Lesson 347:

Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me…

All judgment is self judgment. Every decision we make in our live is based on what we believe we are. Am I what I made of myself through the criteria of judgments the ego laid out? In other words, am I a body in a world of survival of the fittest...

Or, am I as God created me through extending His Love? Which would make me, basically, Love; the essence of life itself… What I decide determines what I will see. In the former, my perception comes after manifestation; leaving me at the mercy of what shows up and therefore what is available as far as resources goes, to make do the best I can to survive and hopefully, be happy…. In this scenario~ the more ‘stuff’, the better the success … Sounds pretty tenuous and insecure to me…

With the latter, identifying myself as the Son, which God created as Himself, my perception develops from within; taking form from the meaning or purpose of the situation. So what I see is part of me… and the purpose of life itself… The particulars of any circumstance or chain of events are seen as relevant only in so much as they serve the relationship to each other… Here, happiness rules, because it is not dependent on a state other than Now… Patience and certainty are present, because nothing is missing, for oneness is known.

The miracle allows us to make that shift from fantasy to reality in God; to see the false as false and only the truth as true... to experience our unity with each other as well as our oneness with Creator and creation.

This lesson is reminding us that when we experience anger of any kind, we have flip-switched to the false, attacking our true identity…And that by that decision, we are keeping the miracle at arms length… Luckily, at this stage of the game, we are generally quick to realize our error because any lack of peace is becoming increasingly intolerable. Plus, we know the restoration of peace and joy is just decision for forgiveness, away…

We judge because we’re afraid to trust. However, what we know now, is that this need not be. And we are willing to give up our defense against love and let anger dissolve into this instant where we are willing to listen… and in that stillness, we recognize the gentle Voice for God assuring us that He has judged… and that we are the Son He loves…

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 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 202:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

I will be still an instant and go home.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

“There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. There is a place in your which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the father and the Son. Where Both abide are They remembered, Both. And where They ere is Heaven and is peace… Think not that you can change Their dwelling place. For your Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must you be. The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of it creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within.” (T-29.v.1-2).

Imagine that at any moment, you could just slip off into paradise of total peace and bliss.... You can. It’s called the present moment.

What this lesson is reminding us, is that we can experience this any time we choose. It’s saying, “How’s Now”?

It is a decision of the state in which we want to be. It is a wholehearted decision and can’t be made half-massed. We either want Heaven and the peace of God, or we want hell. In other words, what I am saying is that, if we are telling ourselves that we want Heaven yet don’t feel it is being given us, we are simply still harboring fugitive values in this world of hell. We are still valuing the belief that there is something outside our Self that can determine our experience of life. I like how the Course addresses this as a parallel to childish dreams. They make up characters and pretend the rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak for them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their whishes are their own, when in nightmares, it seems the toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real.

This is just how we do it, isn’t it? We experience said situation; say, you’re waiting at the amusement park, watching your child riding rides. It begins to pour rain. Those are simply the facts of the situation; the ‘innocent’ or neutral facts of the situation. It’s what is. Now, what if you don’t like it when this happens; what if you have a belief that rain will spoil the fun, or your hair, or you just plain don’t want it to rain, what happens? Does the rain back off? See, we give life (outside our self) to the object of our attention, with our judgment of it. Does our irritation change anything; but perhaps our sanity to insanity?

What if we remain in the present moment; totally, joyously accepting, without expectation, whatever happens?

This is the practice of ‘being still an instant and going home’. This is how we do our part in practicing the holy instant, till we have no more resistance left, and God can enter and the holy instant can be given us by God. For we are ready to receive…

Now, I am not talking about how we love certain things seemingly in this world, its only natural. We love what we make. Just as God loves what he created. We made the ego and with it a world opposite to Heaven in everyway (or it would be Heaven, wouldn’t it). So it must be a dream…

The thing is that we also cannot be apart from what we are; which is as God created, which is Heaven and home. We are the love we experience in this world. The joy and love and happiness we experience are infused by our being. Form has only the function we give it. It is our dream. We are at home in God.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

and

I will be still an instant and go home…

Lesson 182:

I will be still an instant and go home…

Home and stillness reside as one in my mind; resonating together in a feeling of timeless peace. It is this state of being, that backgrounds the so-called experience of this life on earth. Through practice, such as we are directed to do today, we recognize what was and is, always, already within us.

Each of us has felt the exile of believing the world to be our home. Feeling alone, we have comforted ourselves with the adage that at least we are all exiled together… Yet, deep inside, we know we belong to something beyond our small and muted grasp… Yet too, a haunting feeling in the mind, an intangible memory of what we can’t be sure, but have a sense we should know, somewhere in our mind is present… Even when we sufficiently critical-ize the specifics of our so-called lives, so as to distract ourselves sufficiently from the ‘haunting memory of home’s presence in mind, the distraction is temporary, its rewards limited, and we are left hungering for our permanent home, beyond what we now experience, where we can rest at peace forever…

Each of us has felt the innocence of the beckoning child within, and responded from a source beyond person-hood consciousness, with a tender sense of being its protector. Have we not? We might not have put words to it or even consciously allowed ourselves to be present with this inner-innocence described in the lesson today, but as we read it, we recognized its presence within us; felt at home with its message, yes? There is a quiet knowing that this we must do although we might attempt to ignore, delay, even deny its presence, we still respond with the protection due the sacred… true Self-protection, till we are willing to know our own… Self…

This is the Self we can trust; this child of innocence within whose very innocence is our power, defenselessness, our strength. Each moment which we devote to the practice turning our minds to the stillness within, it is this child-Self we rest in, beyond…

It is this still presence we know and re-familiarize ourselves with through our practice and we begin to see the way within us. As the lesson says:

“And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still an instant and go home with Him, and be at peace a while….