after.
116 God's Will for me
is perfect happiness.
I share God's Will for happiness for me.
This is my reminder, today, of what's true. If God is Love, as Christianity
would have it and I learned in the Baptist church, then His will for me
must be perfect happiness. After all, would God condemn any of his Sonship
to the eternal fires of hell? I grew up in fear of hell, but c'mon! I
was just a kid who knew nothing of sin. How did God create me? I am sure
He did not create me evil from the get-go.
And why would I choose anything but perfect happiness, transcendent beauty,
ecstatic creativity? I share God's will for me!
117 God, being Love, is also
happiness. I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
MT: Thanks for this thought, JC. I really made myself miserable yesterday
by procrastinating. I avoided updating the ID website and uploading Carol's
new paintings to her website. Since I spent the whole day avoiding those
two tasks that would have taken two hours at most, I didn't do anything
I really enjoyed, whatever that is. Even watching a movie in the evening
was tainted by the nagging feeling that I hadn't done those two things,
the shame that I might be judged a flake and a non-keeper of commitments.
JC: You spent the day treating yourself lovelessly.
MT: I am confused. Every time I sat down to the computer, the loving thing
seemed to be to play a game of Spider Solitaire! It's instant relief,
to play a game. I feel the relief washing over me when the green screen
opens up.
JC: Look at what's actually happening, instead of your picture of what
should be happening.
MT: Uh? My picture of what should be happening is--I do the work, and
then I feel peace. I relax. I have time to go downtown and browse in the
bookstore, or go for a nice evening walk with Mozart on the mp3 player.
It's really undignified, to spend so much time playing Spider Solitaire!
It doesn't agree with the picture I hold up as myself, the go-getter,
the sparkling, efficient woman who tells these people: "no problem,
I'll have that done in no time at all." I feel like a creep when
I don't do what I promised to do. I slink around like a dog that's eaten
franks off the barbecue.
JC: So you are saying you are long on promise and short on delivery?
MT: You've got it. How can I get out of this pickle? I need to promise
less and deliver more.
JC: Can you forgive the 16-year-old who was left in charge of the house
when mother left? The teen who boldly promised to take care of Father
because she felt she was more sparkling, more efficient than Mother? Can
you forgive your dad for telling everybody you had failed?
MT: That goes back a long ways, doesn't it. Ouch. I need to go right now,
but thanks for the awareness.
JC: God does not call you a failure. The word does not exist in His vocabulary.
You've already gotten an A in this Course.
117 God, being Love,
is also happiness. I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
MT: Don't know what to say, JC. It is curious that I can know that something
is true and still not fully integrate it. Of course God is love and happiness.
Of course happiness belongs to me in truth. I need a deeper experience
of this, that's all.
JC: Ask for a deeper experience, and let yourself be guided by what comes
next.
MT: It's usually nothing.
JC: Nothing is exactly what needs to happen. Give up your attempts to
show God the way. The ego IS your mania for showing God how things should
be. Just know that, if you are unhappy, or restless, or judgmental, you
have decided with the ego, and then it is time to decide for God.
MT: I seek but what belongs to me in truth. How could I not receive it!
117 God, being Love, is also happiness.
I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
I seek happiness for myself. Therefore, I must also want God! Then it
follows that misery is just a way of shutting God out.
Happiness belongs to me. God belongs to me. God is my family, my name,
my life. In His house I dwell, forever and forever.
118 God's peace and joy are
mine. Let me be still and listen to the truth.
MT: Here I am, JC, such as I am, with all my scars. That's quite a promise,
that God's peace and joy are mine for the asking, and that I can hear
the truth merely by being still.
JC: In God's world there are no scars, pimples, bad breath, falling hair,
tooth decay. In God's world, you leave this world behind, along with money,
housing, taxes, relationships, beauty and ugliness, rain and shine.
MT: I used to fear those words, because I was attached to so much. Now
there are only a few stray attachments, at least in theory. I think that
threats to my health and physical integrity would strike terror in my
heart. The movie last night--Hotel Rwanda--I was there, JC. To know that
half a million got chopped to pieces in that beautiful country, in the
streets I walked, hits close to home. I had hoped that humanity had learned
something from two world wars, but nothing seems to have changed.
JC: You can also see how the carnage was only because of ego, no? Human
beings erroneously thinking that killing others kept them safe. It needed
not happen.
