Lesson 355:

There is no end to all the peace and joy, and all the miracles that I will give, when I accept God’s Word. Why not today?

Why not today, indeed?

Do I have something ‘better’ to do? In actuality this is not only the only business on the calendar of my so-called life, but all I am interested in… I have utterly defrauded all opposing thought forms as having any substance or significance what-so- ever, through the inquiry forgiveness offers… All that remains is the alive experience of ‘love-now’, which Holy Spirit within my mind held already, saving it for but my decision to place my faith in love instead of fear; the true only….

God/Self replaces the self-concept and I see the face of Christ reflected in shining stars; the light my brothers are and share with me…

~Christ-mas is the season of now; the answer always Yes! Today’s inquiry ‘why not today’~ unequivocally, YES! ~

~There is no end to all the peace and joy, and all the miracles that I will give, when I accept God’s Word: I AM AS GOD CREATED ME~ And only that is TRUE…

Please join me in remembering the beautiful prayer of truth at the beginning of this section: What Am I?

“I am God’s Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. in me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own…”

Lesson 338:

I am affected only by my thoughts….

I could say that this single idea: ‘I am affected only by my thoughts’, made more impact on the irreversible direction of my life than any other. I recall it as having been the first ‘pure’ ring-true-bell for me… And let me tell you, when you get this; I mean, really get this, it changes everything! Doesn’t it.

When I truly realized that I was responsible, entirely, for everything that was going on in my life, regardless of what it seemed externals might be, l was elated and terrified all at once. There was no longer, really, anywhere to run… And for that matter, there was nowhere to turn…~ nowhere, that is, but inward…

~Inward, I have to chuckle, the very place I had been trying to get away from all my life. I had run form looking within using every trick; including running compulsively in all the traditional, addictive ways were all to familiar, way as well as some I thought original to me.(Ah, the ego and its ingenuity~ passé!) One of my favorite methods was to remake or improve myself. You know, make it better, stronger, faster, get out in front, in head of the crowd… None of it worked. In fact it was the very futility of my ingenuity that lead me to its disillusionment… and into my Self within…

All my efforts to escape finally all lead back to me… And well, the most surprising thing happened.. Where I had been so sure there was only darkness within; what I called “the loneliness of nothingness”, I found only light: “the incredible lightness of being”… It was a miracle.

The miracle was just waiting for me to get over my little fearful ‘rightness’, and allow its work to be done. Its message was clear: “I am as God created me~ nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God, and I am affected only by my thoughts”…This, turned out to be the peace of Mind I previously sought in escape and projection…

It is the Mind I share with God, the ‘real’ Mind, where illusions have no reign. I can pretend all I want and play a role in the dream about affects of thoughts apart from love, but I am in truth, always, the dreamer of the dream. I can even scare the wits out of myself, worry, regret, feel guilty, get angry, attack, feel remorseful, hurt and terrified to make a move, but this is all illusion….

I know, for beneath and beyond the dream, I am aware of my Self; deep within the everythingness and nothingness from which it came and it disperses; I recognize the light of creation in which I am wholly complete~ extending...choosing my thoughts in the light of awareness…

Love is all there is in truth. And only the thoughts that come from love bring happiness at all. They are the only one’s I want…keeping this in mind makes it’s relatively easy to not take the dream too seriously, as gradually, lucidity within the dream, becomes accessible.

I am affected only by my thoughts. I am deeply affected by my thought of you, my brothers... what happens to you happens to me. You are my thought of love transformed from my thought of fear. Thank you for your light, that I might see my thoughts reflected there. Through it, Mind returns to wholeness. I love you forever and ever as one…

Lesson 326:

I am forever an Effect of God….

Once in a while, I’ll be going about my daily business, feeling love-aligned, and, what seems like all the sudden, that old shadow-identity voice will rise up from its grave (and grave it is…) and start issuing orders: “Hey”, it says, “push this girl down and smack her around a bit. There’s a belly full of blame and judgment here, and no place to put it. I need a whipping girl. Now get to it!”

