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Lesson 88. Today we will review these ideas:

Lesson 88. Today we will review these ideas:

1.(75) The light has come.

In choosing salvation rather than attack, I merely choose to recognize what is
already there. Salvation is a decision made already. Attack and grievances are
not there to choose. That is why I always choose between truth and illusion;
between what is there and what is not. The light has come. I can but choose the
light, for it has no alternative. It has replaced the darkness, and the darkness
has gone.

These would prove useful forms for specific applications of this idea:

This cannot show me darkness, for the light has come.
The light in you is all that I would see, [name].
I would see in this only what is there.

3.(76) I am under no laws but God's.

Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am
constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me. I suffer
only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am
perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of
freedom.

For specific forms in applying this idea, these would be useful:

My perception of this shows me I believe in laws that do not exist.
I see only the laws of God at work in this.
Let me allow God's laws to work in this, and not my own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 88. Today we will review these ideas:

(1:1)(75) "The light has come."

*The light has come because the light has always been in our minds. This is
reflected in the first sentence.*

(1:2) "In choosing salvation rather than attack, I merely choose to recognize
what is already there."

*That is why "the light has come." The light of the Atonement is in our minds,
but when we choose it we experience it as coming to us. In truth, however, we
have come to it. We left the light when we chose the ego's darkness, and now we
have returned. Coming to the light is salvation, just as leaving it constituted
the first attack, mirrored in the specific attacks within our lives that are
merely the shadowy fragments of the original thought.*

(2:2-4) "This cannot show me darkness, for the light has come."
"The light in you is all that I would see, [name]."
"I would see in this only what is there."

*Confronted by the ego's perceptions of specialness -- the darkened world of
guilt, judgment, hate, punishment, and fear -- we go quickly to Jesus that we
may see the situation differently. His vision -- <all> people calling for love
or expressing it; <all> people sharing in the ego's insanity of hate and the
Holy Spirit's sanity of forgiveness -- reflects Heaven's light. This light, born
of our inherent sameness as God's Son, we now wish to see in others, for it is
what we wish to see in ourselves.*

(4:2-4) "My perception of this shows me I believe in laws that do not exist."
"I see only the laws of God at work in this."
"Let me allow God's laws to work in this, and not my own."

*Whatever we perceive outside shows us that we believe in the ego's "laws that
do not exist." Our daily practice, therefore, consists of first looking at the
world through the ego's eyes of special and separate interests, the reflection
of its fundamental law of separation. Recognizing this false perception allows
me, next, to ask my new Teacher to teach me its correction. And so the Holy
Spirit gently instructs me in the practicing of forgiveness, the reflection on
earth of God's law of love. Regardless of the situation I am in, regardless of
the pain (or pleasure) afforded me in a relationship, I can see God's laws
reflected by seeing the opportunity to learn how separate interests lead to
hell, while shared purpose leads to the Heaven I never truly left -- the Home of
God's laws of love and life.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 87. Our review today will cover these ideas:

#93087

Lesson 87. Our review today will cover these ideas:

1.(73) I will there be light.

I will use the power of my will today. It is not my will to grope about in
darkness, fearful of shadows and afraid of things unseen and unreal. Light shall
be my guide today. I will follow it where it leads me, and I will look only on
what it shows me. This day I will experience the peace of true perception.

These forms of this idea would be helpful for specific applications:

This cannot hide the light I will to see.
You stand with me in light, [name].
In the light this will look different.

3.(74) There is no will but God's.

I am safe today because there is no will but God's. I can become afraid only
when I believe there is another will. I try to attack only when I am afraid, and
only when I try to attack can I believe that my eternal safety is threatened.
Today I will recognize that all this has not occurred. I am safe because there
is no will but God's.

These are some useful forms of this idea for specific applications:

Let me perceive this in accordance with the Will of God.
It is God's Will you are His Son, [name], and mine as well.
This is part of God's Will for me, however I may see it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 87. Our review today will cover these ideas:

(1:1) (73) "I will there be light."

*This is a direct appeal to the power of our minds to make another choice: the
light of forgiveness instead of the darkness of attack.*

(1:2-3) "I will use the power of my will today. It is not my will to grope about
in darkness, fearful of shadows and afraid of things unseen and unreal."

*This was my ego's wish in contrast to the Holy Spirit's Will, which I now
reflect in the right-minded use of my decision-making ability. Despite my wish
for shadows, my will remains one with God's, held in safekeeping by the Holy
Spirit. I had substituted what the ego would say is my will -- really the ego's
wishes -- to be an individual, a decision which inevitably led to the ego's
darkened thought system of separation and fear, culminating in the shadowy
physical world of separation and fear. This lesson, then, is a direct appeal to
look at things differently, to exercise the power of my mind ("the power of my
will") to make another choice.*

(1:4-6) "Light shall be my guide today. I will follow it where it leads me, and
I will look only on what it shows me. This day I will experience the peace of
true perception."

*Learning our lessons, we happily choose to let the light of Jesus' wisdom guide
us each day. We look on the world through his non-judgmental eyes of forgiveness
and peace. Our eyes "see" what they have always seen, but now we see
differently: calls for love or expressions of it, as opposed to the ego's "eyes"
that see only sin, guilt, and the need for punishment.*

(2:2) "This cannot hide the light I will to see."

*Looking at situations that heretofore had reflected the ego's darkened world of
guilt and judgment, I recognize they had no power to hide the light of
forgiveness from me. It was my mind that had the power, by choosing not to see
the light that was always there. In other words, nothing here has the power of
that light. But within the delusional dreams of shadows and death, we can choose
not to recognize it, even though it shines so brightly within, and its
reflections all around us. We choose now to recognize these witnesses to the
light and see them as our own. Thus we say to each special love and hate
partner.*

(2:3) "You stand with me in light, [name]."

*Those we had condemned to hell join as one Son, along with us, together
awakening from the dream of death. All that is necessary for this happy
recognition to occur is the willingness to look at the ego's lies for what they
are, choosing instead to believe the truth Jesus has always held out for us,
patiently our acceptance.*

(2:4) "In the light this will look different."

*In Lesson 193, Jesus says, "Forgive, and you [I] will see this differently"
(W-pI.193.3:7). When I let him be my eyes, the external situation does not
change, but the way I perceive it does. Rather than seeing the situation as a
way of proving I am right and Jesus is wrong, that differences are real and sin
rests in you and not in me, I realize that together we share the purpose of
awakening from the dream. Again, this shift has nothing to do with what is
external, but only with what is in our minds.*

(3:5-6) "Today I will recognize that all this has not occurred. I am safe
because there is no will but God's."

*Even though Jesus does not expect us to accept this totally, we can begin the
process of understand that there is a part of our minds that knows that none of
this occurred. We are fearful of that part because I signifies the end of our
special self.

On the practical level this means that what has not occurred is that you hurt
me, for the truth is <I> have hurt me. In the perceptual world, you may indeed
have said or done something unkind, but I am upset because I want you to hurt
me, accusing you of sin instead of me. In that sense, I forgive you for what you
have <not> done. Only as I progress up the ladder do I realize this is a dream
that is not actually occurring at all.

The three specific applications all reflect the Oneness of God.*

(4:2-4) "Let me perceive this in accordance with the Will of God."
"It is God's Will you are His Son, [name], and mine as well."
"This is part of God's Will for me, however I may see it."

*Everything in our personal world and collective worlds is a reflection of God's
Will -- forgiveness -- if we choose to see it through Jesus' eyes, the vision of
Christ that unifies perception. The <everything> includes the totality of the
Sonship, regardless of how the ego perceives a situation. Since there is no
hierarchy of illusions, all situations are the same, for they share the
wrong-minded purpose of separation as well as the right-minded one of
forgiveness. This unanimity of purpose unites us all: unseparated and undivided
-- one in illusion and one in truth.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 86. These ideas are for review today.

#93086

Lesson 86. These ideas are for review today.

1.(71) Only God's plan for salvation will work.

It is senseless for me to search wildly about for salvation. I have seen it in
many people and in many things, but when I reached for it, it was not there. I
was mistaken about where it is. I was mistaken about what it is. I will
undertake no more idle seeking. Only God's plan for salvation will work. And I
will rejoice because His plan can never fail.

These are some suggested forms for applying this idea specifically:

God's plan for salvation will save me from my perception of this.
This is no exception in God's plan for my salvation.
Let me perceive this only in the light of God's plan for salvation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3.(72) Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

Holding grievances is an attempt to prove that God's plan for salvation will not
work. Yet only His plan will work. By holding grievances, I am
therefore excluding my only hope of salvation from my awareness. I would no
longer defeat my own best interests in this insane way. I would accept God's
plan for salvation, and be happy.

Specific applications for this idea might be in these forms:

I am choosing between misperception and salvation as I look on this.
If I see grounds for grievances in this, I will not see the grounds for my
salvation.
This calls for salvation, not attack.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 86. These ideas are for review today.

1.(71) "Only God's plan for salvation will work."

*It can only be God's plan for salvation that will work, because no other plan
can save us. All others are external and designed to fail, since each would
distract attention from our minds -- the source of our problem and the Source of
our salvation.*

(1:2-3) "It is senseless for me to search wildly about for salvation. I have
seen it in many people and in many things, but when I reached for it, it was not
there."

*We senselessly followed the ego's plan of <seek but do not find,> and wherever
we sought for salvation -- our special relationships -- will always fail, since
they were made for that purpose, being the substitutes for What alone can save
us. Even more to the point, idols were made to keep us in perpetual state of
mindlessness, ensuring we would never exercise the mind's power to choose --
salvation instead of slavation.*

(1:4-5) "I was mistaken about where it is. I was mistaken about what it is."

*The reference is to special relationships, and Jesus' purpose for us is to
forgive our special indulgences, to look with him and realize our insanity in
wildly looking around for things to make us happy. Thus would we recognize the
futility of specialness as a way of life: <It does not work>. Peace and love
will never come when we seek for them outside ourselves. Note this summarizing
statement from "Seek Not Outside Yourself" on the hopelessness of pursuing idols
of specialness, and the hope in seeking only God:

"An idol cannot take the place of God. Let Him remind you of His Love for
you, and do not seek to drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of
yourself. Seek not outside your Father for your hope. For hope of happiness is
not despair." (T.29.VII.10.4-7).

Whenever we look without judgment at our mistaken search for idols, we are free
to make another choice -- salvation in place of specialness.*

(1:6-8) "I will undertake no more idle seeking. Only God's plan for salvation
will work. And I will rejoice because His plan can never fail."

*Coming to our sanity at last, we pledge no longer to waste time seeking for
what can never be found, choosing only to follow the path of forgiveness, which
alone will bring us home. In that choice is found our salvation; in that choice
is found our joy.

We look now at the first specific application:*

(2:2) "God's plan for salvation will save me from my perception of this."

*Notice that we are not going to be saved from "this," whatever the "this" is.
We do no have to be saved from a situation, but from our perception of it. The
language is quite specific and intentional: "God's plan for salvation will save
me from my perception of the this." When tempted to be upset by something, we
need only realize this is our perception of the problem. It is not what we
perceive to be the problem -- something outside; it is the way we see it, which
means the teacher with whom we are seeing: Jesus or the ego. If we are upset, we
know we have chosen the ego. God's plan for salvation calls for us to change our
minds, or more to the point, to change our teacher. Again, if we are not happy
with how something is going, we need simply realize it is because we chose the
wrong voice and its interpretation of the situation.

To restate this point: God's plan to save us is to have us choose a new teacher.
Looking at the situation through His eyes, we realize this is an opportunity to
look at what is going on within our minds. If we were not upset by what seems to
be external, would have no opportunity to bring it inside and realize it was a
projection. That is why our special relationships are our saviors. They offer us
the chance to reconsider our faulty perceptions. Once we realize the problem is
within, we are free to make another choice.*

(2:3) "This is no exception in God's plan for my salvation."

*The principle of forgiveness always works: "There is no order of difficulty in
miracles." There is no perception of difficulty, pain, or discomfort that will
not change when we choose to set aside our grievances and guilt, and accept the
Atonement for ourselves. God's plan for salvation is simple. That is why it
always works.*

3.(72) "Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation."

*Jesus takes us a step further, by introducing the purposive element of anger:
it directly attacks the plan of the Atonement, which redirects our focus inward,
where the ego's thought system of guilt and attack is undone.*

(3:2-4) "Holding grievances is an attempt to prove that God's plan for salvation
will not work. Yet only His plan will work. By holding grievances, I am
therefore excluding my only hope of salvation from my awareness."

*The only hope of salvation, again, lies in my accepting full responsibility for
the misery I experience, which reflects my original choice to be a sinful and
guilty individual deserving of misery and punishment. Therefore, in an insane
attempt to be free of pain, I choose to project the guilt and attack you for it.
I can thus be saved only by returning to the decision-making part of the mind
and correcting this mistaken choice. By being angry, however, and justifying my
judgments, I assert the reality of the body and sin --- yours and mine.
Moreover, I consciously believe the sin is not in me and that there is no mind
-- everything happens only in a world of bodies where grievances are real and
not my responsibility.

By saying to Jesus there is something wrong because I am not at peace, I allow
him to teach me that what I am upset about in you is a split-off part of what I
am upset about in me: my guilt for separating from the Love of God. Jesus helps
me realize I am choosing between misperception and salvation as I look on this.
I come to understand that my perception is the effect of my choice: the ego's
grievances or the Holy Spirit's miracle. The former roots me still further in
the world of guilt and attack, while the latter leads me to my mind, the home of
salvation.*

(4:2-4) "I am choosing between misperception and salvation as I look on this."
"If I see grounds for grievances in this, I will not see the
grounds for my salvation."
"This calls for salvation, not attack."

*I am learning that all circumstances in my life -- past, present, or
anticipated -- offer me the opportunity of choosing to see differently. My
problems are <perceptual>, my perceptions come from <thinking>, and my thinking
originates in the mind's <decision> for the ego of the Holy Spirit. The
right-minded choice for forgiveness corrects the ego's thinking, which led to my
wrong-minded perceptions of grievances and attack. Because I now choose to be
happy, I see grounds for forgiveness and salvation in everything. Only by
wishing to remain in the pain of my guilt would I choose to see grounds for
grievances. Yet, as Jesus fortunately reminds us (e.g., T-16.VI.8.8), I am no
longer wholly insane and so I call for salvation and not attack.

One final point -- salvation does not mean I save you, the situation, or even
myself. I save the situation in my mind, by <changing my mind.> All situations
call for this inner shift. Remember , "Seek not to change the world, but choose
to change your mind about the world" (T-21.in.1:7).*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 85. Today's review will cover these ideas:

#93085

Lesson 85. Today's review will cover these ideas:

1.(69) My grievances hide the light of the world in me.

My grievances show me what is not there, and hide from me what I would see.
Recognizing this, what do I want my grievances for? They keep me in darkness and
hide the light. Grievances and light cannot go together, but light and vision
must be joined for me to see. To see, I must lay grievances aside. I want to
see, and this will be the means by which I will succeed.

Specific applications for this idea might be made in these forms:

Let me not use this as a block to sight.
The light of the world will shine all this away.
I have no need for this. I want to see.

3.(70) My salvation comes from me.

Today I will recognize where my salvation is. It is in me because its Source is
there. It has not left its Source, and so it cannot have left my mind. I will
not look for it outside myself. It is not found outside and then brought in. But
from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the
light that shines in me and in itself.

These forms of the idea are suitable for more specific applications:

Let this not tempt me to look away from me for my salvation.
I will not let this interfere with my awareness of the Source of my salvation.
This has no power to remove salvation from me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(1:5-6) "Grievances and light cannot go together, but light and vision must be
joined for me to see. To see, I must lay grievances aside."

*This is the bottom line: Do I want to see or not? If I do, Jesus must be my
eyes, which means I cannot judge. I will know which choice I made by its
outcome. Finding myself angry, depressed, guilty, fearful, or anxious is what
tells me I do not want to see. With the ego, my individuality and separation are
all I know and my self is safe, though miserable.*

(1:7) "I want to see, and this will be the means by which I will succeed."

*We are no longer willing to be safe <and> miserable. We want the vision that
embraces all Sons as the same, the precursor to remembering our Oneness as
Christ. In this vision -- born of letting go of grievances -- we find our true
happiness.*

(2:2-5) "Let me not use this as a block to sight."
"The light of the world will shine all this away."
" I have no need for this. I want to see."

*Diligently practicing these lessons helps us realize we have a split mind. The
part that does not want to return home is responsible for our being in the
world. The other part is a student of A Course in Miracles. We must be aware of
both so we can make a meaningful choice between them. We need to understand that
the ego's grievances hold the light of peace and joy from ourselves, leaving us
in the darkness of misery and pain. Only by realizing the connection between our
decision to attack and our suffering will we be motivated to say and mean: "I
have not need for this." In that recognition we shall see, and in that vision
all pain is shined away in the light of forgiveness.*

3.(70) "My salvation comes from me."

*Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not outside me, nor is salvation. Indeed, I am
not outside of me!*

(3:2-6) "Today I will recognize where my salvation is. It is in me because its
Source is there. It has not left its Source, and so it cannot have left my mind.
I will not look for it outside myself. It is not found outside and then brought
in."

*That is what people want to do with God, Jesus, and A Course in Miracles: see
them outside themselves. We must realize that salvation rests only within, in
the power of the mind to choose Jesus as our teacher and not the ego. It is not
found <in> Jesus, but in our mind's capacity to choose him. As we discussed
earlier, Jesus has always asked us to come to him <outside the dream>. Yet we
have continually striven to bring him <into the dream>, so that our ego identity
will remain secure and intact. We need to take Jesus' hand and walk through the
dream, that we may walk with him out of it.

The ego, on the other hand, attempts to keep the dream alive and well, and that
is Jesus' caution here. The memory of God is in our minds, where the dream has
its beginning and ending. Its undoing constitutes salvation, which rests in
choosing to remember our Source -- <in our minds.> As an idea in the Mind of God
we have never left Him, and He has never left us: <ideas leave not their
Source>. That is why we must seek salvation in our right minds, the home of
Jesus, where the memory of God awaits our acceptance as we awaken at last from
the dream of separation and death.*

(3:7) "But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but
reflect the light that shines in me and in itself."

* "Everything I see," as we now realize, does not refer to physical sight; we do
not really see physical light in people, nor light in objects. Since the light
is a right-minded thought, it is this light of forgiveness that is reflected in
what our eyes "see." Moreover, from the light's extension in the mind the Son is
healed, since the mind of God's Son is one.

Jesus makes his ongoing appeal to apply this idea throughout the day.*

(4:2-4) "Let this not tempt me to look away from me for my salvation."
"I will not let this interfere with my awareness of the Source of my salvation."
"This has no power to remove salvation from me."

*In other words, it is <our> choice whether the world will take our peace from
us, for in and of itself, being an illusion, it can do nothing. We alone have
power, which we then project onto the world. It is the mind that chooses against
Jesus' peace, and he asks us not to give in to this temptation because it will
not make us happy. He directs our sight inward and away from the world; the
shift in purpose -- from guilt to salvation -- reflects our decision to remember
our Source and our Self.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 84. These are the ideas for today's review:

#93084

Lesson 84. These are the ideas for today's review:

1.(67) Love created me like itself.

I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss
and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will
worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concept to replace my Self. I am in the
likeness of my Creator. Love created me like itself.

You might find these specific forms helpful in applying the idea:

Let me not see an illusion of myself in this.
As I look on this, let me remember my Creator.
My Creator did not create this as I see it.

3. (68). Love holds no grievances.

Grievances are completely alien to love. Grievances attack love and keep its
light obscure. If I hold grievances I am attacking love, and therefore attacking
my Self. My Self thus becomes alien to me. I am determined not to attack my Self
today, so that I can remember Who I am.

These specific forms for applying this idea would be helpful:

This is no justification for denying my Self.
I will not use this to attack love.
Let this not tempt me to attack myself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(1:7-8) "I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like itself."

*Jesus returns to the lesson's theme, and asks us to return as well. We are
speeded along our journey by our willingness to set aside the ego's shabby
substitutes and accept the truth about ourselves. We are created in the image
and likeness of our Creator and Source -- Love Itself.

This is reiterated in the specific applications:*

(2:2-4) "Let me not see an illusion of myself in this."
"As I look on this, let me remember my Creator."
"My Creator did not create this as I see it."

*The "this" is any situation that causes us to believe we are vulnerable bodies,
reinforcing the belief we are not glorious Self of spirit that God created.
Jesus' point is that if we see ourselves as hurt or exhilarated by anything, it
is because we have chosen to see it that way. Nothing has the power to make us
feel good or bad but the mind's choice for the ego, made because we value it
over the non-dualistic Self created by God. Jesus asks us to want to choose
differently; to see each event of our day as an opportunity to remember our
Creator. This choice is reflected by our recognition that Perfect Love could not
have created the situation we experience, and so it cannot be real. And what is
not real can have no power over us.*

(3:1) (68). "Love holds no grievances."

*Jesus returns to the important theme of grievances and attack thoughts. Implied
here is that our grievances do not just come; we <actively choose them> because
we want to hold another responsible for the misery we feel from having separated
from love. Rather than accept responsibility for our "sin" and admit the fear
that caused us to separate, we deny the sin, split it off from the self and,
through projection, hold grievances against someone else -- <anyone> else --
accusing that person of what we secretly believe we have done. All this is
brought about to fulfill the ego's purpose of protecting its existence through
denying the mind and making us mindless, leaving us "at the mercy of things
beyond [us], forces [we] cannot control" (T-19.IV-D.7:4)*

(4:2-4) "These specific forms for applying this idea would be helpful:

"This is no justification for denying my Self."
" I will not use this to attack love."
"Let this not tempt me to attack myself."

*Jesus, as always, appeals to the power of our minds to make another choice. His
appeal takes the power of recognizing there is no justification for attack
thoughts of any kind. Recalling the shift in purpose, of which the Holy Spirit
is the reminder, allows us to release our grievances. Thus does the love
underneath ascend in our awareness and bring us peace, the steppingstone to
remembering the Self we had denied.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 83. Today let us review these ideas:

#93083

Lesson 83. Today let us review these ideas:

1. (65) My only function is the one God gave me.

I have no function but the one God gave me. This recognition releases me from
all conflict, because it means I cannot have conflicting goals. With one purpose
only, I am always certain what to do, what to say and what to think. All doubt
must disappear as I acknowledge that my only function is the one God gave me.

(2). More specific applications of this idea might take these forms:

My perception of this does not change my function.

This does not give me a function other than the one God gave me.
Let me not use this to justify a function God did not give me.<

3. (66) My happiness and my function are one.

All things that come from God are one. They come from Oneness, and must be
received as one. Fulfilling my function is my happiness because both come from
the same Source. And I must learn to recognize what makes me happy, if I would
find happiness.

(4). Some useful forms for specific applications of this idea are:

This cannot separate my happiness from my function.

The oneness of my happiness and my function remains wholly unaffected by
this.
Nothing, including this, can justify the illusion of happiness apart from my
function.<

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 83. Today let us review these ideas:

1.(65) "My only function is the one God gave me."

*There <is> nothing else.*

(1:2-5) "I have no function but the one God gave me. This recognition releases
me from all conflict, because it means I cannot have conflicting goals. With one
purpose only, I am always certain what to do, what to say and what to think. All
doubt must disappear as I acknowledge that my only function is the one God gave
me."

*Our function is to forgive, the only right-minded reason for being in the
world. We are not here to save it, make a lot of money, raise a happy family,
have a healthy body, or live to be a hundred and fifty years. Remembering this
will remove conflict, because believing our function is external will inevitably
conflict with our internal function of realizing that nothing external is
important; only the change of thinking brought about by the change of teachers.

Conflict results as well from wanting to study this course and return home, at
the same time yearning to be its great teacher,or, seemingly more humbly, its
devoted student, while still desiring the gifts of specialness: money, fame,
power, and love. In these cases we regard an external goal as important -- if
not more so -- than the internal one, setting up conflict that was the ego's
goal from the beginning. Yet this course will end conflict, not exacerbate it,
and the only right-minded purpose of the external world, once we have made it,
is for it to be the mirror that shows us the choice we have made internally.
Only then can our minds -- the true source of conflict -- be healed, as the
following passage explains:

"Forget not that the healing of God's Son is all the world is for. That is
the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it has. Until
you see the healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world,
by time and all appearances, you will not know the Father nor yourself. For you
will use the world for what is not its purpose, and will not escape its laws of
violence and death." (T.24.VI.4.1-4)

Healing is thus the world's only sane purpose. Once we made it as an expression
of our hatred of God and Christ, our new Teacher shifts the purpose. The world
becomes the vehicle for showing us, first, that we have a mind, and second, the
ego decision we made within it. Now the right decision is inevitable, and we are
certain of the purpose of forgiveness as doubt disappears.

We now seek to apply what we are learning:*

(2:2-3) "My perception of this does not change my function."
"This does not give me a function other than the one God gave me."

*Whatever situation I believe is disrupting my peace has no effect on my mind.
Stated another way, nothing I perceive as external has the power to change my
purpose of forgiveness. Regardless of the ego reactions to a situation, my
function remains within, gently and patiently held for me by Jesus. The reader
may recall our earlier citation of this lovely passage of the text -- Jesus
echoing his gentle and patient role as our teacher -- part of which we look at
again:

"I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I
have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in
their own perfect radiance." (T-5.IV.8:3-4).

Despite our ego's shenanigans, we cannot lose. Our insanity has no effect on the
sanity within, nor on our sane function of forgiveness.*

(2:4) "Let me not use this to justify a function God did not give me."

*Let me not use an external situation as a means of justifying the belief there
is some purpose in my life other than undoing the ego's thought system. The
world is only too happy to cooperate in the ego's plan -- after all, the ego
made the world to cooperate -- by providing us with one opportunity after
another to justify our judgments and grievances, our perception that we have
been unfairly treated; an unfairness that can be remedied only by our defensive
and, at times, aggressive response. However, we are twice told: Anger is never
justified (T-6.in.1:7; T-30.VI.1:1-2). Restoring the mind's peace is our only
responsibility, and recognition of this happy fact is the heart of our function
of forgiveness.*

(3:1)(66) "My happiness and my function are one."

*This is because our happiness does not result from anything in the world.
Remember the laws of specialness tell us our happiness comes from the body: our
own or another's, or anything external. This, again, must engender conflict,
because happiness comes only when we let go of guilt, the joyous effect of
forgiveness. However, if we think there is pleasure in the world, we will
inevitably be in conflict. This certainly does not mean we should feel guilty
because we still seek bodily pleasure, but only that we should be aware of what
we are doing. This is not a course in sacrifice or giving up what we feel is
important, but in our learning, as Jesus instructs us near the end of the text,
that giving up the world is giving up nothing, and therefore there is no
sacrifice involved. Thus at the same time he is asking us to give up nothing,
Jesus is helping us recognize that everything here is nothing. Only then can we
truly give up the world:

"Give up the world! But not to sacrifice. You never wanted it. What
happiness have you sought here that did not bring you pain? What moment of
content has not been bought at fearful price in coins of suffering? Joy has no
cost. It is your sacred right, and what you pay for is not happiness. Be speeded
on your way by honesty, and let not your experiences here deceive in retrospect.
They were not free from bitter cost and joyless consequence." (T.30.V.9.4-12)

This is a course in opening our eyes so that we understand how what we think,
feel, and do fits into God's plan of Atonement. Everything we desire outside can
serve a holy purpose, if we let the Holy Spirit teach us its true meaning. Thus,
to repeat this important point, realizing that our happiness does not come from
the external should not make us feel guilty. It is a statement that merely helps
us realize that our entire lives are based on conflict, and from that
realization comes the end of conflict and the dawning of true happiness.*

(3:2-4) "All things that come from God are one. They come from Oneness, and must
be received as one. Fulfilling my function is my happiness because both come
from the same Source."

*The ego tries to split us off from God and from our self -- <in the mind> --
and then have us believe that our happiness and function rest outside us -- <in
the body>. Once we understand the principle of oneness, however, everything is
clear. The contrast is striking between this principle and how we live our
lives, which are characterized by separation, differences, and discrete events:
We feel good some days and not others; good with the same people sometimes but
not other times, and on and on and on. Our experience is never unified, for
everything is governed by adherence to the ego's principle of <one or the other>
: My interests and yours are separate -- if I win you lose, if I lose you win.
Jesus helps us realize that the way back to God's living Oneness is through
reflecting Its Love, which we do by perceiving each other through the lens of
shared interests.*

(3:5) "And I must learn to recognize what makes me happy, if I would find
happiness."

*The purpose of these lessons is to teach what would make us happy. We have seen
repeatedly that happiness does not lie in the fulfillment of something external,
for that is merely transitory.

Jesus asks us to apply the idea of the lesson as follows:*

(4:2-3) "This cannot separate my happiness from my function."
"The oneness of my happiness and my function remains wholly unaffected by this."

*As in the previous lesson, we are asked to recognize that whatever form of
upset confronts us, it has no power to change the happiness that forgiveness
brings. Happiness comes from the mind's decision, and no power in the world can
take that from us. Only our decision can, and unfortunately has done so.

We can see again and again in these applications how Jesus asks us to take these
relatively abstract ideas and apply them in our diurnal situations. That is
mandatory if we are going to learn this course, which is not really an
intellectual process. While intellectually learning its message is important --
that is the purpose of the text, after all -- if we do not apply the teachings,
they mean nothing. Therefore, the emphasis of these lessons is to have us go
through our day as we normally would, but the moment something disturbs our
peace or makes us excited, to realize this can have no effect on our happiness
and function, which are within. We have merely covered them with illusions,
which have no effect on the truth.

The last statement repeats this thought:*

(4:4) "Nothing, including this, can justify the illusion of happiness apart from
my function."

*When something makes you happy and gives you pleasure, realize this experience
is separate from your function of forgiveness, and so it will not last. True
happiness in this world comes from letting go of guilt, the problem that caused
us to flee our minds, as we believed we fled from Heaven. Guilt's undoing, then,
is the source of pain, and returns us to the home we never left.

Our happiness during the day is equated with forgiveness, wherein we recognize
that nothing and no one has the power to take away the peace of God. It is ours,
awaiting our acceptance. Awareness of this fact, even if we are not yet ready to
choose peace, provides an intimation of joy and a sense of hope, which are
impossible as long as we think we need to manipulate, seduce, or change the
world. This may work some days, but never all the time. Indeed, this is the
criterion Jesus asks us to use in evaluating the worth of anything in the world,
as he says in Lesson 133. Previewing this incisive passage, we read:

"If you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is
valueless. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a
value that is real. What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering
to him who chooses it." (W-pI.133.6:1-4).

Simply realizing that we no longer have to "value what is valueless" (W-pI.133,
title), even if we are not yet ready to let it go, is a source of hope.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 82. We will review these ideas today:

#93082

Lesson 82. We will review these ideas today:

1.(63) The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness.

My forgiveness is the means by which the light of the world finds expression
through me. My forgiveness is the means by which I become aware of the light of
the world in me. My forgiveness is the means by which the world is healed,
together with myself. Let me, then, forgive the world, that it may be healed
along with me.

2.Suggestions for specific forms for applying this idea are:

Let peace extend from my mind to yours, [name].
I share the light of the world with you, [name].
Through my forgiveness I can see this as it is.

3.(64) Let me not forget my function.

I would not forget my function, because I would remember my Self. I cannot
fulfill my function if I forget it. And unless I fulfill my function, I will not
experience the joy that God intends for me.

4. Suitable specific forms of this idea include:

Let me not use this to hide my function from me.
I would use this as an opportunity to fulfill my function.
This may threaten my ego, but cannot change my function in any way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 82. We will review these ideas today:

1.(63) "The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my
forgiveness."

*This lesson extends the previous one.*

(1:2-5) "My forgiveness is the means by which the light of the world finds
expression through me. My forgiveness is the means by which I become aware of
the light of the world in me. My forgiveness is the means by which the world is
healed, together with myself. Let me, then, forgive the world, that it may be
healed along with me."

