Lesson 337:

My sinlessness protects me from all harm…

Let me see here, sinlessness is the state of the center where the Self resides. The dark concept of harm cannot coexist with invulnerability; which is the natural state of the Son of God….

Once we be come willing to hide nothing, to harbor no thoughts that we would keep private, the belief in harm or vulnerability crumbles in the light of impartiality.

Harm is a concept only valid within the separation-illusion. Without belief in structures and concepts, harm could not exist. The ego’s entire kingdom is pieced together and propped up with the belief structures of scarcity, specialness, attack and harm, producing the illusion of danger and death and attackers and victims, winners and losers …. It’s all smoke and mirrors, easily dispelled when the choice to ‘forgive and see this differently’ takes precedence in value… Then what we see is our unity and oneness, even simultaneously as the bodies eyes see what they are made to see, within we recognize our brother as our Self…

In choosing Atonement for myself, I began to trust without reservation or forgive my reservation as soon a I noticed a sense of loosing connection with my center of peace … I became willing to forget fairness and justice concepts and allow the mystery within and beyond to visit truth’s impartial ‘fairness’ that unites… The letting go of needing to know, to understand and allow, has resulted in an experience of tolerance I never imagined. It’s really a feeling of accepting unconditionally that all things work together for good for all.

Nothing in this world can be done to fix anything dawns easily, although not always recognized or welcome in the beginning, when we accept Atonement and the single goal of truth. This choice seems to hold the energy of inevitability; a sense that what unfolds next has already been tested and true, so to speak…

The Holy Spirit is engaged and brings to life the ongoing gentle waking to the truth where no concepts reside at all. So, what I’m trying to get at here is although details in the dream seem effected, and choices seem to be made, another experience that is ongoing, beyond what seems apparent~ the bigger picture or rest of the story, so to speak.

There is an instant recognition, always; but due to valuing the belief in the reality of sin and you and me, etc., there is no conceptualization for pure life within the structure of the dream, so it seemingly takes time. Yet, the Holy Spirit is the great interpreter and once chosen, has given another way of seeing.

An experience that brings peace and safety and certainty comes quietly but for the single desire for it. I know... In this state of deep awareness within Mind, actions in this world blend with God’s plan for salvation and its accomplishment.

Then this experience of safety and certainty is paid forward, and trusting is easier, which handles rising fears and boosts faith… I see your sinlessness, I see mine.

Like the lesson says: “What must I do to know all this is mine? I must accept Atonement for myself, and nothing more. God has already done all things that need be done. And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self.”

Lesson 245:

Your peace is with me, Father. I am safe…

I started to notice a sort of detachment from my so-called daily life, once I really got rockin’ and rollin’ with forgiveness as the one operative for addressing it. Things on the surface still looked relatively the same; night and day, you and me, acting, feeling, participating… yet, I was becoming more and more removed from it; watching, resting just behind it. Also, it become easier to hear the Voice for God, as resistance began to diminish, easier to feel the ever-present love I felt. Simultaneously, I began to notice I was noticing, which grounded me still further into a sense that my Self was residing beyond the drama we call life, and that that was exactly where I have always been. Furthermore, this being space where I reside is absolute, immutable peace, already known to me so intimately, as my own being and Gods.

Okay now, I was having exquisitely peaceful experiences in meditation as well and one might argue that this sense of detached peacefulness was a carry over from peak meditative experiences. Here’s the thing, I began to recognize that this sense of immutable peace, it seems, is even closer than that. It is Spirit, and being what I am, is impossible to avoid… it is the peace of God…

The invitation of today’s lesson is to place our attention firmly on this peace as we move about the seeming nuances of the day. Talk about safety! We purposefully bring the peace of God into every encounter. And when we remember that no encounter is by accident, no matter how seemingly brief, we can feel the unfolding of the holy encounter we have been given.

