Lesson 360:

Peace be to me, the holy Son of God.

Peace to my brother, who is one with me.

Let all the world be blessed with peace through us…

Of course the lessons wrap up in a state of perfect peace, because that is our true state… All is well with creation and us… always, already. We merely mistook ourselves to be the characters in a dream of separation and specialness, scarcity and loss… Yet through joining with a single-heart, in wholehearted willingness for the true~only, and giving ourselves innocently over to the curriculum of this Course, the mind has been returned, at last, to where it never really left in truth; to our natural state of perfect peace extending and blessing…

Sure, there are a good deal of forgiveness opportunities still to reveal themselves as we go about our lives, but now we see them as beacons ~lighting the way to unity with each other, and the way home…

Please join me in the exquisite prayer offered in the lesson today:

Father, it is Your peace that I would give, receiving it of You. I am Your Son, forever just as You created me, for the Great Rays remain forever still and undisturbed within me. I would reach to them in silence and in certainty for nowhere else can certainty be found. Peace be to me, and peace to all the world. In holiness were we created, and in holiness do we remain. Your Son is like to You in perfect sinlessness. And with this thought we gladly say “Amen”.

LESSON 358:

No call to God can be unheard nor left
Unanswered. And of this I can be sure;
His answer is the one I really want.

This is why we’re all here isn’t it? First in letting the imagination run wild and project a world and existence seemingly separate from our Source and all else. And Now, in glimpsing its transparent falseness, choosing to remember truth instead…

Here’s what I’ve seen; all prayers, or calls to God, are always answered instantly. Our reception isn’t nearly so clear. When our prayers are requests to a false god or idol, their manifestation follows the false laws of scarcity, specialness and loss. When our prayer is for only the truth, Heaven’s host rallies to assist us in remembering who we really are through the Holy Spirit… reminding us that we are under no laws but God’s. Forgiveness is the medium of the Holy Spirit to translate all that we thought we wanted into what we really want behind, beneath and beyond what can be experience with perception, but can be felt as love, acceptance, unity, and peace… every call is a call to God, to see the truth about ourselves

This is the truth: we are love’s radiant reality; we are as God created; His sinless Son, co-creator of all that is… Every call to any son of God is ultimately a call to remember Self through seeing Christ in our brother…

You are my sinless Self and I am joyously in your debt, welcoming the full remembrance of our eternal oneness, Now!... Thank you…

Lesson 352:

Judgment and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself…

All of us actually know this simple truth and know it in actuality… Every time we judge, we can feel our heart constrict, yes? And in that instant of judgment, we can not feel the love we have, nor the love we are….

Pick a judgment; any judgment. Now try to hang on to that judgment as reality and feel the love that you are, simultaneously… Can’t be done, can it? Now, feel the deepest love you can within yourself; whether you identify this with your relationship with Self, with God, your children, Jesus, or whatever… just rest there in that yummy place of peace within~ This is the present moment~ the presence of God… Now try to judge, and stay in touch with that feeling of now… Doesn’t work, does it?

Judgment is a characteristic of time; founded in fear and fleshed out in memory… We simply have to leave the present to get to it…

The Course tells us that we don’t need judgment to organize our lives and that the letting go of judgment is the obvious prerequisite for hearing the Voice for God… We need but be still and present an instant… Then love will direct our actions …

When we can let all things be exactly as they are, we easily live in the now; in the presence of love…

There is now way to get love. Love is what we are, and therefore love is the way! Simply Love Now! And the rest will fall into place for the good of all…

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.~ …

This statement, from the beginning of this section, What Am I, has bee a constant mantra for me almost from the beginning of my study with the course. It has served as a key that unlocks my consciousness to truth; to intrinsic awareness of the truth of what I am…

I remember that the first time I read it, I felt I already knew it by heart and I was merely recalling and reciting. I was so humbled by the experience of Self sweeping me away from my perceived self, I just sat and wept for the longest time in total gratitude for absolute opening to the possibility of total salvation from all I had designed and imprisoned myself with….It was my first Taste of recognizing eternity in the Self…

I feel that same awesome gratitude and eternal oneness right now~

I rest serenely, in the realization of instant and total forgiveness….