*We see the by-now familiar theme that the mind of God's Son is one, the basis
for the world's healing. If I forgive you, I must be forgiving me because we
come from the same self. When I accept Jesus' love as my identity instead of the
ego's special love, I realize there is no separation in the Sonship without
forgiving all of it. This is an essential part of Course's message. To say it
again, Jesus is not talking about healing an external world. <There is no
external world!> That is why he says in the text, "seek not to change the world,
but choose to change your mind about the world." (T-21.in.1.7) The world, being
an idea, has never left its source in the mind; therefore it still exists there.
Thus, when my mind is healed of thoughts of separation -- sin, guilt, and attack
-- the world must be healed accordingly.

Next we see these three statements, to be applied in our daily practicing: *

(2:2-4) "Let peace extend from my mind to yours, [name].
I share the light of the world with you, [name].
Through my forgiveness I can see this as it is."

*If there is peace in your mind, it must extend to everyone. One clear way of
discerning whether you have chosen God's peace or the ego's hatred is to pay
attention to your perceptions. If you perceive anything in the world disturbing
you, peace cannot be in your mind. This reflects the early lessons that taught
that everything we perceive outside comes from our thoughts. We will thus
realize that if we are not peaceful outside, our minds cannot be peaceful. This
helps us understand the ego choice we have made, which we can correct and undo.

While at this point in our practice of A Course in Miracles we are not directly
in touch with our minds, we can recognize them by understanding that what
perceive outside directly reflects what we have made real inside. To say it
again, if we want to know whether we have chosen Jesus or the ego as our
teacher, we need but pay attention to our reactions in the world. We need to
remember that whenever we find ourselves making judgments or getting upset, this
is a red flag that says: "I have chosen my ego again. Rather than assume
responsibility for this decision, I choose to project it, seeing it in everyone
else, but not in me." This insane thinking is easily undone through
forgiveness.*

(3:1)(64) "Let me not forget my function."

*We return to the theme of our real Self.*

(3:2) "I would not forget my function, because I would remember my Self."

*If I truly want to remember Who I am and return home, I must forgive. My
function of forgiveness, then, is the means whereby I achieve the end of
remembering my Identity.

If you find yourself making judgments -- special hate or special love -- that is
a sure sign you have chosen not to awaken from the dream and remember your Self.
You have chosen instead to remain a prisoner, yet blaming others for your
condition. When you discover what you have done, you should not judge yourself
nor feel guilty. You simply ask Jesus for help to remember you are not happy
here, and that no judgment you have made, or specialness you have sought, has
brought you anything but the illusion of happiness and peace. Ask Jesus to help
you look without judging yourself, which also means looking at others without
judgment.

To repeat, if you want to know what is going on in your mind, pay attention to
what you are thinking, perceiving, and feeling. If there is peace and a spirit
of joining with others in a common goal, you know you have chosen the Holy
Spirit as your Teacher. On the other hand, if you are feeling disquieted, that
it is the certain sign you have chosen the ego.*

(3:3) "I cannot fulfill my function if I forget it."

*Thus we need a Teacher Who reminds us of our function of forgiveness, which can
be defined as letting go of judgment. Therefore, if you find yourself judging,
you are choosing -- it does not happen automatically -- to forget your function
because you do not want to return home. Forgetting is purposive.*

(3:4) "And unless I fulfill my function, I will not experience the joy that God
intends for me."

*Whenever we feel special, make judgments, or are engaged in anything of the ego
thought system, we are saying we do not want the joy that God intends for us,
accepting the ego's substitute instead. In our guilt over pushing the joy of God
away, we project it out and find fault with everyone else. The idea, once again,
is not to judge ourselves for projecting, but to be aware that this is what we
have done, and the tremendous cost to us of having done so.

We are then asked to practice applying this idea, saying:*

(4:2) "Let me not use this to hide my function from me."

* "This" is anything we are experiencing during the day; e.g., being unhappy
with the change of weather or with what someone did or did not do. We should
then say: "I am choosing the situation as excuse to hide my function from me,
which I want to do to keep the joy of God away." *

(4:3) "I would use this as an opportunity to fulfill my function."

*Rather than use a situation as an opportunity to deny our function, we can let
Jesus redefine it as an opportunity to forgive. In other words, we could look at
everything as a classroom the Holy Spirit can use to teach us that our happiness
does not lie in anything external, nor in being a separated self, but in
choosing Jesus as the teacher who leads us beyond our specialness and takes us
home. This, again, applies to anything that happens during the day. *

(4:4) "This may threaten my ego, but cannot change my function in any way."

* In other words, if I perceive what someone says or does as threatening, this
does not mean my function is gone. It means only that I have chosen to be upset
because I want to obscure it. Yet it rests safely within me because its Teacher
does. Therefore, nothing has the power to remove the function of forgiveness
from me, <except my own decision>. *

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 81. Our ideas for review today are.

#93081

Lesson 81. Our ideas for review today are.

(1) (61) I am the light of the world.

How holy am I, who have been given the function of lighting up the world! Let me
be still before my holiness. In its calm light let all my conflicts disappear.
In its peace let me remember Who I am.

(2) Some specific forms for applying this idea when special difficulties seem to
arise might be:

Let me not obscure the light of the world in me.
Let the light of the world shine through this appearance.
This shadow will vanish before the light.

(3:1) (62) Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.

It is through accepting my function that I will see the light in me. And in this
light will my function stand clear and perfectly unambiguous before my sight. My
acceptance does not depend on my recognizing what my function is, for I do not
yet understand forgiveness. Yet I will trust that, in the light, I will see it
as it is.

(4) Specific forms for using this idea might include:

Let this help me learn what forgiveness means.
Let me not separate my function from my will.
I will not use this for an alien purpose.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 81. "Our ideas for review today are."

*As I mentioned when discussing the first review, Helen had informed Jesus she
did not want the same mundane introductory statement repeated throughout. One of
her criteria for judging whether Jesus really was who he claimed to be, was to
see if he would dictate different words for the opening of each lesson (e.g.,
"Our ideas for review today are"; "We will review these ideas today"; Today let
us review these ideas"; etc.). Having now seen another example of how these
lessons share the same content, but different form, we can proceed from the
ridiculous to the sublime.*

1(61) "I am the light of the world."
"How holy am I, who have been given the function of lighting up the world! Let
me be still before my holiness. In its calm light let all my conflicts
disappear. In its peace let me remember Who I am."

*In this first lesson we find a clear statement of our real Self, reflected in
what the Holy Spirit's Voice reminds us of: our function of lighting up the
world. As we had seen when we discussed this lesson earlier, we do not
illuminate an external world, as would a lamp casting its glow. The world exists
only in the mind of God's Son, and is darkened because we have chosen to listen
to the ego. By thus choosing the Holy Spirit, we become His light of truth.
Since God's Son is one, and the world is in the Son's mind, we become the
world's light as well. In this light conflict cannot be, for it exists only in
the darkness of the ego's thought system of opposition.*

(2) "Some specific forms for applying this idea when special difficulties seem
to arise might be:

Let me not obscure the light of the world in me.
Let the light of the world shine through this appearance.
This shadow will vanish before the light."

*When we choose Jesus, the world's shadow -- the projection of our guilt -- must
disappear. They have no power before the light as long as we choose the light,
regardless of the shadow's form. An illusion is an illusion is an illusion, and
has no power before the truth. Our daily function is thus to bring our
perceptions of darkness to the light of Jesus' truth.

The next lesson deals with forgiveness, the major theme of A Course in
Miracles.*

(3:1) (62) "Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world."
*Our function in Heaven is to create, with which no one here is in touch, for it
has no worldly reference. On the other hand, forgiveness does have meaning for
us. Previewing Lesson 192, we are reminded:

"It is your Father's holy Will that you complete Himself ... extending love,
creating in its Name, forever one with God and with your Self. Yet what can such
a function mean within a world of envy, hatred and attack?"

"Therefore, you have a function in the world in its own terms. For who can
understand a language far beyond his simple grasp? Forgiveness represents your
function here." (W-pI.192.1:1-2:3).

Elsewhere in the text, as you may recall, Jesus says our function is to heal:

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is
healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares
His with you on earth." (T-12.VII.4:7-8).

It is our function of forgiveness (or healing) that enables us to release the
ego's thought system, first by not seeing it in another, and then realizing it
is not truly present in our minds either. This undoing of guilt removes the
barriers that kept our true function of creation hidden, as it kept hidden or
Identity as Christ.*

(3:2-3) "It is through accepting my function that I will see the light in me.
And in this light will my function stand clear and perfectly unambiguous before
my sight."
*Again and again we see the focus on removing the blocks -- the meaning of
forgiveness -- that keep the light of Christ's Love from us. It is always
helpful to recall the beginning of the text:

"The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond
what can be taught. It does aim, however at removing the blocks to the awareness
of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance." (T. Intro.6-8).*

(3:4-5) "My acceptance does not depend on my recognizing what my function is,
for I do not yet understand forgiveness. Yet I will trust that, in the light, I
will see it as it is."

*This is important. When we begin our work with A Course in Miracles, we think
forgiveness is something we do with someone else. Even more to the point, we
think forgiveness involves overlooking some terrible thing others have done, and
saying we forgive them. A step above that is realizing: "No, I am the sinner
instead of you." This leads us to understand that forgiveness has nothing to do
with anyone else, but only with ourselves, for there is no world apart from our
minds.

Jesus is thus saying we can begin this process without understanding what it
entails; making our ascent up the ladder with no awareness of its top rungs, let
alone of the God Who is beyond the ladder entirely. It is enough to know we have
been wrong about everything we have thought, felt, and perceived. We can do very
well now without understanding the answer to the problem of the ego.
Indeed:

"You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution
to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need
understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot
give right now." (T.18.IV.7.5-7)

Yet we can at least understand that we do not know. That is the first step. The
next ones easily follow as we practice, as in these three specific
applications:*

(4:2-4) "Let this help me learn what forgiveness means.
Let me not separate my function from my will.
I will not use this for an alien purpose."

*As always, Jesus asks us to see our daily experiences as opportunities for
learning how to forgive. Again, we anticipate the later wonderful Lesson. "All
things are lessons God would have me learn." (W-pI.193) We learn the proper use
of our mind's power, shifting from the ego's alien purpose of attack to the Holy
Spirit's right-minded purpose of healing. Thus we return our will to the Will
that God created.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Review II

#93080

Review II

Introduction

1.?We are now ready for another review.??We will begin where our last review left off, and cover two ideas each day.??The earlier part of each day will be devoted to one of these ideas, and the latter part of the day to the other.??We will have one longer exercise period, and frequent shorter ones in which we practice each of them.

2.?The longer practice periods will follow this general form: Take about fifteen minutes for each of them, and begin by thinking about the ideas for the day, and the comments that are included in the assignments.??Devote some three or four minutes to reading them over slowly, several times if you wish, and then close your eyes and listen.

3.?Repeat the first phase of the exercise period if you find your mind wandering, but try to spend the major part of the time listening quietly but attentively.??There is a message waiting for you.??Be confident that you will receive it.??Remember that it belongs to you, and that you want it.

4.?Do not allow your intent to waver in the face of distracting thoughts.??Realize that, whatever form such thoughts may take, they have no meaning and no power.??Replace them with your determination to succeed.??Do not forget that your will has power over all fantasies and dreams.??Trust it to see you through, and carry you beyond them all.

5.?Regard these practice periods as dedications to the way, the truth and the life.??Refuse to be sidetracked into detours, illusions and thoughts of death.??You are dedicated to salvation.??Be determined each day not to leave your function unfulfilled.

6.?Reaffirm your determination in the shorter practice periods as well, using the original form of the idea for general applications, and more specific forms when needed.??Some specific forms are included in the comments which follow the statement of the ideas.??These, however, are merely suggestions.??It is not the particular words you use that matter.

()

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 80. Let me recognize my problems have been solved.

#93079

Lesson 80. Let me recognize my problems have been solved.

(1) If you are willing to recognize your problems, you will recognize that you
have no problems. Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no
other. Therefore, you must be at peace. Salvation thus depends on recognizing
this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem, one
solution. Salvation is accomplished. Freedom from conflict has been given you.
Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan
for salvation.

(2) Your only problem has been solved! Repeat this over and over to yourself
today, with gratitude and conviction. You have recognized your only problem,
opening the way for the Holy Spirit to give you God's answer. You have laid
deception aside, and seen the light of truth. You have accepted salvation for
yourself by bringing the problem to the answer. And you can recognize the
answer, because the problem has been identified.

(3) You are entitled to peace today. A problem that has been resolved cannot
trouble you. Only be certain you do not forget that all problems are the same.
Their many forms will not deceive you while you remember this. One problem, one
solution. Accept the peace this simple statement brings.

(4) In our longer practice periods today, we will claim the peace that must be
ours when the problem and the answer have been brought together. The problem
must be gone, because God's answer cannot fail. Having recognized one, you have
recognized the other. The solution is inherent in the problem. You are answered,
and have accepted the answer. You are saved.

(5) Now let the peace that your acceptance brings be given you. Close your eyes,
and receive your reward. Recognize that your problems have been solved.
Recognize that you are out of conflict; free and at peace. Above all, remember
that you have one problem, and that the problem has one solution. It is in this
that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is
guaranteed to work.

(6) Assure yourself often today that your problems have been solved. Repeat the
idea with deep conviction, as frequently as possible. And be particularly sure
to apply the idea for today to any specific problem that may arise. Say quickly:

Let me recognize this problem has been solved.<

(7) Let us be determined not to collect grievances today. Let us be determined
to be free of problems that do not exist. The means is simple honesty. Do not
deceive yourself about what the problem is, and you must recognize it has been
solved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 80. "Let me recognize my problems have been solved."

*This lesson expresses even more specifically the message of Lesson 79.*

(1:1) "If you are willing to recognize your problems, you will recognize that
you have no problems."

*Recognizing that "my problems have been solved" can be understood as the
presence of the Holy Spirit in my mind holding the solution to every problem I
have, regardless of its form or complexity. Since He is already in my mind as
the answer, this means my problems are gone. Recall this previously quoted
passage about the role of the miracle in showing us that we have no problems:

"The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out
the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but merely takes away.
And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to
have immediate effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it
are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little
while. The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no
effects. Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not
effects." (T.28.I.1.1)

Thus our problems were also over long ago. Choosing the Holy Spirit's miracle
instead of the ego's grievance restores that simple truth to awareness.*

(1:2-7) "Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other.
Therefore, you must be at peace. Salvation thus depends on recognizing this one
problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem, one solution.
Salvation is accomplished. Freedom from conflict has been given you."

*The ego's answer to the Holy Spirit is conflict. I sinned against God, God will
sin against me, and thus are we in perpetual war with each other. We project
that battleground -- <kill or be killed> -- and now experience conflict with
everyone else in the world. Being freed from such distress does not come through
opposing or overthrowing the other party in the spirit of <one or the other>.
Freedom comes in realizing that the Atonement answer of love is already within
us. This means there is no separation, sin, or conflict. The Atonement is the
only answer that will work, for it truly saves us from our misperceptions of
separation and hate.*

(1:8) "Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's
plan for salvation."

*The rightful place is the acceptance of our function to forgive, which has
nothing to do with the external. In other words, our rightful place is the same
as everyone else's: forgiveness. Our collective function is thus to recognize
there is only one problem -- the belief in separation and separate interests,
and only one solution -- the acceptance of the Atonement, reflected in our
recognition that only shared interests exist in the dream.*

(2:1-2) "Your only problem has been solved! Repeat this over and over to
yourself today, with gratitude and conviction."

*Once again Jesus does not intend this as an affirmation or mantra that you
simply say by rote, over and over again. Whenever you are tempted to be upset
and your peace disturbed, think of this statement and realize that if your
problem has been solved, why are you upset? Begin to understand the motivation
for your disturbance. I want to keep the answer away because in it my
specialness disappears. Thus I want to be upset, because that proves I am right
and Jesus is wrong. It proves I do not have a mind because it is my body that is
abused and unfairly treated. To this new understanding of the nature of your
problem and its underlying purpose, bring your perceived problems, and watch
them fade away, back into the nothingness from which they came (M-13.1:2).*

(2:3-5) "You have recognized your only problem, opening the way for the Holy
Spirit to give you God's answer. You have laid deception aside, and seen the
light of truth. You have accepted salvation for yourself by bringing the problem
to the answer."

*That is what opens the way for the Holy Spirit to give us God's answer, meaning
I am wrong about my perceptions. Perhaps what my eyes see is true within the
illusion, but my ego's reaction is far from true. Since all that is important is
the way I react, does it make it any real difference whether my perception is
accurate or not? What does matter is whether I let Jesus or the ego interpret
this for me. Choosing the ego <is> the problem. By thus realizing I am wrong, I
am saying the problem is not outside me but within, which means I am now
bringing it to the answer; the ego's deception to the Holy Spirit's truth.*

(2:6) "And you can recognize the answer, because the problem has been
identified."

*The crucial aspect in this process is not the answer as such, but identifying
<where> and <what> the problem is. Again, simply stated, the problem is my
decision to push away God's Love so I can continue to be right, to be a special
individual. That is the problem. Once I recognize it and can look without
judging myself, I have availed myself of the answer. The process of healing does
not lie in affirming the Holy Spirit's answer, but in <recognizing the problem>.
It is the undoing of the ego by looking without guilt or fear that allows the
Atonement's answer to rise in our awareness. Remember that our task is not to
choose the truth, but to choose to "<deny the denial of truth>" (T-12.II.1:5).
Jesus makes the same salient point in the following passage from the text, which
in one summary sweep undoes our pain and suffering:

"Now you are being shown you can escape. All that is needed is you look
upon the problem as it is, and not the way that you have set it up. How could
there be another way to solve a problem that is very simple, but has been
obscured by heavy clouds of complication, which were made to keep the problem
unresolved? Without the clouds the problem will emerge in all its primitive
simplicity. The choice will not be difficult, because the problem is absurd when
clearly seen. No one has difficulty making up his mind to let a simple problem
be resolved if it is seen as hurting him, and also very easily removed."
(T-27.VII.2).

Looking at the problem "as it is" means looking within at our faulty decision
making, so it can be corrected. In that simple choice is the ego's defensive
shield of the thought and world of guilt removed.*

(3:1-2) "You are entitled to peace today. A problem that has been resolved
cannot trouble you."

*Therefore, if you are troubled by something you must be making it up, because
the answer is already within you. How can you be troubled by something that does
not exist and a problem that is no longer there? That question takes the wind
out of your ego's sails. When you begin to build a case against yourself or
someone else, remember this is a non-existent problem -- you are literally angry
over nothing -- which makes it difficult to justify your reactions.*

(3:3-6) "Only be certain you do not forget that all problems are the same. Their
many forms will not deceive you while you remember this. One problem, one
solution. Accept the peace this simple statement brings."

*We see how often Jesus repeats this theme. He would like us to repeat it as
often, each and every time we are tempted to forget its simple truth of <one
problem, one solution>, choosing instead to be blinded by our perceptions of
form.*

(4:1-2) "In our longer practice periods today, we will claim the peace that must
be ours when the problem and the answer have been brought together. The problem
must be gone, because God's answer cannot fail."

*If something is bothering me, I am in effect telling Jesus he is wrong, because
he is telling us here there is no problem, for God's answer has never failed us.
However, we counter: "Wait just a minute and I will show you how you failed me.
Look at what is going on! Look how upset or sick I am! Look at my real
problems!" Thus we keep the problem from the answer and retain our misery and
pain; a price we gladly (and insanely) pay in order to maintain our "rightness"
and Jesus' "wrongness." *

(4:3-6) "Having recognized one, you have recognized the other. The solution is
inherent in the problem. You are answered, and have accepted the answer. You are
saved."

*The problem and solution are in one place. The solution is inherent in the
problem because the problem never happened. That is the solution! Remember, the
Atonement principle is that the separation was a non-event. Moreover, since the
belief in separation and its correction are in the mind -- because there is only
the mind -- the ego's strategy of mindlessness is answered and undone.*

(5) "Now let the peace that your acceptance brings be given you. Close your
eyes, and receive your reward. Recognize that your problems have been solved.
Recognize that you are out of conflict; free and at peace. Above all, remember
that you have one problem, and that the problem has one solution. It is in this
that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is
guaranteed to work."

*The "reward" of peace is the ultimate motivator for choosing the answer over
the problem. We recognize at last that the former alone brings us peace. Simple!
That is how we know it is the truth, for truth is simple.*

(6:1-3) "Assure yourself often today that your problems have been solved. Repeat
the idea with deep conviction, as frequently as possible. And be particularly
sure to apply the idea for today to any specific problem that may arise."

*Once again Jesus is urging you to use the idea for the day very specifically
when you are upset. Realize how quickly you forget what he has taught you, and
then forgive yourself for having forgotten, for having let the ego's engine of
hate and judgment rev up again. When you find yourself becoming upset, as soon
as you can, stop and say: "But the problem has already been solved. Stubbornly
insisting I am justifiably upset and right in my perceptions tells Jesus he is
wrong again. My upset proves it. At that point you should say quickly:*

(6:5) "Say quickly: "Let me recognize this problem has been solved."

*And then peace will happily return.*

(7) "Let us be determined not to collect grievances today. Let us be determined
to be free of problems that do not exist. The means is simple honesty. Do not
deceive yourself about what the problem is, and you must recognize it has been
solved."

*To make this point again, grievances are a way of saying I am right and Jesus
is wrong: the problem is outside -- just look at what these terrible people are
doing to me! Honesty is thus vitally important in this and all the exercises;
the honesty of looking within and understanding you made it all up. What will
aid you in this process is understanding the motivation for the problem:
preserving your separated self. That recognition is the simple honesty to which
Jesus refers. Anything outside you that bothers or upsets you is there because
you put it there to hide the answer, in the presence of which your separate and
special identity would gently fade away. Therefore, to preserve yourself you
ensured your were right by seeing external problems, and blaming everyone else
for your miserable situation. As King Lear observed: "That way madness lies
(III,iv,21). We come to learn through these lessons that sanity is our only real
choice, for only from that sane decision comes the peace and joy that is our
just reward. It is that -- <and only that> -- we choose today in simple
honesty.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 79. Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved.

#93078

Lesson 79. Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved.

(1) A problem cannot be solved if you do not know what it is. Even if it is
really solved already you will still have the problem, because you will not
recognize that it has been solved. This is the situation of the world. The
problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been
solved. Yet the solution is not recognized because the problem is not
recognized.

(2) Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are
all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution that solves them
all is to be accepted. Who can see that a problem has been solved if he thinks
the problem is something else? Even if he is given the answer, he cannot see its
relevance.

(3) That is the position in which you find yourself now. You have the answer,
but you are still uncertain about what the problem is. A long series of
different problems seems to confront you, and as one is settled the next one and
the next arise. There seems to be no end to them. There is no time in which you
feel completely free of problems and at peace.

(4) The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the
problem of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast
number of problems, each requiring a different answer. This perception places
you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure
is inevitable.

(5) No one could solve all the problems the world appears to hold. They seem to
be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that
they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are
inevitable as you regard them. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think
you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of
denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but
still unsolved.

(6) All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem,
and therefore not to let it be resolved. If you could recognize that
your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept
the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying
constancy in all the problems that seem to confront you, you would understand
that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means, because
you recognize the problem.

(7) In our longer practice periods today we will ask what the problem is, and
what is the answer to it. We will not assume that we already know. We will try
to free our minds of all the many different kinds of problems we think we have.
We will try to realize that we have only one problem, which we have failed to
recognize. We will ask what it is, and wait for the answer. We will be told.
Then we will ask for the solution to it. And we will be told.

(8) The exercises for today will be successful to the extent to which you do not
insist on defining the problem. Perhaps you will not succeed in letting all your
preconceived notions go, but that is not necessary. All that is necessary is to
entertain some doubt about the reality of your version of what your problems
are. You are trying to recognize that you have been given the answer by
recognizing the problem, so that the problem and the answer can be brought
together and you can be at peace.

(9) The shorter practice periods for today will not be set by time, but by need.
You will see many problems today, each one calling for an answer. Our efforts
will be directed toward recognizing that there is only one problem and one
answer. In this recognition are all problems resolved. In this recognition there
is peace.

(10) Be not deceived by the form of problems today. Whenever any difficulty
seems to rise, tell yourself quickly:

Let me recognize this problem so it can be solved.<

Then try to suspend all judgment about what the problem is. If possible, close
your eyes for a moment and ask what it is. You will be heard and you will be
answered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 79. "Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved."

*What is stated in this and the following lesson is that there is only one
problem, although the world tells us there are many. This problem is the mind's
belief we are separated from God and on our own. To repeat earlier discussions:
the ego takes the single thought of separation, teaches us it is not in our
minds but in the world, fragmenting the thought into billions of different
expressions of the one problem, each calling for a particular answer. Each
problem thus commands attention, demanding to be solved in its own way. As we
shall see below, this is an extremely frustrating situation because the true
problem remains hidden in our minds, buried beneath the almost infinite number
of external concerns that present themselves to us over and over and over again.
This ensures that the external problem can never really be solved, as we now
read:*

(1:1) "A problem cannot be solved if you do not know what it is."

*We could also say that a problem cannot be solved if we do know where it is,
which is virtually the same thing. The <where> is the mind, and, <what> is our
decision to be separate. Remember, the whole point of the ego -- indeed, the
whole point of its thought system of separation -- is to see that we never
realize <where> and <what> the problem is. It cannot be overemphasized that
purpose is everything, and the only way to undo the ego is to change the purpose
it gave the world -- to conceal the problem -- to the Holy Spirit's purpose of
revealing the problem so it can be undone: " Let me recognize the problem so it
can be solved." *

(1:2-4) "Even if it is really solved already you will still have the problem,
because you will not recognize that it has been solved. This is the situation of
the world. The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has
already been solved."

*If the Holy Spirit is the memory of God we took with us when we fell asleep,
and that memory is the link between our dream state and the truth of God's Love,
we are not separate.*

(1:5) "Yet the solution is not recognized because the problem is not
recognized."

*Again, when we misunderstand A Course in Miracles' meaning of the miracle, we
are seeing to it that the problem of separation will never be recognized and
therefore never solved. If we think a miracle addresses something external, we
are saying the problem itself is external, as must be the solution given by God.
At this point we can no longer be referring to the God of perfect Oneness, but
the ego's projection. Thus the real problem -- our minds' mistaken decision --
can never be looked at and therefore its solution never recognized.*

(2:1-2) "Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they
are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution that solves
them all is to be accepted."

*Lessons 79 and 80 are unmistakably clear in statement and meaning. Their
language is simple, yet the entire curriculum is contained in them, being
essentially a variation on the principle theme of the Course: <There is no order
of difficulty in miracles.> (T.1.I.1.1) That is how the text begins, as you all
know. What you may not know is that the actual dictation to Helen did not begin
with the current Introduction, but with the statement that the first thing to
remember about miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among them.
Jesus thus stated the theme of his course right at the beginning, and in a sense
everything that followed -- and these lessons in particular -- is a commentary
on that theme. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there is but
one problem. Bill Thetford used to say that the first principle could be
restated as: <There is no order of difficulty in problem solving,> because the
miracle is a way of solving problems. <But not external problems>. The miracle
solves problems by bringing them to the mind, wherein is found the <one> problem
and its <one> solution.*

(2:3-4) "Who can see that a problem has been solved if he thinks the problem is
something else? Even if he is given the answer, he cannot see its relevance."

*We all would agree we have been given the answer -- the Holy Spirit, Jesus, or
A Course in Miracles. But we do not see the answer's relevance because we think
it involves the body -- making our dream better by helping us become happier,
healthier and wealthier through forgiving other people. Therefore we do not
realize the Course's direct relevance to our problems. In addition, we still do
not accept fully that we have a mind -- indeed, we have <only> a mind -- and the
body is simply a projection, and therefore can never be the problem.

The reason A Course in Miracles often seems not to work is that its students
make it irrelevant. They do not use it for the purpose for which Jesus gave it,
which is to return the problem to the mind, helping us to understand why we so
stubbornly insist on not accepting the answer that is already present in us.
Recall these lines, in which Jesus exhorts Helen to remember that the purpose of
the course he was dictating to her was to restore to her awareness the power of
her mind to choose the ego, so that she may now choose the Holy Spirit:

"If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be
tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there
is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking.
This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much
more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully
enough." (T.2.VII.1.4-7)

The reason, again, that we seek to depreciate the power of our thinking is that
we do not want to give up our individuality or specialness. Perhaps we could
accept that we are not bodies, but we do not want to give up the fact that we
have a special personality. Thus, for example, we might think it fine if we die
because there is a personality that survives. We do not give up our specialness,
for it validates us as individuals. The birthplace and home of this self is in
the mind, access to which is now forbidden by the cruel dictates of the ego's
strategy of mindlessness.

In summary, as long as we listen to the ego, A Course in Miracles will never
work because we will never see its relevance. We will think its purpose is to
solve a problem outside our minds. Yet all we do is attempt to solve a
non-existent problem, taking the answer of forgiveness but applying it to the
wrong problem. The answer remains in our minds, and so Jesus and his course help
us return to that place of correction: the right-minded home of the Holy
Spirit.*

(3:1-2) "That is the position in which you find yourself now. You have the
answer, but you are still uncertain about what the problem is."

*All students of A Course in Miracles, if they were truly honest, would realize
there is a part of them that does not fully believe what Jesus teaches us here.
Our resistance is another way of expressing our belief that our problems are
something other than the mind's decision to be an individual, and so we cannot
see the relevance of the answer that has been given us.*

(3:3-5) "A long series of different problems seems to confront you, and as one
is settled the next one and the next arise. There seems to be no end to them.
There is no time in which you feel completely free of problems and at peace."

*There is probably not a person in this world who cannot identify with these
statements. We all have problems. On the physical level, for example, we are
hungry and we eat, which does not mean we are not going to get hungry again a
few hours from now. We take a breath, but a few seconds later another one is
needed. We may be sick and then cured, but we know at some point we will become
ill again and eventually die. And on and on it goes.

We have psychological problems, too: You love me today, but will you love me
tomorrow? I was given an A on my exam, but will I do so next time? I received a
promotion and a raise, but how do I know my job is really secure? Thus,
everything may have worked out fine for now, but who is to say that it will be
that way in the future?

Rising above the ego's battleground and surveying its purpose for the body and
the world, we understand that the ego made the body to present us with an
endless number of problems -- physical and psychological -- each of which
demands solutions. What a massive and successful distraction from the mind --
the source of <the> problem and <the> solution of peace!*

(4:1) "The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the
problem of separation unsolved."

*This is another critically important line. We keep "the problem of separation
unsolved " because that keeps our separate self intact, fulfilling the ego's
purpose of maintaining our individuality and specialness. Since there is but one
problem -- the belief we are separate -- we defend against its solution by
making up a multitudinous number of problems. As the previous lesson told us,
all problems express a basic grievance, being some form of the statement we saw
in Lesson 71: "If this were different, I would be saved." *

(4:2-3) "The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each
requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which
your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure is inevitable."

*We all can identify with this sense of inevitable failure. The world was set up
so that we would fail, seeking the cause of failure outside our minds. To
continually attempt to solve problems that are destined to remain insoluble is
extremely frustrating, which prompted this passage on the ego's tactic of <seek
and do not find>:

"The search the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated. And since
it also teaches that it is your identification, its guidance leads you to a
journey which must end in perceived self-defeat.... You do not know the meaning
of love, and that is your handicap. Do not attempt to teach yourself what you do
not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have
clearly failed. Your learning goal has been not to learn, and this cannot lead
to successful learning. You cannot transfer what you have not learned, and the
impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure.... I have
said that the ego's rule is, "Seek and do not find". Translated into curricular
terms this means, "Try to learn but do not succeed". The result of this
curriculum goal is obvious.... If you are trying to learn how not to learn, and
the aim of your teaching is to defeat itself, what can you expect but
confusion?" (T-12.IV.2.2:1-2;T-12.V.6:2-4;7:1-3,5).*

(5) "No one could solve all the problems the world appears to hold. They seem to
be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that
they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are
inevitable as you regard them. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think
you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of
denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but
still unsolved."