As false and absurd as I recognize this ‘baby-self’ voice to be, the twisted part is that there is a compulsion to buckle to its demands, a sick sense of ‘responsibility’ (for lack of a better word) to it. It’s like, in the past, when I have been identified with the role as ‘mother’, and my kids want something from me that I see as a sacrifice, but, as a mom, I have felt compelled to ‘make the sacrifice. Know what I mean? After all, they’re ‘my’ kids, right? I owe them something; some sacrifice of me, yes?

That’s just plain twisted… yes? I don’t know what I’m getting at here, but as long as I think I fathered myself, the sacrifices to that identity are endless and relentless. I am so grateful to finally see that all my pain has been caused by this ridiculous competition with God, (my Cause and the only reason for my being, incidentally). It is such a load off….

I love the description of my true-identity as the effect of God put so beautifully lesson 156. Remember what it says?

“Truth must be true throughout, if it be true. It cannot contradict itself, nor be in parts uncertain and in others sure. You cannot walk the world apart from God, because you could not be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are He is. There is one life. That life you share with Him. Nothing can be apart from Him and live.. Yet where He is, there must be holiness as well as life. No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. What lives is holy as Himself, because what shares His life is part of Holiness, and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice; the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass to grow with roots suspended in the air… There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head... The light in you is what the universe longs to behold. All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. The light you carry is their own. And thus they see in you their holiness, saluting you as savior and as God. Accept their reverence, for it is due to Holiness Itself, which walks with you, transforming in Its gentle light all things unto Its likeness and Its purity… This is the way salvation works. As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening, ridiculous perhaps, but who would waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim?”

I am forever an Effect of God….An effect can only exist from the attributes of its cause. Where else would it come from? What could possibly be its reality? It cannot be spawn from some alien subsistence outside its only state of being… except maybe in wild imaginings, which aren’t real. Oh yeah, that’s what this so-called-world-life is…

The mind is creative; deriving its natural prolusion to extend from its Loving Cause… Love extends. ~We’ve all felt the truth of this, regardless of what ‘belief base’ we’re signed on to~. We want to love and be loved~ No matter how we dress it up to look like something else or even believe it is. It’s not. When it is stripped down to its naked core; every success dance, anger dance, romance dance, family dance and/or system dance, be it political, religious, sexual, intellectual or ‘spiritual’, still comes down to one thing, we want love; to give and receive~ It is the very fabric of our being and impossible to remove from our being. ~Cover up perhaps, deny, definitely, but be without~ impossible…

We are the effect of God; of Love, and nothing else will ever give us happiness…

As we train our minds to see the false as false and forgive its unreality, love’s awareness seeps into our presence of mind as the present moment; and time, itself, slips to the background as relevant. This is the point of contact that we must come back to eventually, as we learn to let the Holy Spirit lead our thinking back to right-minded thinking, which is with our Source.

The ‘self-concept’ thinks for itself. It is wrong. The miracle for me has been to remain vigilant against the wrong-minded or false thinking of the ‘self-concept’ until my relying on the Holy Spirit became a habit of engaging with God, a habit worthy of the Son-returning-home… Nothing else feels natural any more and seeing/recognizing the false for what it is; false, seems simpler. Each and every experience in this world, I see it now as a forgiveness lesson in the making. Everywhere I look, there it is. As the shadow is dispelled by the light of forgiveness, there is Love, awaiting awareness.

Turns out, love is every where and every when and every one. It is unmistakably within all. In letting go the self concept altogether, truth of our being as Christ reveals itself; reflecting in everyone and everything we seem to see, in this dream of waking up to the Son of God as is…in truth. And in realizing Christ, we recognizing we had merely been dreaming the dream of ‘something else. ~ I am forever an Effect of God…

Lesson 325:

All things I think I see reflect ideas…

Boy, I can witness to the fact of this statement. Here’s what I’ve noticed; whatever way and for whatever reason, at any I am viewing the world, my-so-called life and what seems to be the lives of ‘others’, this fact: ‘All things I think I see reflect ideas’, relentlessly stares back at me. What I am seeing is what is in my mind… And how I see it, reflects what I believe to be so…

Prior to ACIM as a model, I suspected this. I observed that somehow, someway, what I thought and believed; even believed by wishing it not true, were being influenced, at the very least, by attention to them in my mind. Then I met the Course… And ah, I now had, a formula to pull this awareness forward in my mind to the point of true attention, rather than the addictive attention to form based structures, brought on by bringing my mind under the influence of the whole unconscious belief construct of the separation idea.