Lesson 351:

My sinless brother is my guide to peace. My sinful brother is my guide to pain. And which I choose to see I will behold…

You are my self and how I see you, is what I wish to be…. That is really some kind of truth to ‘white-flag’ the ego-identity to… Spectacular!!! Once you’ve recognized it, even for one holy instant, it changes everything… mutating your very DNA… I can never really ‘cop-out’ again… on some level I always know, I am responsible for literally everything that ‘seems’ to happen in my world of perception…by my choice of what I wish to see… I have gotten awfully particular about my wish-list anymore... I have truly come to know, that in this world, it is only by my function of forgiveness that happiness is mine… making happiness the only way to see….

Any resistance to love’s presence, that seemingly ‘shows-up’ in my life, boils down to an authorship or authority issue, easily seen now as the ego’s die-hard competition with God… None of this make-believe has mattered-a-whit to the truth. Always, it has presented itself via the Holy Spirit in mind, as a chance to forgive, which is the chance for the restoration of peace, which is the reestablishment of the memory of my Self…. There’s simply no way to loose….

One thing has remains constant; how I choose to see you is what I end up experiencing as me. My perception of you ends up being my perception of myself. And oh, the joy of seeing your innocence ~ the perfect reflection of what I am…. Thank you.

Lesson 345:

I offer only miracles today, for I would have them be returned to me….

For years I took the miracle on faith, choosing out of hopelessness and into hope. And gradually, miracles have altered my whole life; my total way of thinking, therefore seeing the world… And now, miracle-mindedness has become a habit you might say. I am ever awe-struck by how the Holy Spirit uses all the ego’s little tactics, like the addictive mechanism, for exactly the opposite purpose than they were made, healing the mind to wholeness through complete surrender to what is... We, as the characters in the dream, are already networked with the mechanisms once used for defense, and find another purpose; one of unity rather than separation, peace rather than competition, sameness rather than specialness ~till this is all we want~….

I want only the healed perspective. I want only to see unity where division once seemed so real.

Because of the single goal to see the truth set forth by my accepting Atonement for myself, I accept it for you, for we are one. The methodology I have at my disposal is the Miracle~ the correction of the error of seeing any interests apart from my own. ~I want only to see the false for what it is, denying its power, and leaving only the Christ we are as one. And in this one desire rests the miracle, which is now visited upon us both in grace, and with it deep abiding peace.

How joyous is the timeless gift of unending Love we experience by merely choosing to offer only miracles today.

Even on the level of this world, just slowing down our compulsive, competitive, thought system and therefore actions, and thinking of the ‘other’ choice; miracle-mindedness ~ the possibility of looking with only loving eyes/perception) already feels better. Geez, just softening our eyes and considering it, starts warming the heart, ~yes?….

I offer you only miracles for I would have them for myself~ otherwise I am blind…. Truth be know, I have no other goal to choose any more. No-thing else satisfies or raises the slightest interest for me…

Thank you for the miracles you have given and received…. Not one has been lost on me (or anyone in truth). I might have been (and still can be) a resistive study at times, but I have found that every loving thought merely awaits reception. Period. Like the ever-favorite quote from the Course says: “LOVE WAITS ON WELCOME NOT ON TIME”.

I bless you with miracles today…

Lesson 342:

I let forgiveness rest upon all things, for thus forgiveness will be given me….

This is a guarantee…. It isn’t crucial that we understand everything about forgiveness, just that we practice it… Keeping in mind that it is the ‘ego that analyzes; where the Holy Spirit accepts’ puts us in right-minded alignment for forgiveness. The crucial piece is that we practice our willingness to have our perception changed … We are ‘doing it right’, if we leaning in the direction of being willing to see the situation or person or belief or circumstance differently. And this is enough to engage the Atonement principle, and release the mind to healing... The Holy Spirit handles the details…

This transformation procedure actually takes place within a dimension of reality where the needs for conflict and forgiveness aren’t viable. The change of heart, inherent in deciding we want forgiveness’s blessing on a situation or relationship, is the softening or opening that invites the Holy Spirit to visit the light of truth upon it.