*This describes the state of the world. It should impress us as students of A
Course in Miracles that we read lines like this and know they are true, yet they
persist in holding onto the idea we are right. It cannot be this simple, we
claim. If we are upset, it is definitely not because we chose our individuality
over God, nor that we pushed Jesus away. Our upset is due to what someone else
said, what just happened, our poor upbringing, our faulty bodies, etc., etc.,
etc. It is helpful to observe how quickly we fall prey to the ego's temptation.

However, if we can retreat, to make this point again, and objectively look at
the nature of the world and body, it would be patently obvious that depression
is the only response that makes sense. Even if our lives seem to work for us, in
the end we all die. Thus, a lifetime spent in problem solving, struggling
against the inevitable odds the ego has stacked against us, is in the end all
worth nothing. What could be more depressing!*

(6) "All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the
problem, and therefore not to let it be resolved. If you could recognize that
your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept
the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying
constancy in all the problems that seem to confront you, you would understand
that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means, because
you recognize the problem."

*These thoughts should be incorporated into your daily activities as
specifically as possible. The problem is not the separation in some abstract
sense; it is here right now in your desire to see yourself separated from the
Holy Spirit. Make your practice as personal as you can in applying the principle
that separation is the problem. If you awaken in the morning and are not feeling
well, it is because you have pushed love away -- <that is the separation>. You
can be clear about your responsibility and still not blame yourself. This
non-judgmental stance allows you to receive the answer and understand the
significance of the first principle of miracles: <there is no order of
difficulty among them> (T-1.1.1:1). Since every problem is the same --
separation -- every solution is the same -- Atonement. One problem, one
solution.

However, you cannot receive the answer if you are filled with guilt, judgment,
and blame. You accept the answer only when you acknowledge personally that <you>
have pushed love away again; not because you are sinful, but because you are
afraid. By choosing Jesus' forgiveness, you let his love gently wash over you,
assuring you that you have done nothing wrong, except bring pain upon yourself.

Once again, as you read this lesson and do its exercise, make your practice as
specific as you can. This will help you see that everything in your daily life
is directly relevant to your salvation and peace. Thus will you find yourself
increasingly motivated to practice and learn.*

(7-8:1) "In our longer practice periods today we will ask what the problem is,
and what is the answer to it. We will not assume that we already know. We will
try to free our minds of all the many different kinds of problems we think we
have. We will try to realize that we have only one problem, which we have failed
to recognize. We will ask what it is, and wait for the answer. We will be told.
Then we will ask for the solution to it. And we will be told."
"The exercises for today will be successful to the extent to which you do not
insist on defining the problem."

*You cannot ask for the solution if you think you know <what> and <where> the
problem is. This arrogance forestalls your progress with this course. It is
necessary to return to the choice point in your mind in which you re-enact over
and over again the separation from God. Whether you speak of God, Jesus, the
Holy Spirit, or any other name, you have pushed away the loving experience of
oneness because you are threatened by the loss of your special self, which you
are convinced will happen if you join with love. That is the problem. Thinking
you know the problem ensures you will never learn the answer. As the early
workbook lesson said:

"You will not question what you have already defined. And the purpose of these
exercises is to ask questions and receive the answers." (W-pI.28.4:1-2).

This point about developing the humility that undoes the ego's arrogance, so
essential to our learning, is repeated throughout these lessons, and we shall
see how often Jesus returns to it.

To reinforce the point I have been making, even though you may read, understand,
and believe these lines, watch how quickly you stray from that belief and try to
make the problem be something else. Remember that your existence as a physical,
psychological being is based on the thought that your not responsible; that the
problem is not in your mind but in the body. Watch how quickly you are tempted
to fall back into the ego's trap of mindlessness!*

(8:2-3) "Perhaps you will not succeed in letting all your preconceived notions
go, but that is not necessary. All that is necessary is to entertain some doubt
about the reality of your version of what your problems are."

*These lines reflect the theme, already familiar to us, of "a little
willingness" (T-18.IV). We are asked simply to begin the process of questioning
the validity of our judgments and absolute certainty that we know the nature of
the problem -- in ourselves and everyone else. More than that is not required.
Indeed, as we have already seen, <more> would be counter-productive and merely
reinforce the guilt over usurping a role that is not our own.*

(8:4) "You are trying to recognize that you have been given the answer by
recognizing the problem, so that the problem and the answer can be brought
together and you can be at peace."

*The problem is in our minds; the solution is there as well. The ego, of course,
took the problem from the solution in the mind, projected it out, and made a
world so that we could declare that the problem is all around us, <outside our
minds>. The miracle, therefore, brings the problem back to the answer. This is
analogous to the process of forgiveness: bringing the darkness of our illusions
to the light of truth. This wondrous passage from the clarification of terms
beautifully summarizes this process of forgiveness:

"This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is
seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the
Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought
to truth and laid upon the altar. What is seen outside must lie beyond
forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen
as outside? What remedy can guilt expect? But seen within your mind, guilt and
forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at
last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God
has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete." (C-4.6).*

(9) "The shorter practice periods for today will not be set by time, but by
need. You will see many problems today, each one calling for an answer. Our
efforts will be directed toward recognizing that there is only one problem and
one answer. In this recognition are all problems resolved. In this recognition
there is peace."

*Note the change in instructions. Jesus is asking us today to set our own
schedule, based upon the need that <we> recognize. He assumes we are beginning
to recognize what is in our best interests. After over two months of exercises,
we are beginning to understand what <no order of difficulty in miracles> means:
since all <forms> of problems express the same <content>, there can truly be
only one problem and one answer. Therefore, as soon as any discomfort reaches
our awareness, we now have the means at hand to remedy it: the miracle.
Regardless of the form of the upset, we understand that the answer lies in
choosing the right teacher to resolve it. The problem is our having chosen the
ego and its separation; the solution is choosing the Holy Spirit and His
Atonement.*

(10) "Be not deceived by the form of problems today. Whenever any difficulty
seems to rise, tell yourself quickly:
"Let me recognize this problem so it can be solved."
Then try to suspend all judgment about what the problem is. If possible, close
your eyes for a moment and ask what it is. You will be heard and you will be
answered."

*This final paragraph underscores the need to move beyond the form of the
problem, recognizing that all problems are the same. It is this simplicity that
characterizes A Course in Miracles and Jesus' teaching. Despite the apparent
multitudinous number of problems that confront us, there remains only one: the
belief we are right and Jesus is wrong. Our judgments were based on illusions,
and so we defer at last to his true judgment. Only this shift will bring us
peace. Lesson 80 continues the theme of one problem, one solution.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 78. Let miracles replace all grievances.

#93077

Lesson 78. Let miracles replace all grievances.

(1) Perhaps it is not yet quite clear to you that each decision that you make is
one between a grievance and a miracle. Each grievance stands like a dark shield
of hate before the miracle it would conceal. And as you raise it up before your
eyes, you will not see the miracle beyond. Yet all the while it waits for you in
light, but you behold your grievances instead.

(2) Today we go beyond the grievances, to look upon the miracle instead. We will
reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stop before it sees. We will
not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in
silence to behold the Son of God.

(3) He waits for you behind your grievances, and as you lay them down he will
appear in shining light where each one stood before. For every grievance is a
block to sight, and as it lifts you see the Son of God where he has always been.
He stands in light, but you were in the dark. Each grievance made the darkness
deeper, and you could not see.

(4) Today we will attempt to see God's Son. We will not let ourselves be blind
to him; we will not look upon our grievances. So is the seeing of the world
reversed, as we look out toward truth, away from fear. We will select one person
you have used as target for your grievances, and lay the grievances aside and
look at him. Someone, perhaps, you fear and even hate; someone you think you
love who angered you; someone you call a friend, but whom you see as difficult
at times or hard to please, demanding, irritating or untrue to the ideal he
should accept as his, according to the role you set for him.

(5) You know the one to choose; his name has crossed your mind already. He will
be the one of whom we ask God's Son be shown to you. Through seeing him behind
the grievances that you have held against him, you will learn that what lay
hidden while you saw him not is there in everyone, and can be seen. He who was
enemy is more than friend when he is freed to take the holy role the Holy Spirit
has assigned to him. Let him be savior unto you today. Such is his role in God
your Father's plan.

(6) Our longer practice periods today will see him in this role. You will
attempt to hold him in your mind, first as you now consider him. You will review
his faults, the difficulties you have had with him, the pain he caused you, his
neglect, and all the little and the larger hurts he gave. You will regard his
body with its flaws and better points as well, and you will think of his
mistakes and even of his "sins."

(7) Then let us ask of Him Who knows this Son of God in his reality and truth,
that we may look on him a different way, and see our savior shining in the light
of true forgiveness, given unto us. We ask Him in the holy Name of God and of
His Son, as holy as Himself:

Let me behold my savior in this one You have appointed as the one for me to

ask to lead me to the holy light in which he stands, that I may join with him.<

The body's eyes are closed, and as you think of him who grieved you, let your
mind be shown the light in him beyond your grievances.

(8) What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your savior has been waiting long
for this. He would be free, and make his freedom yours. The Holy Spirit leans
from him to you, seeing no separation in God's Son. And what you see through Him
will free you both. Be very quiet now, and look upon your shining savior. No
dark grievances obscure the sight of him. You have allowed the Holy Spirit to
express through him the role God gave Him that you might be saved.

(9) God thanks you for these quiet times today in which you laid your images
aside, and looked upon the miracle of love the Holy Spirit showed you in their
place. The world and Heaven join in thanking you, for not one Thought of God but
must rejoice as you are saved, and all the world with you.

(10) We will remember this throughout the day, and take the role assigned to us
as part of God's salvation plan, and not our own. Temptation falls away when we
allow each one we meet to save us, and refuse to hide his light behind our
grievances. To everyone you meet, and to the ones you think of or remember from
the past, allow the role of savior to be given, that you may share it with him.
For you both, and all the sightless ones as well, we pray:

Let miracles replace all grievances.<

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 78. Let miracles replace all grievances.

*In this lesson we can see much more specifically that grievances are the
problem and miracles the solution. I might mention that this is the first lesson
that is in blank verse. This has no bearing on the meaning of the lesson of
course, but for those who appreciate Shakespeare, whose primary verse was iambic
pentameter, this is a bonus. Prior to this lesson there were occasional passages
that slipped in and out of blank verse, but this is the first time a lesson is
written entirely in meter. Jesus then shifts back to prose until later. If as
you go through this lesson you find yourself reading in rhythmic cadences, your
are responding to the iambic pentameter, even without being aware of it.*

(1:1) "Perhaps it is not yet quite clear to you that each decision that you make
is one between a grievance and a miracle."

*We think the decisions we make are between A and B, choices that are always
seen as external. Do I see this person or that one? Do I eat this food or
something else? Do I go here or there? Jesus is telling us these choices are but
forms that conceal the underlying and only choice: Do I choose the ego or the
Holy Spirit, attack of forgiveness, grievances or miracles?*

(1:2) "Each grievance stands like a dark shield of hate before the miracle it
would conceal."

*Note the purposive nature of grievances. We have seen that purpose is
everything in A Course in Miracles, and Jesus states that the only question we
should ask of anything is: "What is it for?" (T.17.VI.2.2) The purpose we give
to a circumstance is all the meaning it has. Directly implied here is that the
grievance is a defense, "a dark shield of hate" that prevents us from choosing
the miracle "it would conceal." We are therefore never angry or judgmental for
the reasons we think. We believe our anger is caused by something outside us:
what someone does or says, or a situation we do like. However, this statement
lets us know that the real purpose -- the attack thought's underlying content --
is our desire to hide the miracle from our vision.*

(1:3) "And as you raise it up before your eyes, you will not see the miracle
beyond."

*Why do we not want to see the miracle? If we did, we would be seeing within our
minds, realizing the reason we are upset is that we made the wrong choice. In
other words, we are the dreamers of our dreams, and therefore the only ones who
have the power to change them -- the last thing in the world the ego wants us to
discover. What preserves the belief in the reality of the ego is the fact that
we do not remember we made it up. The ego has no existence in itself, which
means the world that arose from it has no existence either. Their seeming
reality rests in the power of the Son's mind to believe in it.

The ego's problem, to recap our earlier discussions, is not the Love of God, of
which it knows nothing. Its problem is the decision maker, the power of the
Son's mind to choose the ego. This means that at any given moment -- the holy
instant -- the Son can withdraw that power and choose the Holy Spirit's miracle
instead. The ego would then disappear, as would our individual existence. That,
then, is the ego's fear: redemption, not crucifixion (T-13.III.1:10-11). To
ensure this does not happen, the ego makes up an elaborate thought system of
sin, guilt, and fear, and projects this into a specific world in which we can
justifiably hold grievances. These defend against the minds guilt, which in turn
defends against the love in our minds. Thus the ego's "shield of hate" prevents
us from seeing the miracle, thereby preventing our ever choosing it.*

(1:4) "Yet all the while it waits for you in light, but you behold your
grievances instead."

*The miracle of correction waits, which ultimately means the One Who <is> the
correction. Consequently, if you want to keep the Holy Spirit's Love away from
you, you need only pick a fight with someone. Jesus says the same thing in the
manual in the context of the peace of God:

"God's peace can never come where anger is, for anger must deny that peace
exists. Who sees anger as justified in any way or any circumstance proclaims
that peace is meaningless, and must believe that it cannot exist." (M-20.3:3-4).

Anger is like a solid shield or wall, behind which is the Love of God. If you
fear this Love, knowing that in its presence your specialness disappears, you
keep it by fighting with someone -- physically, verbally, or in your thoughts.
The form anger takes does not matter, since the dynamic is the same: the
darkness of our grievances conceals the miracle's light.*

(2:1-2) "Today we go beyond the grievances, to look upon the miracle instead. We
will reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stop before it sees."

*Implied here is that our eyes are not the instruments of seeing. True seeing,
or vision, occurs in our minds, as we have seen many times already. It occurs
only when we choose Jesus as the source of our vision. When we exclude him we
become blind. We "see" separation and sin within; and therefore we think we see
a separated and sinful world without. But none of this is seeing. Recall our
earlier quoted line -- "Nothing so blinding as perception of form" -- now seen
in its fuller context:

"Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a
distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would
give.... The body's eyes see only form. They cannot see beyond what they were
made to see. And they were made to look on error and not see past it. Theirs is
indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look
beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To
this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands
between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yet how can sight that stops at
nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? It is held back by form,
having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived."

"These eyes, made not to see, will never see. For the idea they represent
left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. What was its
maker's goal but not to see? For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not
for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond.
Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning.
Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form means understanding
has been obscured." (T-22.III.4:3;5:3-6:8).

That is why Jesus teaches us never to trust our perceptions. They are based on
form, the shadowy fragment of the ego's thought system of separation and guilt.*

(2:3) "We will not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently
lift our eyes in silence to behold the Son of God."

*In the early years of studying A Course in Miracles, we inevitably think the
Son of God we behold is someone external to us. It is only later, as we work
with the Course over a period of time, that we come to realize that the Son of
God has nothing to do with what our physical eyes see, for we experience him in
the mind, the image of which we project onto others. The Son we have made real
within is thus what we perceive outside: <projection makes perception>. To be
sure, the context of these lessons is the shift in our perception of our special
love or hate partners. In truth, however, we are only changing our minds about
the Son of God <in our minds>. Before we can shift the inner perception of the
Son from guilty to sinless, we need first recognize that the Son is ourselves
and not another. Only then do we happily lay down our shield of hate.*

(3:1-2) "He waits for you behind your grievances, and as you lay them down he
will appear in shining light where each one stood before. For every grievance is
a block to sight, and as it lifts you see the Son of God where he has always
been."

*The Son has always been within his Father, Whom he never left. Therefore he has
always been within the mind, which contains the memory of his Source. The
principle of the Atonement reminds us that the darkness of our hate has no power
over the light; the ego's grievances cannot withstand the face of Christ shining
in forgiveness beyond the block to sight.*

(3:3) "He stands in light, but you were in the dark."

*The Son of God is the Christ Who remains in our right minds through the Holy
Spirit, even though we shrouded him in veils of separation, guilt, and hate.
These are veils that we, in our deluded minds, had chosen to replace the light
in our awareness.*

(3:4--4:1) "Each grievance made the darkness deeper, and you could not see."
"Today we will attempt to see God's Son.

*We come now to another exercise in forgiveness, which helps us see the light
that is just beyond the ego's darkness of hate and judgment. Keep in mind,
again, that the context is seeing God's Son in our brother, against whom we
believe we hold grievances. However, since what we perceive outside mirrors what
we perceive inside, the light of Christ I see in you is nothing more or less
than the Son of God I have made real in my mind. My learning to see God's Son in
you, my brother in specialness, reflects my seeing the same Son in me.*

(4:2-5) "We will not let ourselves be blind to him; we will not look upon our
grievances. So is the seeing of the world reversed, as we look out toward truth,
away from fear. We will select one person you have used as target for your
grievances, and lay the grievances aside and look at him. Someone, perhaps, you
fear and even hate; someone you think you love who angered you; someone you call
a friend, but whom you see as difficult at times or hard to please, demanding,
irritating or untrue to the ideal he should accept as his, according to the role
you set for him."

*In "Dream Roles" near the end of the text, Jesus explains that we get angry at
others because they do not fulfill the role we have given them in our dream
(T-29.IV.4:1). This kind of exercise, repeated in different ways throughout the
workbook is something we should practice all the time, not just when we are
working with a particular lesson. It should be applied whenever we are tempted
to get upset with anyone. Sometimes it is the same person, -- we all have our
favorite targets -- but it could be someone, as Jesus describes here, whom we
think of as a friend or loved one. When people behave in a way that pushes our
buttons, we can see this as an opportunity to realize that the relationship is
only a screen onto which we projected our guilt over having pushed the love of
Jesus away. If we allowed ourselves to experience his love, we could never be
angry or upset with anyone. It would be impossible because of the mind's
principle of <one or the other>: hate of forgiveness; fear or love.

When we find ourselves upset, it is always because: 1) we decided Jesus' love
was too threatening to our specialness, and separated from it; 2) we next
repress the guilt over this perceived sin, committed still again; and 3) sought
and found others onto whom we could project our guilt, magically believing we
had become free of it. We then forget this three-step process, aware only of its
end product -- hurt, anger, and disappointment. At this point we should remind
ourselves of the exercise, returning to our minds to ask Jesus for help, saying,
as a variation of T-5,VII.6:7: "I must be looking at these people wrongly,
because I am blaming my loss of peace on them." We thus use the circumstance as
an opportunity to realize that what we are perceiving outside directly reflects
the sin and guilt we first perceived inside. Instead of seeing it in ourselves
and accepting it there, we had chosen to see it in other people.

It is only in asking Jesus for help -- i.e., joining with him -- that we undo
the cause of our upset, which lies in our guilt over pushing him away. That is
why going to him or the Holy Spirit is a major theme of A Course in Miracles.
Asking Their help is precisely what undoes the root cause of our distress,
regardless of its form. In an important passage at the end of the manual for
teachers, Jesus tells us that asking the Holy Spirit for guidance is the way out
of guilt:

"There is another advantage, -and a very important one,- in referring
decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not
thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy
Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of
the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum. The imagined usurping of
functions not your own is the basis of fear. The whole world you see reflects
the illusion that you have done so, making fear inevitable. To return the
function to the One to Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear. And it is
this that lets the memory of love return to you. Do not, then, think that
following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own
inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you." (T-29.3).

This view of seeking the Holy Spirit's help shifts the focus from the <form> of
what we think we are asking for to the <content> of undoing the ego's arrogance
in thinking it is better off on its own.

The process of healing thus begins with the experience of anger or
disappointment with another, our having repressed the mind's decisions for sin,
guilt, and projection. Our commitment to learning and practicing this course can
be seen in how quickly we are able to ask the Holy Spirit's help to shift how we
see someone outside, as a way of reflecting the shift in how we wish to see
ourselves.*

(5:1-3) "You know the one to choose; his name has crossed your mind already. He
will be the one of whom we ask God's Son be shown to you. Through seeing him
behind the grievances that you have held against him, you will learn that what
lay hidden while you saw him not is there in everyone, and can be seen."

*We find here an intimation of the theme of generalization, which is central to
the next two lesson. If I could accept that I made up my grievances against you
-- and no one has trouble finding someone to use for the exercise -- I will at
some point generalize the lesson and realize I have made up my grievances
against everyone. The darkness I saw in you I saw in all people, because it is
in me. However, the light I now see in you is also in all people, because that,
too, is in me. We have practiced with specifics but only so we can learn to
generalize and recognize there is only one problem and one solution. As Jesus
says later in the workbook:

"The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp
abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. We need to see a little,
that we learn a lot." (W.PI.161.4.7).*

(5:4-6) "He who was enemy is more than friend when he is freed to take the holy
role the Holy Spirit has assigned to him. Let him be savior unto you today.
Such is his role in God your Father's plan."

*Our brother is our savior -- "more than friend" -- not because he possesses
magical attributes, but because we realize that what we are seeing in him is a
projection of what is in our ourselves. This enables us to be saved from our
guilt and the disastrous effects of our wrong choices. Had it not been for this
special relationship, we would have had no opportunity for salvation. This,
then, is the essence of "God's" plan of Atonement: The world, which was made as
an attack on God and substitute for His Love, becomes a classroom in which we
learn to remember Him. There is nothing redeeming in the world itself, but our
redemption comes from giving it a different purpose.*

(6) "Our longer practice periods today will see him in this role. You will
attempt to hold him in your mind, first as you now consider him. You will review
his faults, the difficulties you have had with him, the pain he caused you, his
neglect, and all the little and the larger hurts he gave. You will regard his
body with its flaws and better points as well, and you will think of his
mistakes and even of his "sins."

*Jesus is asking us to be honest with ourselves (and with him) about our
grievances: to hold no perception back from awareness. If we do, we are choosing
to retain some "spots of darkness" (T-31.VIII.12.5) in ourselves that we never
wish to relinquish to the healing light of forgiveness. It is these "spots" we
have projected onto another -- our savior -- that become the means of healing
ourselves.*

(7:1) "Then let us ask of Him Who knows this Son of God in his reality and
truth, that we may look on him a different way, and see our savior shining in
the light of true forgiveness, given unto us."

*Again, we need ask for help to change the wrong choice in our minds, not the
external situation; we change our minds, not someone else. As Jesus says in a
parallel passage from the text:

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy
innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His
beloved Son. Dream of your brother's kindnesses instead of dwelling in your
dreams on his mistakes. Select his thoughtfulness to dream about instead of
counting up the hurts he gave. Forgive him his illusions, and give thanks to him
for all the helpfulness he gave. And do not brush aside his many gifts because
he is not perfect in your dreams." (T.27.VII.15.1-6).*

(7:2-3) "We ask Him in the holy Name of God and of His Son, as holy as Himself:
"Let me behold my savior in this one You have appointed as the one for me to ask
to lead me to the holy light in which he stands, that I may join with him."

*We ask for help "that I may join with him." Strictly speaking, of course, we do
not join with someone else, because we are already joined. However, the
experience of joining with someone undoes the attack thought that kept us
separated. It is really a prayer to ourselves -- the decision-making part of our
minds -- that we begin the process of recognizing that God's Son is one. If I
attack you, my special love or hate partner, I am saying the Son is separated,
split in two: <me> and <you>, and the rest of Sonship contained in you. The
above prayer for the experience of oneness is thus the correction for such
insane thinking.*

(7:4) "The body's eyes are closed, and as you think of him who grieved you, let
your mind be shown the light in him beyond your grievances."

*Jesus is certainly not talking about an external perceptual shift, but a
miraculous shift in the Course's sense of that term: the mind's shift from
grievances to miracles.*

(8:1-3) "What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your savior has been waiting
long for this. He would be free, and make his freedom yours."

*This can be understood on two levels. We each need each other's forgiveness
because we can help each other understand we made the wrong choice and now can
make the correct one. When you identify with your guilt and I attack you, I
reinforce it by saying, in effect, your decision for the ego was right. However,
when I am in my right mind and do not attack, regardless of how you may perceive
me, I send a different message, communicating to you that same choice I made you
can make:"Your mind contains two alternatives. The one you have chosen -- the
one I have chosen as well -- was a mistake. As I have corrected my mind I
represent for you the same choice." Recall the passage from the manual for
teachers we have seen before, in which we say to each other:

"Behold, you Son of God, what life can offer you. Would you choose sickness
[or guilt] in place of this?" (M-5.III.2:11-12).

Ultimately, of course, the savior who "has been waiting long for this" is
ourselves. We understand metaphysically that there is no one out there, and so
the person we perceive is a split-off part of ourselves -- the guilty self that
needs forgiveness. Our misperception of this person thus becomes the means
whereby we correct the original misperception of ourselves.*

(8:3-5) "He would be free, and make his freedom yours. The Holy Spirit leans
from him to you, seeing no separation in God's Son. And what you see through Him
will free you both."

*At this stage of one's work with A Course in Miracles, one would most likely
not be aware that these lines are meant literally. It is not the Holy Spirit
sees me and you as separate, both beloved Sons of God. He does not see us as
separate at all, because we are not. As our experience of the Course deepens
over time, our understanding of lines like these will deepen, too. We will come
to realize that this literally means we are not separate selves, but split-off
parts of a larger self that is one, as our true Self is One.*

(8:6-8) "Be very quiet now, and look upon your shining savior. No dark
grievances obscure the sight of him. You have allowed the Holy Spirit to express
through him the role God gave Him that you might be saved."

*Our quietness is the result of having silenced the ego's shrieking voice of
specialness, allowing us to hear the gentle sound of the Holy Spirit's
Atonement. His vision of the inherent sinlessness of God's Son is allowed to
replace the darkened sight of grievances and hate. This vision embraces the
Sonship as one -- my brother and myself -- as I come to recognize my savior in
the very person I had chosen to exclude from love: the savior who is my self.*

(9) "God thanks you for these quiet times today in which you laid your images
aside, and looked upon the miracle of love the Holy Spirit showed you in their
place. The world and Heaven join in thanking you, for not one Thought of God but
must rejoice as you are saved, and all the world with you."

*The gratitude is our own, for finally having made the right choice: oneness
instead of separation; miracles instead of grievances; God instead of the ego.
In that choice is all the Sonship healed as it remembers the unity it had never
destroyed, its voice joined at last with the song of gratitude -- the prayer of
love -- Jesus describes in the beautiful opening to The Song of Prayer:

"Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son at his creation.
It was then what it is to become; the single voice Creator and creation share;
the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto
the Son. Endless the harmony, and endless, too, the joyous concord of the Love
They give forever to Each Other. And in this, creation is extended. God gives
thanks to His extension in His Son. His Son gives thanks for his creation, in
the song of his creating in his Father's Name. The Love They share is what all
prayer will be throughout eternity, when time is done. For such it was before
time seemed to be." (S-1.in.1.)*

(10) "We will remember this throughout the day, and take the role assigned to us
as part of God's salvation plan, and not our own. Temptation falls away when we
allow each one we meet to save us, and refuse to hide his light behind our
grievances. To everyone you meet, and to the ones you think of or remember from
the past, allow the role of savior to be given, that you may share it with him.
For you both, and all the sightless ones as well, we pray:
"Let miracles replace all grievances."

*This, again, is an expression of the oneness of God's Son. As long as we
believe he is many -- separate bodies involved with other bodies -- we need to
practice with each one, applying "God's salvation plan": the forgiveness of our
special relationships. Each person then becomes our individual savior, for each
offers the opportunity of being saved from the mistaken choice of making the
separation real. At some point we realize that each person is every person, and,
finally, that <there is no person out there at all> -- only the one Son of God
contained in our minds. Since minds are joined, God's Son is in all people as
well. This vision of the light of miracles replacing the darkened veil of
grievances is given lovely expression in "The Savior's Vision":

"Behold your role within the universe! To every part of true creation has
the Lord of Love and Life entrusted all salvation from the misery of hell. And
to each one has He allowed the grace to be a savior to the holy ones especially
entrusted to his care. And this he learns when first he looks upon one brother
as he looks upon himself, and sees the mirror of himself in him. Thus is the
concept of himself laid by, for nothing stands between his sight and what he
looks upon, to judge what he beholds. And in this single vision does he see the
face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone as he beholds this one. For
there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his
sight." (T-31.VII.8).

We move now to Lessons 79 and 80, which present the familiar theme of salvation,
but expressed differently. Our symphony based on the theme of forgiveness thus
continue, with its almost endless series of variations.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 77. I am entitled to miracles.

#93076

Lesson 77. I am entitled to miracles.

(1) You are entitled to miracles because of what you are. You will receive
miracles because of what God is. And you will offer miracles because you are one
with God. Again, how simple is salvation! It is merely a statement of your true
Identity. It is this that we will celebrate today.

(2) Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself. It
does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself, nor on any
of the rituals you have devised. It is inherent in the truth of what you are. It
is implicit in what God your Father is. It was ensured in your creation, and
guaranteed by the laws of God.

(3) Today we will claim the miracles which are your right, since they belong to
you. You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been
assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost. We ask no
more than what belongs to us in truth. Today, however, we will also make sure
that we will not content ourselves with less.

(4) Begin the longer practice periods by telling yourself quite confidently that
you are entitled to miracles. Closing your eyes, remind yourself that you are
asking only for what is rightfully yours. Remind yourself also that miracles are
never taken from one and given to another, and that in asking for your rights,
you are upholding the rights of everyone. Miracles do not obey the laws of this
world. They merely follow from the laws of God.

(5) After this brief introductory phase, wait quietly for the assurance that
your request is granted. You have asked for the salvation of the world, and for
your own. You have requested that you be given the means by which this is
accomplished. You cannot fail to be assured in this. You are but asking that the
Will of God be done.

(6) In doing this, you do not really ask for anything. You state a fact that
cannot be denied. The Holy Spirit cannot but assure you that your request is
granted. The fact that you accepted must be so. There is no room for doubt and
uncertainty today. We are asking a real question at last. The answer is a simple
statement of a simple fact. You will receive the assurance that you seek.

(7) Our shorter practice periods will be frequent, and will also be devoted to a
reminder of a simple fact. Tell yourself often today:

I am entitled to miracles.<

Ask for them whenever a situation arises in which they are called for. You will
recognize these situations. And since you are not relying on yourself to find
the miracle, you are fully entitled to receive it whenever you ask.

(8) Remember, too, not to be satisfied with less than the perfect answer. Be
quick to tell yourself, should you be tempted:

I will not trade miracles for grievances.

I want only what belongs to me.
God has established miracles as my right.<

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 77. "I am entitled to miracles."

*This is the first mention of miracles in the workbook. There is an indirect
reference earlier in the lessons, but discussion of this central theme occurs
here for the first time. Since it is so easily misunderstood, I shall talk
briefly about the miracle before moving into the lesson itself.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus is fond of using terms that seem to suggest one
thing, and providing them with an entirely different meaning. The term
<miracles>, which gives its name to the Course, is a prime example. Almost
everyone associates the word with something external. Whether or not one
believes in the Bible, everyone in our Western world has been influenced by the
accounts of various miracles described in the Old and the New Testaments. An
examination shows that they involve some change in the body or the world,
whether it is the parting of the Red Sea, healing of illness, or raising the
dead. In the Course, miracles are understood differently, having nothing to do
with the external, but only with a change of mind. Lessons 77 and 78 indicate
that the best way of thinking about a miracle is as a correction for our faulty
perceptions and, above all, as the means for undoing our distress and pain. In
Lesson 193 Jesus explains that all distress comes from a lack of forgiveness:
"Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness"
(W.PI.193.4.1); and in our next lesson he discusses miracles as the answer to
our grievances.