The precise articulation of this concept gave me a language for which I could be honest with myself. And perhaps more accurately, it gave me a whole new use for language in which to describe perception, as well as everything I seemed to perceive.

Now from this right-sided vision, I see only one thing, everything I see is only my mind; ideas I have aligned with, and only my mind that I am faced with. “I am responsible for what I see, I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And anything that seems happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked”. (T-21.II.2.3)

Will I choose the ideas of creation as host to God, or will I choose ideas that I have made up and be hostage to them? That is the question…

All of what is happening behind the scenes so to speak, is that I decide I want something as a possible “it” (even if ‘it’ is to scary to even consider consciously) the very decision to fear, details out the specifics in some department behind closed doors. But ‘its’ reality in my mind is in process. Like happened with the idea of separation, it’s like it went something like this; ‘what if one could separate from his source and make a world apart? … Oh, shit that’s too scary to even dream about… ~huge~ ‘what if’.

Once conceived of by the mind of the Son of God, for god’s sake, with all power of creation given him as the natural effect of God the Father, his Cause; it stands to reason that the ideas’ possibility prospectus would by drawn up. Ergo the Atonement principle…. Ideas leave not their source. This primary theme threads together the fabric of the message of the Course, and is consistently reestablished by its holographic design. ~Hum, just like us~

God’s Son is as God created: the whole extension of His Love~ Extension is Love’s only purpose. Therefore, nothing else could possibly ever happen… Love is what it is, such as are we the love that we were creeated, being one whole creation…

“God is”… says it all~ literally…

Please join me in the yummy reflection prayer to carry into the day…

“Our Father, Your ideas reflect the truth, and mine apart from Yours but make up dreams. Let me behold what only Yours reflect, for Yours and Yours alone establish truth”. ~

Lesson 283:

My true identity abides in You…

Today,can we allow identity be itself only, and not insist on the ''nothingness-identity overlays' we seemingly 'worked so hard to design in nowhere', and let our awareness rest in the beam if Christ that lights all creation and all dreams as well; always, already ~our true identity in God~LOVE!!!

Ah, yes! of course we can and will... for it is God's Will, which is our own...

Lesson 278:

If I am bound, my Father is not free…

We are of course referring here to the perceived imprisonment of the mind through the belief in illusions... We identify with what we believe in. And if we believe that we are people in bodies, living in time and space, we cannot know our Self as God created us. And we certainly cannot know the magnitude we share with God. What we end up doing with our relationship with God, is we attempt to squeeze God into ‘small-mind’, assigning Him attributes we identify with, and some we don’t, then fearing what we don’t know and ultimately binding the mind from its natural state of creation. It is our free will to believe what we choose. But belief is not truth… belief is about where we place the focus of our attention…

Fidelity to premise is the law of mind. And if our premise is one of separation and limitation, we use fear to manage the relationship we have made with the God we have made up… Within the premise of separation, our options are limited to… well ‘specialness’ ~and separations sentinels; subject or object special relationships, special-love, special-hate… Exclusion plays a staring role, for without it specialness looses all meaning… Fear reigns… for the ‘other’ is the threat…

The premise of truth where love reigns, on the other hand, is all about inclusion. Each has looked within and seen no lack and therefore extends creative thought to join in holy gratitude for the glorious eternal relationship extended in creation of the Son by and with the Father…

Where, as the lesson says, truth is free…

Let’s just fine-tune the dial on our attention to the premise of truth, as we offer this prayer:

“Father, I ask for nothing but the truth. I have had many foolish thoughts about myself and my creation, and have brought a dream of fear into my mind. Today, I would not dream. I choose the way to You instead of madness and instead of fear. For truth is safe, and only love is sure…”