Before we realize it, our guts have started shape-shifting and our smudged vision of the other/circumstance, clears and love’s clarity shows us another way of addressing the situation, entirely.

In fact, often we don’t even recognize that it is the healed and forgiven issue, sponsoring our involvement in a given miracle.

FORGIVENESS MUST REST UPON ALL THINGS… that is the promise of the Atonement…. In reality, it has all already been accomplished… Yet, for the mind that still believes in the reality of the dream of separation, forgiveness is simply the means by which the Atonement is accomplished in the time/space mind dynamic… So that’s all handled through God’s plan for salvation…

We just need remember that all things are for-giving to all as one…

And doesn’t it just feel better to give up the burden of having to be right, or of having to know? Whew!

Please join me in today’s perfect, yummy prayer:

“I thank You, Father, for Your plan to save me from the hell I made. It is not real. And You have given me the means to prove its unreality to me. The key is in my hand, and I have reached the door beyond which lies the end of dreams. I stand before the gate of Heaven, wondering if I should enter in and be at home. Let me not wait again today. Let me forgive all things, and let creation be as You would have it be and as it is. Let me remember that I am Your Son, and opening the door at last, forget illusions in the blazing light of truth, as memory of You returns to me.”

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 336:

Forgiveness lets me know that minds are joined….

What a glorious gift to bring to this worn out diverse reality. Ours for the asking, forgiveness eliminates the need for perception, allowing us to see what is present now; which is the vision of Christ… It is begins with our willingness to close the seeming gap between subject and object, you and me; and to experience the ‘fact’ that minds are joined. As we become increasingly willing to dispel the belief in private thoughts and value only what can be shared, we come to find ourselves within the whole embodiment of the now. It is profoundly unique in experience of this world which exists only in the past. Yet, the brilliant eternal aliveness of the present moment extends into experience of a forgiven past.

Turns out our willingness ‘to see this differently’ is always, in all ways, enough. The Holy Spirit works within the miracle; beyond yet within the construct in which we currently believe of time; past or future. It’s like He hears our prayer for Atonement within our hearts even before we are aware we have prayed it: “let me see my brother as myself”… Oh yeah, ‘the slightest invitation’ and recognition can be called to mind through the Holy Spirit within our Mind… for it has already done.

This life is like a big déja vu, ne’st pas? That feeling of déja vu, is one of the side effects, if you will, becoming progressively more noticeable as forgiveness transforms judgment’s perception as precedence within the mind. Vision takes the place of what the eyes are seeing and serves up meaning from a unified perspective, leaving the body’s eyes to serve the Holy Spirit’s purpose rather than the ‘specifics’ which the split mind is so full of … the details look ever-so the same. Yet, the experience is present, full and unified. It is alive…

This is the blessing of vision that forgiveness gives; here I feel all of me present within all, and specifics line-up…. It is the miracle in effect, and I notice, in a way that it is clear to me, that it all has been done. Fear of future and guilt of past are vague memory elements, yet the memory of Present Love, is Now….This ‘present’ is the alive texture of my day-to-day life … Within it is room to heal the mind; allowing this ‘forgiveness-lesson-drama/re-gathering of Self, with its stresses, and romances and pleasures and pains, of ‘the character I play, seem like some kind of déja vu dream, ~impossible to take too seriously for long.

Our reality is only Spirit and Spirit’s primacy and grace shine on everything. Forgiveness lets me see that you are me, and that there is one Self, the one we share, uniting us with God.

“In quiet may forgiveness wipe away my dreams of separation and of sin. Then let me, Father, look within, and find Your promise of my sinlessness is kept; Your Word remains unchanged within my mind, Your Love is still abiding in my heart”.