As we go through these lessons, therefore, think of the miracle as a change of
mind or, even more specifically, a change of teachers: from the ego to the Holy
Spirit. That change corrects all misperceptions and misthoughts, the source of
our suffering. Therefore, when Jesus says at the beginning of this lesson "I am
entitled to miracles," he, again, is not referring to something external, nor
God's grace descending upon us from on high, blessing us, our families, or
anyone else. We are entitled to the end of our pain simply because we are God's
Son, who cannot be in pain. He may dream he suffers, dream he separated from God
but the truth is that he remains as God created him. The miracle is Jesus name
for the dynamic that allows us to understand that everything we have made -- our
personal and collective worlds -- is a dream. We are the dreamers of this dream,
and therefore we are the ones who can change our minds about it, as we see in
this passage from the text:

"Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and
dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of
someone else's dream. ... The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you
who the dreamer is. It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are
still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do you wish for dreams
of healing, or for dreams of death?" (T.28.II.4.1-4).

We turn now to the lesson, which takes us another step towards accepting the
dreams of healing, the precursor to our awakening from the sleep of separation:*

(1:1-2) "You are entitled to miracles because of what you are. You will receive
miracles because of what God is."

*The source of the miracle is the presence of Jesus or the Holy Spirit in our
minds. This presence reminds us of who we are as God's one Son. In "Principles
of Miracles," Jesus explains that their Source is beyond our evaluation
(T-1.1.2:2), meaning God is beyond understanding. Jesus or the Holy Spirit
reflect God's truth -- the Atonement principle -- which is that the separation
from God never happened. Thus, we will receive miracles because we have
<already> received them. The correction is fully present in our minds, awaiting
our acceptance.*

(1:3) "And you will offer miracles because you are one with God."

*When we choose the miracle -- the choice to return to our minds and change the
decision from the ego to the Holy Spirit -- we have undone the belief in
separation. In that holy instant there is no separation. In that holy instant
there is no separated Son of God, only the <one> Son. Thus does the miracle we
have accepted naturally extend through us to the whole Sonship, because our
healed mind <is> the whole Sonship. In the instant we have chosen Jesus -- the
great symbol of the one Son -- as our teacher and identified with his love, we
become like him. Helen's "A Jesus Prayer," expresses the fervent wish that this
be so, in our first of several references to this inspired and inspiring poem:

A perfect picture of what I can be
You show to me, that I might help renew
Your brothers' failing sight. As they look up
Let them not look on me, but only on You." (The Gifts of God, p.83.)

Moreover, Jesus tells us in the text that when we take his hand we reach beyond
the ego because he is beyond the ego:

"I go before you because I am beyond the ego. Reach, therefore, for my hand
because you want to transcend the ego." (T.8.V.6.7-8)

In the holy instant we have transcended thoughts of separation, and offer
miracles in the sense that we are one with God when we have chosen His Teacher.
As one with our Creator, we must then be one with His creation; a unity that
embraces its seemingly separated fragments.

The words of the lesson seems to suggest that a miracle is something we do. In
fact, many statements early in the text seem to suggest that as well. As we have
discussed previously, however, the language of A Course in Miracles allows Jesus
to speak to us on a level that we can understand, which involves experiencing
ourselves and others as bodies. Although the language in many places suggests
that miracles involve behavior, in truth they are but correction thoughts we
choose and therefore accept. Again, once accepted, the miracle naturally extends
through our joined minds. We, as separated individuals -- body and ego -- do not
do anything. We do not offer miracles on a bodily level, nor do we receive them
there. The miracle is simply a process of decision in our minds that allows
extension to occur.*

(1:4) "Again, how simple is salvation!"

*This is a recurring theme throughout A Course in Miracles. Salvation is simple
because it says, for example: "what is false is false, and what is true has
never changed." (W.PII.Q10.1.1) What is false is the ego system, regardless of
the many forms in which it comes; and what has never changed is the truth of
God. As Jesus repeatedly reminds us: What could be more simple? *

(1:5-6) "It is merely a statement of your true Identity. It is this that we will
celebrate today."

*Choosing the miracle corrects the misperceptions we are an ego, we have a split
mind, and we are not as God created us. When we realize what we are <not>, the
memory of who we are -- Christ, the Identity of God's Son -- will dawn on our
minds.*

(2:1) "Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself."

*The primary illusion about ourselves is that we are bodies. We are therefore
not entitled to miracles on the bodily level to better our dream or those of our
loved ones. Our true claim is to a change in mind or, again more and more to the
point, a change in teachers. Thus we are taught by our new teacher that we are
not travesties of our Self: bodies instead of spirit. Recall Jesus' statement to
Helen in "The Gifts of God": "For I am not a dream that comes in mockery" (The
Gifts of God, p.121). In other words, Jesus is not a body, the hero of the dream
that would mock our creation as spirit. Likewise, neither are we. Thus we claim
the miracle of correction that reminds us of the truth about ourselves.*

(2:2) "It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself,
nor on any of the rituals you have devised."

*From the perspective of A Course in Miracles, the miracles that are described
in the Bible are forms of magic. They are what one miraculous body does on
behalf of other bodies. The Biblical God, too, is very much involved in the
physical world, and He is portrayed as the source of the miracles, often working
through His chosen agents -- the prophets or Jesus himself. All these are forms
of magic because they have nothing to do with a change of mind. The problem
requiring the miracle's intervention is external to the mind. In fact, there is
nothing in the Bible about a mind -- even though the word is used occasionally
-- in the sense in which it is defined in the Course. The problem is thus
perceived to be external, and the miracle correspondingly acts to remedy the
problem.

In A Course in Miracles this is all different. The source of the problem is
shifted from the body to the mind that conceived of the problem. This is
ultimately some aspect of guilt, which can be solved only by the miracle.*

(2:3-5) "It is inherent in the truth of what you are. It is implicit in what God
your Father is. It was ensured in your creation, and guaranteed by the laws of
God."

*The truth of what we are is Christ, and His memory is in our right minds
through the presence of the Holy Spirit. That is where the miracle is found
waiting to be chosen. The "It" throughout this paragraph refers to our claim to
miracles. We are entitled to them because of who we are as God's Son, which
means we are entitled to the correction already present in us.*

(3) "Today we will claim the miracles which are your right, since they belong to
you. You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been
assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost. We ask no
more than what belongs to us in truth. Today, however, we will also make sure
that we will not content ourselves with less."

*Again, miracles belong to us because they are within our minds, and cannot be
found in anything outside them. The promise of the "full release from the world
that you made," and the assurance "that the Kingdom of God is within you, and
can never be lost," is the purpose of the Atonement principle -- the separation
from God never happened. It is the truth of the Holy Spirit that releases us
from the world, because the world came from the belief that we did in fact
separate, a belief that initiated the development of the thought system of
individuality -- sin, guilt, and fear -- culminating in the projection that made
the world. Therefore, if there is no individuality, because the separation from
God never happened, we are automatically released from the world. This is the
truth to which we are entitled because we <are> the truth: an extension of God's
loving Will.

We see here a recurring theme in A Course in Miracles: By choosing the ego
instead of the Holy Spirit, littleness instead of magnitude (T-15.III), we
settle for a parody of our creation instead of the glorious truth of who we are.
In other words, we settle for the crumbs instead of the banquet, the parts of
the song itself. Thus we are told in the opening pages of The Song of Prayer:

"The real sound is always a song of thanksgiving and of Love."
"You cannot, then, ask for the echo. It is the song that is the gift. Along
with it come the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes, but these are secondary.
In true prayer you hear only the song. All the rest is merely added. You have
sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else has indeed been given you."
(S-1.1.2.9-3:5).

Or, as Jesus says of "the forgotten song": "The notes are nothing" (T-21,1.7:1).
Our preferring life in the body to life as spirit is the height, not only of
insanity, but of self-depreciation. Jesus says further in the text:

"Be not content with littleness. But be sure you understand what littleness
is, and why you could never be content with it. Littleness is the offering you
give yourself. You offer this in place of magnitude, and you accept it.
Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness,
in the strange belief that littleness can content you. When you strive for
anything in this world in the belief that it will bring you peace, you are
belittling yourself and blinding yourself to glory. Littleness and glory are the
choices open to your striving and your vigilance. You will always choose one at
the expense of the other." (T-15.III.1).

In summary, we are told that our problem is that we ask for far too little, and
not for too much (T-26.VII.II:7). We are indeed entitled to everything.*

(4:1-2) "Begin the longer practice periods by telling yourself quite confidently
that you are entitled to miracles. Closing your eyes, remind yourself that you
are asking only for what is rightfully yours."

*We have repeatedly seen the importance of using these ideas whenever we are
tempted to believe we are separated: feeling special, angry, guilty, anxious, or
depressed. Having thus made real some aspect of the ego thought system, we need
to realize as soon as possible that we have made the wrong choice of the wrong
teacher. At this point we ask for help to see that the problem we are
experiencing is one we made up because we needed it to preserve our individual
identity. This self is in the mind, chosen by the decision maker, and as long as
we see the problem in the world or body, we affirm our mindlessness. Thus there
is no way we can change our minds, a state that is the ego's salvation, and with
which we have all so strongly identified. That is why exercises such as these
are so vital for our unlearning.*

(4:3-5) "Remind yourself also that miracles are never taken from one and given
to another, and that in asking for your rights, you are upholding the rights of
everyone. Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from
the laws of God."

*The five laws of chaos discussed in Chapter 23 of the text, are the most cogent
descriptions in A Course in Miracles of these "laws of the world." The fourth
law of chaos says that "You have what you have taken" (T-23.II.9:3), which rests
on the now-familiar teaching of the ego: <one or the other> -- if you have it, I
do not; if I have it, you do not. Thus, if you have the innocence and I want it,
I must take it from you. This establishes you as sinful -- being without
innocence -- leaving me as sinless, for I have taken your innocent state and
made it my own.

The law of God is that we are one. What is therefore true for you must be true
for me. The laws of the ego -- the laws of chaos -- rest on the belief in
differences are real (T-23.II.2;1-3). A Course in Miracles teaches instead that
there is only one law in Heaven -- perfect Oneness and Love. Miracles are thus
present in everyone. There are no exceptions because there can be no exceptions
in Heaven's truth or its reflections on earth.*

(5) "After this brief introductory phase, wait quietly for the assurance that
your request is granted. You have asked for the salvation of the world, and for
your own. You have requested that you be given the means by which this is
accomplished. You cannot fail to be assured in this. You are but asking that the
Will of God be done."

*As the text reminds us -- <twice> : "The outcome is as certain as God"
(T-2.III.3:10; T-4.II.5.8). We cannot fail. However, we believe we can, if we do
not avail ourselves of the means -- the miracle or forgiveness -- that is
provided by the Holy Spirit to help us remember the Will that God has for us, to
remember that we <are> His Will. In that remembrance, brought about by the
miracle, is salvation come.*

(6) "In doing this, you do not really ask for anything. You state a fact that
cannot be denied. The Holy Spirit cannot but assure you that your request is
granted. The fact that you accepted must be so. There is no room for doubt and
uncertainty today. We are asking a real question at last. The answer is a simple
statement of a simple fact. You will receive the assurance that you seek."

*The problem, as we have seen many times, is our arrogance in thinking we know
the problem and therefore know which question to ask, always some version of:
How do I behave? What should I say? What is the answer to my problem? Where
should I move? What job should I take? What relationship should I be involved
with? All these are but pseudo-questions, designed to distract us from realizing
the true problem of separation, the focus of Lessons 79 and 80.

In truth we are not asking <for> anything. We ask the Holy Spirit to help us
realize we made a mistake, and can now make the correct choice. That is the
meaning of Jesus saying early in the text that "the only meaningful prayer is
for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven have everything"
(T-3.V.6:3). Our true prayer is that we accept the miracle or correction that is
already present within us. This means we have to take our eyes off the
distractions -- perceived problems, either in my body or another's -- bringing
them to our minds so we can understand the problem is not something outside, but
a mistaken choice within. Again, this correction is the essence of the miracle,
and asking for it is the only real request we can make, the answer to which is
found in the holy instant, as the following passage explains:

"Therefore, attempt to solve no problems in a world from which the answer
has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place that holds the answer
lovingly for you. Here are the answers that will solve your problems because
they stand apart from them, and see what can be answered; what the question is.
Within the world the answers merely raise another question, though they leave
the first unanswered. In the holy instant, you can bring the question to the
answer, and receive the answer that was made for you." (T-27.IV.7).*

(7:1-4) "Our shorter practice periods will be frequent, and will also be devoted
to a reminder of a simple fact. Tell yourself often today:

I am entitled to miracles.<

Ask for them whenever a situation arises in which they are called for."

*Jesus is again telling us that these lessons -- and therefore his course --
have no meaning if we do not use them to help undo our pain and distress. He
asks us to think very specifically of the idea for today, and go to it for help
when we are upset and tempted to blame someone or something else for our
discomfort.*

(7:5-6) "You will recognize these situations. And since you are not relying on
yourself to find the miracle, you are fully entitled to receive it whenever you
ask."

*This is an extremely important point -- the big shift. Heretofore we have
relied on ourselves, or a projected image of ourselves we call Jesus, the Holy
Spirit, or God -- some magical savior figures who will undo our pain and
distress without <our> having to change our minds. The plea to these magical
savior figures was really a prayer for magic, not true healing. Jesus is now
assuming we are no longer telling ourselves what the problem is, and therefore
not asking the image we made of him to solve the problem for us. Instead, we go
to the source of the problem, the mind's decision to be on its own and be right,
rather than happy. Truly asking Jesus or the Holy Spirit for help says we do no
want to be on our own anymore, ensuring that the miracle will once again be
ours. A special message to Helen addressed this very issue, Jesus cautioning his
scribe against trying to define the problem that needed answering:

"Any specific question involves a large number of assumptions which
inevitably limit the answer. A specific question is actually a decision about
the kind of answer that is acceptable. The purpose of words is to limit, and by
limiting, to make more manageable. But that means manageable by you." (Absence
from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of A Course in
Miracles. p.445).

The point lies in our recognizing that all problems are the same, and therefore
asking for the miracle -- asking ourselves to choose it -- is the only
meaningful thing to do. Only the miracle allows true and unlimited correction of
the separation to occur.*

(8) "Remember, too, not to be satisfied with less than the perfect answer. Be
quick to tell yourself, should you be tempted:

I will not trade miracles for grievances.

I want only what belongs to me.
God has established miracles as my right.<"

*This paragraph leads into the next lesson's theme: miracles and grievances are
mutually exclusive states. The former reside in our right minds, when we choose
the Holy Spirit as our Teacher; the latter in our wrong minds, when we project
responsibility for our attack onto others, even God Himself.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 76. I am under no laws but God's.

#93075

Lesson 76. I am under no laws but God's.

(1) We have observed before how many senseless things have seemed to you to be
salvation. Each has imprisoned you with laws as senseless as itself. You are not
bound by them. Yet to understand that this is so, you must first realize
salvation lies not there. While you would seek for it in things that have no
meaning, you bind yourself to laws that make no sense. Thus do you seek to prove
salvation is where it is not.

(2) Today we will be glad you cannot prove it. For if you could, you would
forever seek salvation where it is not, and never find it. The idea for today
tells you once again how simple is salvation. Look for it where it waits for
you, and there it will be found. Look nowhere else, for it is nowhere else.

(3) Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the
strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you. You really think that you
would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal
discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your
veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death. You really
think you are alone unless another body is with you.

(4) It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them
under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve
no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics and of
health. Protect the body, and you will be saved.

(5) These are not laws, but madness. The body is endangered by the mind that
hurts itself. The body suffers just in order that the mind will fail to see it
is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to
hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it
attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your "laws" would save the
body. It is for this you think you are a body.

(6) There are no laws except the laws of God. This needs repeating, over and
over, until you realize it applies to everything that you have made in
opposition to God's Will. Your magic has no meaning. What it is meant to save
does not exist. Only what it is meant to hide will save you.

(7) The laws of God can never be replaced. We will devote today to rejoicing
that this is so. It is no longer a truth that we would hide. We realize instead
it is a truth that keeps us free forever. Magic imprisons, but the laws of God
make free. The light has come because there are no laws but His.

(8) We will begin the longer practice periods today with a short review of the
different kinds of "laws" we have believed we must obey. These would include,
for example, the "laws" of nutrition, of immunization, of medication, and of the
body's protection in innumerable ways. Think further; you believe in the "laws"
of friendship, of "good" relationships and reciprocity. Perhaps you even think
that there are laws which set forth what is God's and what is yours. Many
"religions" have been based on this. They would not save but damn in Heaven's
name. Yet they are no more strange than other "laws" you hold must be obeyed to
make you safe.

(9) There are no laws but God's. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and
hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth to
you. You will be listening to One Who says there is no loss under the laws of
God. Payment is neither given nor received. Exchange cannot be made; there are
no substitutes; and nothing is replaced by something else. God's laws forever
give and never take.

(10) Hear Him Who tells you this, and realize how foolish are the "laws" you
thought upheld the world you thought you saw. Then listen further. He will tell
you more. About the Love your Father has for you. About the endless joy He
offers you. About His yearning for His only Son, created as His channel for
creation; denied to Him by his belief in hell.

(11) Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us
to Him. Thus is creation endlessly increased. His Voice will speak of this to
us, as well as of the joys of Heaven which His laws keep limitless forever. We
will repeat today's idea until we have listened and understood there are no laws
but God's. Then we will tell ourselves, as a dedication with which the practice
period concludes:

I am under no laws but God's.

(12) We will repeat this dedication as often as possible today; at least four or
five times an hour, as well as in response to any temptation to experience
ourselves as subject to other laws throughout the day. It is our statement of
freedom from all danger and all tyranny. It is our acknowledgment that God is
our Father, and that His Son is saved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 76. I am under no laws but God's.

*If memory serves me correctly, it was well over twenty years ago that questions
asked about the two levels on which A Course in Miracles was written. As I
discussed in the Prelude, Level One is the Course's metaphysics foundation,
which contrasts the reality of God and Heaven with the illusion of the ego's
thought system and the world that arose from it. On this level there is no
compromise between truth and illusion. Level Two treats <only> the illusory
realm, contrasting the ego's wrong-minded thought system of separation with the
Holy Spirit's thought system of Atonement.

The reason students find this lesson so difficult, not to mention infuriating,
is their confusion of these levels, not understanding that the purpose of Level
Two discourse is to meet us in the illusionary state we believe we are in, and
not to make statements of absolute truth. Thus, even though the body is
inherently illusory, we are not asked to dismiss it. Quite the contrary. We are
asked to pay careful attention to it and its place in our special relationship,
for these become the classrooms in which we learn the Holy Spirit's lessons in
forgiveness.

From this perspective we can see how Jesus pokes fun at the body; more
importantly, at our use of it. You may recall Jesus' statement that it is
practically impossible to deny our physical experience in this world
(T-2.IV.3:10). Therefore he is not asking us in this lesson to deny our bodies
by not taking medicine, let alone not eating, breathing, spending money, etc.
Rather, Jesus presents a vision of what it is like to be in the real world,
without the belief in bodies. A passage in "The Attainment of the Real World"
highlights the complete absence of separation that characterizes this advanced
state of mind:

"The real world ... has no buildings and there are no streets where people
walk alone and separate. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of
things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes
not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss.
Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever".(T.13.VII.1.)

This is not describing a physical place, but the healed mind in which the
thought of separation has been undone. In that state, the holy instant wherein
we have accepted the Atonement for ourselves, there is no longer a body "At no
single instant does the body exist at ll." [T.18.VII.3.1] ) Therefore if there
is no body, there can be no laws to govern it. That is the point here. Jesus is
not making fun of us, nor, again, challenging us to give up our beliefs in the
necessity for medicine, food, or relationships. He simply reminds us that we
believe in is not really there. The new understanding enables us not longer to
take our physical and psychological experiences in the world as seriously as we
once did, reflecting our having learned not to take the tiny, mad idea of
separation seriously either ( T-27.VIII.6.2-5)

Once again, this is not meant to be a statement in which Jesus is pressuring us
to give up our belief in the body. In fact, he says in the text:

"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" Ask
only, "Do I really wish to see him sinless?" (T.20.VII.9.1-2).

Rather than having us deny our experience that bodies exist external to us,
Jesus stresses that his goal for us is to change our <minds> about the body,
i.e., its purpose. He urges us no longer to project our perceived sin onto
others, thereby attacking them and reinforcing the belief in separate interests.
Forgiveness -- <the> message of A Course in Miracles -- rests on the simple
premise that our interests are one. *

(1:1) "We have observed before how many senseless things have seemed to you to
be salvation."

*The reference of course is to our special love objects, the idols we made to
show God we did not need His Love. Special hate objects function that way as
well, insofar as we feel salvation comes when we can truly hate another or
suffer pain. By blaming someone (or something) other than our selves for our
misery, we establish our innocence. Salvation, then, takes either form, and the
ego does not care whether it is special love or hate, as long as salvation is
seen to be external to our minds.*

(1:2-4) "Each has imprisoned you with laws as senseless as itself. You are not
bound by them. Yet to understand that this is so, you must first realize
salvation lies not there."

*This is a reference to the laws of specialness, which center on the rock on
which the ego's salvation rests: <one or the other> -- someone must lose so that
another can win. Every law of the ego -- in the mind as in the world -- reflects
this basic principle. One finds them as well in the ego's five laws of chaos
(T-23.II), the virtual grandfather of all laws. The key point is that these laws
not only emanate from the mind, but they remain there as well, following the
fundamental principle <ideas leave not their source.> Yet they do appear to be
external, and our lives are governed by them. The truth, however, is that we are
bound only by our mind's decision, and this is truly good news. We have very
little -- if any -- control over the body's laws, and this would seem to condemn
us to a life of hopeless victimization, the helplessness felt by almost all
people. But only <we> -- the decision-making part of our minds -- can control
the fact that we have chosen to identify with these laws. Therein lies our true
help.

This is an extremely important concept to grasp, for it would keep you honest as
you work through this lesson. In order to understand why you are under no laws
but God's, and why you are not bound by any of the body's laws, you must first
realize that you have a mind, because that is where salvation lies. The problem
is that we do not believe we do. No matter how many times Jesus tells us this in
A Course in Miracles, no matter how many times we read the same lines, there
remains a part of us that does not believe it, because we still believe he is
teaching us <as a body>. He repeatedly teaches how we are not really here, and
so the body does not do anything: it is not born, nor does it live or die; it
does not suffer pain or feel pleasure. In other words, everything occurs in the
mind. Yet this means absolutely nothing to us, because, again, we still think
Jesus is talking to us as a person, living in a body. We refuse to go to the
source of this self -- the mind -- that is not in the body at all, and find the
real problem. Were we to find this in our minds -- the guilt over the separation
-- we would see the answer of the Atonement.

This lesson, then, is a plea to all of us to pay careful attention and think
about what Jesus is teaching us in A Course in Miracles. When he has us say over
and over again -- as he does later in the sixth review -- "I am not a body. I am
free. For I am still as God created me," he means that very literally as well.
We must be really clear that we do <not> believe it, because we still think that
Jesus, a separated person, is talking to <us>, as separated persons, and
teaching <us> very nice things. However, we do not yet realize he is not
teaching us as a body. What we think of as our bodily self but reflects a
thought in the mind. This is such an important lesson because it points out so
clearly the illusory nature of the body. Just as clear, if we study it
carefully, is the reason we have so much trouble with it: <We do not want to
believe it!> The basis of our difficulty is the refusal to accept that salvation
does not lie outside us, but rather within our minds, the locus of both the
problem and answer.*

(1:5-6) "While you would seek for it in things that have no meaning, you bind
yourself to laws that make no sense. Thus do you seek to prove salvation is
where it is not."

*That, again, is the problem: We do not want to know we have a mind, for if we
do, we will at some point choose against the ego, and our individuality will
disappear. The ego tells us the problem is sin and guilt, found either in our
body or someone else's. Since that is where the problem is, salvation is found
there as well. If I believe sin is in my body, I believe in suffering and
sacrifice; if I believe it is in yours, I believe in judgment and attack. The
ego's plan for salvation therefore consists of punishing the body -- mine or
yours.

Evading the truth that we have a mind can take another form. For example, A
Course in Miracles says that I am under no laws but God's and that I am not a
body. Therefore since my body is an illusion, I do not have to see doctors; nor
need I lock my car or apartment; I do not have to care for my body and so it
does not matter what I eat or what I do. These are a few examples of what I
refer to as "blissninnyhood": the simplistic and naive denial of the body and
its problems. Rather than accepting the fundamental unreality of the body as a
shadow of guilt, "blissninnies" simply deny they have a body, which renders the
source of the shadow -- our mind's guilt -- even more inaccessible. Thus does
the answer of the Atonement remain buried still further beneath the ego's
arsenal of defenses.

This lesson is certainly <not> intended to discourage Course in Miracle students
from seeking medical attention, or to decline inoculation if they plan to travel
abroad, for example. It is not meant to discourage students from eating foods
that are good for them, or doing whatever it is that they believe is healthy. We
all have some notion of what is good in this regard -- and whatever you believe
in is what you should do. Moreover, Jesus is not saying you should give up
friendship or anything that reflects the laws of the world. He is simply saying
it would be of value to realize the source of these laws, and to understand
their place in the ego's thought system. Only then may you choose to shift their
purpose so that they fill their more proper place in the Holy Spirit's thought
system of correction.

Implicit in all of this, to make the important point again, is the necessity of
realizing the tremendous resistance we have to accepting the fact we are not
bodies. This is an important theme in the text, and is one of the centerpieces
of the workbook. Again, Jesus uses these statements to poke gentle fun at us, as
he does in these passages from the text that highlight the futility of trying to
protect the body and make it real and attractive:

"Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and
pamper it, and make it live?" (T.23.II.18.8)

"What would you save it [the body] for? For in that choice lie both its
health and harm. Save it for show, as bait to catch another fish, to house your
specialness in better style, or weave a frame of loveliness around your hate,
and you condemn it to decay and death." (T.24.VII.4.4-6)

"It [the body] puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal
discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get
them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does
not need and does not even want. (T.27.VIII.2.2-3)

Thus we are encouraged to ask Jesus for help learning not to take our bodily
identification so seriously. But -- one more time -- he is not asking us to
<deny> our bodies in the process.

We would know we have fallen into the trap of seriousness when we find ourselves
becoming impatient with those who do not deny their body or accusing others of
not doing A Course in Miracles right, seeing that they have physical or
psychological concerns. Those judgments should be a red flag, indicating we are
accusing others of what we secretly accuse ourselves. Remember, we want the
complete patience the previous lesson spoke about, and we cannot have it without
being completely gentle. Patience and gentleness go hand in hand -- that is why
they are among the ten characteristics of God's teachers. (M-4.IV,VIII). *

(2:1) "Today we will be glad you cannot prove it."

*The part of us that clings to our individual and special self is <not> glad! We
need to be aware of our resistance to being truly glad that salvation is not
outside of us but within. That awareness will eventually make it possible for
true gladness to come.*

(2:2-4) "For if you could, you would forever seek salvation where it is not, and
never find it. The idea for today tells you once again how simple is salvation.
Look for it where it waits for you, and there it will be found."

*Salvation waits for us, and so the one we have to be patient with is ourselves
-- to choose the salvation that awaits us in our minds. We must be willing to
<seek> salvation where we can <find> it. To achieve that goal Jesus instructs us
in seeing the body as the effect of the mind, which is the cause: the <cause>
that is the problem; the <cause> that is the solution. What could be simpler?*

(3) "Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the
strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you. You really think that you
would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal
discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your
veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death. You really
think you are alone unless another body is with you."

*Jesus is taking three of the most important aspects of our existence here:
dependence on <money>, fear of <sickness> and need to go to doctors for help,
and the <special relationship that says if I do not have another person with me,
I will be alone in my misery. However, Jesus is not telling us to give these
things up; merely to look at our investment in them.

Near the end of the Psychotherapy pamphlet, in a section called "The Question
Payment" (P-3.III), Jesus discusses money, but does not say therapists should
not charge their patients. He says that "even an advanced therapist has some
earthly needs while he is here" (P-3.III.1:3), and will thus require payment. It
is evident, however, that Jesus is not talking about money <per se>, but rather
the therapist's attitude that would lead to gouging patients, for example, or
that would insist that they pay even if they lacked funds. Again, as long as we
are here we are going to have needs, which means money is a necessity.
Therefore, Jesus is not against our making money, just as he is not against our
taking care of he body. He is helping us shift our emphasis from the body to the
mind, which the understanding of purpose allows us to do.

At the end of the journey, in the real world, there will be no emphasis at all
on the body, because we shall have realized there is none. At the point,
recognizing the illusory nature of the body is not denial, nor is it the basis
of affirmations to repress an experience with which we do not want to deal. We
have become aware of what Jesus refers to in the text as "a simple statement of
a simple fact" (T-26.III.4:5). What enables us to reach this simple fact of the
real world, in which there is no separation and no body, is gently looking at
our investment in denying both the guilt and Atonement that are in our minds. We
learn we are gentle with ourselves by the degree to which we are gentle with
others. When we <un>gently judge them, it is only because we have attacked
ourselves for pushing Jesus away once again. Further, since he is within, we
have pushed the mind away as well, which roots our attention to the body, the
ego's principal form of protection and the consummation of its plan for
salvation.*

(4) "It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them
under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve
no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics and of
health. Protect the body, and you will be saved."

*It is essential that you take care of your body <as long as you think you are
one.> Not doing so as long as you identify with it is only an expression of
self-hatred and self-punishment, not to mention silliness. <Taking care of your
body can therefore be a gentle and kind way of forgiving yourself.> Remember, no
one who reads A Course in Miracles fully believes in what Jesus says, because if
he or she did they would not need it. We very much believe we are bodies. In
fact, these lessons are geared specifically to those who believe in them. As
bodies we live in time, and it is obvious these lessons are geared toward
time-bound people. Almost every lesson mentions some aspect of our temporal
existence -- minutes, hours, days, weeks, years -- because Jesus' students
believe they are bodies existing in time and space, and he does not ask us to
deny them. Once again, he but asks that we be gentle and kind towards our and
other people's bodies, reflecting the desire to forgive ourselves for our misuse
of them, the shadow of our misuse of the mind.

Nonetheless, it is also important for us to recognize that these "laws" hold
<only> because we have given them power to do so. We are not bound to the body's
laws, but rather to our mind's decision to be a body, which as been specifically
designed to be under the laws that appear to bind us. Thus it is that we seek
"protect the body ... [to] be saved," while our true protection -- the Atonement
-- is kept buried beneath the ego's laws of guilt and specialness.*

(5:1) "These are not laws, but madness."

*They are madness because in reality there are only God's laws: the laws of
love, oneness, and eternal life. All other "laws" are outside the Mind of God,
and therefore dwell in the ego's mind of madness. ... The next paragraph
explicitly states the causal relationship between the mind and body, which
relationship is, in a sense, the very heart of the lesson.*

(5:2-3) "The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers
just in order that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself."

*How does the mind hurt itself? Guilt. The original "injury" to my mind was the
belief I separated from God, for in that decision I denied my true reality. From
that moment on I continually punished myself through guilt. My ego does not want
me to realize it is my mind that is victimizing me, and that I -- the decision
maker cloaked by the ego's thought system -- am the one who is suffering.
Therefore, my decision maker, now identified with the ego, projects the guilt
onto the body, which thus becomes guilt's shadow. It now appears that the body
suffers -- the smoke screen that keeps my mind out of awareness. In the
following passage Jesus explains the insanity of seeing the body as the problem,
when all along it is the clever ego mind calling the shots from behind its veil
of secrecy:

"Who punishes the body is insane. ... It is indeed a senseless point of view
to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the
sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear. It suffers not the punishment
you give because it has no feeling. It behaves in ways you want, but never makes
the choice." (T.28.VI.1.1;2:1-3)

Our mind is indeed the source of the problem, but even there its guilt does not
deserve punishment, as the ego would have us think, but simply correction.*

(5:4) "The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really
suffers."