Your peace surrounds me, Father. Where I go, Your peace goes there with me. It sheds its light on everyone I meet. I bring it to the desolate and lonely and afraid. I give Your peace to those who suffer pain, or grieve for loss, or think they are bereft of hope and happiness. Send them to me, my Father. Let me bring Your peace with me. For I would save Your Son, as is Your Will, that I may come to recognize my Self.

Lesson 244:

I am in danger nowhere in the world…

I am not in the world. I am the beyond; the vast freedom expanse in which the world arises. I am the Self; forever one that which is, from which creation springs. And, I am the Son which God created one with Him, blending in fullness and completion. All danger and suffering and time and space arise from me. But I am not it. What arises from me cannot possibly, now, overtake me. I am beyond in the Now-eternity-in-God, before time was... aware and witnessing… In truth, that which is what I am, has never been here at all…

If a dream of danger or doubt plays out upon the screen of time and space and seems to doubt or endanger myself or you in the world, I witness to that dream play, and I, too, am the forgiveness that remembers it is not the dream, but the dreamer.

We can’t change our core nature. Fidelity to premise is the law of mind. In this holographic dynamism of creation, we see this fact regardless of the level at which we are looking at it; fidelity to premise is the law of mind. So, whatever the premise is, fathers what is seen. Period. The thought of God’s love is the premise of our being… it cannot leave its Source.

The process of forgiving all that seemingly happens, by seeing beyond it, back to the truth of where we already reside in the peace of God, is all we can do within the premise of this world, for we are beyond and exist not within the illusion of ego-identities. This re-collecting brings us back into alignment in mind with our Self in God, which is what we are …

Today’s lesson offers us another chance to choose once again what we will see:

“Your Son is safe wherever he may be, for You are there with him. He need but call upon Your Name, and he will recollect his safety and Your Love, for they are one. How can he fear or doubt or fail to know he cannot suffer, be endangered, or experience unhappiness, when he belongs to You, beloved and loving, in the safety of Your Fatherly embrace?”

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 194:

I place the future in the Hands of God…

When I came to this lesson with an mind and heart, where I no longer cared to ‘understand’ what it meant with my strategic mind, I noticed in the core of my being the response to this was: “Whew, take it off my hands, p l e a s e. . . I am no longer interested.”

Now this brings me to discuss this topic from a miracle-received place. And if I were to describe, in worldly terms, a statement that encapsulates the freedom and ease that has come to me as a result of placing my future in the Hands of God’, it would be that, ‘ I don’t really care’. I don’t. It’s as simple as that. The truth is, I haven’t really cared for a long time. Scratch that~ ever! I don’t care what the future brings. I’m never going to see it.

I am interested in my happiness, right here, right now.

Truthfully, it’s the only thing I’m capable of…this present moment, always.

Every manner of twisted, so-called self-sacrificing, self-depreciating, other-focused, self-focused, acting out of beliefs, no matter how convoluted they may seem to a semi-sane mind; when it gets down to it, some place, somehow, I signed-on to a belief that x-amount of x was necessary for happiness. I acted out of the belief in scarcity and that the rights to happiness were earned through hard work, sacrifice, guilt and worry. Or, I stole moments of fabricated relief and called them, happy- times, knowing the fraudulency of my actions; justifying and attempting to rationalize legitimately, dodging the bullet at every turn… and so on. All to be happy, now.

You know, bottom-line, all the twisting and turning, I fondly refer to as my so-called life, find its roots in one belief: that I am a separate being, existing in a world of time and space. Now, with this kind of lonely start, add a list of all possible defenses and offense maneuvers for survival as necessary components. And it all plays out as a grand competition with God for control. ~ arrh, the compulsion to feel in control~ As if…

Well, anyway, it sounds ridiculous when I try to talk about it now…

I place the future in the Hands of God…

I, through the Holy Spirit within my mind, and the course’s suggestion, am developing the habit of engaging with God in acceptance of my identity in Him as a way of dealing with the time-construct. I choose being present, now, in the place of the self-identity, past-future construct. And when I loose my way and real-ize a particular ‘care’, it is easily seen differently when given over to the lens of forgiveness… I love the way it works, I am never without the deep abiding joy that comes with placing the future in God’s Hands… I can so relate to this lesson and feel the workings of transformation taking place within;

E.g. from today’s lesson:

“Accept today’s idea, and you have passed all anxiety, all pits of hell, all blackness of depression, thoughts of sin, and devastation brought about by guilt. Accept today’s idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it. You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the gift you give the world, because you have received.