Lesson 265:

Creation’s gentleness is all I see…

“In quiet would I look upon the world, which but reflects Your Thoughts, and mine as well. Let me remember that they are the same, and I will see creation’s gentleness…”

I just look around and all I see is the Thought of God… It is the Life Force which animates my dream of a beautiful forgiven world with brothers to dance and sing and laugh and cry with. It is the unlimited breath breathing me which allows me to seemingly have unlimited air to breathe. It is the eternal light of which I am a part, brilliantly lighting the grand and the miniscule, that I might see… It is the Vision that gives me might sight to see you, my Christ-brother and co-creator of the melody which creates music and the listening that gives life to hearing as well as the music to hear… I see magnificent unending beauty going on forever within the pin-point eternity of now… for what I see with, is beauty; the feeling of perfect completion…

I softened my eyes to the magic-picture artwork of this so-called world through forgiveness, and merely softened my heart, accepting the atonement for myself, and automatically, the world I see is inviting and generous and extending. It is the reflection on the still water of the Mind I share; the mind in which you and I are one, united in each other and in God…

Yes, it can be said that today, Creation’s gentleness is all I see…

Lesson 260:

Let me remember God created me…

Father, I did not make myself, although in my insanity I thought I did. Yet, as Your Thought, I have not left my Source, remaining part of Who created me. Your Son, my Father, calls on You today. Let me remember You created me. Let me remember my Identity. And let my sinlessness arise again before Christ’s vision, through which I would look upon my brothers and myself today…

Umm…. Such a perfect prayer of remembrance we are included in( and concluded within). We are the whole effect of the Thought of Love, with but its characteristics, including all and excluding none in the glorious holy expansion containing all creation…

If we but refuse to hop on the trains of thoughts of subjectivity; of time and space and things and peoples that pass through, but rather stay in the borderland station above the battleground of the illusory, we have available a respite from which to choose once again, the truth: Love which is our Identity as God created from which our sight of all things becomes Christ’s vision and our brothers~ our Self…

The tenor is one of pure bliss… For through remembering our Source and our true Identity, the simple way of the Atonement, the way of perfect happiness and peace, becomes clear at last…

We are innocence in love’s embrace forever now…

Lesson 248:

Whatever suffers is not part of me…

Nor is what is pleasurable. Pain and pleasure are interchangeable states of mind; mind-body… I, the Self, one with creation, am beyond. Suffering only arises in the experience assigned to the dream… Suffering is not present at all in dreamless sleep…so it is not real. It comes and goes according to the value one places on the belief in its reality…The inalienable Self resides beyond, in the true.

Suffering, and its bed-partner, pain, is a belief absolutely fundamental and critical to the operational function of this world as reality. No one questions it. Until of course, we’ve absolutely had enough, and we’re willing to give up the pleasure factor as well, in order to find the truth… And this is when the real questioning of our beliefs begins. After the obvious, private-mind thoughts have been revealed as the fraudulent perspective that fathered the beliefs we have held in our personal lives, we delve deeper, to the core belief system that fathered the world and all its seeming realities… Beliefs designed to secure our retreat from God; beliefs like scarcity and suffering, where our belief that we are afraid of God, lays hidden. After all, if we can suffer, God cannot be real. Or at the very least, he’s a real bitch; totally justifying our tenacity to run and hide from him…. Our deeper, patient, inquiry of the beliefs behind the apparent beliefs reveals merely a mistaken-identity belief and its mis-creations… which, in actuality, never touched the Son of God’s innocent perfection at all.

See, once we get that far surrendered, we can feel the Love of our being, the love we share; the love that disputes suffering forever. At this stage, the path is set; the false reflections of the false ideas of pleasure, pain and suffering can’t hold our attention for long… We recognize them as distraction, and we question… and forgive… restoring us to our natural essence of peace and joy and oneness…

We are as God created us and we are beyond the belief in suffering and scarcity. It is inevitable we will remember the truth, for it cannot be assailed… The Love of God is what we are, and we have never left the mind that creates us as Himself…

Father, my ancient love for You returns, and lets me love Your Son again as well. Father, I am as You created me. Now is Your Love remembered, and my own. Now do I understand that they are one.