*What Jesus means by "mind," of course, is the decision maker, which chooses to
make guilt real, and then chooses to project it onto the body. It is thus the
decision maker that uses the body to hide the real cause of the suffering: its
decision for separation and guilt. The cleverness of the ego's strategy is
described in more detail below, part of the section from which we have just
quoted. Here we see the <you>-- our decision maker -- hides behind the body so
that no one is ever the wiser about what is really going on: the mind's decision
to be separate and guilty:

"The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want [ the ego's guilt, ] the
body does not know. You [ the decision making part of our minds] send it forth
to seek for separation and be separate. And then you hate it, not for what it
is, but for the uses you have made of it. You shrink from what it sees and what
it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. And you despise its acts, but not
your own. It sees and acts for you. It hears your voice. And it is frail and
little by your wish. It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for
the limitations that it brings to you. Yet you have made of it a symbol for the
limitations that you want your mind to have and see and keep." (T-28.VI.3).*

(5:5) 'It [ the mind's decision maker] would not understand it is its own enemy;
that it attacks itself and wants to die."

*If we knew this, of course, we would change our minds in an instant. If we knew
that <we> were the problem -- we would not hesitate to choose the Holy Spirit,
marking the end of the ego. Once again, to ensure that this catastrophe never
occurs, the ego -- the part of our minds that embraces separation -- devises its
strategy of mindlessness, which has the Son identify with the body -- other's
and our own -- are the enemies, while the true "enemy" -- our decision maker's
wrong-minded choice -- remains safely hidden out of awareness, concealed by
guilt and fear.*

(5:6-7) "It is from this your "laws" would save the body. It is for this you
think you are a body."

*Jesus helps us to understand the motivation or purpose for having a body; to
have a place in which to hide the mind's guilt. Thus the ego tells us we do
indeed have a real problem -- in our bodies -- but fortunately there are laws
that will take care of it, The problem, the ego convinces us, is not our inner
emptiness because we left God, but, for example, the emptiness in our stomachs.
Therefore, we fill them with food and we feel fine. The "law" states: if you are
hungry, you eat. Furthermore, if you want to stay healthy by your eating, you
must eat specific foods -- whatever it is you believe in, for the food itself
does not matter.

The ego has thus taken the problem of lack -- the absence of Christ because I
believe I crucified Him -- splits it off and projects it, so now there is a lack
perceived in my body. The ego's "laws" then come to save it, and solve the
problem of maintaining our physical and psychological existence as creatures of
the world. Thus it becomes, in addition to the problem of food:
1) The problem is that I am alone in the universe, since I destroyed God. Yes,
the ego agrees, there is a problem of loneliness, but it is in the body.
Therefore, I will invent special relationships, and teach you the laws of
manipulation and seduction, which will enable you to keep other bodies close to
you. Thus the problem of your loneliness is solved.
2) The problem is that I am impoverished because I threw away the treasure of
God. I have nothing. Yes, the ego agrees, there is a problem of impoverishment
but it is in the body. Therefore I will invent money and teach you the laws of
earning it. Thus is the problem of your impoverishment solved.
3) The problem is that I am sick at heart because I betrayed God. Yes, the ego
agrees, there is a problem of sickness, but it is in the body. Therefore, I will
invent medicine and teach you the laws of acquiring and using it. Thus is the
problem of your sickness solved. ... And on and on it goes.

This lesson helps us understand that the laws the ego tells us will save the
body only uphold the separation and guilt that is in our minds. Jesus' purpose,
once again, is not to make us feel guilty or like failures, but simply to help
us realize where the problem is so it can be <truly> solved.*

(6:1-2) "There are no laws except the laws of God. This needs repeating, over
and over, until you realize it applies to everything that you have made in
opposition to God's Will."

*By "repeating, over and over," Jesus does not mean, once again, that we use the
words as a mantra of affirmation. Rather, they are a statement of truth to which
we bring the ego's laws of illusion. The body is nothing but the end product of
a long series of thoughts that were made in opposition to God's Will:
separation, specialness, sin, guilt, fear, and death. Thus we need to pay
careful attention to our experiences of victimization at the hands of laws over
which we have no control, and on which we believe the fate of our peace rests.
It is this misplacement we bring to the truth, recognizing how we have used the
body's laws as a cloak to conceal our guilt over believing we had, in fact,
chosen against the laws of God.*

(6:3) "Your magic has no meaning."

*The laws of the world have to do with magic because they are external. The
miracle -- magic's counterpart -- is internal. Magic helps us change our
bodies, the miracle helps us change our minds. Magic is the ego's solving a
problem where it cannot be solved -- in the body. The miracle is the Holy
Spirit's solving a problem where it can be solved -- in the mind.*

(6:4-5) "What it is meant to save does not exist. Only what it is meant to hide
will save you."

*This a nice Level One statement: the body does not exist. Moreover, the body
and its laws were made to hide guilt in our minds. Yet they do not only hold the
guilt but its undoing, brought about through the acceptance of the Atonement,
which alone can save us.*

(7) "The laws of God can never be replaced. We will devote today to rejoicing
that this is so. It is no longer a truth that we would hide. We realize instead
it is a truth that keeps us free forever. Magic imprisons, but the laws of God
make free. The light has come because there are no laws but His."

*We need to pay careful attention to the ego's laws we obey in order to trace
them back to what they represent in our minds, as I just did above. Thus: money
undoes our experience of spiritual <impoverishment>, putting food in our stomach
and oxygen in our lungs supplies the <lack> in our split minds; and specialness
undoes the <loneliness> that is the "natural" state of a separated mind. We can
therefore use the ego's laws to reflect back to us what they were meant to hide:
the belief that the laws of God can be replaced. Indeed, they have been replaced
-- by me; at least by the wrong-minded, deluded me that thinks it is a separated
self. However, we are now ready to learn that this delusion occurred only in our
dreams. Our real Self but awaits the opening or our eyes. ... Jesus now pokes
further fun at us:*

(8:1-5) "We will begin the longer practice periods today with a short review of
the different kinds of "laws" we have believed we must obey. These would
include, for example, the "laws" of nutrition, of immunization, of medication,
and of the body's protection in innumerable ways. Think further; you believe in
the "laws" of friendship, of "good" relationships and reciprocity."

*It should be quite obvious by now that Jesus is not asking us to give up our
belief in these laws, which are the very bedrock of our existence in the world.
But we are asked to step back with him -- to go <above the battleground>
(T-23.IV) -- and look through his eyes at the place these laws hold in our ego's
defensive system and strategy of mindlessness. Thus we learn not to take them or
our lives as seriously as before. This point, like so many others, cannot be
stated too often. Our resistance to looking at the ego without judgment is
enormous, and needs the gentle persuasion of gentle repetition to be effectively
diminished.*

(8:5-6) "Perhaps you even think that there are laws which set forth what is
God's and what is yours. Many "religions" have been based on this. "

*Jesus puts "religion" in quotes because he is telling us that these -- the
formal religions of the world -- are not <true> religions. The etymological
meaning of <religion> is "to bind together again," by realizing God's Son is one
-- we are one with each other and one with God. The "religions" of the world
separate, their adherents judging everyone who does not agree with them,
unconsciously believing they themselves are separate from God. Thus Jesus states
the following in the pamphlet of Pyschotherapy, addressing the issue of
religion's place in the practice of pyschotherapy:

"Formal religion has no place in psychotherapy, but it also has no real
place in religion." (P-2.II.2.1)

Once religion, regardless of its inspirational origin, becomes formalized, it
becomes separatist. It invetibly then becomes subsumed under the laws of <homo
sapiens>, which not only demarcate the respective and hierarchical places of
different members of the species, but also respective and hierarchal places of
God and us. Separation becomes Heaven's law, while the true law of unity and
oneness disappears into the reality that has been hidden by the externalization
of God's Love, the only law.*

(8:6-7) "They would not save but damn in Heaven's name. Yet they are no more
strange than other "laws" you hold must be obeyed to make you safe."

*These "laws" of formal religions are indeed strange, for they make the Love of
God conditional, accessible through the body. On the other hand, the
universality of love makes it totally accessible, and easily remembered when the
world is seen as a classroom in which we learn of forgiveness that enables us to
<transcend> the world and body entirely. *

(9:1-2) "There are no laws but God's. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today,
and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth
to you."

*How do you become silently ready? You quiet the ego's raucous shrieks and
stubborn insistence that you are right and God is wrong. And then wait in
patience for yourself to move beyond the resistance born of fear to the truth
born of love.*

(9:3) "You will be listening to One Who says there is no loss under the laws of
God."

*In all the ego's laws -- whether religious or not -- there is loss. If I am to
eat, an animal or vegetable must lose its "life"; if I am to have my specialness
needs met, another must sacrifice. It must be so, for the rock on which the
ego's <slavation> rests is that one must lose so that another can win.
Statements like the above gently correct that illusion.*

(9:4-6) "Payment is neither given nor received. Exchange cannot be made; there
are no substitutes; and nothing is replaced by something else. God's laws
forever give and never take."

*The ego is born of the original thought I am a substitute for God or Christ,
and everything else logically from that ontological premise. In other words,
from the sin of substitution I experience guilt, which then demands I be
punished. In order to assuage the vindictive wrath of the sinned-against deity,
I concoct a theory of salvation in which it appears as if He demands my payment
for what I stole, a payment that drips with the blood of my suffering and
sacrifice: the ego's meaning of atonement. From this insane thought arises a
world in which we believe that we can achieve happiness or salvation only
through payment of some kind. Thus we find the following statements in
Psychotherapy regarding the question of payment. Unlike the world's view, in
which patients pay therapists for their expertise, a <quid pro quo>, Jesus
advocates the more Marxist view: <From each according to his ability. To each
according to his need.> This utopian vision has, unfortunately, never been
tried, yet Jesus makes it the basis for his view on <payment>, distinguishing it
from <cost>:

"Only an unhealed healer would try to heal for money, and he will not
succeed to the extent to which he values it. Nor will he find his healing in the
process. There will be those of whom the Holy Spirit asks some payment for His
purpose. There will be those from whom He does not ask. ... There is a
difference between payment and cost. ... Patients can pay only for the exchange
of illusions. This, indeed, must demand payment, and the cost is great. ... If
their relationship is to be holy, whatever one needs is given by the other;
whatever one lacks the other supplies. ... The therapist repays the patient in
gratitude, as does the patient repay him. There is no cost to either. ... This
... [reflects] the law of God, and not of the world."

Anticipating the inevitable complaint, Jesus states:

"This view of payment may well seem impractical, and in the eyes of the
world it would be so. Yet not one worldly thought is really practical. How much
is gained by striving for illusions? How much is lost by throwing God away? And
is it possible to do so?" (P-3.III.2:1-4, 6-8;3:3-4;4:4,6-7;5:4;7:1-5).

The law we are asked to reflect in our relationships is the law of perfect
Oneness, in which there can be no cost or loss. Its loving expression within the
world of illusion is the rock on which salvation rests: "And everyone <must>
gain, if anyone would be a gainer" (T-25.VII.12:2).

The next paragraph asks us to listen to the Holy Spirit tell us, again, how
foolish indeed are the "laws" we have striven to follow:*

(10) "Hear Him Who tells you this, and realize how foolish are the "laws" you
thought upheld the world you thought you saw. Then listen further. He will tell
you more. About the Love your Father has for you. About the endless joy He
offers you. About His yearning for His only Son, created as His channel for
creation; denied to Him by his belief in hell."

*The Holy Spirit does not take our laws away from us, but shows us their
foolishness in that they reflect a thought system that is foolish. Remember how
miracles do not make the correct choice. They simply show us how incorrect we
have been in our prior choices:

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true
... The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done nothing."
(T-28.II.7:1,10).

Once He has our attention, the Holy Spirit "speaks" to us of he heavenly Love we
chose to forget, when we chose to remember the hell of he ego's special love.*

(11:1) "Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through
us to Him."

*The way we open God's channels -- our minds -- is to forgive ourselves for
having chosen the ego as substitute for the Love of God. Forgiveness is the key
that opens the right-minded home of the Holy Spirit, which we had sealed with
locks of guilt and specialness.*

(11:2-6) "Thus is creation endlessly increased. His Voice will speak of this to
us, as well as of the joys of Heaven which His laws keep limitless forever. We
will repeat today's idea until we have listened and understood there are no laws
but God's. Then we will tell ourselves, as a dedication with which the practice
period concludes:

I am under no laws but God's."

*Once we choose to accept the Atonement and remember our Identity as Christ, we
identify with our true function of creation: the endless increase of God's Love
<through> us and <as> us. This "us" is God's one Son, the Christ He created as
one with Him; the Self that is no longer <under> the laws of God -- It <is> the
law of God.*

(12) "We will repeat this dedication as often as possible today; at least four
or five times an hour, as well as in response to any temptation to experience
ourselves as subject to other laws throughout the day. It is our statement of
freedom from all danger and all tyranny. It is our acknowledgment that God is
our Father, and that His Son is saved."

*We are back where we began -- the acceptance of the Atonement. Jesus is asking
us to strengthen our resolve to accept this acceptance throughout the day -- <at
least> every twelve-to-fifteen minutes. Thus we seek to remember -- as often as
we can and especially when tempted to believe in the ego's laws of scarcity and
deprivation, of specialness and loss -- that "there is no will but God's; no
laws but His." We then gladly acknowledge: "Yes, I made these laws and still
believe in them. But I am now willing to admit I was wrong. The truth is that
God is my Father and not the ego, and therefore I am saved from my thoughts of
sin and guilt, for they have disappeared into His Love." The only remaining
question for ourselves is why would we not remember this happy fact throughout
the day.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 75. The light has come.

#93074

Lesson 75. The light has come.

(1) The light has come. You are healed and you can heal. The light has come. You
are saved and you can save. You are at peace, and you bring peace with you
wherever you go. Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has
come.

(2) Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. There
are no dark dreams now. The light has come. Today the time of light begins for
you and everyone. It is a new era, in which a new world is born. The old one has
left no trace upon it in its passing. Today we see a different world, because
the light has come.

(3) Our exercises for today will be happy ones, in which we offer thanks for the
passing of the old and the beginning of the new. No shadows from the past remain
to darken our sight and hide the world forgiveness offers us. Today we will
accept the new world as what we want to see. We will be given what we desire. We
will to see the light; the light has come.

(4) Our longer practice periods will be devoted to looking at the world that our
forgiveness shows us. This is what we want to see, and only this. Our single
purpose makes our goal inevitable. Today the real world rises before us in
gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has come.

(5) We do not want to see the ego's shadow on the world today. We see the light,
and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world. Begin the longer
practice periods by telling yourself the glad tidings of your release:

The light has come. I have forgiven the world.<

(6) Dwell not upon the past today. Keep a completely open mind, washed of all
past ideas and clean of every concept you have made. You have forgiven the world
today. You can look upon it now as if you never saw it before. You do not know
yet what it looks like. You merely wait to have it shown to you. While you wait,
repeat several times, slowly and in complete patience:

The light has come. I have forgiven the world.<

(7) Realize that your forgiveness entitles you to vision. Understand that the
Holy Spirit never fails to give the gift of sight to the forgiving. Believe He
will not fail you now. You have forgiven the world. He will be with you as you
watch and wait. He will show you what true vision sees. It is His Will, and you
have joined with Him. Wait patiently for Him. He will be there. The light has
come. You have forgiven the world.

(8) Tell Him you know you cannot fail because you trust in Him. And tell
yourself you wait in certainty to look upon the world He promised you. From this
time forth you will see differently. Today the light has come. And you will see
the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end
of time ensured.

(9) The shorter practice periods, too, will be joyful reminders of your release.
Remind yourself every quarter of an hour or so that today is a time for special
celebration. Give thanks for mercy and the Love of God. Rejoice in the power of
forgiveness to heal your sight completely. Be confident that on this day there
is a new beginning. Without the darkness of the past upon your eyes, you cannot
fail to see today. And what you see will be so welcome that you will gladly
extend today forever.

(10) Say, then:

The light has come. I have forgiven the world.

Should you be tempted, say to anyone who seems to pull you back into
darkness:
The light has come. I have forgiven you.<

(11) We dedicate this day to the serenity in which God would have you be. Keep
it in your awareness of yourself and see it everywhere today, as we celebrate
the beginning of your vision and the sight of the real world, which has come to
replace the unforgiven world you thought was real.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 75. "The light has come."

*In this lesson Jesus speaks of the real world, and as is true of other lessons,
he gives us a pep talk. Despite what he says overtly, Jesus obviously does not
expect his students to identify with the light on this particular day. If he
did, this message would not be in other lessons. These are words of
encouragement that let us know that beyond the clouds of illusion -- the
complexity of our anger, judgments, suffering and anxiety -- there is really a
light. It is the light of the real world, the truth that shines outside the
ego's darkened dreams of separation and madness.

Let me also comment on the theme running through the lesson as a musical
<leitmotif>, which not so much tells us that the light <comes>, but that <we
have come to the light>. Our experience is that the light has come to us, but in
truth it never left, for it is always present in our minds. Since, then, we are
the ones who left the light, we must be the ones who return. If the workbook
statement were accepted literally, it would seem that we had nothing to do with
the light's coming. It simply came on its own, implying that at some other point
it had left.

This points again to the importance of understanding that the words in A Course
in Miracles are simply symbols. The true dynamic at work here is that we were
the ones who left the light by clinging to the ego's illusion of separation and
individuality. Therefore, we are the ones who must realize our wrong choice --
the darkness of our illusions does to not make us happy. That realization leads
us finally to say there must be another way, and then we do seek the light we
had left. In fact, it is more than that we just left it. The ego tells us we
were abandoned, and destroyed its love. We therefore accuse ourselves of this
sin, from which, as we have seen many times, comes the experience of guilt and
horror that impels us to get rid of the guilt through projection, thereby making
a God in our own image and likeness, and a world that also mirrors our
self-concept of separation, guilt, and attack.

If we were to realize we simply made a mistake, taking the wrong turn because we
listened to the wrong guide, we would remember the Guide Whom we could truly ask
for help. His Love would teach that our "sin" was a mistake that has already
been corrected. Thus there can be no sin, guilt, denial, or projection, and no
world. It is at that point we come to the inner light A Course in Miracles
refers to as the real world.*

(1:1-2) "The light has come. You are healed and you can heal."

*If I am healed, it means the thought of separation in my mind has been undone,
along with pain and suffering, leaving only God's Son as He created him. This is
how I become a healer: accepting the Atonement's healing light instead of the
ego's darkness. Since the Sonship is one with me, it is healed, too. This again
is what is meant by Lesson 137: "When I am healed I am not healed alone." *

(1:3-4) "The light has come. You are saved and you can save."

*This of course parallels "You are healed and you can heal." You are saved from
the prison of your own mistaken choice, the pain and suffering of your mind's
guilt. In the holy instant you become God's one Son, symbolizing, as does Jesus,
the right-minded choice for light instead of darkness.*

(1:5) "You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go."

*This is because <ideas leave not their source>. Throughout the day -- wherever
we go, whatever we do -- our right minds are filled with the light that is
always there. It is not anything we literally bring with us, but something that
automatically happens, as natural to the mind as breathing is to the body.
<Ideas leave not their source>: The body and its misuses of attack and judgment
have never left its source -- the thought of guilt in the wrong mind; the body
as an instrument of Jesus' love has never left its source -- the thought of
light in the right mind. This light of peace automatically extends through the
mind of God's Son, the meaning, again, of "you bring peace with you wherever you
go." *

(1:6-7) "Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has come."

*Remember, it is <one or the other>. The ego uses this principle as a way of
justifying attack: if I do not kill you, you will kill me. The same principle
operates with Jesus as well, but with different content. If I join with the
light there cannot be darkness, not because I attacked it, but because the
darkness disappears in the presence of light. To Jesus, then, <one or the other>
is a non-dualistic principle. If there is light and oneness, there cannot be
darkness and separation; since my mind and will are one with God's, and there is
no Mind and Will but His, how could separation exist? The principle of <one or
the other> is thus valid for both teachers: to the ego it means attack and
murder; to Jesus it reflects the comforting fact of the Atonement -- the
separation from God never happened.*

(2:1) "Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster."

*Regard this as another of Jesus' pep talks. If you feel distress or unhappiness
today, do not use this statement as a way of judging yourself as a failure. The
fact that there is the rest of the workbook -- and Jesus' concludes the
workbook by saying this course is a beginning and not an end -- is letting you
know that he does not expect you to end the ego's dream here and now. However,
he does want to remind you of the Atonement principle: The light has come
because it never left.

This is another way of telling us -- as Jesus does throughout the workbook --
that there is another thought system in our minds that is totally separate from
the ego. We believe there is nothing <but> the ego, and our interpretations of
God, Jesus, and salvation are based on our specialness, in which we magically
hope that someone or something outside us will be our savior. We do not know
another teacher, a Jesus who is outside the dream and not the more familiar
figure who is very much part of the ego's dreams -- "a dream that comes in
mockery" (The Gifts of God, p.121). Lessons like this one, therefore, are Jesus'
way of telling us there is another teacher in our minds; his way of
communicating to us -- just beginning to learn his lessons of forgiveness -- our
ultimate goal: the light at the end of the ego's tunnel that happily shines away
our dreams of disaster and death. This outcome of light is indeed as certain as
its Source.*

(2:2) "There are no dark dreams now."

*From a different perspective we can view this lesson as Jesus providing the
ideal, even as he knows we have miles to go before we wake, to paraphrase Robert
Frost, and identify with the light. At least we now know there is a goal; and he
teaches us how to attain it. Another way of understanding the lesson is to
regard it as Jesus' way of telling us: "If you follow me, do these lessons
faithfully, read my text carefully, you will be at peace and your dark dreams
will be over. If you persist in thinking you know better than I, however, your
dreams of separation, specialness, and individuality will unhappily continue.
Are they really worth the pain?" *

(2:3-4) "The light has come. Today the time of light begins for you and
everyone."

*It can never be said enough that if the light of Christ shines for me it must
shine for everyone, since Christ is one. Therefore, it is not only that the
light has come, in the sense that I have chosen to accept it in place of the
ego's dark dreams of separate interests, but that light has come for the entire
Sonship, since the Holy Spirit's happy dreams see everyone's interests as the
same.*

(2:5-7) "It is a new era, in which a new world is born. The old one has left no
trace upon it in its passing. Today we see a different world, because the light
has come."

*When Jesus says the old world "has left no trace upon it in its passing," he
echoes the lovely words I never tire of quoting: "Not one note in Heaven's song
was missed" (T-26.V.5:4) -- past sins have had no effect on the present; not the
ego's guilty present, but the present of the holy instant. Once we are in the
new world -- the real world -- and accept forgiveness as our reigning principle
instead of attack, the ego thought system is gone. When students sometimes ask
if they will remember their world when they awaken from the dream, the answer is
"no" -- <there is nothing to remember>. The old world has left no trace upon the
new one in its passing. What is gone is gone, because it never was.*

(3:1) "Our exercises for today will be happy ones, in which we offer thanks for
the passing of the old and the beginning of the new."

*"The passing of the old" is not something Jesus of A Course in Miracles does,
but it is our accomplishment when we exercise the mind's power to choose. Jesus
offers us a glimpse of how wonderful it will be when we release our illusions of
individuality, specialness, and judgment, as he tells us early in the text, and
we repeat again and again:

"You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from
meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment." (T-3.VI.3:1).*

(3:2) "No shadows from the past remain to darken our sight and hide the world
forgiveness offers us."

*This is an explicit statement that the shadows of our past -- some expression
of sin -- "hide the world forgiveness offers us." In other words, our thoughts
of attack and judgment are purposive and do not just happen. We choose them to
hide the world of light forgiveness offers us. Being the key, forgiveness opens
our mind's locked door, behind which stands the loving presence of Jesus. The
door opens when we look at our defenses: the shadows of guilt we projected onto
our brothers. The very close of the text restates this now familiar thought in
beautiful fashion:

"Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still
remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone." (T-31.VIII.12:5).*

(3:3-5) "Today we will accept the new world as what we want to see. We will be
given what we desire. We will to see the light; the light has come."

*Jesus appeals to our motivation to be happy, for happiness is what we truly
want. Without this desire, however, we will never find it. We are thus being
taught, as was emphasized in the text, to associate the light of forgiveness
with happiness and peace, and the darkness of guilt with misery and pain. In the
following passage from the text, Jesus elaborates on his philosophy of teaching.
Like any good reinforcement theorist, he knows that: "learning through rewards
is more effective than learning through pain" (T-4.VI.3:4). Thus he is teaching
us to associate joy with valuing his teaching, and misery with ignoring it. In
this way we come to desire his teaching of light because of the joy it would
bring us:

"How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately
thrown away? He must have thrown it away because he did not value it. You can
only show him how miserable he is without it, and slowly bring it nearer so he
can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it. This teaches him to
associate his misery with its absence, and the opposite of misery with its
presence. It gradually becomes desirable as he changes his mind about its worth.
I am teaching you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the spirit. You
have taught yourself the opposite. You are still free to choose, but can you
really want the rewards of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God?"
(T-4.VI.5).*

(4:1--5:1) "Our longer practice periods will be devoted to looking at the world
that our forgiveness shows us. This is what we want to see, and only this. Our
single purpose makes our goal inevitable. Today the real world rises before us
in gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has
come."
"We do not want to see the ego's shadow on the world today."

*The "ego's shadow on the world" is our thoughts of pain and attack, arising
from our mind's guilt. We know how the ego makes up an illusory thought of
individuality. It does not let this world of thought go, but buries it within
our minds before projecting it. It is this thought system of guilt that casts a
long and despairing shadow on what we think of as the world. Guilt's final
destination is thus the body, the perceived source of all pain and distress, up
to and including death. Yet this is nothing more than a flimsy veil used by the
ego to conceal the truth we do not want to see because it is the truth
(T-21.VII.5:14) Recognizing our mistake, we choose again, forgiveness instead of
judgment, the world of light instead of the ego's shadows of guilt.*

(5:2) "We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the
world."

*We do not see Heaven in the world; we see its reflection, known as the real
world. We have first looked within, and then seen the ego's projected shadow's
of guilt all around us: loss, abandonment, sacrifice, and death. When we change
our minds and ask Jesus for help, we let the shadows go, allowing his inner
light to be all that we see reflected in the world.*

(5:3-5) "Begin the longer practice periods by telling yourself the glad tidings
of your release:

The light has come. I have forgiven the world."

*"Glad tidings," of course, is a biblical phrase that referred to Jesus coming
as the light of the world. He thus uses a phrase that has had one series of
connotations, and gives it a totally different meaning. Here, the good news --
"the glad tidings" -- is not that the light of Jesus came into the world, but
that the light of Jesus in our minds has never gone away, despite our belief
that we had destroyed it. The Holy Spirit's principle of the Atonement was true
after all. What gladder tidings could there be than that?

We can forgive the world only because we forgive ourselves for destroying the
light of the world, the inner world of love that our deranged minds convinced us
was actually gone. Thus we realize -- through accepting Jesus' love for us here
-- that we have not separated from love, which means we have not crucified it
nor destroyed its Source. That, again, is the truly good news. We happily
realize that our attempts to shroud this light has not left. Once we accept this
joyous fact the shrouds disappear, the veils of darkness part, the shadows
evanesce, and only the light remains. This happens only by forgiving ourselves
for having made a mistake -- glad tidings indeed!*

(6:1) "Dwell not upon the past today."

*The past expresses sin, <literally>; the belief we sinned against God. We catch
ourselves dwelling on the past each and every time we hold a grievance, for each
one is a shadowy fragment that reminds us of our original grievance: <against
ourselves>. We thus come to recognize that withholding forgiveness reflects our
desire to keep the sinful past alive, reinforcing the separate identity that is
protected by our projections onto others.*

(6:2) "Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every
concept you have made."

*Lesson 189 contains a prayer that nicely expresses this idea. It is important
enough to quote it here, even though we shall be returning to it later:

"Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and
what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold
about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false,
or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it
is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has
taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world,
forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."
(W-pI.189.7).

This implies we have to know we are truly happy that we are wrong and Jesus is
right. We are wrong because we believe there is a world of attack and pain here,
and he is right because he tells us all this is made up. Only when we allow
ourselves to be taught that our reward of peace is far greater than the
punishment of pain, can we allow our minds to be cleansed.*

(6:3-9) "You have forgiven the world today. You can look upon it now as if you
never saw it before. You do not know yet what it looks like. You merely wait to
have it shown to you. While you wait, repeat several times, slowly and in
complete patience:

The light has come. I have forgiven the world."

*Jesus is telling us we do not bring the real world to us, since we are the ones
who must choose it. Moreover, our patience does not include waiting for Jesus
because there is a long waiting list; we wait but for ourselves, for we are
still too afraid to accept the light, in the presence of which the darkness of
our individual self is gone. We once again see how Jesus is letting us know that
<he> knows we are not yet at the point when we can look upon the forgiven world.
That is why there is no need to pretend we are further along than we really are.
Such arrogance hardly befits a Son of God; moreover; such arrogance ensures we
shall never remember that we <are> the Son of God.

It is evident in Jesus' approach throughout A Course in Miracles that while he
is unequivocally consistent in presenting the truth, he is always gentle,
patient, and understanding of our not yet being ready to accept it. It is
extremely important to experience his patience, so we can demonstrate it to
everyone else. When we find ourselves becoming upset with others and impatient
with their mistakes, it is only because we do not want to accept Jesus' patience
with <our> mistakes. This is because we want to see them as sins, and rather
than accept responsibility for these mistaken thoughts, we project them out and
find ourselves seemingly justified in being impatient with everyone else.
Statements like these make clear how lovingly patient Jesus is with us, a model
for us all.*

(7:1) "Realize that your forgiveness entitles you to vision."

*The theme of vision returns, this time in the context of our acceptance of the
real world through forgiveness. In other words, when we are unforgiving we
cannot see, and what we think we see is simply a distortion. When we forgive, on
the other hand, our eyes are washed clean of guilt's shadows, and then vision
comes.*

(7:2) "Understand that the Holy Spirit never fails to give the gift of sight to
the forgiving."

*This does not mean that the Holy Spirit withholds the gift from us when we
judge others or ourselves, but rather that we reject the gift when we are filled
with judgments. Indeed, that is why we judge in the first place, to keep the
gift away. As with God's grace, the Holy Spirit's vision is for all, and
embraces all. It merely awaits our forgiveness for the acceptance of His gift.*

(7:3-11) "Believe He will not fail you now. You have forgiven the world. He will
be with you as you watch and wait. He will show you what true vision sees. It is
His Will, and you have joined with Him. Wait patiently for Him. He will be
there. The light has come. You have forgiven the world."

*Once again, if we take these words literally it sounds as if we have to wait
for the Holy Spirit to come. Obviously that makes no sense, just as it makes no
sense that for over two thousand years Christians have waited for Jesus to come:
the so-called Second Coming. At issue is not <his> Second Coming but <ours>, as
the term is re-defined in A Course in Miracles (T-4.IV.10:2-3). Thus when Jesus
says "wait patiently for Him," he really means wait patiently to let go of our
fear sufficiently so we could accept the Holy Spirit. Thus we watch and wait
with patience, reflective of his infinite patience:

"Your patience with your brother is your patience with yourself. Is not a
child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience because my will
is that of our Father, from Whom I learned of infinite patience. His Voice was
in me as It is in you, speaking for patience towards the Sonship in the Name of
Its Creator." (T-5.VI.11:4-7).*

(8:1-3) "Tell Him you know you cannot fail because you trust in Him. And tell
yourself you wait in certainty to look upon the world He promised you. From this
time forth you will see differently."

*To make the point about the metaphor once again, we are not really telling the
Holy Spirit, Who hardly has to be told anything from us. The meaning of this
first sentence is simply that we have to reinforce <our> decision to trust Him.
We learn to recognize the causal connection between abandoning our belief that
we are better off on our own, and the wonderful effects that vision brings:
seeing a gentle world of shared interests, quite different from the ego's
hateful world of separate interests.*

(8:4-5) "Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been
promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured."