Lesson 315:

All gifts my brothers give belong to me…

I remember back in the day, when I was totally identified with the “me” character where myself and all the others were separate things; subject and objects… Yet, today, I see only my Self…That’s exciting! That’s present! That is the gift forgiveness brings! When we accept the Atonement for ourselves, and forgiveness becomes our chosen dream, all gifts, as all brothers, reveal themselves as another holographic reflection of the face of Christ…

Anyway, back then, I had a pretty standard response to others gifts~ and it wasn’t just gratitude. In fact that was miniscule to all that was going on below the surface. I felt jealous; envious, yes~ but deeper than that even, I felt somehow ashamed when I recognized a gift in someone and felt it was deficient in me. I couldn’t just appreciate them and admire or champion them (like I outwardly and behaviorally appeared to ~ faking the ‘appropriate’ response; wishing it were all I felt)… No, deep inside, in the secret chamber of my little-self, I felt exposed, alone, alien, small and desperate… ~I had more character to build, skills to achieve, ‘others’ to impress with ‘something’ great… And on and on it went. Lord, what a ridiculous, lonely, exhausting and imprisoned world that was~ only the truly ‘mad’ would choose it. …duh…

When, for and instant, I became completely willing to be wrong about everything, including ‘reality’ as I knew it; about you, me, subjects and objects~ somehow, I made a true decision.

I say true because, in this deliberate choice to be wrong, I was transported beyond my ‘self’ and body/emotion world indelibly reversing my perception from subject/object based to Oneness based. It seemed as if some external skin slipped away from me.

In this moment, for an instant, I did not see my interests as apart from someone else’s… I somehow knew it was all one mind returning ~ all spirit.

Now, I am constantly noticing how everyone just wants to experience themselves as the love that they are; the love we share as one~ I see that we all want to give their gifts, as fast, and often as we can; a smile, a kind word, a skill, a listening ear…

This beautiful symphony of love actually is easily noticed, once the unified perspective has been accepted. It’s a choice. I would see based on what I identify with… Will I be hostage to the ego or host to God? Am I as God created? Yes. And only this… And as such; perfect love. I forgive all other interpretations and see differently. Simple as that.

Minds are joined, each gift is everyone’s. How joyous is the awareness that all is one.

The Atonement answered the subject/object split the instant it was conceived: “God is total, and the separation could not be. Therefore, it never really occurred and this tiny mad idea we call a world is the dream. We, the one Son of God, are the dreamer and we are in the grand awakening; we are answering to the call to awaken and be glad in a myriad of ways touching each other with our gifts; every where, every time, every space~ till the wake-up is complete.

Thank you my brothers for your gifts to every one of us, I feel your extending love and reception of love ~for it is my own. I receive your blessing by blessing everyone and every situation with forgiveness and gratitude… forever and ever~now.

Lesson 295:

The Holy Spirit looks through me today…

This is the decision we make when we choose the Atonement for ourselves; we step back and let the Holy Spirit’s vision (interpretation) replace the body’s eye’s program. We no longer value a program for sight that separates out and limits the Son of God, neither in our brothers nor Self…

What once appeared as the world’s horrors; pain and suffering, and terror, loss, and death is seen as falsehood drawn on a flimsy overlay stretched across the light of truth, which now lifts and disappears, as only truth is valued… and the Holy Sprit given reign to see…

In place of hopelessness, we now see salvation, ancient hatred’s have become present loves, and as each pair of eyes is lifted; the seer and the seen, recognize the face of Christ~ which is one…

The peace of God has settled over the mind that sees only for Christ and Love is one… Join me in offering today’s lesson’s prayer in union:

“Our Father, Christ has asked a gift of us, and one we give that it be given us. Help us to use the eyes of Christ today, and thus allow the Holy Spirit’s Love to bless all things which we may look upon, that His forgiving Love may rest on me…”

Lesson 294:

My body is a wholly neutral thing…

Neutral, having no agenda of its own, the body is at the service of where I place my mind. Will I be hostage to the ego or host to God? This is a question served up in the text that I have use throughout my process to zero me back to a place where I could get honest and begin to question the meaning I had given the particular circumstance I was in…

Returning the mind to the service of the Holy Spirit when I had been engaged in body fantasies to hurt myself did not come so easily, for me. I felt: ‘I got myself into this, I better get myself out.’ Shame ruled the day. Even after I had felt the hand of the Holy Spirit on my heart, I still forgot and allowed myself to get totally caught up in body-identity… For the longest time, I saw body importance as a particularly unworthy form of worship that I had become, unfortunately, completely addicted to, and not only the problem, but solving it. It was undeniably a nightmare on the horror scale… but, it was nothing more.

