71 Only God's plan for salvation will work.

MT: The ego's plan for salvation is to look everywhere except in my own mind, where salvation resides. It's amazing, however, how I cling to other plans. I've stopped blaming other people (except for my partner), but I look to money, diet, and exercise for salvation.

I also realize I'm not focusing, and it feels fake to talk about the lesson like a good girl in the little Baptist church. Let me check out my state of mind right at this moment. I am sleepy. I would like to go back to bed instead of doing this lesson. I just drifted off, thinking about my lost tooth. I remembered the dream I was having this morning, another dream about packing up to leave someplace. What is God's plan for salvation for me, JC? To give up all this? I also still hate my belly. It reminds me of Mother. I would like to go back to bed. This chair is uneven and it's hurting my back. Help me make sense of this.

JC: I can't help you, because it makes no sense. You have to give it up.

MT: But then, there's the Great Nothingness.

JC: But then, there's everything. The peace of God. Nothing can touch you. You walk the world in perfect holiness.

MT: So I'm refusing to be peaceful right now, this moment, when I could be feeling just fine.

JC: That is correct.

MT: So come in, Awson. I welcome you, right here, right now. The silence of the spheres.

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

MT: Not again!! Guess this is pretty central, to let go of grievances. The sullen resentment I hold against my partner is the only one I can think of. It's not easy to let go of it, because I think he's got an investment in the status quo. He provokes grievances and calls it kidding and having fun.

JC: And you respond in kind. You are like two naughty children. Your relationship, as it is most of the time, is an attack on God's plan for salvation. You two could be doing so much more, so infinitely more, to help bring on the Atonement.

MT: But JC. . .

JC: You think it is his fault, don't you? You think that if he would only mellow out and open up his heart, you two would be fine. So the world goes, everybody waiting on each other. Six billion people, everybody waiting on everybody else.

MT: If Helen and Bill had waited on each other, we wouldn't have the Course.

JC: Definitely not. What does this tell you?

MT: I've tried not to respond to his "kidding" and "having fun."

JC: But in order not to respond, you close yourself off. Approach him with an open heart. See the light in your partner, the last bastion of the ego for you. You have nothing to lose but your anxiety and your old patterns of feeling and behavior.

MT: So help me today as I navigate uncharted waters. This is my prayer: help me open my heart to those closest to me, my partner above all. I am willing to let the light in today.

73 I will there be light.

MT: I am troubled by Carolynn's message. There seems to be a contradiction
here. How are we to be "in the world but not of it" at the same time that we
assume our function of performing miracles? Isn't that making the world
real?

JC: Relax. You are feeling attacked, and the Thought of God is not available
to you when you are feeling attacked. Your body just got a shot of
adrenaline. Your stomach contracted. It's the old feeling of being the bull
in a china shop, breaking delicate things.

MT: Stuff about Miriam. About her being wounded by me. Or Mother, saying she
wanted to die and refusing comfort from any of us. I told her to go kill
herself already! That was rude and thoughtless, but I was only a child--ten?
Twelve? Aunt Elisa, wounded by what I said in a moment of anger. I had all
those delicate people around me, one touch of a finger and poof! As if there
wasn't enough wounding to go around, they had to look for it.

JC: And you? What do you know about acting like a crushed flower?

MT: I got "wounded" by Sarah. . . same thing. I was offended and retreated
into my shell. Poor Sarah. She meant well.

JC: She's not "poor Sarah," though. She is fine. She is a strong woman, and
she was out of line when she chose to see you as pulling her flowers. She
didn't know the difference. You were out of line when you decided never to
touch any of her plants again. Don't make such sweeping decisions. By making
the world black and white, you congeal it.

MT: Thanks. . . This is old, old stuff for me. The possibility of "wounding"
someone else is a powerful brake. It keeps me from boldly going ahead. I am
too afraid of consequences. Of course, I have come across as cold and
indifferent, encrusted in my logical thinking--like Father. Guess one never
gets over Family.

JC: There is room for everybody in this world, the thinkers and the doers.
We all contribute what we can. But let go of this wounded business. It is
not fitting for a Son of God. The Prodigal Son returns, completely healed.
The separation never happened. The "wounded" brother didn't lose anything,
his situation was completely unchanged.

MT: So, JC, I started out to do the lesson. . . I will there be light.

JC: You have done the lesson!

74 There is no will but God's.

MT: First of all, JC, I need to clear my mind in this issue of miracles--who is to perform them, what is the mental attitude we're looking for here.

JC: Who performs miracles? Everybody, everywhere, at any time. They are natural, and when they do not occur, something has gone wrong.

MT: So how would I know. . . guess it's a question of being of one will with God. Of being "as God."

JC: Do not confuse attachment with God's will. When you are aligned with God's will, miracles happen instantaneously. Attachment, on the other hand, makes a miracle a lot of work! If you need to work at it, there is part of you that is not with God. When miracles have happened in your life, they have come from the singing heart.

MT: The singing heart! I like that.

JC: Which is not to say that God does not respond to the heavy heart. The real miracle is the lifting of the weight you carry, so a singing heart is God's first response. You may as well ask for that.

MT: But we can call from our anguish and our pain.

JC: Yes. No need to clean house for the cleaning lady. Come as you are, come wholly empty handed unto your God. Does He not know the way to you?