*This last is an intriguing sentence. When Jesus says "you will see the world
that has been promised you since time began," he is not talking about the <you>
you think you are.<You> have not existed since time began; <you> are not fifteen
billion years old. Hence he is referring to the decision maker in our minds,
which is part of the one Son who was promised at the beginning that "the light
has come" -- the principle of the Atonement. In that ontological moment when we
believed we separated from God, the promise was there, already fulfilled. We
just had not accepted it. Projecting the blame for the rejection, we believed
that the Holy Spirit did not keep His promise, nor did God, Jesus, and now A
Course in Miracles.This is the problem Jesus corrects. The Atonement was in our
minds from the first instant the thought of separation seemed to begin,
reflecting God's promise to us (and ours to Him), as we read in this inspiring
passage from the text. It comes in the context of our choosing sickness instead
of healing, having made a promise to the ego instead of God:

"God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. In his creation did his Father
say, "You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. Be you perfect as Myself, for
you can never be apart from Me". His Son remembers not that he replied "I will",
though in that promise he was born. Yet God reminds him of it every time he does
not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. His
secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares. And
what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God."
(T-28.VI.6:3-9).

Once again, if you pay close attention to a statement like the above, it is
clear that Jesus is not talking about the <you> you think is reading, studying,
and practicing these words, but the one Son of God outside of time and space,
the decision-making self that believed in itself, rather than its Self. As a
later lesson succinctly puts it:

"Let me not forget myself is nothing, but my Self is all."
(W-pII.358.1:7).*

(9:1-4) "The shorter practice periods, too, will be joyful reminders of your
release. Remind yourself every quarter of an hour or so that today is a time for
special celebration. Give thanks for mercy and the Love of God. Rejoice in the
power of forgiveness to heal your sight completely."

*As in many other lessons, Jesus wants us to experience the joy of learning his
message. The end of our misery lies in forgiving our brothers and ourselves --
truly one and the same. Who, knowing this fact, could not want to remember every
fifteen minutes that the light has come and is ours. Yet that light is what we
still need to accept as the truth about ourselves.*

(9:5-7) "Be confident that on this day there is a new beginning. Without the
darkness of the past upon your eyes, you cannot fail to see today. And what you
see will be so welcome that you will gladly extend today forever."

*Notice Jesus says "a new beginning," which, incidentally, is the title of
Chapter 30 in the text. He is not saying the journey is over, even though many
of the statements in the lesson would indicate that, for he is not coming from a
linear perspective. He is saying "the light has come" because the light is
already here within us. Yet we must undertake the process of accepting it, which
consists of releasing the darkness of our sinful past. Only then can we acquire
the joy of Christ's vision, welcomed once we no longer desire to make sin real,
and protect it by the guilt perceived in another. As this vision is welcomed,
<and nothing else beside it>, it extends into the forever of knowledge.*

(10) "Say, then:

The light has come. I have forgiven the world.

Should you be tempted, say to anyone who seems to pull you back into darkness:

The light has come. I have forgiven you."

*We practice so that this vision of light would come more quickly, along with
the joy of forgiveness. What speeds us along is our willingness to practice
vigilance against our grievances, that forgiveness would shine away the darkness
of guilt that had enshrouded us and the world in pain and misery.*

(11) "We dedicate this day to the serenity in which God would have you be. Keep
it in your awareness of yourself and see it everywhere today, as we celebrate
the beginning of your vision and the sight of the real world, which has come to
replace the unforgiven world you thought was real."

*Jesus continues to inspire with the happy outcome of peace he assures us is
ours. We need merely desire it as fully as we desire to leave the unforgiven
world, and walk into the light born of forgiving our partners in specialness.
This light is our reality and reward, as Jesus portrays so beautifully in this
passage from the text, a lovely way to end our discussion of this lesson:

"This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean
and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here,
for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth.
... All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world
with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you
see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all
illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. ... Go out
in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust out of this
world, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness."
(T-17.II.2:1-3;6:1-2;8:5).*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 74. There is no will but God's.

#93073

Lesson 74. There is no will but God's.

(1) The idea for today can be regarded as the central thought toward which all
our exercises are directed. God's is the only Will. When you have recognized
this, you have recognized that your will is His. The belief that conflict is
possible has gone. Peace has replaced the strange idea that you are torn by
conflicting goals. As an expression of the Will of God, you have no goal but
His.

(2) There is great peace in today's idea, and the exercises for today are
directed towards finding it. The idea itself is wholly true. Therefore it cannot
give rise to illusions. Without illusions conflict is impossible. Let us try to
recognize this today, and experience the peace this recognition brings.

(3) Begin the longer practice periods by repeating these thoughts several times,
slowly and with firm determination to understand what they mean, and to hold
them in mind:

There is no will but God's. I cannot be in conflict.<

Then spend several minutes in adding some related thoughts, such as:

I am at peace.

Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's.
My will and God's are one.
God wills peace for His Son.<

During this introductory phase, be sure to deal quickly with any conflict
thoughts that may cross your mind. Tell yourself immediately:

There is no will but God's.

These conflict thoughts are meaningless.<

(4) If there is one conflict area that seems particularly difficult to resolve,
single it out for special consideration. Think about it briefly but very
specifically, identify the particular person or persons and the situation or
situations involved, and tell yourself:

There is no will but God's. I share it with Him.

My conflicts about ______ cannot be real.<

(5) After you have cleared your mind in this way, close your eyes and try to
experience the peace to which your reality entitles you. Sink into it and feel
it closing around you. There may be some temptation to mistake these attempts
for withdrawal, but the difference is easily detected. If you are succeeding,
you will feel a deep sense of joy and an increased alertness, rather than a
feeling of drowsiness and enervation.

(6) Joy characterizes peace. By this experience will you recognize that you have
reached it. If you feel yourself slipping off into withdrawal, quickly repeat
the idea for today and try again. Do this as often as necessary. There is
definite gain in refusing to allow retreat into withdrawal, even if you do not
experience the peace you seek.

(7) In the shorter periods, which should be undertaken at regular and
predetermined intervals today, say to yourself:

There is no will but God's.

I seek His peace today.<

Then try to find what you are seeking. A minute or two every half an hour, with
eyes closed if possible, would be well spent on this today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 74. There is no will but God's.

(1:1) "The idea for today can be regarded as the central thought toward which
all our exercises are directed."

*This is Jesus' way of rephrasing for us our sole responsibility, which is to
accept the Atonement for ourselves. The tiny, mad idea, once taken seriously by
the ego, says the separation from God is a fact, and that the Son has a will
separate and distinct from the Will of his Creator. This "will" of the Son can
now establish its own reality as an autonomous entity. From that basic premise
the ego system logically follows, up to and including the making of the physical
universe. The ego is thus a statement that says there is indeed a will apart
from God's. This is in contrast to the principle of the Atonement that says
there is no will <but> God's. Any other thought is illusory, and therefore has
never happened. This idea is succinctly captured in the following lines from the
manual for teachers, in the context of the idea of separation:

"In time this happened very long ago. In reality it never happened at all."
(M.2.2.7)

Again, Jesus is saying this idea -- "there is no will but God's" -- is the
central thought of these exercises. In fact, it is the goal of A Course in
Miracles to teach and accept the Atonement for ourselves; to deny the seeming
reality of the ego thought system, which is based on the tiny, mad idea taken
seriously -- "[in the Son's forgetting to laugh at the tiny, mad idea] did the
thought become a serious idea" (T-27.VIII.6.3) -- and an individual self
believed to have an autonomous will outside the Will of God.*

(1:2-3) "God's is the only Will. When you have recognized this, you have
recognized that your will is His."

*This is the last thing the ego ever wants us to understand, because if our will
is His, there is no separation -- another way of stating the Atonement
principle, which undoes the ego. Moreover, if there is no other than God, there
can be no choosing and hence, no decision maker. The Holy Spirit holds this
Atonement thought in our minds, and the ego's fear of our choosing to identify
only with this motivates it to develop the strategy of mindlessness -- the world
of bodies. This fear is succinctly summarized in the following statement from
the text:

"You are afraid to know God's Will, because you believe it is not
yours. This belief is your whole sickness and your whole fear."
(T-11.1.10:3-4).*

(1:4) "The belief that conflict is possible has gone."

*We find in these lessons -- which is why we are studying them so closely -- the
entirety of the ego's thought system as presented more fully in the text. If I
have a will that is separate from God's, the ego tells me I earned it by
triumphing over my Great Adversary. By thus winning the great conflict, I
deserve the wonderful fruits of individuality. This winning, however, is called
<sin> by the ego, followed by <guilt>, the projection of which causes us to make
a God in our image and likeness: One Who has been sinned against, and now
angrily and justifiably seeks retribution, an attack we justifiably <fear>. As
you may recall from our previous discussion, the second and third laws of chaos
(T-23.II.5-8) specifically address this issue of a vengeful, angry God; an image
present in everyone, regardless of their religion or lack thereof. In the
Western world, the image is grounded in the biblical God -- a vengeful deity who
believes in the reality of sin.

Once we project our sin, a seemingly eternal battleground is established in our
minds. <That> is the conflict -- between ourselves and God, since He is the One
we believe we have attacked, and Whose vengeance is demanded by our guilt. It
goes without saying that this is not the true God. However, within our insane
dream, which begins with the belief we are autonomous individuals, this conflict
is quite real. It leads us to repress the terrifying thought, and -- through
projection -- make up a world in which we see conflict all around us, but no
longer within our minds. We believe everyone and everything is at war with us,
the fragmentary shadows of the original conflict. Whether this takes the form of
outright enemies -- what we call special hate, or the more subtle enemies we
call our special loves -- the conflict remains. It is a battle not only with
individuals, but with life itself, the chief characteristic of which is death.
Hence, as Freud taught, from the moment we are born we are preparing to die. The
ultimate thought of death, therefore, is the primary conflict we experience
here, yet this is but a thought we have a will separate from God's. We won that
will by destroying Him, and now He is going to rise from the grave and destroy
us, seizing back the life we believe we took from Him.*

(1:5-6) "Peace has replaced the strange idea that you are torn by conflicting
goals. As an expression of the Will of God, you have no goal but His."

*Recall for a moment Lesson 24 and 25, in which Jesus explains that we do not
know our own best interests. One of the exercises had us take a problem and
think about its best solution. Jesus told us if we really did this
conscientiously we would realize we have conflicting goals and thus could not be
sure of what was best for us. One moment we think of something that would work
well, and in the next we think of something else. This forces us to decide
between these shifting goals, which is Jesus' way of teaching us that we do not
understand anything, and certainly not our own interests.

The conflicting goals we experience reflect the original conflict in our minds
between God and ourselves, which really is within ourselves. This ego-projection
of a God is made up. Thus He is not truly there, being nothing but a split-off
part of our already split minds. The ego's conflict is <one or the other, kill
or be killed> -- a conflict played out within our minds, because the figures in
our lives we believe are victimizing us are but characters in our own dreams:
hallucinatory figures of our delusional thought system. However, when we turn
away from the ego's thought system -- conflict, sin, and individuality -- and
are back with the Holy Spirit, we have accepted the Atonement. There is only
<one> goal -- already accepted -- which is remembering Who we are and returning
home.*

(2:1) "There is great peace in today's idea, and the exercises for today are
directed towards finding it."

*In fact, we can find peace <only> through this idea. It comes in many, many
different forms, but its essence is that peace is found in accepting the idea
that we never separated from God, and therefore are not separate from anyone or
anything else.*

(2:2-4) "The idea itself is wholly true. Therefore it cannot give rise to
illusions. Without illusions conflict is impossible."

*The illusions are everything the ego tells us is true. Thus, once we begin with
the basic premise there is another will besides God's -- the tiny, mad idea
taken seriously, which leads us to believe that we exist as separate individuals
-- the other illusions logically follow: I am sinful, guilty, and afraid of
punishment, my inevitable fate if I am to remain in my mind. In order to project
this newly acquired self, I have to project the basic conflict between me and my
image of God, making a world in which I experience a new set of problems -- all
perceived outside my mind.

These, then, are the illusions, and they stem from our not accepting the
principle of the Atonement that there is no will but God's, which means the
separation never happened. Therefore, once these illusions are looked at and let
go, there can be no conflict, which, again, is between our guilty, sinful part
of ourselves we do not want to let into our awareness, and the guilty, sinful
part of ourselves we have projected as the image of God. When the thought of sin
is no longer accorded faith, there can be no illusions or conflict; and
therefore no pain or suffering.*

(2:5-3:1) "Let us try to recognize this today, and experience the peace this
recognition brings."
"Begin the longer practice periods by repeating these thoughts several times,
slowly and with firm determination to understand what they mean, and to hold
them in mind:"

*I mentioned twice before than many statements in the workbook can be
misunderstood as affirmations, similar to those found in many New Age systems
where they shout down people's ego's by replacing negative thoughts with
positive ones. It is quite obvious this does not work, for all it accomplishes
is our repressing our bad thoughts into the unconscious, and whatever is
repressed has a most unfortunate way of finding its way back out, either in
attacking others (judgment) and/or attacking ourselves (sickness).

Jesus is not encouraging us to bring truth to the illusion -- the truth of these
statements to the illusions we believe in -- but rather is teaching us to
bring the illusions of our ego's thoughts to this truth. Whenever we are tempted
to feel upset, therefore, we need to bring that upset and all its seeming causes
to the truth: we made this up. We know we have because there is no Will but
God's.

To repeat, these are not statements we should use to shout down our ego's, but
instead we should bring our ego's raucous shrieks of guilt and judgment to the
lesson's gentle thought. This process holds not only for these exercises, but
for all the others. Thus we say:*

(3:2-3) "There is no will but God's. I cannot be in conflict."

*This means that when you find yourself unhappy or upset in the course of the
day and honestly look at your ego, you would realize you are upset because you
believe you are in conflict -- someone or something has brought you pain, and
that is the "cause" or the problem. If you recall the statement -- "There is no
will but God's. I cannot be in conflict" -- you recognize that everything you
now perceive comes from the thought that you are in conflict with God. You
suffer at someone else's hands, feel ill, or have lost your peace as a result of
conditions in the world -- all because you believe that you have separated from
your Creator. Stated another way, conflict means duality, which is the essence
of the ego's illusory state of separation; while the Will of God expresses the
non-dualistic truth of the oneness of our reality as God's Son.

This lesson continues the process of training that would have us begin to always
-- not just here, but always -- revisit the ego thought system that underlies
our being upset, angry, depressed, sick, anxious, or fearful. When we look at
the ego with Jesus beside us, we automatically do what he is asking of us in
this lesson. As he tells us at the beginning of the text, he is the Atonement
(T-1.III.4:1): the experience and symbol within our dream that there is no Will
but God's. His loving principle within our minds is proof that nothing has come
between us and the Love of God, and that, moreover, nothing <could> come between
us and this Love, as we now read:*

(3:4-9) "Then spend several minutes in adding some related thoughts, such as:

I am at peace.
Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's.
My will and God's are one.
God wills peace for His Son."

*Jesus continues by telling us how to proceed in these exercises:*

(3:10-13) "During this introductory phase, be sure to deal quickly with any
conflict thoughts that may cross your mind. Tell yourself immediately:

There is no will but God's.
These conflict thoughts are meaningless."

*Once again, Jesus does not want us to shout down our pain or deny our
experience of conflict with anyone or anything, but to bring our suffering to
him. This is analogous to what the great Indian teacher Krishnamurti emphasized
is his teachings: <Stay with the pain.> This was not a call to masochism. It was
a plea to his students not to cover the pain, but to continue on through it to
the love beyond. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus is the one who leads us through
the pain we have first brought to him, to the peace that awaits us beyond the
ego's veil of conflict.*

(4:1) "If there is one conflict area that seems particularly difficult to
resolve, single it out for special consideration."

*As we have seen throughout these lessons, Jesus is asking us to pay careful
attention to our minds, to search them to find the thoughts of conflict. We then
move back from our unhappiness and distress to the underlying thought of
separation that is the basis for the experience of specific conflicts. Rather
than seek to avoid the particular difficult conflict situation, we are
encouraged by Jesus to pay attention to it -- to "single it out for special
consideration" -- which means bringing it to him so that the mind's guilt can be
looked at and let go.*

(4:2-5) "Think about it briefly but very
specifically, identify the particular person or persons and the situation or
situations involved, and tell yourself:

There is no will but God's. I share it with Him.
My conflicts about ______ cannot be real."

*I cannot realize the conflicts between you and me are unreal unless I accept
the fact that I have made them real, <very real>. We first have to look at the
conflict as we experience it, and then retrace it to its source. This process of
looking, of course, is the sum and substance of A Course in Miracles, a process
that is impossible unless we look in the right place: the decision-making part
of the mind, where the mistake was first made. The close of Chapter 5 in the
text provides one example of Jesus' explicit teaching in this regard:

"... the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless
within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your
thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the
Atonement in peace." (T-5.VII.6:4-6).

Elsewhere in the text Jesus discusses conflict and how it is resolved by the
vision of the Holy Spirit, the sharing of which is the goal of A Course in
Miracles:

"The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them, because He cannot
perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves the
apparent conflict they engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless. I have
said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it
is meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He
wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not
understandable." (T-7.VI.6:1-5).

Again, this is why Jesus wants us to perceive the conflict; that we may see
<beyond> it to the truth.

This concludes the first part of the exercise. The second part follows:*

(5:1) "After you have cleared your mind in this way, close your eyes and try to
experience the peace to which your reality entitles you."

*In other words, we have first to be aware of our obscuring thoughts, the clouds
that in an earlier lesson Jesus told us he would take us through (Lesson 70).
Beyond these clouds of defense is the peace of God. Consistently Jesus reminds
us that peace cannot come without first undoing the conflict; light is returned
to us only when we to go through the darkness; and love cannot be remembered
unless we look at the hate.*

(5:2-4) "Sink into it and feel it closing around you. There may be some
temptation to mistake these attempts for withdrawal, but the difference is
easily detected. If you are succeeding, you will feel a deep sense of joy and an
increased alertness, rather than a feeling of drowsiness and enervation."

*Many people experience a tendency to fall asleep when they begin to meditate or
do the lessons. This is Jesus' point of reference here, and he is helping us
understand its defensive purpose of protecting our fear. Drowsiness does not
happen because we are overtired or insincere students. It comes because we fear
the state of peace. When we are aware of our thoughts of conflict we will not
fall asleep. We should therefore ask ourselves why we stay awake with these
thoughts, and fall asleep when we are on the verge of getting beyond them to the
peace of God. The answer is obvious. Peace is threatening because it says there
is no will but God's, and ours is one with His. If the separation never
happened; then we never happened either. <That> is the fear; the fear of losing
our individual self.

It is important when you begin to distract yourself -- by being tired, falling
asleep, or thinking of everything but the exercise -- that you not judge
yourself or feel guilty, but realize the distraction is coming from your fear of
the lessons' goal.*

(6) "Joy characterizes peace. By this experience will you recognize that you
have reached it. If you feel yourself slipping off into withdrawal, quickly
repeat the idea for today and try again. Do this as often as necessary. There is
definite gain in refusing to allow retreat into withdrawal, even if you do not
experience the peace you seek."

*What is helpful about such statements is Jesus' gentleness in pointing out our
potential resistance to these lessons. If he is expecting us to have difficulty
and does not judge us for it, there is no reason, again, to judge ourselves when
we forget to do the exercises, or begin them and promptly fall asleep.

When we allow ourselves to move beyond the thoughts of anger, depression, and
conflict, we joyously feel the peace of knowing our sins are forgiven and have
had no effect on the love and light within. Such joy is impossible if we do not
first accept our self-concepts of sin, guilt, and failure. "Failing" the
workbook offers us perfect opportunities of looking at these ego concepts, and
then moving beyond them to the truth about ourselves.*

(7) "In the shorter periods, which should be undertaken at regular and
predetermined intervals today, say to yourself:

There is no will but God's.
I seek His peace today.

Then try to find what you are seeking. A minute or two every half an hour, with
eyes closed if possible, would be well spent on this today."

*If the goal of peace is truly ours, we shall happily embrace the means of
attaining it as well. Our constant remembrances throughout the day reflect this
embrace. Therefore, once again, forgetting "the minute or two" we are asked to
spend every thirty minutes helps us get in touch with our ambivalence about the
goal. This alerts us to our inner conflict, and provides constant opportunities
for forgiving ourselves for the "sin" of pushing God away. From time to time we
shall return to this important aspect of our workbook practice.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 73. I will there be light.

#93072

Lesson 73. I will there be light.

(1) Today we are considering the will you share with God. This is not the same
as the ego's idle wishes, out of which darkness and nothingness arise. The will
you share with God has all the power of creation in it. The ego's idle wishes
are unshared, and therefore have no power at all. Its wishes are not idle in the
sense that they can make a world of illusions in which your belief can be very
strong. But they are idle indeed in terms of creation. They make nothing that is
real.

(2) Idle wishes and grievances are partners or co-makers in picturing the world
you see. The wishes of the ego gave rise to it, and the ego's need for
grievances, which are necessary to maintain it, peoples it with figures that
seem to attack you and call for "righteous" judgment. These figures become the
middlemen the ego employs to traffic in grievances. They stand between your
awareness and your brothers' reality. Beholding them, you do not know your
brothers or your Self.

(3) Your will is lost to you in this strange bartering, in which guilt is traded
back and forth, and grievances increase with each exchange. Can such a world
have been created by the Will the Son of God shares with his Father? Did God
create disaster for His Son? Creation is the Will of Both together. Would God
create a world that kills Himself?

(4) Today we will try once more to reach the world that is in accordance with
your will. The light is in it because it does not oppose the Will of God. It is
not Heaven, but the light of Heaven shines on it. Darkness has vanished. The
ego's idle wishes have been withdrawn. Yet the light that shines upon this world
reflects your will, and so it must be in you that we will look for it.

(5) Your picture of the world can only mirror what is within. The source of
neither light nor darkness can be found without. Grievances darken your mind,
and you look out on a darkened world. Forgiveness lifts the darkness, reasserts
your will, and lets you look upon a world of light. We have repeatedly
emphasized that the barrier of grievances is easily passed, and cannot stand
between you and your salvation. The reason is very simple. Do you really want to
be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die?

(6) Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really Heaven.
You know it is not so. You cannot want this for yourself. There is a point
beyond which illusions cannot go. Suffering is not happiness, and it is
happiness you really want. Such is your will in truth. And so salvation is your
will as well. You want to succeed in what we are trying to do today. We
undertake it with your blessing and your glad accord.

(7) We will succeed today if you remember that you want salvation for yourself.
You want to accept God's plan because you share in it. You have no will that can
really oppose it, and you do not want to do so. Salvation is for you. Above all
else, you want the freedom to remember Who you really are. Today it is the ego
that stands powerless before your will. Your will is free, and nothing can
prevail against it.

(8) Therefore, we undertake the exercises for today in happy confidence, certain
that we will find what it is your will to find, and remember what it is your
will to remember. No idle wishes can detain us, nor deceive us with an illusion
of strength. Today let your will be done, and end forever the insane belief that
it is hell in place of Heaven that you choose.

(9) We will begin our longer practice periods with the recognition that God's
plan for salvation, and only His, is wholly in accord with your will. It is not
the purpose of an alien power, thrust upon you unwillingly. It is the one
purpose here on which you and your Father are in perfect accord. You will
succeed today, the time appointed for the release of the Son of God from hell
and from all idle wishes. His will is now restored to his awareness. He is
willing this very day to look upon the light in him and be saved.

(10) After reminding yourself of this, and determining to keep your will clearly
in mind, tell yourself with gentle firmness and quiet certainty:

I will there be light. Let me behold the light. Let me behold the light

that reflects God's Will and mine.<

Then let your will assert itself, joined with the power of God and united with
your Self. Put the rest of the practice period under Their guidance. Join with
Them as They lead the way.

(11) In the shorter practice periods, again make a declaration of what you
really want. Say:

I will there be light. Darkness is not my will.<

This should be repeated several times an hour. It is most important, however, to
apply today's idea in this form immediately you are tempted to hold a grievance
of any kind. This will help you let your grievances go, instead of cherishing
them and hiding them in darkness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 73. I will there be light.

*In this lesson Jesus continues to talk about grievances. He begins, however, by
contrasting <will> with <wish>, a distinction that is explained more fully in
the text (see, e.g., T-7.X.4-7) the ego wishes; spirit wills.*

(1:1-2) "Today we are considering the will you share with God. This is not the
same as the ego's idle wishes, out of which darkness and nothingness arise."

*The ego's idle wish is to be separate from the Will of God, an individual self
apart from His living Oneness. Out of that illusory wish arise nothingness and
darkness: first the ego thought system of sin, guilt, and fear, and then the
world.*

(1:3-7) "The will you share with God has all the power of creation in it. The
ego's idle wishes are unshared, and therefore have no power at all. Its wishes
are not idle in the sense that they can make a world of illusions in which your
belief can be very strong. But they are idle indeed in terms of creation. They
make nothing that is real."

*The ego's idle wishes have no power in reality, but they certainly do within
the dream. On the level of truth, the ego is absolutely nothing, but within its
own thought system it is very powerful. After all, it believes it destroyed
Heaven. Yet because the ego is on its own, it lacks the power of Heaven's
Oneness, which is the power of creation. The ego's "power" of miscreation can
only make illusions; hence, it is idle. I mentioned above that in the text Jesus
makes the same distinction. Here is an excerpt from his comments:

"God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful as His because it is
His. The ego's wishes do not mean anything, because the ego wishes for the
impossible. You can wish for the impossible, but you can will only with God.
This is the ego's weakness and your strength." (T.7.X.4.6-11).*

(2) "Idle wishes and grievances are partners or co-makers in picturing the world
you see. The wishes of the ego gave rise to it, and the ego's need for
grievances, which are necessary to maintain it, peoples it with figures that
seem to attack you and call for "righteous" judgment. These figures become the
middlemen the ego employs to traffic in grievances. They stand between your
awareness and your brothers' reality. Beholding them, you do not know your
brothers or your Self."

*When Jesus talks about "picturing the world [we] see," he does not mean there
is a world out there that we simply misperceive. He is speaking of the <world of
perception> that we see. It is not just that we see by means our misthoughts.
The fact that we see in the first place is the object of Jesus' correction. The
perceptual world -- "the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."
(T.13.IN.2.2) -- was made by the wish to protect our mind's decision to be
separate, and the dynamic of projection, which accomplished this, is also
utilized to protect the original (or primary) projection. Our grievances against
others -- the secondary projections if you will -- perpetuate the delusional
system of separation by keeping them separate from us, at the same time holding
them up as sinners deserving punishment. All this -- the special love and hate
relationships are the ego's bread and butter -- continually attack our and our
brother's reality as Christ: God's one Son, undifferentiated and undivided. Our
specialness clothes them in the darkness of our needs and demands, hiding the
light that unites us all as one Self.*

(3) "Your will is lost to you in this strange bartering, in which guilt is
traded back and forth, and grievances increase with each exchange. Can such a
world have been created by the Will the Son of God shares with his Father? Did
God create disaster for His Son? Creation is the Will of Both together. Would
God create a world that kills Himself?"

*Once again, Jesus is not speaking of a world in which there is physical death,
plane crashes, or other disastrous occurrences; he is speaking of a physical
world, <period>. The world of perception is the world of duality; the world of
special relationships in which each partner bargains with the other for some
scraps of specialness. Each seeks to give as little and receive as much as
possible in return. This strange and unnatural way of relating -- one ego self
trying to negotiate with another ego self for what is ultimately worthless -- is
depicted quite explicitly in this passage form "The Choice for Completion":

"Most curious of all is the concept of the self which the ego fosters in
the special relationship. This "self" seeks the relationship to make itself
complete. Yet when it finds the special relationship in which it thinks it can
accomplish this it gives itself away, and tries to "trade" itself for the self
of another. This is not union, for there is no increase and no extension. Each
partner tries to sacrifice the self he does not want for one he thinks he would
prefer. And he feels guilty for the "sin" of taking, and of giving nothing of
value in return. How much value can he place upon a self that he would give away
to get a "better" one?" (T-16.V.7)

In reading the Bible, a student of A Course in Miracles can see how the biblical
deity is directly involved with such a strange bartering, continually trading
grievances with his children. This reinforcement of the ego's principles of
specialness explains the great attraction the Bible has had for its readers and
adherents, and one can justifiably ask whether the God of Love and Oneness could
possibly be involved with such insanity?*

(4) "Today we will try once more to reach the world that is in accordance with
your will. The light is in it because it does not oppose the Will of God. It is
not Heaven, but the light of Heaven shines on it. Darkness has vanished. The
ego's idle wishes have been withdrawn. Yet the light that shines upon this world
reflects your will, and so it must be in you that we will look for it."

*This is the real world. While still an illusion, it yet reflects the reality of
Heaven as it does not oppose God's Will in any way. In this peaceful state we
stand outside the dream, seeing the physical world for what it is. We have
accepted the Atonement for ourselves by choosing, <once and for all>, against
the separation wishes of the ego. All that remains is the light of the
Atonement's truth within our minds, patiently awaiting our decision to look for
it.*

(5:1-4) "Your picture of the world can only mirror what is within. The source of
neither light nor darkness can be found without. Grievances darken your mind,
and you look out on a darkened world. Forgiveness lifts the darkness, reasserts
your will, and lets you look upon a world of light."

*Truth and illusions are both within our minds; not outside, as the ego would
have us believe. This idea is more than familiar to us by now: What we see
outside is a projection of what we have first seen inside: <projection makes
perception.> If we want to see light outside, we first must see it within, which
we cannot reach without going through the darkness. Forgiveness -- undoing the
mind's guilt -- is therefore the means of accomplishing this happy and
light-filled outcome.*

(5:5-8) "We have repeatedly emphasized that the barrier of grievances is easily
passed, and cannot stand between you and your salvation. The reason is very
simple. Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer
and die?"

*The barrier is easily passed because it consists of nothing but our decision to
be in the hell of separation and attack. Once taught by Jesus that all
suffering, even unto death, has come from this decision, the answer is very
simple: change our minds and forgive.*

(6:1-4) "Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really
Heaven. You know it is not so. You cannot want this for yourself. There is a
point beyond which illusions cannot go."

*In other words, illusions will never make us happy. We have to accept that
statement as fact before we can be willing to ask Jesus' help. The illusions of
specialness can certainly bring us happiness and pleasure, but these can never
last because our special relationships were made <not> to last. This is "the
point beyond which illusions cannot go." Why would we want to seek for what will
inevitably fail us? Jesus repeatedly returns to this point, since its appeal is
what he hopes will eventually turn us away from hell.*

(6:5-6) "Suffering is not happiness, and it is happiness you really want. Such
is your will in truth."

*Once again, Jesus is pointing out our need to realize that what we do in this
world does not make us happy. Until we can accept that, and accept that none of
our specialness is going to end our pain or bring us joy, we are not going to
ask for his help, at least not sincerely. Intrinsic to this process is
acknowledging, as we have seen earlier, that only he can teach us the difference
between pain and joy, imprisonment and freedom, suffering and happiness.*

(6:7-9) "And so salvation is your will as well. You want to succeed in what we
are trying to do today. We undertake it with your blessing and your glad
accord."

*Jesus cannot help us unless we give such help our blessing. That is why he must
first convince us he is right and we are wrong, and that we truly prefer to be
happy and not right (T-29.VII.1:9). Without such conviction we would never
choose to follow him. That is why he needs us as much as we need him
(T-8.V.6:10). We need to want to be helped; only then can our salvation be
accomplished.*

(7) "We will succeed today if you remember that you want salvation for yourself.
You want to accept God's plan because you share in it. You have no will that can
really oppose it, and you do not want to do so. Salvation is for you. Above all
else, you want the freedom to remember Who you really are. Today it is the ego
that stands powerless before your will. Your will is free, and nothing can
prevail against it."