Lesson 236:

I rule my mind which I alone must rule…

Ya know, coming to understand that I do indeed rule my mind, whether I want to be accountable for it or not, changed everything for me. At first, just getting that no one else, nor any circumstance, could make me feel any way... I decide. And ah, a little slice of freedom… Then, as I began examining every belief I held, looking for its origin and finding but a circular web of misbelieve all designed support its illusive self and to deflect me from seeing its unreality, I really began to feel the power of the mind.

Here’s what I have come to. This entire cosmos could not exist without my mind. The universe, world of bodies and things and diversity and change, are but the out picturing of my mind. I’m not talking about just in a perceptual framework of existence, I am saying, at all… Every idea I have summoned which seeming resides in this so-called life, I have looked deeply into and found that its solidity and structure dissolve into nothing but appearance by the mere act of looking. And behind each, I have found but my own true face…

The Self, which is beyond description here, but stands as the gateway to beyond, to some reality my mind is not savvy to, folds in on itself to what I can only refer to, in the context of this course, as Spirit; where timeless, structure less, changeless, oneness Love, simple is …

This empty fullness is an experience of such peace and completion; one can hardly comprehend how we got so upside down in the illusion. Let alone fight to stay deluded… Save it to say, that it easily reveals the magnificent power of the mind… yes? Now, we see that mind is the activation agent of spirit, supplying its creative energy, as the Course states in the clarification of terms section at the end of the Course, which I’ll again refer to...

And another passage in the text that I love, that I refer to now, as I so often do, because of the impact it was for me, is from chapter 21:

I am responsible for what I see.

I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the

goal I would achieve.

And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and

receive as I have asked.

It is so freeing and powerful to take accountability for everything we experience in this world, forgive the false and decide with the Holy Spirit.

This is all we need do to rule our mind; change our mind about the world and therefore change the world, seeing Christ reflected in everyone and everything.

I rule my mind which I alone must rule…

Lesson 232:

Be in my mind, my Father, through the day…

Aren’t the prayers in this section of the lessons, just so yummy and complete and satisfying? I love the feeling of safety and certainty and peace they seem to materialize from. Thank you for joining me in saving the world we see, through our acceptance and appreciation of salvation, now:

“Be in my mind, my Father, when I wade, and shine on me throughout the day today. Let every minute be a time in which I dwell with You. And let me not forget my hourly thanksgiving that You have remained with me, and always will be there to hear my call to You and answer me. As evening comes, let all my thoughts be still of You and of Your Love. And let me sleep sure of my safety, certain of Your care, and happily aware I am Your Son.”

I decide with the Holy Spirit in mind, and peace is mine. The world I drew-out with my perception just a minute ago, dissolves into the timeless presence which is my Self in God…

The world I draw-out now includes all and excludes none. Each thought I think; each act I seem to commit; each forgiveness I embrace, I do for all. Each encounter~ a holy encounter~ after all, ultimately, it is my Self I deal with, always. We are the one Self, which God created as Himself… It is this I hold in mind with my Father… for we are the One…

Lesson 229:

Love, which created me, is what I am…

This is really the zero-point ~Love~ the love that is my Self; what I am~ the all of all that I am, and from which, I draw-out my world. All seeming experience ultimately folds back into the zero-point ~ Love… It is the steady, yes? Even when we are seemingly blind to our own very Self, Love is the calling card that draws us out of hiding and into seeking… and, what we seek is the Self same Love which, unbeknownst to our private mind, whispered our true name to us: “Love”…

I, myself, have stared down the scope of love’s seeming opposite; gone to the mat with the horrors of hate and murderous thoughts of fear and destruction. I’ve met death square in to face and surrendered its nothingness… Only to find Love ~Light ~Life: Self, at the helm; waiting for mind to re-member… completely untouched by the shadows that once seemed to cross the mind. The ‘fear of God’; the ‘fear to look within’ turned out to be the ‘Love of God’; the ‘Love I am’… changeless and eternal…

In the zero-point, one knows it to all have been a dream and sings the merriment that is constant creation, which is Love. Gratitude showers in circling flow as mind re-calls the truth:

Love, which created me, is what I am…

“Father, thanks to You for what we are; for keeping our Identity untouched and sinless, in the midst of all the thoughts of sin our foolish mind made up. And thanks to You for saving us from them. Amen.”