In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced or loss perceived. In no one instant sorrow can be set upon a throne, and worshipped faithfully. In no one instant can one even die. And so each instant given unto God in passing, with the next one given Him already, is a time of your release from sadness, pain and even death itself.”

I am no longer deceiving myself that the nothingness of unreality holds anything I want. The rest it just breaking the bad habits that were once coping mechanisms, through forgiving the false and accepting that only the truth is true.

Thank you for joining me as we still a our minds an instant, letting this moment tell as what I time is. We find the inevitability of God, eternally, always, already, now…

And as we begin our day,we go with this surety:

“For in God’s Hands we rest untroubled, sure that only good can come to us. If we forget, we will be gently reassured. If we accept an unforgiving thought, it will be soon replaced by love’s reflection. And if we are tempted to attack, we will appeal to Him Who guards our rest to make the choice for us that leaves temptation far behind. No longer is the world our enemy, for we have chosen that we be its friend”...

Lesson 177:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

This glorious premise we practice; where all is love, and only Love, gives life and meaning to and for you and me, keeps everything so very simple. From the Love premise, extension only, is seen as life’s creation. I am so very grateful for this dedicated series of lessons… deliberately resting in the belly of LOVE…

It’s funny, in all the times I’ve gone through the lessons and their applications, always, what I am looking for, I find. Here’s an example; I’m going along yesterday, feeling absolutely yummy, grateful, good, and one with everything: imperturbable. Everything was going my way, as usual.

So, I get this phone call. It’s like premise-slide; and I instantly I am no longer thinking or feeling, I am being thought and felt-up by the premise I allowed. The premise is dictating a spectrum of responses appropriate to its design.

Each premise comes complete with its own thoughts and feelings; each true to the core of the premise. Once the premise shift is made in mind, one is at the mercy of it until one chooses again. FLASHING-RED-FORGIVNESS-OPPORTUNITY!!! Whatever it is within my thought system that I am still vulnerable to sliding into, represent my forgiveness lessons. How glorious it is to see this immediately, and what’s more, be grateful for it…

Only one premise is true: LOVE: abstract, changeless, formless, eternal oneness…

There is no death. The Son of God is free…

Everything else is some form of the death-script, authored by the belief in the time/space reality. Every judgment, every need to be right, is a choice that death be true. Death is the belief in the possibility of being in competition with God for authorship of reality. It plays out in every call for love in this world; from preferences, to threats, persons to events. It is survival by way of scarcity and specialness. Doesn’t that sound insane? It certainly does to me as I rest here in the premise Love~ as I am.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

As we recognize the false premise with which this world takes it meaning, and choose once again, the truth, bringing each illusion; each forgiveness opportunity back to the premise of Love; the Holy Spirit within our mind, we are restored to the peace beyond this seeming world of shifting tides, to the ocean which is creation. We find that we are at home already.

Now we are one with Him Who is our Source…

Simply…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Lesson 175:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

This is the still point of creation by which we come to our lives today. By beginning on purpose from this premise, we have the chance to remember that we are love, and that it is from love that we draw our purpose. The recognition of love as our crucial premise is the miracle we receive which we then can extend into every situation and to everyone we encounter today.

I give the miracles I have received…

This is accomplished through forgiveness. We bring all that tampers with our peace of mind; all judgments of our brothers, all preferences, likes and dislikes back to the still point and offer them to the Holy Spirit for correction and renewed life. Forgiveness offers us fresh eyes to see our brothers as our Self; to correct our misperception and renew our faith that we are all in this together, united in purpose. This purpose has been set from beyond and available to us through our desire to do His Will. God’s Will for us is perfect happiness.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

When we align ourselves with the love in which we have our being, we can easily see the dark waves of fear’s thought system, drift across the mirrored surface of our still minds and attempting play-out in our lives.