The thing about our nightmares, or dreams of any kind, is that they are not real… and when we wake up, who we are has not been altered in any way. Merely a part of the mind made up another scenario for a second, while we remained as we always were…

The thing for me was that I got tired of being a loser, in the win-lose body world… And what I noticed is that if I stayed out of the body piece of it altogether, like “here, you deal with this. I can’t handle it right now,” and focused exclusively on my mind and returning it to the Holy Spirit; bringing every belief and value I held, up for review and correction, the body identity dropped away, as spirit identity took its place.

What interests me now about the body is how and if it is useful in communicating with my brothers and our communing with our Father… I am all about the love and how we can drop the façade and experience our Self as we truly are as God created…

Please join me in today’s lesson’s prayer:

“The body, Father, cannot be Your Son. And what is not created cannot be sinful nor sinless; neither good nor bad. Let us, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made.”

Lesson 288:

Let me forget my brother’s past today…

How joyous it is to be present! Each holy moment is all moments, each encounter holy… We have our being in this moment, right here, right now… This is why it is imperative to accept the Atonement for ourSelf; offer our little willingness to the miracle and let forgiveness heal our sight… And oh my gosh, for me, the beauty of our brother which reveals itself as I have shed the false identity I placed him under… when the only goal is to see the face of Christ… and, as I increasingly loosened my attachment to guilt and its bed-partner shame, which kept the personhood identity alive in my mind and therefore in us both, as I look in the mirror of your eyes; I see but my own true face… And the past is nowhere to be found…

The groovy thing about forgiveness is that it truly acts as ‘past-memory-eraser… As wounds heal and dissolve into the healed perspective, the specifics of a given circumstance become vague and certainly usurped by the unifying balm of oneness. Hurt feelings have no meaning and what seemed to separate is, instead seen as a necessary re-membering of each aspect of the Sonship’s holy glory in truth…

Sanity and Joy and unity and all-ness replace ancient stories of nothingness, disguised as separate persons and things in a chaotic world that makes no sense… And peace pervades as the background music… always!

Let us forget our brother’s past today. Let’s be honest, is not worth keeping, once the goal of truth is set… Let’s instead, join in offering today’s prayer:

This is the thought that leads the way to You, and brings me to my goal. I cannot come to You without my brother. And to know my Source, I first must recognize what You created one with me. My brother’s is the hand that leads me on the way to You. His sins are in the past along with mine, and I am saved because the past is gone. Let me not cherish it within my heart, or I will lose the way to walk to You. My brother is my savior. Let me not attack the savior You have given me. But let me honor him who bears Your Name, and so remember that It is my own.

Lesson 279:

Creation’s freedom promises my own…

It’s always about what we identify with, yes? I identify my Self either as having my being in God, as Christ; the Son in which we are all one, and co-creator with the Father; unlimited, eternal and free be, created or even dream … Or, I identify myself as a victim born of a world in which I am but a pawn, striving to stay alive until the inevitable heavy hand of death snuffs my out, where the best I can hope for is temporary specialness; one-up on the other guy only to return to the humdrum of bad-hair days soon to follow… The ego mind is a seductive, sneaky little player; and if I want to believe myself the hero of its dream, I need time and space and winners and losers to play it all out…

I have tried on the identity of both for size. And truly, only one fits... and fits perfectly for all time...
The other?... not so much... It’s excruciating the pain and guilt and utter imprisoning futility of the other… Well, it’s just hell…

Absolute freedom is here, now, not in some future moment near or far. It is the decision to give up the ridiculous competition with God and grow up… Quit looking for answers and let reality be... It’s funny, in the ‘stop’, I found the Heaven I’d been seeking ‘out-there’~ right here, within, now…

I was only lost because I was trying to get somewhere… In reality, I am free… That is nature of creation… Creation’s freedom promises my own. Only my belief in limitation, scarcity and survival became my prison walls. Withdraw belief, and poof! ~freedom!~ Free is what I am…

Lesson 276:

The Word of God is given me to speak…

“My Son is pure and holy as Myself...”