Lesson 222:

God is with me. I live and move in Him.

Ummm… Our theme is forgiveness for this series of lessons. And, oh my gosh, can’t you just feel the tremendous loving impact of peace, that learning the true meaning of forgiveness has transformed life into...

I know I do. It is the only thing I know.

And furthermore, in the expedience of this one tool; practicing its application by merely going to our Now-Coach (Holy Spirit) for instruction with everything we seem to experience; in the place where fixing or competing or attacking or judging used to be the tool box we used… and bingo! Peace.

And now, forgiveness is becoming a way of life; how simple, effective, easy to use, and transferable it is among our so-called problems. How sure we are becoming that what today’s lesson says, “God is with me. I live and move in Him”, must be the truth. It is quickly becoming the only thing that feels right. Nes’t pas?

How lovely it is to rest for an instant in the certainty of our being in Him. Please join me in the prayer offered us in today’s lesson:

Father, we have no words except Your Name upon our lips and in our minds, as we come quietly into Your Presence now, and ask to rest with You in peace a while…

Lesson 217:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I can be but my gratitude I earn.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Appreciation is the best of all feelings… is it not? Whether you are looking at a sunset or holding your child in your arms, thanking a friend for a favor or a stranger for assistance, or joining together in a common cause for the salvation of the world. Whether that salvation looks like Katrina relief or some other physical coming together, or the commitment to persistent forgiveness of every thought we ever had that hurt, and letting the miracle wash over our vision, clean it up, and cause a new perception. It is the feeling of gratitude in the end that makes us feel unified and identified with those around us. ~ And, aaahhh, the joy…~

You know what I am so grateful for that goes along these lines? I am grateful for a healed perception from one that teaches that the world is somehow outside myself and I am at the mercy of its dictates, to one where all seeming minds are One-Mind, the one we share with God. That Mind thinks only thoughts of Creation; with love at the base, extending and receiving in full appreciation, returning in kind and extending again…. And on and on….

I am grateful too, that because this is the only thing that could be real and it is what I am. (And I know it by the resounding cha-chink that rings the chorus of joy throughout my being as I tune inward to the Oneness that creates or makes-up worlds…) On the same note, I am so grateful to bare witness to the fact that the false is always false; all the pains and frustrations and pettiness and competition and scarcity and sacrifice and worry and guilt ~ well, fear in other words, are but nothing; merely given the semblance of life on illusions screen…

Every single thing you say or do, or not, shows me what I think I am… what the texture of my current belief structure is, and where I am in my forgiveness lessons. If I am experiencing anything but appreciation… its time to offer the situation and all involved, to the Holy Spirit for reinterpretation and healing… It’s so simple and always works, every time to restore my mind to peace…. Thank you, thank you, thank you… for we are the One…

Lesson 205:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I want the peace of God…

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Is there anything that wouldn’t be resolved, given the peace of God? The thought; the peace of God, alone, has releasing and restorative properties. Replace any thought with this one thought: the peace of God, and instantly feel a sense of proportion, hopefulness, and calm… Even the symbols of the words: the peace of God, seem to carry tranquil properties.

The peace God… The peace of God... The peace of God…

Consistant leaning in the direction of the peace of God, by merely placing our attention on it instead of something else, brings a feeling of serene comfort, unparalleled by anything one can find in this world. As a matter of fact, behind all the ‘using’ and ‘bettering ourselves’ and winning games, aren’t we ultimately just looking for the experience of peace; total, unmitigated peace?