*Another pep talk from Jesus, reminding us to remember how much we want his
salvation instead of the ego's slavation; that our freedom lies in ourselves as
does our imprisonment. When we are tempted to forget, he reminds us that no
matter how powerful the ego appears to be -- external <and> internal -- it can
have no power over us unless we choose to let it. That is why nothing can
prevail against our will, as he tells us in the text:

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will
not prevail against it (T-4.III.1:12; italics omitted).

That is the source of our hope and our joy.*

(8) "Therefore, we undertake the exercises for today in happy confidence,
certain that we will find what it is your will to find, and remember what it is
your will to remember. No idle wishes can detain us, nor deceive us with an
illusion of strength. Today let your will be done, and end forever the insane
belief that it is hell in place of Heaven that you choose."

*The pep talk continues, as Jesus wants us to understand the inherent weakness
of the ego's illusory wishes, which in no way can compare with the strength of
our will, always at one with the Will of our Creator and Source.*

(9) "We will begin our longer practice periods with the recognition that God's
plan for salvation, and only His, is wholly in accord with your will. It is not
the purpose of an alien power, thrust upon you unwillingly. It is the one
purpose here on which you and your Father are in perfect accord. You will
succeed today, the time appointed for the release of the Son of God from hell
and from all idle wishes. His will is now restored to his awareness. He is
willing this very day to look upon the light in him and be saved."

*We are asked by Jesus to put into practice what he has been teaching us; to
think seriously during the day's long practice periods about our mistake in
thinking we would want, even if we could, to oppose God's Will. He asks us to
see how unhappy such a mistake has made us, and how happy we could be simply
setting aside our ego's opposition to the truth. Thus do we welcome the Will of
God where it is already, as the awareness of Heaven is restored to our minds in
place of the hell we had made in its stead.

It is important to understand that we must truly accept this teaching;
otherwise, we might choose to practice these lessons <behaviorally>, without
really wanting to do so. Early in the text Jesus cautions us against this very
mistake of entering into the conflict of not wanting to do what we feel he is
asking us do, yet doing it anyway:

"You can behave as you think you should, but without entirely wanting to do
so. This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain ... resulting in
a situation in which you are doing what you do not wholly want to do. This
arouses a sense of coercion that usually produces rage, and projection is likely
to follow. " (T-2:VI.5:4-7).

That is why Jesus is continually emphasizing the benefits to us of letting our
grievances go. He wants us to <want> to forgive. Only then will we truly and
joyfully choose to do so.*

(10) "After reminding yourself of this, and determining to keep your will
clearly in mind, tell yourself with gentle firmness and quiet certainty:

I will there be light. Let me behold the light that reflects God's Will and
mine.

Then let your will assert itself, joined with the power of God and united with
your Self. Put the rest of the practice period under Their guidance. Join with
Them as They lead the way."

*We do our part by joining God and Christ in our minds. This allows our joint
Will to shine through us, embracing the Sonship in the oneness of love. This
process of reflecting creation's will of light -- the essence of healing --
finds lovely expression in the final principle of miracle workers, known to many
students of A Course in Miracles as the "Prayer for Salvation":

I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or
what to do, because He Who sent me will
direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes,
knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.
(T-2.18:2-6)

Thus are we guided daily to heal as we are healed, forgive as we are forgiven,
and love as we are loved.*

(11:1-5)"In the shorter practice periods, again make a declaration of what you
really want. Say:

I will there be light. Darkness is not my will.

This should be repeated several times an hour."

*Our decision is reflected by the willingness to remember -- as often as we can
-- that our will and God's are one, the ego's delusions of grandeur
not-withstanding. We reinforce this willingness because of our recognition that
illusions breed darkness, while the truth sets us free by virtue of its light --
<our> light as God's Son, the Self He created as Himself.*

(11:6:7) "It is most important, however, to apply today's idea in this form
immediately you are tempted to hold a grievance of any kind. This will help you
let your grievances go, instead of cherishing them and hiding them in darkness."

*Jesus is always asking us to pay careful attention to our attack thoughts and
grievances. Thus we realize they will not make us happy, for they are an active
attack on God's plan for salvation. We have come to understand that we have
cherished our judgments because of their ability to keep our individuality safe
and the light of Christ in darkness, and the cost to us of cherishing such
defenses was too great. This recognition makes it easier and easier to let our
grievances go, and choose the Holy Spirit's light over the ego's darkness.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 72. Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

#93071

Lesson 72. Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

(1) While we have recognized that the ego's plan for salvation is the opposite
of God's, we have not yet emphasized that it is an active attack on His plan,
and a deliberate attempt to destroy it. In the attack, God is assigned the
attributes which are actually associated with the ego, while the ego appears to
take on the attributes of God.

(2) The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the
physical embodiment of that wish. For it is that wish that seems to surround the
mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds
except through the body that was made to imprison it. The limit on communication
cannot be the best means to expand communication. Yet the ego would have you
believe that it is.

(3) Although the attempt to keep the limitations that a body would impose is
obvious here, it is perhaps not so apparent why holding grievances is an attack
on God's plan for salvation. But let us consider the kinds of things you are apt
to hold grievances for. Are they not always associated with something a body
does? A person says something you do not like. He does something that displeases
you. He "betrays" his hostile thoughts in his behavior.

(4) You are not dealing here with what the person is. On the contrary, you are
exclusively concerned with what he does in a body. You are doing more than
failing to help in freeing him from the body's limitations. You are actively
trying to hold him to it by confusing it with him, and judging them as one.
Herein is God attacked, for if His Son is only a body, so must He be as well. A
creator wholly unlike his creation is inconceivable.

(5) If God is a body, what must His plan for salvation be? What could it be but
death? In trying to present Himself as the Author of life and not of death, He
is a liar and a deceiver, full of false promises and offering illusions in place
of truth. The body's apparent reality makes this view of God quite convincing.
In fact, if the body were real, it would be difficult indeed to escape this
conclusion. And every grievance that you hold insists that the body is real. It
overlooks entirely what your brother is. It reinforces your belief that he is a
body, and condemns him for it. And it asserts that his salvation must be death,
projecting this attack onto God, and holding Him responsible for it.

(6) To this carefully prepared arena, where angry animals seek for prey and
mercy cannot enter, the ego comes to save you. God made you a body. Very well.
Let us accept this and be glad. As a body, do not let yourself be deprived of
what the body offers. Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing. The
body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation.

(7) This is the universal belief of the world you see. Some hate the body, and
try to hurt and humiliate it. Others love the body, and try to glorify and exalt
it. But while the body stands at the center of your concept of yourself, you are
attacking God's plan for salvation, and holding your grievances against Him and
His creation, that you may not hear the Voice of truth and welcome It as Friend.
Your chosen savior takes His place instead. It is your friend; He is your enemy.

(8) We will try today to stop these senseless attacks on salvation. We will try
to welcome it instead. Your upside-down perception has been ruinous to your
peace of mind. You have seen yourself in a body and the truth outside you,
locked away from your awareness by the body's limitations. Now we are going to
try to see this differently.

(9) The light of truth is in us, where it was placed by God. It is the body that
is outside us, and is not our concern. To be without a body is to be in our
natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves
as we are. To see our Self as separate from the body is to end the attack on
God's plan for salvation, and to accept it instead. And wherever His plan is
accepted, it is accomplished already.

(10) Our goal in the longer practice periods today is to become aware that God's
plan for salvation has already been accomplished in us. To achieve this goal, we
must replace attack with acceptance. As long as we attack it, we cannot
understand what God's plan for us is. We are therefore attacking what we do not
recognize. Now we are going to try to lay judgment aside, and ask what God's
plan for us is:

What is salvation, Father? I do not know.

Tell me, that I may understand.<

He will answer. Be determined to hear.

(13) One or perhaps two shorter practice periods an hour will be enough for
today, since they will be somewhat longer than usual. These exercises should
begin with this:

Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

Let me accept it instead. What is salvation, Father?<

Then wait a minute or so in silence, preferably with your eyes closed, and
listen for His answer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 72. Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

*Viewing the lessons as a series, different movements in a gigantic symphony, we
see how each one is part of the larger whole, the lessons building upon
themselves as the music of forgiveness evolves. In this lesson Jesus talks a
great deal about the body. Yet it is not the body that is the problem, but our
belief in it. This defends against the body's source: the guilt in our minds.*

(1:1) "While we have recognized that the ego's plan for salvation is the
opposite of God's, we have not yet emphasized that it is an active attack on His
plan, and a deliberate attempt to destroy it."

*If we really experienced this "deliberate attempt" the instant we started
making judgments and holding grievances, we would stop instantly. The ego splits
off the effect from the cause, so that we are not aware of what we are doing,
allowing us blissfully to keep on doing it. Jesus was making the same point in
the text when he discussed the viciousness of the special relationship, not only
to destroy God's "plan" of forgiveness but to destroy God Himself. We have
already discussed the paragraph's opening sentence:

"If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, would you
want it? Let us not think of its fearful nature, nor of the guilt it must
entail, nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only attributes of
the whole religion of separation, and of the total context in which it is
thought to occur. The central theme in its litany to sacrifice is that God must
die so you can live. And it is this theme that is acted out in the special
relationship." (T.16.V.10.1-5)

It is essential that we recognize the effects of our judgments; otherwise
choosing against them would have no meaning and, indeed, could never happen.*

(1:2) "In the attack, God is assigned the attributes which are actually
associated with the ego, while the ego appears to take on the attributes of
God."

*This is an important theme in A Course in Miracles, and helps us to understand
why the world has made such hideous images of God: destroyer, avenger, punisher,
arbiter of specialness, etc. We project our unconscious thoughts about
ourselves, and have them now be in God. We discussed this in the previous
lesson, citing the text's statement of the impossibility of <not> perceiving God
as a body once we believe we are bodies -- <projection makes perception>. It is
not only our belief in the body that we project onto God, but the underlying
thought system of sin, guilt, and fear. Given the immutable nature of this
fundamental principle of the mind -- again, <projection makes perception> -- it
cannot <not> be the case that we would project our unconscious attributes of
selfishness and hate onto our Creator; He, the great killer. In the following
images of sun and sunbeam, ocean and ripple, God is perceived by the little self
to be a monster:

"In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it is the sun; this
almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and
frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself
apart against the universe. The sun becomes the sunbeam's "enemy" that would
devour it, and the ocean terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it."
(T-18.VIII.3:4-6).

Moreover, it cannot <not> be the case that we would believe -- following another
ego principle of <one or the other> -- that what was once God's has become ours.
<We> -- the separated and autonomous ego self -- have become the creators. We
shall return to these fundamental ego dynamics later in the workbook.*

(2) "The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the
physical embodiment of that wish. For it is that wish that seems to surround the
mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds
except through the body that was made to imprison it. The limit on communication
cannot be the best means to expand communication. Yet the ego would have you
believe that it is."

*These are explicit statements of the ego's essence, the stark reality of its
desire to become autonomous, independent, and free, < and then believing it has
accomplished this impossibility > ! The body, then, "is the physical embodiment
of [ the ego's ] wish" to replace God and be on its own. In the text Jesus
teaches that the body is a limit on love (T-18.VIII.1:2). <Communication> in the
Course, however, is the song of unlimited love the Father and Son sing to each
other, a song of perfect oneness and unity. The body keeps that reality separate
from our awareness. "The Little Garden" also expresses the idea that the body
keeps us separated from God, as we see in this representative passage:

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love
will always seem to shut Him out, and keep you apart from Him. The body is a
tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a
circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered
from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter
not." (T-18.VIII.2:3-6).

In the next two paragraphs Jesus explains that when we hold grievances they are
always against a body. This relates to the idea in Lesson 161, which I mentioned
earlier, that hate is specific. If I am going to hate, there must be a body out
there to be hated. Jesus is helping us realize that our grievances always deal
with bodies, the antithesis of our, and our brother's identity as spirit:*

(3) "Although the attempt to keep the limitations that a body would impose is
obvious here, it is perhaps not so apparent why holding grievances is an attack
on God's plan for salvation. But let us consider the kinds of things you are apt
to hold grievances for. Are they not always associated with something a body
does? A person says something you do not like. He does something that displeases
you. He "betrays" his hostile thoughts in his behavior."

*Recall the essential role of the body in its plan to keep the Son of God
mindless. It not only solidifies the ego's claim that the separation actually
occurred, but the magical hope as well that someone else's body will be the
secure repository of our guilt. Thus do our bodies' eyes roam viciously around
their world, ready to pounce on any proof that our brother is the sinner,
leaving us innocent and free of any threat of punishment. Our brother "says
something [ we] do not like" because we want him to say something we do not
like. This does not mean we are responsible for what is said, but we are most
definitely responsible for our interpretation of what he said. In other words,
we <want> the hostility to be in another, directed at ourselves, and so we see
it there, as this graphic passage about the ego's "hungry dogs of fear"
(T-19.IV-A.15:6) depicts:

"The messengers of fear are harshly ordered to seek out guilt, and cherish
every scrap of evil and of sin that they can find, losing none of them on pain
of death, and laying them respectfully before their lord and master. ... Fear's
messengers are trained through terror, and ... Its messengers steal guiltily
away in hungry search of guilt, for they are kept cold and starving and made
very vicious by their master, who allows them to feast only upon what they
return to him. No little shred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes. And in their
savage search for sin they pounce on any living thing they see, and carry it
screaming to their master, to be devoured ... they will bring you word of bones
and skin and flesh. They have been taught to seek for the corruptible, and to
return with gorges filled with things decayed and rotted. To them such things
are beautiful, because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger."
(T-19.IV.A.11:2;12;3,5-7;13:2-4).

Without the body, these fear-laden dogs would have nothing to feast on, and
their guilt would devour them as punishment for their sin.*

(4:1-4) "You are not dealing here with what the person is. On the contrary, you
are exclusively concerned with what he does in a body. You are doing more than
failing to help in freeing him from the body's limitations. You are actively
trying to hold him to it by confusing it with him, and judging them as one."

* "Shadows of the Past" also tells us we do not see people for the Christ they
are, but as shadowy bodies based on the projection of guilt: or perceived evil
seen in them. The following passage describes the ego's unholy use of the body
-- "as means for vengeance":

"The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to demonstrate he
did what he did not.... They represent the evil that you think was done to you.
You bring them with you only that you may return evil for evil, hoping that
their witness will enable you to think guiltily of another and not harm
yourself. ... They offer you the "reasons" why you should enter into unholy
alliances to support the ego's goals, and make your relationships the witness to
its power.... Without exception, these relationships have as their purpose the
exclusion of the truth about the other, and of yourself. This is why you see in
both what is not there ...And why whatever reminds you of your past grievances
attracts you, and seems to go by the name of love ... And finally, why all such
relationships become attempts at union through the body, for only bodies can be
seen as means for vengeance. That bodies are central to all unholy relationships
is evident." (T-17.III.1:6,9-10,12;2:3-7).

Strictly speaking, I cannot hold you in the ego's hell; but I can certainly
reinforce your choice to be there by equating you with the body, the purpose of
the special relationship. Thus every special relationship -- unfortunately that
means almost all our relationships -- is based upon an illusion. It begins with
the illusion we hold about ourselves -- "the home of evil, darkness, and sin"
(W-pI.93.1.1) -- which we then seek to dispose of through projecting it onto
others. Our belief that we are separated, now projected onto another, leads to
that projected thought given form <and made real>. Thus our brother <is> a body,
and if we are too, it is not our fault. The sinful and guilty shadows of our
past's mistaken decision have become reality to us, and our reality as spirit
has become the illusion.*

(4:5-6) "Herein is God attacked, for if His Son is only a body, so must He be as
well. A creator wholly unlike his creation is inconceivable."

*In Lesson 68 I referred to the concept of God being whatever we conceive His
Son to be. Thus, again, if we see ourselves and others as bodies, it is
impossible that we not see God as one, too. This is because every belief we have
about another comes directly from our belief about ourselves: <projection makes
perception>. That is why, to repeat this important point, Jesus speaks about God
as if he were a body. He calls him "Father," asks us to have a conversation with
Him, and ask Him questions. However, this is not because God knows about the
illusion, as the continuation of the passage of the sun and ocean -- metaphors
for God -- makes clear:

"Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and
meaningless activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and
hated by a tiny segment of themselves." (T-18.VIII.4:1-2).

Once more, Jesus talks to us <as if> God knows about us, because this is how we
experience God: like perceives like, bodies perceive bodies, illusions perceive
illusions.*

(5:1-5) "If God is a body, what must His plan for salvation be? What could it be
but death? In trying to present Himself as the Author of life and not of death,
He is a liar and a deceiver, full of false promises and offering illusions in
place of truth. The body's apparent reality makes this view of God quite
convincing. In fact, if the body were real, it would be difficult indeed to
escape this conclusion."

*This passage depicts the biblical God -- in spades! When we make our thought
system of individuality real, we make the body real. This means we believe we
have destroyed the true God, replacing Him with a deity literally made up in our
own image, and a lying and deceiving one at that. If the body is real, which we
certainly believe, this image of God <must> be real as well. The ego thought
system, you may recall, is a totally coherent, internally consistent one. Thus,
if the body were real, the thought system that made it and still informs it is
real as well. And God, the projection of our guilt, must be an ego, too. This
same argument begins in Chapter 13 in the text, the context being the world of
bodies, made by "those made mad by guilt":

"The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God's Son was the beginning of
the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. The world you see
is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this
world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of
punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death.
Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by
suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds seem
to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are
hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose
what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither
and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more. Not one of them but has
thought that God is cruel.

If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no Father could
subject His children to this as the price of salvation and be loving."
(T-13.in.2:1--3:2).

No wonder the biblical God is such a despicable creature. He is <us>! *

(5:6-9) "And every grievance that you hold insists that the body is real. It
overlooks entirely what your brother is. It reinforces your belief that he is a
body, and condemns him for it. And it asserts that his salvation must be death,
projecting this attack onto God, and holding Him responsible for it."

*Projection comes to the ego's rescue, once again! What better way to keep our
true Identity hidden than to see only the mindless body as real. What better way
to keep the body real than to continually see it as the object and perpetrator
of attack. How better to keep the belief in attack real than by punishing it
through the "natural" law of death. Finally, how fiendishly clever on the ego's
part to keep this law immutable by attributing it to Almighty God Himself, as
the Bible so blatantly asserts. One can only admire the ego's ingenuity, even as
we suffer under its guilt-ridden yoke.*

(6) "To this carefully prepared arena, where angry animals seek for prey and
mercy cannot enter, the ego comes to save you. God made you a body. Very well.
Let us accept this and be glad. As a body, do not let yourself be deprived of
what the body offers. Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing. The
body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation."

*This is a rather strong passage, but if we are honest with ourselves we will
realize this is not only what religions have believed, but what we believe, too.
Indeed, religions teach this because they were made by the ego.

The reference here is to the little scraps of specialness we are so desperate to
get, for which we so pitifully settle. This is why Jesus says in the text that
the problem is not that we ask for too much, but for far too little
(T-26.VII.11:7); and why he asks us to consider our use of the body:

"To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little is to hurt
yourself ... " (T-19.IV-A.17:12).

In The Song of Prayer he urges us not to settle for the parts of the song, but
to seek instead the experience of the song itself. In other words, we should not
accept the ego's shabby and specific substitutes of specialness when Jesus is
offering us the totality of God's Love:

"You cannot, then, ask for the echo. It is the song that is the gift. Along
with it come the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes, but these are secondary.
In true prayer you hear only the song. All the rest is merely added. You have
sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else has indeed been given
you."(S-1.I.3.).

The ego has told us that God has given us nothing, for He gave us the body and
left us here, and there is nothing we can do about it. Moreover, He is going to
kill us. Therefore, the ego continues, as long as we are here let us make the
best of it, and get whatever bodily crumbs of pleasure we can! In the
pessimistic words of Isaiah, worthy of the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes:
"Let us eat and drink [ and be merry , adds Ecclesiastes 8:15]; for tomorrow we
shall die" (Isaiah 22:13). The ego then believes it has had the last laugh,
because the very fact there is a body that can live <and> die, means that Gods
and Christ's reality as eternal spirit must be illusory. Thus are we saved
<from> God's Love, and for the ego's specialness.*

(7) "This is the universal belief of the world you see. Some hate the body, and
try to hurt and humiliate it. Others love the body, and try to glorify and exalt
it. But while the body stands at the center of your concept of yourself, you are
attacking God's plan for salvation, and holding your grievances against Him and
His creation, that you may not hear the Voice of truth and welcome It as Friend.
Your chosen savior takes His place instead. It is your friend; He is your
enemy."

*There is no one in this world who does not believe the body saves us from God,
for each of us has chosen to come into this world as a body. And who but the
insane would choose to come to hell rather than remain in Heaven? We all have
chuckled over the Cheshire Cat's response to poor Alice, perhaps without
recognizing Lewis Carroll's wisdom:

"In that direction." the Cat said, waving its right paw, "lives a Hatter: and in
that direction," waving another paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like:
they're both mad."

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're
mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

It makes no difference to the insane ego whether we embrace the body or are
repulsed by it. Either way we have made it real. That is why Jesus tells us
(twice!) in the sections on the obstacles to peace that whether the body is
perceived as pleasurable or painful is irrelevant, as long as believe it has
that capacity (T-19.IV-A.17:10-11;T-19.IV-B.12). Thus have we made it real in
our perception, and turned spirit into illusions. These opposite sides -
pleasure and pain -- of the same bodily coin are discussed again in Lesson 155.

The devotion to the body goes right to the heart of our motivation. We do not
want to hear the Voice of truth, which signals the end of the ego self.
Therefore we first silence the Holy Spirit by our guilt, and by glorifying the
body as our friend and savior.*

(8) "We will try today to stop these senseless attacks on salvation. We will try
to welcome it instead. Your upside-down perception has been ruinous to your
peace of mind. You have seen yourself in a body and the truth outside you,
locked away from your awareness by the body's limitations. Now we are going to
try to see this differently."

*Again, after making his case, Jesus appeals to us to listen, and therefore
choose again. At the end of the text Jesus makes this same appeal, even more
emphatically:

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it
occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must
die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It
sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his
grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you be this, if Christ appeared to you
in all His glory, asking you but this: Choose once again if you would take your
place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your
brothers there. For He has come, and He is asking this:

"Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the
world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there. For He <has> come,
and He <is> asking this." (T-31.VIII.1).

The question is clear, the problem even clearer. The answer merely awaits our
inevitable decision.*

(9) "The light of truth is in us, where it was placed by God. It is the body
that is outside us, and is not our concern. To be without a body is to be in our
natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves
as we are. To see our Self as separate from the body is to end the attack on
God's plan for salvation, and to accept it instead. And wherever His plan is
accepted, it is accomplished already."

*Referring to our chart, the light of truth is in our minds -- the inner circle
-- and the body is in the clouds -- the outer circle. Once again, the decision
is ours. It is helpful to return to the workbooks basic purpose: training us to
return to our minds, within which we have a choice between the unnatural thought
system of the body -- reflecting the unnatural thought of the ego -- and the
natural state of our Self as spirit. The decision is made possible by
recognizing the painful futility of holding onto our grievances, when we could
have the peace of God instead.*

(10) "Our goal in the longer practice periods today is to become aware that
God's plan for salvation has already been accomplished in us. To achieve this
goal, we must replace attack with acceptance. As long as we attack it, we cannot
understand what God's plan for us is. We are therefore attacking what we do not
recognize. Now we are going to try to lay judgment aside, and ask what God's
plan for us is:

What is salvation, Father? I do not know.

Tell me, that I may understand.<

Then we will wait in quiet for His answer. We have attacked God's plan for
salvation without waiting to hear what it is. We have shouted our grievances so
loudly that we have not listened to His Voice. We have used our grievances to
close our eyes and stop our ears."

*We have already discussed at length the use of dualistic language in A Course
in Miracles, which is seen again here and requires no further commentary.

Jesus is asking us to set aside our judgments and grievances, for these are the
ego's "raucous shrieks" that prevent us from hearing the gentle Voice of the
Atonement. To quote again from that important passage on specialness:

"What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you, when it is your
specialness to which you listen, and which asks and answers? Its tiny answer,
soundless in the melody that pours from God to you eternally in loving praise of
what you are, is all you listen to. And that vast song of honor and of love for
what you are seems silent and unheard before its "mightiness". You strain your
ears to hear its soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless
to you." (T-24.II.4:3-6).

Our judgments are thus calculated by the unconscious ego to deflect our
attention from the guilt in our minds, focusing it on the body -- our sinful
brother's!*

(11) "Now we would see and hear and learn. "What is salvation, Father?" Ask and
you will be answered. Seek and you will find. We are no longer asking the ego
what salvation is and where to find it. We are asking it of truth. Be certain,
then, that the answer will be true because of Whom you ask."

*Jesus is assuming we have made our choice, released our grievances, and are
free to hear the truth. We have <sought> for the answer where it can be <found>,
where it has awaited our return. Salvation is really not an answer but a
decision, and one which we now happily make.*

(12) "Whenever you feel your confidence wane and your hope of success flicker
and go out, repeat your question and your request, remembering that you are
asking of the infinite Creator of infinity, Who created you like Himself:

What is salvation, Father? I do not know.

Tell me, that I may understand.<

He will answer. Be determined to hear."

*As he almost always does at the end of a lesson, Jesus urges us to remember his
truth when we are tempted to forget our function and embrace the illusion of
attack and judgment. Recall again that judgment is motivated by decision <not>
to hear the Voice that speaks for the Atonement -- the salvation from
separation and pain. Such recollection brings to mind our purpose of remembering
the Love that is the Answer to all problems and concerns. *

(13) "One or perhaps two shorter practice periods an hour will be enough for
today, since they will be somewhat longer than usual. These exercises should
begin with this:

Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

Let me accept it instead. What is salvation, Father?<

Then wait a minute or so in silence, preferably with your eyes closed, and
listen for His answer."

*Today's instructions call for fewer practice periods than before, and we can
see how Jesus does not want us to be bound by rigid structure. His goal is for
us to be dependent on the <content> of his message not the <form> in which it
comes and with which we practice. Thus he varies the <form> of the daily
exercises, though hardly their <content>.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 71. Only God's plan for salvation will work.

#93070

Lesson 71. Only God's plan for salvation will work.

(1) You may not realize that the ego has set up a plan for salvation in
opposition to God's. It is this plan in which you believe. Since it is the
opposite of God's, you also believe that to accept God's plan in place of the
ego's is to be damned. This sounds preposterous, of course. Yet after we have
considered just what the ego's plan is, perhaps you will realize that, however
preposterous it may be, you do believe in it.

(2) The ego's plan for salvation centers around holding grievances. It maintains
that, if someone else spoke or acted differently, if some external circumstance
or event were changed, you would be saved. Thus, the source of salvation is
constantly perceived as outside yourself. Each grievance you hold is a
declaration, and an assertion in which you believe, that says, "If this were
different, I would be saved." The change of mind necessary for salvation is thus
demanded of everyone and everything except yourself.

(3) The role assigned to your own mind in this plan, then, is simply to
determine what, other than itself, must change if you are to be saved. According
to this insane plan, any perceived source of salvation is acceptable provided
that it will not work. This ensures that the fruitless search will continue, for
the illusion persists that, although this hope has always failed, there is still
grounds for hope in other places and in other things. Another person will yet
serve better; another situation will yet offer success.

(4) Such is the ego's plan for your salvation. Surely you can see how it is in
strict accord with the ego's basic doctrine, "Seek but do not find." For what
could more surely guarantee that you will not find salvation than to channelize
all your efforts in searching for it where it is not?

(5) God's plan for salvation works simply because, by following His direction,
you seek for salvation where it is. But if you are to succeed, as God promises
you will, you must be willing to seek there only. Otherwise, your purpose is
divided and you will attempt to follow two plans for salvation that are
diametrically opposed in all ways. The result can only bring confusion, misery
and a deep sense of failure and despair.

(6) How can you escape all this? Very simply. The idea for today is the answer.
Only God's plan for salvation will work. There can be no real conflict about
this, because there is no possible alternative to God's plan that will save you.
His is the only plan that is certain in its outcome. His is the only plan that
must succeed.

(7) Let us practice recognizing this certainty today. And let us rejoice that
there is an answer to what seems to be a conflict with no resolution possible.
All things are possible to God. Salvation must be yours because of His plan,
which cannot fail.

(8) Begin the two longer practice periods for today by thinking about today's
idea, and realizing that it contains two parts, each making equal contribution
to the whole. God's plan for your salvation will work, and other plans will not.
Do not allow yourself to become depressed or angry at the second part; it is
inherent in the first. And in the first is your full release from all your own
insane attempts and mad proposals to free yourself. They have led to depression
and anger; but God's plan will succeed. It will lead to release and joy.

(9) Remembering this, let us devote the remainder of the extended practice
periods to asking God to reveal His plan to us. Ask Him very specifically:

What would You have me do?

Where would You have me go?
What would You have me say, and to whom?<

Give Him full charge of the rest of the practice period, and let Him tell you
what needs to be done by you in His plan for your salvation. He will answer in
proportion to your willingness to hear His Voice. Refuse not to hear. The very
fact that you are doing the exercises proves that you have some willingness to
listen. This is enough to establish your claim to God's answer.

(10) In the shorter practice periods, tell yourself often that God's plan for
salvation, and only His, will work. Be alert to all temptation to hold
grievances today, and respond to them with this form of today's idea:

Holding grievances is the opposite

of God's plan for salvation.
And only His plan will work.<

Try to remember today's idea some six or seven times an hour. There could be no
better way to spend a half minute or less than to remember the Source of your
salvation, and to see It where It is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 71. "Only God's plan for salvation will work."

*This is not a very happy thought for the ego, because we still think <our> for
salvation will work. To say it again, God does not have a plan. Terms like these
are used because they are familiar and easily understood. We must always keep in
mind, however, that they are Jesus' symbols of forgiveness to correct the ego's
symbols of sin and punishment. In the Bible, and in the religions that have
sprung from the Bible, God certainly does have a plan. The plan Jesus speaks of
here is much different, as we have already seen, and will see again in this
lesson.*

(1:1-2) "You may not realize that the ego has set up a plan for salvation in
opposition to God's. It is this plan in which you believe."

*Most of us do not think when living our special love and hate relationships
that we are actively choosing against God. That is why Jesus asks in the text
that if we knew our special relationships were a triumph over God, would we want
them? (T-16.V.10:1) He is helping us understand that not only do we have a plan
to save ourselves from pain, but this plan directly opposes God. It is helpful
to think about this <one or the other> aspect of our lives, for perceiving the
situation as it is will enable us to change our minds and make the correct
choice.*

(1:3) "Since it is the opposite of God's, you also believe that to accept God's
plan in place of the ego's is to be damned."

*That <is> what we believe: If we accept God's plan and forgive, our
individuality is over and we are damned to eternal oblivion. This is reminiscent
of the crucial discussion in the text where Jesus explains the ego's upside-down
thinking: good is bad, and bad is good; forgiveness is to be shunned, and guilt
embraced:

"Much of the ego's strange behavior is directly attributable to its
definition of guilt. To the ego, the guiltless are guilty. Those who do not
attack are its "enemies" because, by not valuing its interpretation of
salvation, they are in an excellent position to let it go... When it [the ego]
was confronted with the real guiltlessness of God's Son [i.e.,Jesus] it did
attempt to kill him, and the reason it gave was that guiltlessness is
blasphemous to God. To the ego, the ego is God, and guiltlessness must be
interpreted as the final guilt that fully justifies murder."
(T-13.II.4:1-3;6:2-3).*

(1:4-5) "This sounds preposterous, of course. Yet after we have considered just
what the ego's plan is, perhaps you will realize that, however preposterous it
may be, you do believe in it."

*You may recall that in "The Laws of Chaos" Jesus says the very same thing. He
describes the insanity of the ego's five laws, and then states:

"You would maintain, and think it true, that you do not believe these
senseless laws, nor act upon them. And when you look at what they say, they
cannot be believed. Brother, you do believe them." (T-23.II.18:1-3).