Ok, so God’s Son (you and me) is pure and holy as God Himself… in other words, ‘I am as God created me… pure and holy and eternally unchangeable in nature due to Source Itself… Which is to say that what is Love; whole and innocent and eternal cannot be something else…tainted by imagination’s concepts and falsehoods…

Now, in terms of daily application, this really simplifies things. If I am experiencing anything that did not spring forth from this initial idea (God’s Son is pure and holy as Himself) as the fundamental cornerstone of my perception, then I need to stop and ask “What is the meaning of what I behold?” Then be still and listen…

Forgiveness will serve its meaning up to me in purified form and as I see you as myself, I know exactly what to do and say, for it is the present we now share…

Here, now, all I see is that you are my one Self in the holy exchange of the false for the true; the call for Love ~ Love answering…

We are as God created… this is the only message worth of sharing in this so-called world of for-getting and re-membering and for-giving and re-cognizing and real-izing…

YOU, my Christ brothers, are my holy relationship in this world as eternally in God… His Son is pure and holy as Himself…

And as messengers of God (which ultimately we all are), the word of God is given us to speak…

Lesson 274:

Today belongs to Love. Let me not fear…

Love is extension and creation… I find myself referencing the section in the text called The Origins of Separation, which serves up the miracle of the light of understanding to those willing to see… “God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create... Created perfect, there is no emptiness in us… because of our likeness to our Creator we are creative. No child of God can lose this creative ability because it is inherent in what we are, but we can use it inappropriately by projecting… It reminds us that this world we think we live in is basically a case of the inappropriate extension, just an alteration in focus based on a false belief in what we are…a projection which occurs when one believes that some emptiness of lack exists, and that one can fill it with one’s own ideas instead of truth… This process involves the following steps:

First, we believe that what God created can be changed by our own mind.

Second, we believe that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or lacking.

Third, we believe that we can distort the creations of God, including our self.

Forth, we believe that we can create our self, and that the direction of our own creation is up to us…

It tells that these related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the mind that got us dreamed-up in the world of separation and fear in which we seem to find ourselves… It further tells us that all fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that we have the ability to usurp the power of God. Of course, we neither can nor have been able to do this. Here is the real basis for our escape from fear. The escape is brought about by our acceptance of the Atonement, which enables us to realize that our errors never really occurred… whatever lies we believe are of no concern to the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease…there is no order of difficulty in miracles… In reality we are we are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love… “

Love: we spend our lives attempting to express and receive it…often in very convoluted ways. But the desire for knowing and extending the love that we are is the same pure extension of Source Love which is our creation… and why we are the children and parents of love.

For me, the journey has been so much about God, earning God’s Love… betraying it with my rules and guilt and entreating for forgiveness and praying for some intervention outside myself to infuse me with enough ‘self-love’ to do a better job… I begged for a day that I would not make mistakes of assassinating myself and others in the service of incompletion; sacrifice, competition and scarcity all in the compulsive effort to get love… Sounds insane, stated as it is without the disguise, doesn’t it. And insane it is…

But here’s what I came to realize through allowing the miracle, waiting for me just behind the insanity, the gift of accepting the Atonement for myself; it was but the premise from which I saw myself and therefore believed I was, that was insane.

Atonement turns the dial, so to speak, and cha-ching! I am no longer within the dream I thought so real, but rather the dreamer of the dream… And I am, as always, already, all love itself… and all perception finds itself in me… my brothers /myself…

Love is the Self, complete. Up till I real-ized every single ‘other’ as but the One which is myself, I didn’t understand love, for I didn’t really know myself as love. Inclusion is the watchword. Exclusion has no meaning in Love’s awareness… I actually thought it was something you could get or earn or even give… (Well ‘give’ isn’t that far off, except that to re-cognize the Self is to realize love only extends, and this is creation…)

All arises from LoveSelf… even illusion; for the ego and its world is just a thought, a set of ideas exploring the possibility of the impossible~ to separate from Source, and make oneself the source of It… And these ideas are but in the mind, which arises from the Self; from Love itself... The Atonement is GodLove’s guarantee... Atonement is the total commitment we make to let Love be itself and to let creation be exactly as it is…