As the seat of our being begins consistently to reside in the experience beyond the seeming ‘physical experience’ playing out at any particular time, where we have our attention directed toward the unknown, or the Holy Spirit’s domain; the more at home we become with the essence of a situation, being more ‘real’ than its physical characteristics. We being to sense that it is ‘the peace of God’ which is carrying us through from one forgiveness lesson to the next…

It is this calm assurance that lets us release the death grip we have on the belief in scarcity and survival, and begin to lean back and trust…

The peace of God statement given in this lesson has at times, gratefully, positively, served as a sort of mantra to navigate some pretty stormy waters in my life. Please join me in reviewing it now:

“The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal; the am of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home.”

It is our inheritance to reside in the peace of God, and when that too, becomes consciously, our only goal, which is the same as truth; we feel its influence evermore consistently throughout all the workings of our lives…

And gratitude follows naturally, as the path is laid before us, one now at a time…

Lesson 165:

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God…

The Thought of God ~I am… Nothing else. Why deny it? Ultimately, resistance is futile… It is what I am ~ and only that… It is through the grace of miracle-mindedness, inherent in accepting the Atonement for my Self that this is possible, now. You are what I am~ the Thought of God. My acceptance is yours and yours mine…

And we are no longer wholly insane. By accepting the Atonement, we have become miracle workers in this world… The Course tells us that the task of the miracle worker is to deny the denial of truth. I am convinced that this is singly, the most significant assignment for the mind that still finds itself at all vulnerable to seeing itself as split. We deny the denial of truth rather than the Thought that gives us life. And that one moment is our holy instant of release~ we are aware that God’s Thought is what gives our life is. And love is the limitless Being-ness left as experience…

Love is the Source that created like unto itself, and we are here, resting in the truth of the Self as One, and nothing else is really happening at all. In this holy instant of now, reality rests in the spirit of being.

We are fulfilled, feeling the completion in this Thought that gives certainty to identity and peace of mind so thorough, there is no question to give answer to. We accept therefore the reality of creation; regardless of the vain imaginings we have called ourselves. Irrelevant are these identities which are displayed on the screen of the world-theater, where the characters wear the costume of a body amongst many bodies in a multitude of different personalities and separate interests~ Where, in the next moment we seem to have forgotten the truth about our Self and our Source, and take the drama to be our life, for real. We take the characters problems to be in need of solving, for survival of the fittest and conquest and acquisition and sickness and death ignite our senses with textures designed as nearly impossible for the ego identity to ignore. The bitter taste of fear rests at the back of our throats, while its cold loneliness pumps as blood in our veins. We stand convicted and wish for hope to rescue us from the dense and taut existence this character is condemned to…well, death ~It is that irrelevant drama which at last we wholly deny and deny not the Thought of God ~well, life…

The thing is, we have seen the light… If, even only for an instant; perhaps an instant distant in mind, that we can’t really put our finger on, but it is there. Somehow, we know it is there, and somehow it increasingly lightens the burden of pretend reality. We see from beyond. And what we see is simply that we seem to be junkies of fear, subject to the confusion rendered by that familiar drugged state of guilty fear with its insane definitions and interpretation of what reality is.

Yet, we can no longer wholly agree with our belief that what this medicated state of mind represents is what our life is, in truth. Yet, the truth rests quietly, patiently, within, awaiting but our desire for it. DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH! Simply this is required to slip past addictive-repetitive-past-no-thought.

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God. This thought is not only everything we ever wanted to know about ourselves, but everything we are… it is our very life! And here, in this so-called world, we are a mirror of truth, in which God Himself shines in perfect light.

When the temptation to deny the Thought of God and seek the dark enticing alternative; the ego’s relentlessly murmurs to the mind, we quietly respond, “I will not look there because I know these images are not true”… We lean back and let the Holy Thought of God shine on us in peace, knowing that His and only His Thought must be. The compulsive pull to deny it subsides and the ultimate familiarity of the peace of God pumps through our veins, the memory of truth…

We are the Thought of Love God Created as His Son; with us always, defining us always, giving us vision to see and power to create… Let us not deny the Thought of God. We are joined in purpose and we cannot fail~