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211 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I am the Holy Son of God Himself.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: Ho-hum. I am not a body, etc. etc. I am the Holy Son of God himself, etc. etc. I should know this already, I have said it a thousand times already.
JC: Yet you forget, dear sister. You forget the glory of that which you are, truly and completely, for all eternity.
MT: OK, yeah, the world is too real at times. My pasted-together self becomes real then too.
JC: In this situation with E and his illusions, what do you need to remember?
MT: I need--I want-- to remember that he is equally a holy son of God, as much so as I am, no more, no less.
JC: E is a glorious being of light, looking to soar like an eagle. Looking to be as God created him.
MT: And I, in relation to him?
JC: Your mission is to uphold that reality in front of him. It is easy to be critical of one who believes and supports the illusion, but behold instead the holy instant. Be an instrument in the miracle of the reversal.
MT: I need your hand in mine, because I too forget--like him, I guess. I let myself be carried by the momentum of anger. Right then, I just want to point out the error of his ways.
JC: Ask and you shall receive. God responds in joyous haste. God responds with a miracle.

211 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I am the Holy Son of God Himself.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: Yet I sink into littleness, or at least a numb condition, for most of my day.
JC: Behold what is. Come from gratitude for what is. God is the love in your heart.
MT: I don't like the world "love". I will go to the ends of the earth for some people (very few!), halfway there for others, not an inch for most. At heart I am a grouch.
JC: Behold the grouch in you! I did not say you had to be nice. I am not nice. God is not "nice".
MT: I still equate love with being "nice", I guess. Being pleasant. Being socially correct. That is a strain.
JC: Forgive those who put on a love they do not feel. The Holy Son of God need not to pretend to love, because love is what he IS.
MT: I like that! Love is not something I have or do. Love is what I am.



212 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I have a function God would have me fill.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: I am glad you encourage moving on. I am capable of staying rooted to one spot forever. I am a great weed digger, not so good a planter of new flowers.
JC: The more you plant what you want, the fewer weeds you have to dig. At least this is how it works on the Earth plane.
MT: How does it work on other planes?
JC: Not for us to be concerned with, at this point. I do want you to know that there are other planes and other possibilities.
MT: What about this function business? I've struggled for years with the feeling that God didn't want to hire me.
JC: On the contrary, you are valuable. You are a treasure to the Kingdom. Do not forget your function.
MT: Forgiveness, right? It always seems a bit of a copout. Yeah, right, so I forgive, and then what?
JC: To use a modern analogy, forgiveness reboots the system. Your old programs no longer serve, and forgiveness will clear the way for new software.
MT: Well, I did embark on this journey with you because I felt that my old ways no longer served me. When I left the home of my parents, I was totally unprepared for the world. Twenty years of raising a family gave me time to grow up, and I am grateful for that. I think your hand guided me all along.
JC: Welcome to the forgiven world. The Father embraces you.

212 (2006) I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I have a function God would have me fill.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: Here is function again, seemingly by coincidence.
JC: You know there are no coincidences. There is only the Hand of God at work.
MT: You mean, whatever happens was God's will? I thought it was my will, in some strange way.
JC: What perception shows you you have willed, yes. Here is where you can choose again. When you can see everything that happens as your will at work, opposing God's will, you have undone it. You have erased the past.
MT: I see the world I made with perception, and I blame God for it. You are telling me to stop blaming God, then.
JC: Exactly. You love the Father you never left. He is there for you, always will be. All you need to is touch His hand with yours.
MT: And my function?
JC: Your function is to undo the world of perception. For that you need your brother. For that you need forgiveness.



213 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
All things are lessons God would have me learn.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: How am I today? My back feels stiff and my shoulder hurts. But I am alive. This is another day given me to learn forgiveness and get closer to God.
JC: And that is the lesson you chose for today: all things are lessons God would have you learn. You just reminded yourself to be grateful for what is. It is easy to be grateful for a full belly, not so easy when we lumber into the illusion that something is wrong and has to be fixed. But this you must remember: gratitude catapults you out of circumstances and into your God-connection.
MT: Gratitude, then, is a cure-all.
JC: Mankind has forever looked for the fountain of youth, the miracle potion, the magic pill, and here it is: gratitude.
MT: I like that, JC. Gratitude, the magic pill. I can already hear the sigh of disappointment when I tell someone I've got a magic pill for them, and then reveal it's gratitude. They would feel really cheated. They would like to keep the chip on their shoulder and be happy at the same time!
JC: And you, what do you try to keep that prevents you from being happy?
MT: There's a vague feeling of being a victim of those around me, perhaps a victim of my own faulty choices decades ago, stupid idiot that I am.
JC: Do you want to clutch the past to your chest, or would you like to be happy?
MT: It is not even a choice, when I look at it this way. The past is over. It can touch me not.
JC: You are as God created you. Everything else is a fiction, and does not exist.