Jesus knows we believe in the ego's plan because we believe we are here. This
means we believe projection is salvation, for it protects us from the mind's
Atonement principle, the home of the memory of God's Love.*

(2:1) "The ego's plan for salvation centers around holding grievances."

*You wouldn't ask for a simpler statement, and one more directly reflective of
the ego's use of projection. This leads to a cogent description of specialness:*

(2:2-5) "It maintains that, if someone else spoke or acted differently, if some
external circumstance or event were changed, you would be saved. Thus, the
source of salvation is constantly perceived as outside yourself. Each grievance
you hold is a declaration, and an assertion in which you believe, that says, "If
this were different, I would be saved." The change of mind necessary for
salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything except yourself."

*There is not a person in this world who does identify with this thought system,
for it is what made and sustains the world. In <The Interpretation of Dream>
Freud set forth his theory that all dreams are fulfillments of wishes. Jesus
would take this same principle and expand it to <all> dreams: sleeping and
waking. The physical universe as macrocosm, and our individual world is a
microcosm, were specifically made to fulfill the ego's secret wish of
maintaining the separation, but shifting responsibility for it to others. Thus
we all have our ego's cake of separation, and eat and enjoy it because someone
else will pay the price for it. "The Picture of Crucifixion" offers a trenchant
expression of this dynamic of selfishness and hate, wherein we preserve our
innocence at the expense of someone else's guilt, for which the other will be
punished instead of ourselves:

"Every pain you suffer do you see as proof that he is guilty of attack.
Thus would you make yourself to be the sign that he has lost his innocence, and
need but look on you to realize that he has been condemned. And what to you has
been unfair will come to him in righteousness. The unjust vengeance that you
suffer now belongs to him, and when it rests on him are you set free...

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated or in
need of anything, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold
a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ
in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate and
damning him to hell." (T-27.1.2:2-5;3:1-2).

We shall return to this essential component of the ego's plan for salvation.*

(3:1-2) "The role assigned to your own mind in this plan, then, is simply to
determine what, other than itself, must change if you are to be saved. According
to this insane plan, any perceived source of salvation is acceptable provided
that it will not work."

*In the next paragraph Jesus describes this as the ego's maxim -- "Seek and do
not find" -- what everyone does. It is so clearly expressed her that there is no
need to belabor it. It is the essence of projection, the heart of the ego's
thought system, and its insurance that nothing will ever change in the mind of
God's Son.*

(3:3-4) "This ensures that the fruitless search will continue, for the illusion
persists that, although this hope has always failed, there is still grounds for
hope in other places and in other things. Another person will yet serve better;
another situation will yet offer success."

*Later in the workbook Jesus says "another can be found" (W-p1.170.8:7). If we
are truly honest with ourselves, we will realize we are doing precisely what has
been described. Therefore, the last thing we want to do is embrace this course
totally, both intellectually and in practice. Instead, we want to compromise its
teachings so that it would fail to help us -- exactly what we just read, which
is the essence of the ego's specialness.*

(4) "Such is the ego's plan for your salvation. Surely you can see how it is in
strict accord with the ego's basic doctrine, "Seek but do not find." For what
could more surely guarantee that you will not find salvation than to channelize
all your efforts in searching for it where it is not?"

*Remember, what the ego does not want us to find is that we have a mind, for
then we would realize we could choose differently, marking the end of the ego
and our special self. Therefore, we direct our efforts towards searching for
salvation where it is <not>. We can see how Jesus has gradually been bringing us
to this realization, on both the intellectual and experiential levels. He wants
us to know how we use the world to distract us from <finding> the peace we truly
<seek>, convincing us it will yet be <found> in the world outside, as we read in
this passage from the text:

"No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion,
or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring
happiness and peace to him. If everything is in him this cannot be so. And
therefore by his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for
something more than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found
where all the rest of it is not."

"The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to
seek beyond them for a thousand more." (T-29.VII.2:1,5-3:1).

Needless to say, all idols will fail: the ego's hidden agenda.*

(5:1-2) "God's plan for salvation works simply because, by following His
direction, you seek for salvation where it is. But if you are to succeed, as God
promises you will, you must be willing to seek there only."

*That is the catch. Everyone who studies A Course in Miracles will say: "Of
course I want to follow the Holy Spirit ( the meaning of "God" here ); of course
I want to forgive -- but I do not want to do <only> that. I want my specialness,
too, to luxuriate in its pleasures every once in while. I will read the text and
do the workbook lessons faithfully ... <but>, I will do my specialness thing as
well, making the body real and ignoring the mind ("where [salvation] is").
"Unfortunately for the ego, salvation is without such a compromise. This passage
from "Salvation without Compromise" states this explicitly, in the context of
the ego's attempt to attack and love together:

"Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but part
of what you want; to take a little and give up the rest.... Let the idea of
compromise but enter, and the awareness of salvation's purpose is lost because
it is not recognized. It is denied where compromise has been accepted, for
compromise is the belief salvation is impossible. It would maintain you can
attack a little, love a little, and know the difference. ..."

"This course is easy just because it makes no compromise. ... Forgiveness
cannot be withheld a little. Nor is it possible to attack for this and love for
that and understand forgiveness." (T-23.III.3:1-2,5-7;4:1,5-6).

It is this uncompromising nature of A Course in Miracles that is its greatest
strength and greatest trial for the ego, hell-bent on maintaining the
specialness of the body.*

(5:3-4) "Otherwise, your purpose is divided and you will attempt to follow two
plans for salvation that are diametrically opposed in all ways. The result can
only bring confusion, misery and a deep sense of failure and despair."

*We can see how the early workbook book lessons were leading to statements like
these two sentences. The lessons helped us understand there is no outer world,
and what we see outside is a projection of what is inside. In fact, Lesson 22
told how it is our attack thoughts that make up the world. Jesus has thus been
training our minds to understand that the problem is within, not in our bodies
or brains. This lesson provides an explicit statement that he could not have
made without first having taught all he had done previously. The symphonic
development of these ideas is indeed masterful to behold.

It is also interesting to behold the parallels between the text and the
workbook. Although the development in each book is quite different, the core
ideas are present in each. For example, Jesus' point here about the difficulty
in following diametrically opposed plans for salvation parallels the following
passage in the text, even in the use of language:

"The curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you have
established for yourself, but so is its outcome. If the outcome of yours has
made you unhappy, and if you want a different one, a change in the curriculum is
obviously necessary. The first change to be introduced is a change in direction.
A meaningful curriculum cannot be inconsistent. If it is planned by two
teachers, each believing in diametrically opposed ideas, it cannot be
integrated. If it is carried out by these two teachers simultaneously, each one
merely interferes with the other. ..."

"The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully recognized
before a real change in direction becomes possible. You cannot learn
simultaneously from two teachers who are in total disagreement about everything.
Their joint curriculum presents an impossible learning task. They are teaching
you entirely different things in entirely different ways, which might be
possible except that both are teaching you about yourself. Your reality is
unaffected by both, but if you listen to both, your mind will be split about
what your reality is." (T-8.1.5:1-6;6).

Within this context we can understand Jesus' purpose in A Course in Miracles as
presenting us with two "diametrically opposed" teachers, asking us to make the
only meaningful choice open to us: Heaven or hell, God or the ego, happiness or
misery.*

(6) "How can you escape all this? Very simply. The idea for today is the answer.
Only God's plan for salvation will work. There can be no real conflict about
this, because there is no possible alternative to God's plan that will save you.
His is the only plan that is certain in its outcome. His is the only plan that
must succeed."

*The choice is a no-brainer, to use the popular expression. Only one plan will
bring the end of misery and pain. However, this makes no sense unless it is
recognized that the problem resides in the mind, the source of all suffering.
That is why the workbook has been so emphatic on the mind's role in salvation.*

(7) "Let us practice recognizing this certainty today. And let us rejoice that
there is an answer to what seems to be a conflict with no resolution possible.
All things are possible to God. Salvation must be yours because of His plan,
which cannot fail."

*The joy of making the right choice is our ultimate motivation in making it. The
end of conflict is the end of pain and misery, and the beginning of joy and
happiness. Jesus never tires of reminding us of the joyous result of choosing
the Answer.*

(8:1-2) "Begin the two longer practice periods for today by thinking about
today's idea, and realizing that it contains two parts, each making equal
contribution to the whole. God's plan for your salvation will work, and other
plans will not."

*It is the second clause that is the killer. We would willing to accept the
first if we did not also have to accept the second. Unfortunately for our egos,
salvation makes no compromise. We have discussed before that in A Course in
Miracles "yes" means "not no." To say "yes" to God's plan means saying "no" to
the ego's, rejecting the thought system that is the basis of our resistance to
accepting Jesus' teachings. These lines, therefore, reflect the uncompromising
nature of the Course's thought system: truth is true, and nothing else is;
Christ is our true Identity, the ego's is the illusion. We shall happily return
to this principle throughout the rest of the workbook.*

(8:3-6) "Do not allow yourself to become depressed or angry at the second part;
it is inherent in the first. And in the first is your full release from all your
own insane attempts and mad proposals to free yourself. They have led to
depression and anger; but God's plan will succeed. It will lead to release and
joy."

*Anger and depression arise at this stage because we still want to do things our
way. When we feel anxious or depressed, rather than go within and ask Jesus for
help to undo the thoughts that led to the unpleasant feelings, we choose to
cover them by indulging in a special relationship. This is the origin of all
addictions -- with people or substances. The pain is too great, and instead of
resolving it in the mind -- the source of the distress -- we use the body to
dull the pain. To truly practice A Course in Miracles we must realize the ego's
plan does not work. Insisting that it will bring us happiness and relief ensures
that the pain will always be there, albeit appearing in different forms.

The next paragraph has us literally ask God what we should do. Here again, you
must understand that Jesus does not literally expect God to answer us. In fact,
he tells us later in the workbook that God does not even understand words nor
does He answer prayers (see Lesson 184). Yet His words meet us where we are, and
so we are supposed to ask God:*

(9:1-5) "Remembering this, let us devote the remainder of the extended practice
periods to asking God to reveal His plan to us. Ask Him very specifically:"

What would You have me do?

Where would You have me go?
What would You have me say, and to whom?<"

*In other places in A Course in Miracles, Jesus explains that imploring God with
words has no effect. For example, in the manual for teachers he discusses "the
role of words in healing," and says:

"God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to
keep them in the illusion of separation. Words can be helpful, particularly for
the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion, or at
least the control, of extraneous thoughts. Let us not forget, however, that
words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality."
(M.21.1.7-10).

Moreover, Jesus makes it clear in the opening pages of The Song of Prayer that
asking for specifics is tantamount to -- in my words, paraphrasing the ego
principle of forgiveness-to-destroy -- "asking-to-destroy." As is explained in
the following passages, when we ask for specifics we are reinforcing the ego's
belief in the scarcity principle ( A Course in Miracles, Preface, p.xi )
"feelings of weakness and inadequacy" -- and thus asking God to join us there.
The central teaching of A Course in Miracles, however, is that we bring our
beliefs in scarcity and lack to Him, and in His Love all such illusions are
dispelled and problems answered:

"The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need. To
ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and then forgive it.
Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your specific needs as you see
them, and let them go into God's Hands. There they become your gifts to Him, for
they tell Him that you would have no gods before Him; no Love but His. What
could His answer be but your remembrance of Him? Can this be traded for a bit of
trifling advice about a problem of an instant's duration? God answers only for
eternity. But still all little answers are contained in this." (S.1.I.4.)

Yet because we are still "uncertain of [our] Identity." Jesus is telling us in
this lesson that we should in fact ask God for specifics, because he is
responding to us at a different stages of our growth -- different rungs of the
ladder of prayer, the pamphlet's term for the process of forgiveness:

"Prayer has no beginning and no end. But it does change in form, and grow
with learning until it reaches its formless state, and fuses into total
communication with God. In its asking form it need not, and often does not, make
appeal to God, or even involve belief in Him. At these levels prayer is merely
wanting, out of a sense of scarcity and lack."

"These forms of prayer, or asking-out-of-need, [i.e., asking for specifics:
<asking-to-destroy>], always involve feelings of weakness and inadequacy, and
could never be made by a Son of God who knows Who he is. No one, then, who is
sure of his Identity could pray in these forms. Yet it is also true that no one
who is uncertain of his Identity can avoid praying in this way."
(S.1.II.1.1:1-2-3).

Students must be wary, however, that they not take statements like this out of
their overall context in A Course in Miracles. Otherwise, they would be
wrenching its <form> from the fabric of the Course's content, thereby altering
its meaning by having A Course in Miracles teach the exact opposite of what it
truly means. This is a course in undoing the <cause> -- the mind's decision for
separation -- and not modifying the <effect> -- the specifics of our daily
lives.

To summarize this important point: In A Course in Miracles Jesus is leading us
"up the ladder separation led [us] down." (T-28.III.1.2). We begin our ascent at
the bottom rung, which is reflected in our embrace of the ego's dualistic
thought system of sin, guilt, and fear, and the reality of the material world.
At this level God must inevitably be perceived as a body:

"Can you who see yourself within a body know yourself as an idea? Everything
you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. You cannot
even think of God without a body, or in some form you think you recognize."
(T.18.VIII.1.5-7)

This divine body, made in our image and likeness -- the symbol of our belief in
sin, guilt, and fear -- is perceived by our egos as a vengeful and punitive God,
obsessed with our destruction. Thus Jesus, our loving elder brother, gently
corrects this fearful myth by providing us with a kinder one, a forgiving
illusion in which God -- <still perceived as a body> -- is lovingly attentive to
our needs, rather than punishing us for them. Once we ascend the ladder of
prayer with the Holy Spirit as our Guide, we recognize the illusory nature of
these myths and move beyond them to the love that is "beyond the world of
symbols":

"A Power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to receive Its Own.
... Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of
symbols and of limitations." (T.27.III.7.2,8) *

(9:6-7) "Give Him full charge of the rest of the practice period, and let Him
tell you what needs to be done by you in His plan for your salvation. He will
answer in proportion to your willingness to hear His Voice."

*This statement is very important. Lesson 49 told us that God's Voice speaks to
us throughout the day. In that lesson, as I pointed out, Jesus does not say we
<hear> God's Voice throughout the day, but only that the Holy Spirit's Love is
continually present to us. The problem is that we shut ourselves off from it.
Therefore, it is our willingness to hear His Voice that will allow us to hear
It. Needless to say, Jesus is not literally talking about an actual voice or
specific words, but an experience of God's Love that comes when we say, in
effect: "Only God's Love will bring me happiness; the ego's special love will
not." It is thus not the ego's separating fear we seek, but the Oneness of God's
Love, experienced as a Voice. This passage from the manual for teachers explains
it this way, in a continuation of the previous quoted passage about words being
"symbols of symbols":

"As symbols, words have quite specific references. Even when they seem most
abstract, the picture that comes to mind is apt to be very concrete. Unless a
specific referent does occur to the mind in conjunction with the word, the word
has little or no practical meaning, and thus cannot help the healing process.
The prayer of the heart does not really ask for concrete things. It always
requests some kind of experience, the specific things asked for being the
bringers of the desired experience in the opinion of the asker. The words, then,
are symbols for the things asked for, but the things themselves but stand for
the experiences that are hoped for." (M.21.2.)

Therefore, once we choose <against>the ego's fear and <for> the Holy Spirit's
Love, we shall experience the effect of that choice in a form we understand
which reflects that we, a separated body, are in need of another separated body
(even a discarnate one) to help us.*

(9:8-10) "Refuse not to hear. The very fact that you are doing the exercises
proves that you have some willingness to listen. This is enough to establish
your claim to God's answer."

*Jesus is once again letting us know this is a process. The fact that we have
come this far, are doing the workbook and reading his text, is saying there is a
part of us that wants this other way. In the end, "our [little] willingness to
listen" ensures the happy outcome we are promised. However, what will speed us
along in this process is realizing how much we do not want this other way, and
asking Jesus to help us forgive our fear.*

(10) "In the shorter practice periods, tell yourself often that God's plan for
salvation, and only His, will work. Be alert to all temptation to hold
grievances today, and respond to them with this form of today's idea:"

Holding grievances is the opposite

of God's plan for salvation.
And only His plan will work.<

Try to remember today's idea some six or seven times an hour. There could be no
better way to spend a half minute or less than to remember the Source of your
salvation, and to see It where It is."

*The lesson closes, as many of them do, with Jesus urging us to be as vigilant
as possible for our decision for separation, guilt, and attack as the defense
against returning Home to the heart of Love. Jesus is asking us continually --
even <more> than every ten minutes -- to compare his plan with the ego's;
forgiveness with holding grievances. Thus would we be reminding ourselves of
what we really want, and how choosing attack and blame merely interferes with
the desire to return to our Source.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

Lesson 70. My salvation comes from me.

#93069

Lesson 70. My salvation comes from me.

(1) All temptation is nothing more than some form of the basic temptation not to
believe the idea for today. Salvation seems to come from anywhere except from
you. So, too, does the source of guilt. You see neither guilt nor salvation as
in your own mind and nowhere else. When you realize that all guilt is solely an
invention of your mind, you also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the
same place. In understanding this you are saved.

(2) The seeming cost of accepting today's idea is this: It means that nothing
outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But
it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace
or upset you in any way. Today's idea places you in charge of the universe,
where you belong because of what you are. This is not a role that can be
partially accepted. And you must surely begin to see that accepting it is
salvation.

(3) It may not, however, be clear to you why the recognition that guilt is in
your own mind entails the realization that salvation is there as well. God would
not have put the remedy for the sickness where it cannot help. That is the way
your mind has worked, but hardly His. He wants you to be healed, so He has kept
the Source of healing where the need for healing lies.

(4) You have tried to do just the opposite, making every attempt, however
distorted and fantastic it might be, to separate healing from the sickness for
which it was intended, and thus keep the sickness. Your purpose was to ensure
that healing did not occur. God's purpose was to ensure that it did.

(5) Today we practice realizing that God's Will and ours are really the same in
this. God wants us to be healed, and we do not really want to be sick, because
it makes us unhappy. Therefore, in accepting the idea for today, we are really
in agreement with God. He does not want us to be sick. Neither do we. He wants
us to be healed. So do we.

(6) We are ready for two longer practice periods today, each of which should
last some ten to fifteen minutes. We will, however, still let you decide when to
undertake them. We will follow this practice for a number of lessons, and it
would again be well to decide in advance when would be a good time to lay aside
for each of them, and then adhering to your own decisions as closely as
possible.

(7) Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a
statement signifying your recognition that salvation comes from nothing outside
of you. You might put it this way:

My salvation comes from me.

It cannot come from anywhere else.<

Then devote a few minutes, with your eyes closed, to reviewing some of the
external places where you have looked for salvation in the past;--in other
people, in possessions, in various situations and events, and in self-concepts
that you sought to make real. Recognize that it is not there, and tell yourself:

My salvation cannot come from any of these things.

My salvation comes from me and only from me.<

(8) Now we will try again to reach the light in you, which is where your
salvation is. You cannot find it in the clouds that surround the light, and it
is in them you have been looking for it. It is not there. It is past the clouds
and in the light beyond. Remember that you will have to go through the clouds
before you can reach the light. But remember also that you have never found
anything in the cloud patterns you imagined that endured, or that you wanted.

(9) Since all illusions of salvation have failed you, surely you do not want to
remain in the clouds, looking vainly for idols there, when you could so easily
walk on into the light of real salvation. Try to pass the clouds by whatever
means appeals to you. If it helps you, think of me holding your hand and leading
you. And I assure you this will be no idle fantasy.

(10) For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that
your salvation comes from you, and nothing but your own thoughts can hamper your
progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your
salvation. You are in charge of the salvation of the world. Say, then:

My salvation comes from me.

Nothing outside of me can hold me back.
Within me is the world's salvation and my own.<

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The commentary on this lesson (below) is from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles,"
which can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson 70. My salvation comes from me.

*This is an important lesson, from which we quote a great deal. The reason for
its importance lies in its explicit statement that the problem of guilt is in
our minds. In other words, the cause of our distress is within, as is its
undoing. They are not, and <cannot> be found in anything external.*

(1:1)"All temptation is nothing more than some form of the basic temptation not
to believe the idea for today."

*This is the purpose of all special relationships which proclaim: My salvation
comes from you -- whoever or whatever that special person, substance, or
activity appears to be. What makes me happy comes not from my mind's choice, but
from what is external to it. The truth, of course, is that <salvation> can come
only from the mind, since <slavation> (to indulge some word play) comes only
from the mind.*

(1:2-3) "Salvation seems to come from anywhere except from you. So, too, does
the source of guilt."

*What is appealing about the workbook is that most of the time you do not have
the complicated discussions found in the text. The statements are so clear it
will astound you how your eyes pass right over them. If you have done the
workbook in the past and are reading it again, you will be surprised at how much
you did not remember or even notice the first time around. The above is an
example of such simplicity.*

(1:4-6) "You see neither guilt nor salvation as in your own mind and nowhere
else. When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you
also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. In
understanding this you are saved."

*The purpose of the ego's thought system is to keep the problem away from the
answer. The ego makes guilt up as the defense against salvation -- the
acceptance of the Atonement that is in our right minds. It tells us to take the
problem of guilt and project it onto someone else. Our problem now has become
someone else's guilt, not our own. Thus we spend the rest of our lives -- as
individuals and as a society -- trying to solve the mind's problem of guilt that
is perceived to be outside us. We attempt to alleviate pain by external
behavior, yet all the time the real problem -- our choice to be a special and
guilty individual -- is safely buried by the ego's defensive strategy. This is
the <double shield of oblivion> --guilt and body -- we have already discussed.*

(2:1) "The seeming cost of accepting today's idea is this: It means that nothing
outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace."

*This includes A Course in Miracles, its author, and God. There is no one and
nothing outside that can save us. From the perspective of the Course, this means
the end of gurus, in the popularized expression of this Eastern practice. Only
our mind's power to choose -- and this cannot be said often enough -- can bring
us salvation and peace.*

(2:2) "But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb
your peace or upset you in any way."

*If one is true the other must be true, too, because <there is nothing outside
our minds.> No one outside can help us because there is nothing outside. This is
another way of understanding "the simplicity of salvation" (T-31.1).*

(2:3-5) "Today's idea places you in charge of the universe, where you belong
because of what you are. This is not a role that can be partially accepted. And
you must surely begin to see that accepting it is salvation."

*This is not referring to the universe of Heaven, but to the universe of our
minds and the world. We are in charge because we are the ones who chose it. The
<you> in charge of this universe, again, is the <decision maker>. It has chosen
to be in the dream, but can just as easily choose to be outside it.

To say that this role cannot be partially accepted means that we cannot
legitimately claim: "Yes, I can help myself here, but someone else has to help
me there"; or "I can ask for help with this particular problem, but not for
others." Forgiveness works all the time, or else it does not work at all.
Remember that this is an <all> or <nothing> course.*

(3:1-2) "It may not, however, be clear to you why the recognition that guilt is
in your own mind entails the realization that salvation is there as well.
God would not have put the remedy for the sickness where it cannot help."

*As a brief summary of what was discussed in my Preface to these volumes, let me
return to the theme of the language of A Course in Miracles. If taken literally,
3:2 would mean that God does things. Obviously making it real, He has seen the
error of sin and sickness, and gives us the answer. Jesus' words do say this, as
they sometimes do in the text as well. To repeat a most important point,
however, these are the words of metaphor. God does not have a plan in response
to the separation, nor does He create the Holy Spirit and place Him in our
minds. Moreover, our Creator does not set up an elaborate plan of the Atonement
whereby his Sons will awaken from the dream. Jesus just finished telling us
there is nothing outside that can save us! If so, He must be a dualistic Being
Who is external to the one He is saving.

Jesus uses this dualistic language of A Course in Miracles because it is one
with which we can identify; a comforting way of speaking since it is familiar to
us. Recall the passage we discussed before from "The Link to Truth"
(T-25.1.5-7): Being thoroughly identified with a separated (i.e., dualistic)
self, the state of perfect Oneness is unknown to us and so would the "language"
that spoke of it. Thus Jesus utilizes the "ego framework" (C-in.3:1) in which to
express his teachings -- the <reflection> of non-duality is what ultimately will
lead us to non-duality.

We return now to the sentence I just read, and continue.*

(3:2-3) "God would not have put the remedy for the sickness where it cannot
help. That is the way your mind has worked, but hardly His."

*In other words, our minds have separated the problem from the solution.
Fortunately, "God thinks otherwise" (T-23.1.2:7). The memory of His Love enables
us to bring the problem (projected from the mind) back to the solution (in the
mind).*

(3:4) "He wants you to be healed, so He has kept the Source of healing where the
need for healing lies."

*To repeat, God does not want you to be healed. If He did, He would recognize
that you are sick. If so, He would be making the error real. To state it again,
this is comforting set of symbols that we all find reassuring. It is important
to understand this is why A Course in Miracles is written dualistically. The
non-dualistic truth is that God, by virtue of His very nature, is the
ever-present Source of healing: His memory in our separated -- and thus sick --
minds.*

(4:1) "You have tried to do just the opposite, making every attempt, however
distorted and fantastic it might be, to separate healing from the sickness for
which it was intended, and thus keep the sickness."

*We have already discussed that the ego's real fear is not of the Love of God,
about which it knows nothing, but of the mind's power to make the right choice
-- the decision maker's ability to say: "I chose the ego falsely, but there is a
principle of truth in my mind still available for me to choose." That ability to
correct the mistaken decision is the ego's fear, which supplies the motivation
to carry out its strategy of making the Son of God mindless, thereby protecting
itself against the "attack" of the Son's power to change his mind.

The solution, therefore, is in our minds, because that is the source of the
problem, which does not lie in the ego thought system itself, but in our
decision to identify with it. Consequently, the solution does not rest in
changing the ego thought system (the first shield of oblivion). The solution
lies in changing our minds about the ego thought system. To cite again the
wonderful line:

"Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind
about the world." (T-21.In.1:7)

Changing our minds is therefore what A Course in Miracles is about, as we see
over and over again in these lessons. This goal should be quite evident by now,
as should the place of the workbook in its curriculum.

Let me re-read the first sentence of the paragraph: "You have tried to do just
the opposite, making every attempt, however distorted and fantastic it might be,
to separate healing from the sickness for which it was intended, and thus keep
the sickness." That is what we want: to keep the sickness of specialness. The
intricate thought system of the ego and the complex world which arose from it
have one purpose only: to keep the sickness of believing we are special,
autonomous, and separate from God.*

(4:2-3) "Your purpose was to ensure that healing did not occur. God's purpose
was to ensure that it did."

*Remember, the <you> whose purpose Jesus is talking about is the decision maker
that likes the idea of being on its own. This puts the Son in direct opposition
to God, Whose Will is that He and His Son are one and never separate, as the
next paragraph reflects:*

(5) "Today we practice realizing that God's Will and ours are really the same in
this. God wants us to be healed, and we do not really want to be sick, because
it makes us unhappy. Therefore, in accepting the idea for today, we are really
in agreement with God. He does not want us to be sick. Neither do we. He wants
us to be healed. So do we."

*Jesus has to convince us that holding onto grievances makes us unhappy. It may
make everyone else unhappy, too. However, the only motivation that will work is
ending our misery and pain. We are not going to study and practice A Course in
Miracles because Jesus says we should, but because we finally recognized that
everything we tried on our own has failed. We accept at last that only joining
with Jesus will make us happy. Our decision to be with him thus reflects the
union of our will with God's, reflecting the decision to heal the separation.*

(6) "We are ready for two longer practice periods today, each of which should
last some ten to fifteen minutes. We will, however, still let you decide when to
undertake them. We will follow this practice for a number of lessons, and it
would again be well to decide in advance when would be a good time to lay aside
for each of them, and then adhering to your own decisions as closely as
possible."

*Once again we see Jesus asking <us> to impose some structure on our practicing.
It is not much, to be sure, but it is a beginning. His purpose here, as always,
is to encourage us to pursue our training of wanting to think along with him, so
that we can forget our egos and remember God.*

(7) "Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a
statement signifying your recognition that salvation comes from nothing outside
of you. You might put it this way:

My salvation comes from me.

My salvation cannot come from any of these things.

My salvation comes from me and only from me.<"

*This is the purpose of our special relationships: the belief we can be helped
and made happy by something other than God. The purpose of this exercise is to
review how important this concept has been in our lives, and how painful. This
is what will impel us, finally, to make the choice that will bring us true help
and happiness.*

(8:1-5) "Now we will try again to reach the light in you, which is where your
salvation is. You cannot find it in the clouds that surround the light, and it
is in them you have been looking for it. It is not there. It is past the clouds
and in the light beyond. Remember that you will have to go through the clouds
before you can reach the light."

*The aforementioned chart will serve us here as well, illustrating the process
of moving beyond the clouds to the light; beyond the illusions of our special
relationships to the truth of forgiveness. These lines make a very important
statement: We cannot go from where we think we are directly to Heaven; we must
first go through the clouds of illusions. That is why Jesus teaches that freedom
lies in looking at the special hate relationship (T-16.IV.1:1). We must look at
our disturbed, sick, insane, and hateful thoughts before we can move past them
to the love that is underneath. Salvation cannot be found in the clouds of the
world, but only in the light of the Atonement the ego has kept hidden, but which
has never ceased to shine in our minds.*

(8:6) "But remember also that you have never found anything in the cloud
patterns you imagined that endured, or that you wanted."

*We do not really believe this; there is a part of us that still believes there
is hope for something here. We believe our specialness will yet work; we just
have to do it better. This kind of thinking is why we feel A Course in Miracles
does not help us. And so we have to be reminded -- continually reminded -- how
nothing in the world has ever, or will ever, satisfy our longing for love and
peace.*

(9) "Since all illusions of salvation have failed you, surely you do not want to
remain in the clouds, looking vainly for idols there, when you could so easily
walk on into the light of real salvation. Try to pass the clouds by whatever
means appeals to you. If it helps you, think of me holding your hand and leading
you. And I assure you this will be no idle fantasy."

*This is one of the very few places in the workbook where Jesus speaks of
himself. Needless to say, it is a powerful statement. He is saying: "You would
do much better going through the clouds with me." In fact, as Jesus makes it
clear in other places: "You <cannot> go through the clouds without me." That is
why, for example, he says that he needs you as much as you need him
(T-8.V.6:10), a reference we have already seen. As long as you believe you are
an individual body, you need another individual body to help you; a hand to hold
as guide through the morass of specialness. When you attempt to go through the
ego's clouds of guilt by yourself you are doomed to failure, for such attempt is
a shadowy fragment of the original error of trying to exist and create by
ourselves -- <without God>.

In the end there is no you, no Jesus. no clouds -- only God. But that is at the
end. As long as you identify yourself as a student of the Course, Jesus' help is
extraordinarily meaningful. This is echoed in the plea to us in the
clarification of terms, which states that although it is Jesus' message that is
ultimately important, he can still be of help to us:

"Jesus is for you the bearer of Christ's single message of the Love of God.
You need no other. It is possible to read his words and benefit from them
without accepting him into your life. Yet he would help you yet a little more if
you will share your pains and joys with him, and leave them both to find the
peace of God." (C-5.6:4-7).

Thus Jesus says: "Do not make this journey without me.*

(10) "For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that
your salvation comes from you, and nothing but your own thoughts can hamper your
progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your
salvation. You are in charge of the salvation of the world. Say, then:

My salvation comes from me.

Nothing outside of me can hold me back.
Within me is the world's salvation and my own.<"

*The lesson closes with the important reminder that we are no longer justified
in shifting responsibility for our spiritual impediments from our selves to
external influences. Jesus wants us to remember as often as possible throughout
the day that salvation comes only from us. This is the bad news to our egos, but
the best news for the part of our minds that wants to return home. Nothing in
the world can prevent this return, and since this is what we truly want, we
cannot help but succeed.*

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

21 - 40 of 93077

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Review II

Introduction