I know it’s cliché, but: “With Love, all things are possible… There is nothing to fear…

Lesson 246:

To love my Father is to love His Son…

The magnitude of love of God is too vast to conceptualize. Yet it is much closer, more life-giving, than our breath, more truly part of all our experiencing than we can be aware of through the self-identity in which we seem to live in bodies and in this world. The ego identity will never get a accurate fix on the truth. The ego mind is too small, too contracted strategic for the abstract…it was made from the false and cannot leave its source. Anymore than we, God’s Son could leave our Father’s Love…

Yet, it can be brought into alignment; its purpose transformed, by accepting the Atonement for ourselves and merely following the simple guidance laid-out, moment upon moment. And, for the purpose of this lesson work, the ego is the vehicle in which this work is being done. In other words, my participation in the love of God equation is simply to love my brother and myself.

I do this by forgiving every false identity I have given, in each and every encounter, knowing that the truth lies beyond. This allows for me to suspend my judgment of what a situation is for and listen to the voice for God to tell give the instruction needed for the good of all concerned. It lets me look behind what the body’s eyes reveal to the vision that shows, always, that my brother is my Self, and we are Christ…

Love floods rapidly into every equation given over to the Atonement and the feeling of completion literally lifts one to the state beyond concepts, fostering abundant willingness to continue whatever the forgiveness curriculum requires... It just feels so good to love instead of judge… n’est pas?

To love my brother is to love God…

To love my Father is to love His Son…

Lesson 228:

God has condemned me not. No more do I.

Thank Heavens!, the condemnation game is finally over, yes? Talk about a circular waste of energy. You can’t get anywhere with condemnation as a motivator. The basis of existence is freedom, the true nature of our being, as is perfection and wholeness. Where’s the room for condemnation here? Therefore, what but illusion can condemn and be condemned? It is merely a case of mistaken identity, taken seriously in a tiny tick of time, when the Son of God remembered not to laugh.… The natural self will reject the idea and in this world, that looks like a feeling of defensiveness. Now, looped into this falsehood/personhood, we have used this faulty tool as a means of correcting a problem in our person, which isn’t real and therefore doesn’t need fixing. Correction must take place by bring problem and solution together. In this world there is but one problem: we think we are separate from our Source. And but one solution: realize that we are not. So anything that feels at all like it needs correction (including improvement) in anyway is merely an opportunity to ‘forgive and see it differently’.

We forgive. That is all. And actually, we make the decision to forgive and the Holy Spirit which is within our mind, whether we are currently in awareness of it or not, takes care of the work of forgiveness, giving it back to us as healed perception. What once we saw as noteworthy and in need of guilt as the punishment for our crime of not- enough-ness, we now see merely as a one more re-ally-zing of that which we thought we separated off from our Self. Forgiveness is the correction of the mis-identity; fathered in the silly belief that what is One could have separate parts, each sponsoring itself. Now, we see the false as false; insubstantial and irrelevant to our being, which is beyond. We experience the results of our decision for forgiveness within this world of perception, as a sort of bridge illusion (bridge-across-forever); or vision-spectacles, if you will, ~the healed perspective ~miracle mindedness… The ‘other’ has become our ‘brother’, one in purpose.

Still the Source, the still Source, resides within~ beyond… The power of the correction comes from our One Self; which has never been here at all, but has remained as God created and is like unto Himself…

PART II Introduction:

Today, we begin the final part of this year's lesson's; this year that we have given to devoted to know the experience of God the Father and of our Self; His Son..."For now we seek direct experience of truth alone. The lessons that remain are merely introductions to the times in which we leave the world of pain, and go to enter peace. Now we begin to reach the goal this course has set, and find the end toward which our practicing was always geared...we wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father....Now do we come to Him with but His Word upon our minds and hearts, and wait for Him to take the step to us that He has told us, through His Voice, He would not fail to take when we invited Him. He has not left His Son in all his madness, nor betrayed His trust in Him. Has not His faithfulness earned Him the invitation that He seeks to make us happy? We will offer it, and it will be accepted. So our times with Him will now be spent. We say the words of invitation that His Voice suggests, and then we wait for Him to come to us"…