213 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
All things are lessons God would have me learn.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: What can I learn from the plants outside my window, from the calendar hanging on the wall, from the pens and scissors in a cup?
JC: These are all echoes of the Voice for God.
MT: All things have their special beauty, then. They have their function, their life. The atoms that together make these things have been here forever, back to the days of the dinosaurs. So how could I not respect them?
JC: Life looks for itself, reflected in all things.
MT: That is so beautiful, JC--life popping up all over the place, looking for itself so it knows what it is. Let me go out and talk to the plants!



214 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I place the future in the Hands of God.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: You sure you want me to place the future in the hands of God? What about planning for retirement? What about health insurance?
JC: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's.
MT: What's that supposed to mean?
JC: God takes away the preoccupation, the worry and fretting. God will tell you when to plan. But if you choose instead not to trust, you limit life. You rob yourself of joy and spontaneity. Life becomes less worth saving in direct proportion to your efforts to save it.
MT: You measure life in coffeespoons, as T. S. Eliot put it . . .
JC: I seek to open you up to the expansion of life. Acting out of fear brings on that which you fear, while trust expands life.
MT: I am so scared of being called a fool . . . of being like the grasshopper that sings while the ant stashes away winter supplies. All of my mother's dire warnings flood in, when I am at a crossroads of trust.
JC: Do you wish for your mother's life? You do not walk alone. I walk with you, and I will never leave you comfortless.



215 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: We talked about gratitude the other day, didn't we? It keeps cropping up. Right now I feel obligated rather than grateful. But I know you can help me change my mind, you've done so repeatedly.
JC: Yes, I can help. There's obligation on one hand, gratitude on the other.
MT: How to integrate . . . I keep heaping obligations on myself, and then the freedom to act is gone. Joy is gone.
JC: You don't trust yet, do you? You still think God will pull the rug out when you step on it.
MT: That's good, JC. Like Charlie Brown and Lucy . . . he always hopes that this time she will hold the ball for him to kick, and he falls flat once again. I feel vaguely sad, that I learned to distrust so early on and so completely. The distrust seems insurmountable. It is like a default condition.
JC: If your default were trust, how would life be different?
MT: I've seen people who trust. They are playful, full of joy, and especially creative.
JC: Can you forgive yourself for believing that you were not to be trusted?
MT: Yes, but I thought we were talking about others.
JC: There is no Other. The figures you see walking around, they are you and you and you.
MT: You mean, I don't trust myself?
JC: That's exactly what I mean.
MT: So what do I do with that? It explains a bunch of stuff, by the way. I keep trying to prove that I am worthy of trust, but if it were really so, I wouldn't need to prove it!
JC: How did God create you? Did God create you untrustworthy? Did God create you fickle and mean like Lucy?
MT: No, of course not. In the beginning there was God, and all that God created was good, perfect and beautiful.
JC: YOU are good, perfect and beautiful. That which you do is good, perfect and beautiful. To walk in gratitude is to see what is really there, hidden under the fog of the ego world.

215 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


Thank you, God, for that new feeling this morning. Thank you for evolution. Thank you for the Way Home.
Thank you, God, for those around me, the figures in the dream, those who are sent to awaken me. For They have come.
Thank you, God, for the richness of connection, inspiration, and (dare I say it?) passion.
Thank you, God, for Life. I have life to be lived. I am rich in life, and that is enough.

215  I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


Today is dedicated to gratitude. There is nothing I need to change, nothing to improve, nothing to blame or judge or assess. All is well with my world today, this minute. Thank you, God, for what IS.




216 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
It can be but myself I crucify.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: That's a strong image, JC!
JC: There is no guilt. You do it to yourself, and therefore-- why would you?
MT: So as to make others guilty? (just kidding!)
JC: From this one tiny seed sprout the ills of the world. Guilt, attack, anger and fear. Every one completely unnecessary.
MT: The implications are staggering, JC. Wars, famine, rivers of blood and tears, the burning of huts and slaughtering of children, all from the tiny seed of my self-crucifixion?
JC: You can choose again, and this will disappear from view, never having existed. You will wake up and say, it was only a nightmare.
MT: I choose peace today. I am still as God created me. The seed I plant, that I will harvest. Let resurrection be the seed I plant today.