75 The light has come.

MT: This is the first lesson where you clearly want us to stop the words and allow a new vision to replace this shabby one we made.

JC: What can I say? Yes, it is so. You are being given a chance to see what this Course is all about.

MT: How do I do that and keep posting?

JC: Perhaps the format within which you teach your brothers and yourself will change. We do not want to become creatures of habit here. We evolve.

MT: Thank you! You're not asking for rigid, encrusted, overbaked, mind-numbing repetitions. I got so tired of those with religion.

JC: So this is your challenge: the light has come. Now you are offered a new world. If I took away all the props that held the old world together, and didn't offer a new vision, you would just become spectacularly depressed.

MT: It is scary to allow in a new vision . . . what is the fear all about?

JC: Suffice it to say that there is fear. Do not attempt to analyze darkness. You may notice, oh, there is fear around me. You may realize, how peculiar that I should be afraid of light like a subterranean creature. Because it is peculiar that you do not fear the world you made. You pay rapt attention to the insanity in full color on your TV screen, but you avoid the unbounded love of God.

The new vision God offers you today is your release from fear. I will hold your hand today as you enter into Light.

76 I am under no laws but God's.

MT: As I start this day, I ask of you: help me be one. Help us be one. Help me think the highest thoughts I am capable of thinking, do the highest deeds I am capable of doing, feel the highest feelings I am capable of feeling. I am at peace today. I guess "the light has come," even if I was not aware of it.

JC: The light comes not in space or time, so if you stay in your customary space and time, you will not see it. The light is a stepping out of the world you made.

MT: How about the laws? That's what you go on to, today.

JC: Mankind has been breaking its own laws for all of recorded history. For everyone who dared to see a new possibility, there were always ten who were ready to jump in and say it was not possible. Flight was not possible, until it was. Electricity was not possible, until it was. Upon the invention of the automobile, some maintained that the human body could not withstand speeds higher than forty miles per hour. What laws are you laying upon yourself, especially your body?

MT: The laws of nutrition, for one. X number of calories equals X weight gain, but I know it is not so, or only in a very vague sort of way. I'm convinced that body weight resides in the mind, but try and tell that to a nutritionist.

JC: She would chase you out, and rightly so. If you challenge her most basic assumptions, what do you need her for?

MT: Good point. So I would like you to show me where, in my life right now, there reside laws that I would do well to discard.

JC: How about all of it? If any laws are essential to your survival, you will soon find out. Just don't move too fast!

MT: You are asking me to be bold! You have a lot of nerve.

JC: Let me try again. The law that says you become more fearful and withdrawing as you get older? That one bears close scrutiny. Older people close all their windows and lock all their doors, at a time when they could be least fearful. After all, if death is near, why bother keeping safe?

MT: I love it when you dip your pen in irony. Let me laugh a lot today. Let me especially laugh at my fears and the laws with which I keep the world a fearful place.

77 I am entitled to miracles.

MT: It's inescapable, JC. This relates to my posts to Carolynn about her sister's condition. You must have inserted this lesson when I wasn't looking.

JC: I do a lot of things while you sleep. You have questions about this statement?

MT: Yes. Am I seeing myself as weak, when I am really strong? Am I denying myself power that I really have in my hands? How do I reconcile the profound learning about letting others be, while still performing miracles?

JC: You know that the recipient has to be willing. You need to know that you don't know anything. You do not know what is best for anybody else. That is all. Basically, the miracle is a moment of recognition, a moment when you and your brother take in a new reality. You cannot perform a miracle from a split state of mind, because by definition the miracle involves a fusion of separate states of mind.

MT: I always go back to my experiences with Arny Mindell. They touched me profoundly. It was pure love that he offered. He also said that sometimes people die. I think he was saying that our function is to help another step into a layer of the mind that's not usually available. That's the miracle.

JC: That is the miracle: the moment when you and your brother emerge farther along in your evolution. So a miracle does not necessarily have effects observable by the ego, although it may.

MT: We must approach the miracle with humility, then. I think that's what Arny did so well. He totally set his ego aside.

JC: I will tell you when to perform miracles. Your task right now is to learn to go with guidance, rather than questioning it a dozen times.

78

79

80 Let me recognize my problems have been solved.

MT: As I start this day, I thank You for your guidance and your love. Let me be
open to guidance today. Let me recognize love, whatever form it may take.

JC: Well put. Love can take many forms. Even outright attack is a desperate pleading
to be loved and SEEN.

MT: And problems?

JC: The problems in your life are only outward manifestations of Soul crying for
completion.

MT: Interesting! Even hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods? The Holocaust?

JC: Collectively, yes. The Sonship cries for a return to the Source. This is easier to
see on an individual basis.

MT: So many of my problems were obviously self-caused and completely
unnecessary, it's sickening to look back. How different my life would have turned out,
had I not made such egregious mistakes, made such glaringly wrong choices.

JC: But at the time, you were swimming in a Sargasso sea of guilt and resentments and
knee-jerk responses. Guilt and resentments wrap around you and make free
movement impossible. Salvation is a recognition of the error. Forgiveness renders
suffering obsolete.

MT: So today, I recognize my problems have been solved. I can live and let live. I can
lighten up and enjoy what the day brings.

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