We simply choose once again, allowing the Holy Spirit within our mind to remind us who walks with us on the way that we must go. When we ask, “who walks with me?” the answer is always the same. Love answers softly from our own voice in Him… “God walks with me in perfect holiness… for,

I am at home. Fear is the stranger here”…

And we are returned to the still point with which we light the world. We light the world with our holiness. This is our purpose, our union and our happiness…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Lesson 170:

Lesson 170:

There is no cruelty in God and none in me…

The last couple of lessons have been about grace, which is our natural state as spirit, as it says in the very first chapter of the text: “Spirit is in a state of grace forever. Our reality is only spirit. Therefore we are in a state of grace forever”…

Today we have the chance to ‘choose once again’ the way that we would go. Fidelity to premise is the law of mind. No longer can we be faithful to fear: the god of defense, for at last we see our confusion and the error of the fear of God, in which we have our being. God~Love is the premise from which we came and remains still in truth. And it is by the grace of God we recognize our premise as our Self, today.

Having claimed grace as our own by inheritance and chosen once again, NOW, we are released, from not only all desire to attack, but also restored to our intrinsic desire that everyone, clearly like unto ourselves in God, join with us in the presence of mind which is Spirit, Now.

Here we have the truth of what we are. Here is the reason to defend, dispelled and fear’s premise exposed; seen as an instrument of the ego-belief-structure to keep us in forgetfulness and fear. Once seen without the insolent tool of defense, attack and judgment, as well as all otherness, are seen as simply meaningless… How could it be possible that what could never be, have meaning? It was simply another silly mechanism to perpetuate the false.

God, being Love extended Himself in/as Love, and all creation came to be. This timeless, changeless wholly loving being of God could but be what all creation is comprised of. Nothing else… Period. This is the premise of truth.

From and imagined premise, one tiny mad idea, spun out a universe so false, it could not possibly be considered anything but ridiculous by the mind that thinks naturally; the thoughts of creation, the thoughts we think with God. “We say God is… and then we cease to speak”…

The story told by the ego thought has separation at its core. It says, ‘what if? …this brings all unfeasible possibilities into belief’s range. Given but to a moment of doubt about who we are, the fear premise arose and all fear and defense against the nameless enemy ensues, making mindless the part of mind that believes the dream a serious affair. This is a state of consumption by the starved… Trusting no one, the caged animal awaits the enemy from without…

Yet, as each one seemingly waits, the gentle prompting of ‘reality; the quiet whisper of the Voice for truth, calls for our return… “You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable. Lay down your arms, and only then do you perceive it false”….

As we begin to see that this ‘enemy’ is a battle waged within, see the war without and within, as mere ‘sight of hand’; we come to see that only the false battles, and only with itself.

When, in any holy instant, truth is recognized, we see no enemy, and the shadows where we thought he was within our mind, are lit by the One Light… The light of understanding fills the gaps where once defense had meaning… Grace now bestows content to the healing mind of the One Son of God… We have broached the obstacles to peace; and one by one grace has revealed our natural condition in God. Forgiveness is the natural restorative to right-mind premise: mind chooses, and graced with the light of truth, we see that the ‘incredible, unbearable ‘fear of God’, is truly “the incredible, unbearable light of being’… Form simply cannot hold up against it, our holiness; the state of God in us and we His, merely dissolves the silly thought within itself…

The practice of forgiveness on-going, as the Sonship returns to love. It is our one purpose here. To answer the call for love with love, we fulfill God’s plan for salvation. “Stuff” seemingly arises…but it is seen for what it is: ego’s mechanism for perpetuation… It is addictive in quality, compulsively, obsessively driving for mindlessness by way of time. Time-memory is the tool that gives meaning to familiarity of the past, reason to regret, defend and protect, to plan… And round and round the merry-o-round, of repetitious, false identification goes… But we no longer take a ticket and get on the ride… Our fears have been seen, if even for an instant, for the monster in the dark of the childish dream. And we are no longer children. We feel the presence of God, within and recognized as our being…The peace of God is shining in us now. Together we offer this prayer of truth:

“Father, we are like You. No cruelty abides in us, for there is none in You. Your peace is ours. And we bless the world with what we have received from You alone. We choose again, and make our choice for all our brothers, knowing they are one with us. We bring them Your salvation as we have received it now. And we give thanks for them who render us complete. In them we see Your glory, and in them we find our peace. Holy are we because Your Holiness has set us free. And we give thanks. Amen”.

Lesson 153:

In my defenselessness my safety lies…

I didn’t realize just how exhausting living life in constant defense was, till I dropped dead in my tracks, so to speak; I realized I had literally been on guard all the time, ready with reasons and rebuttals and explanations and justifications virtually all my life. I came to it like learning the English language. It was the language of my family and their family before them.

When, at last, in defeat, I realized that I simply, was wrong; that I didn’t after all, know anything about anything. And man, what a relief ~ finally room to breathe. How can one catch a good breath and relax in peace when the story of life one is living in is one of constant justification? And why is this so?

The story, simply, is not the truth. All of our belief in and identification with it will not ever make it so. Our commitment to our story can at most, distract the mind; keep its attention busily tied-up on one chaotic fear, or guilty secret within the dream story. But it will never change the eternal love of God from which can only be, the whole truth of what we are.

I love this statement of truth from the today’s lesson: Choice is always made between Christ’s strength and your own weakness, seen apart from Him. Defenselessness can never be attacked, because it recognizes strength so great attack is folly, or a silly game a tired child might play, when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he wants…

I can’t begin to tell you just how much I resonated with this feeling of being too tired to be sane; fighting for a cause long forgotten, driven on by some elusive need to have been ‘right’. Half the time, I couldn’t even get a fix on what the real issue was, and even when it seemed I could, it turned out something was always not quite settled, always in need of defense.

It’s funny, as far back as I remember in my so-called life; from the first moment my bare feet hit the ground, I was haunted by the feeling of fear; unreasonable, indefinable fear, a sort of free-floating anxiety of being found out. Like any day now, I would go to my day and the jury would have convened and ‘judgment‘against me set. It would go something liked, “We have found out you are not what you say you are. You are a fraud and you don’t belong here. Get back on the bus and go back to where you came from. You are not wanted here. That’s when the horrifying aloneness would swallow me into the abyss of the nothingness from which I must have come, because anywhere else, I didn’t know.

Trying to be a member of a club that would not have me as a member, as one of the Marx brothers put it is extremely tedious. It required tenacious, vigilance to maintain this constant defense of my right to be here, while simultaneously trying to earn it through the jumping through hoops and selling of soul, and other initiation flogging… All, to pay the price of admission to an alien club (world). I never felt safe. I never really got a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow was never really another day…

As it turns out, none of us belong, here… We are at home in God, safe in his loving thoughts of His holy Son. This Sonship, created by God was given by membership of each and every aspect of creation as One. And it is a life-eternal membership…

What a total relief to give up the useless journey; to let die that which was born and feel life at once forever real. In life alone I am safe and sure. Life and joy are one in the same and give meaning to mistaken beliefs, reinterpreted from the dream of death.

Their shadows are seen in the darken corners of my atrophied mind, through the continual warm and present light of the love mind-sweep, lighting and restoring strength. Defenselessness is resurrection to life as love would have it be. I cannot see a reason to defend, when everything has been set expressly for this one purpose, salvation sets.

Innocence is my inheritance and you are all, the honored host that brings the gift of my Self to me… I have no need for defense, for there is no enemy within my mind anymore ~so none that I would need to project out upon a world which now only serves to unite with my Self…

I am free. I am as God created me, eternally safe and at peace, eternally one with you, my brothers, united in our Father’s Love…