217 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
It can be but my gratitude I earn.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: We repeat and repeat. First time I went through these lessons, so long ago, I was driving on US 101 to Santa Barbara. As I repeated the words, over and over, I really began to freak out and had to stop doing it, afraid I would crash the car. That effect was lost, I am sad to say (sad? sad about not freaking out anymore?). I think I missed out on an opportunity to let a completely new awareness come to me.
JC: You've received it in other ways, since then. You still expect a grand baptism of fire, so to speak, but I would like to suggest that you "chop wood and carry water." That you earn your own gratitude. That you practice being a splendid human being, which you are already doing while defining it as not enough.
MT: Those are the ways of the ant. I want the ways of the lion. To be the ant means a sad giving up, getting old in my living room recliner, a shawl over my legs. I saw my father go through this. He turned into a beaten man, and died, barely 69, of broken dreams and a broken heart.
JC: He died of unforgiveness. He died believing his mission was to crucify evil. This quixotic task was what broke his heart and kept him from manifesting his dreams.
MT: Am I by any chance doing a father thing with my life?
JC: Suffice it to say, you are not your father. Or your mother. You are still as God created you. Walk in gratitude today, gratitude for what is.



218 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Only my condemnation injures me.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: Because I am not a body, when I attempt to crucify others, I crucify myself; when I earn gratitude, it's my own I earn; and the only possible injury is my own condemnation of me. Feels like a nest of wasps circling around my head, except that I have no head, being not a body, and the wasps themselves are a product of my fevered imagination.
JC: Everything comes back to you, but, being illusion, has no effects. Do not concern yourself excessively. A sense of ease and even fun should accompany these thoughts.
MT: Because I am free, no?
JC: Because you are free. God created you free, and free you remain, forever and ever.
MT: What a good thought for a Sunday morning!


218 (2006) I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Only my condemnation injures me.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: I have been such an expert at condemning myself! And I have injured myself, in the dream, of course.
JC: So what now?
MT: My sick neighbor, my tight jaw, Bill's death--fragments of past and future and present, that's what's now.
JC: All aspects of self-condemnation. God welcomes you back, but you cannot hear His welcome as long as your mind is busy doing nothing.
MT: So, how far should I go with this? I'm doing pretty well. My body works more or less. My relationships are in good shape.
JC: Is there a restlessness?
MT: Oh, always there is restlessness.
JC: God calls gently to you: come back to Me. You forgot the most precious thing, decades back. Now you have a chance to find this pearl. Let us be One.



219 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I am not a body. I am free.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: This idea must be central to our new thinking, JC, or you wouldn't repeat it so.
JC: Yes, it is. In order to recognize that you are Spirit, you must let go of the belief that you are your body. Perhaps not constantly or consistently, but you must at least allow that thought to enter, to consider it. You will be unable to let it go after that. That is the crack in the facade of the ego.
MT: Could it be true, that I am not this body? That nobody else is their body either?
JC: There is no other, and there is no body.
MT: You are teaching me to be a no-body! Gandhi comes to mind, when he said that he acquired so much power by reducing himself to zero.
JC: That is true. The opposite is also true: by holding the body as the only thing worth saving, you reduce your power to zero.
MT: Ouch . . . I spend most of my day thinking about my body and how to better take care of it!
JC: To that extent you are disempowering yourself. But you can always choose again!

219 I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me
I am not a body. I am free.


MT: I want to remember, JC. I want to remember that I am as God created me. That is the central lesson of the Course. If I forget this one, I have forgotten everything.
JC: You want the peace of God, and it cannot be had while you believe you are a body.
MT: Right now I feel a tinge of desperation: that my will is not enough, that I will sabotage myself as I have done so often in my life.
JC: You do not walk alone. Angels and prophets surround you.
MT: The desperation comes, then, from feeling separate, from trying to move mountains with a matchstick.
JC: It all happens together: your letting go of despair and separation is the same as accepting that you are as God created you, is the same as being one with God and your brothers.
MT: So there is nothing I can do of myself, is there.
JC: God knows how to find you!



220 I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
There is no peace except the peace of God.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.


MT: Let me check in, JC. My mind is already off doing stuff, but I know I want to access peace first.
JC: Excellent idea!
MT: The day goes much more smoothly when I access peace. Now, as for being not-a-body . . .
JC: It still troubles you that you are in the body most of the time, doesn't it?
MT: You bet. Guess I'm a perfectionist. I would like to be on a par with the gurus, the Sai Babas of this world.
JC: Which only means that you are robbing yourself of peace because you aren't peaceful enough!
MT: What a paradox. So only complete self-acceptance will bring about the peace of God, and with it the relinquishment of the body.
JC: One can make a problem out of just about anything, no?
MT: What about now, what do you recommend I do, as I go about the day's business?
JC: Bring peace to the tasks you perform. The tasks are as unreal as the body you inhabit. WHAT you do doesn't matter half as much as HOW you do it. You can issue a speeding ticket with a genuine desire to help, or you can open a healing center with sacrifice as your motive.
MT: It's not what I do, is how I do it. I bring attitude to my actions. Thanks . . .

 


 

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