MT: Now let me leave those thoughts behind. Let me see the futility of
attack. Let me be still and listen to the truth. I am willing to own God's
peace and joy today.
118 God's peace and
joy are mine. Let me be still and listen to the truth.
Mine. Mine! This is have, worth more than all the trinkets, houses, bank
accounts, new cars.
Now let me be still and listen to the truth. It is this I sought when,
as a girl, I primped before the mirror. It was this I wanted when nothing
but the highest grade in the class was worthy of me. It was this I sought
when I owned a house on the hill. It was the peace and joy of God I sought
when I helped others, raised children, trekked in the wilderness, sat
by the campfire in the evening. It was the peace of God I sought when
I drank wine, ate chocolate, anguished over failure and got puffed up
with success. God's peace and joy were mine all along, buried under the
many doings that I believed would bring me peace and joy. Now let me be
still and listen to the truth: God Is.
118 God's peace and
joy are mine.
Let me be still and listen to the truth.
What else could I desire, besides peace and joy?
And how else do I get there, except through stillness? Truth is drowned
out by the static in my mind--not permanently, but within our space/time
reality, it can be a long, long time. Silence must be nurtured, watered
and fertilized like a seedling in spring, that it may flower and produce
its fruit, a hundred to one. Let me be still and listen to the truth.
119 Truth will correct all
errors in my mind. To give and to receive are
one in truth.
MT: Today let me be open to the truth, that to give and to receive are
one.
The minute I wake up, plans for the day inundate my consciousness. I am
willing to take in this truth today, and remember it often. What better
purpose for my day.
JC: All that you give is given to yourself. When you offer forgiveness,
forgiveness comes back to you a thousandfold.
MT: And when I give anger and attack. . .
JC: You tend to receive the same. When you attack, you tempt your brother
to
respond lovelessly. It is his choice, but not a helpful thing on your
part.
Your purpose should never be to educate with a negative example, and excuse
it by saying he needed to learn a lesson.
MT: Forgive me if I laugh. I've excused my angry behavior with exactly
this
line of thought. How sheepish I felt when I yelled at a bad driver and
he
rolled down his window and apologized!
JC: As you go through your day, offer a silent prayer for truth: to give
and
to receive are one, a directionless flow between two Sons of God. You
can
make scarcity, or you can create abundance, peace and joy.
119 Truth will correct
all errors in my mind. To give and to receive are one in truth.
MT: I think I have a feeling for what is truth. It is an energetic feeling
in the body. But somehow, you are connecting the fact that giving and
receiving are one, a true statement I know, with the correction of errors
. . . oh, never mind. I thought I had a question!
JC: You thought they were separate thoughts, but they are one. Today,
stay with the correction of errors, the dawn of truth in the mind of the
Son.
119 Truth will correct
all errors in my mind.
To give and to receive are one in truth.
What is truth, I wonder? How do I know a statement is true? I can venture
a few criteria:
Truth is universal, not exclusive.
Truth eliminates duality.
Truth does not discriminate. Like sunshine, it gives its clarity to saint
and sinner alike.
Truth has a resonance in one's being. Arguments end when truth enters
in.
"To give and to receive are one in truth." Why does this statement
follow the first one? Could it be that the bedrock of the ego is the separation
between giving and receiving? The world of shortages, starvation and lack
does not need to exist. A "world that works for everyone" (in
Werner Erhard's expression) is not only possible but essential.
120 I rest in God. I am as
God created me.
MT: No need to change anything. No need to improve myself, the world,
my
brother. Today I let all things be exactly as they are.
JC: When there is a task to be done, the Holy Spirit will show you the
way,
as it did me, as it does everyone.
MT: Except I am deaf and blind. The enormity of my resistance to hear
and
see anything different is just becoming apparent to me.
JC: God's Voice is as loud as your willingness to hear. This is where
you
need a miracle. The miracle overcomes the barriers you have set up to
keep
God away, but you need to ask. An uninvited miracle is frightening and
negates your free will.
MT: Today, I rest in God. I allow myself to relax into my original state.
I
let God do the work.
JC: From your mouth to God's ear.
120 I rest in God. I
am as God created me.
If I am "as God created me," there is no need to huff and puff,
strive and suffer. As Effects of God, we extend the quiet magnificence
of God Himself. Like the child I once was, I can run out into the sunshine
and breathe in the air of the Father's House. There is beauty and resplendent
power in every leaf that moves in the wind, every drop of water in the
morning sun. I am as God created me.
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