I love this section of the lessons, Part II. I love the format; with a key idea heading a series of ten pertinent lessons for integration of the idea, speaking to the truth within us. Each has a prayer, which alone would be enough to bring one home… They are marvelously simple, astonishingly salient and beautifully poetic. I always find myself singing the great chorus of “Y E S” in the background of my mind while I read and contemplate them. I am so pleased to have you join me this time around. ~Truth rests in constant presence, with assured joy, gratitude and love ~

WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?:

Lesson 221:

Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still…Y.E.S...This is what matters now… the stillness... where the voice for God becomes my own, where clarity is no longer in question and choice has been answered with the certainty of the love of God, which is His holy Son, expressed as my Self. Here, I know what I am…

And from here, this being takes her place ~her function within the world... I know her well, she is in everywhere... She has a face, that face is Christ. Vision is her sight and her eyes but serve to witness to her holy face in every projected person, place and circumstance. And but for one purpose only... that her holy function of forgiveness be fulfilled in you my brothers, as myself...

Where are conflict and competition and hierarchies and ordering of thoughts when the mind has stepped back allowing each unforgiving construct to slip gently into the appropriate place to turn the cogs of the great mechanism of the forgiven world?

God’s perfect plan for salvation has carefully taken all that I made to forget my Self, my Creator and you; the replacement team I made within my mind to pose for what was not, and denying what was true. But, alas, God's placement of the Holy Spirit as His Voice within my mind, then used these skills and abilities designed for this denial to teach me to deny the denial of truth, instead.

Only the truth is left standing in my mind. And the stillness beating in my heart inspires all movement of all seeming actions and decisions. The comforting awareness of knowing that it is all, already done; rests and stabilizes experience. Everything is sure….

Yes, a happy outcome is indeed sure… and all worry and planning has ceased… Ah, yes. It is here… now… peace… all has been answered, forgiven, set back to freedom; the natural state of love… ummm yummy… Join me in this prayer of engagement offered as a beacon for the mind attempting weariness, which revives and reminds and connects…

“Father, I come to You today to seek the peace that You alone can give. I come in silence. In the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind, I wait and listen for Your Voice. My Father, speak to me today. I come to hear Your Voice in silence and in certainty and love, sure You will hear my call and answer me.”

We are in this together, you and I… There really are no separate parts. And while we might pretend a little longer that there just might be, and that 'whole' forgiveness may be served upon this world made to separate; we gather each other, to each other. Each time we allow forgiveness to serve its purpose as designed by God; our hearts swell with the Love that is our Self, impelling Spirit reality to become visible and increasingly substantial as ‘reality’. Our physical-ness begins to fade as presence in our mind for truth has been allowed to be…

Lesson 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…

Without fail, whenever I cannot feel the humility of my glory in God, my birthright and my only status here, it is because I have made someone responsible for my state of mind, through my condemnation of them. Sure, it doesn’t always look like blatant judgment. In fact, it rarely does. The ego is much to slick for that. No, it usually shows up in some form of expectation. An expectation is just a thinly veiled threat, a lack of acceptance, a refusal to let all things be exactly as they are. It is my attempt to win-out over God. When I dream you up to my specifications in any form, I am no longer allowing the Holy Spirit’s vision to shine my brother’s light and reveal my only Self to me. It is like putting on sunglasses. Funny, a song form the nineties keeps playing in the back of my mind right now. It goes: There’s a little black spot on the sun today…”

Ya gotta love it…

So it is only my sight that suffers when I engage the little black spot of condemnation. You’re merrily going about the business of being the perfect Son of God, playing the role of showing me my Self and my condemnation/expectation has not affected who you are, in any way.

Now on the same note, it takes but my recognition of disconnection; which is easily seen since I no longer like the way I feel. My feeling sense has been appropriated to either the past or the future and I feel alone. It takes but this tuning-in to set in motion, the obvious next step. Forgiveness. It is the return inward to the Holy Spirit within my mind and the remembrance of the truth:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

And, you and I are One.

Only my condemnation injury me. only my forgiveness sets me free…

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…