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81 I am the light of the world.
Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.

Dear God, You seem so far away today! I do a very good job of keeping myself in darkness. But I know You are here. You never left. You are the Light in which I see. You are the life force that moves all little things of Earth, the life force that makes the grass grow and the birds outside my window sing their song of joy. You are the vast, all-encompassing intelligence that moves planets and lights up the stars.

A hushed reverence descends over everything at this thought. I spend this holy day in hushed reverence.

82 The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness.
Let me not forget my function.

MT: So God, how does this apply to fat and thin? I know "I am not a body" and all that, but. . . the "problem" is hard to let go. My body goes right here behind my nose, and it's got high cholesterol, according to the gods of medicine.

God: You judge yourself as fat. Therefore, you must be judging others as fat/thin. You divide the Sonship into fat and thin, and thus you make up a split in what I put together in the beginning. Open your heart to those who suffer under excess body weight.

MT: But they are gross! Forgive me, but they are gross! They have skin folds they can never wash. Imagine the smell. Fat people waddle like sea lions. They break chairs. I don't want to be like them. Please don't doom me to this fate, just because I make a little judgment now and then.

God: I doom you to nothing, but you doom yourself to plenty. And it's not a little judgment now and then. It is constant, and it is a strain on you. There are more useful things to think about. You are misusing your beautiful mind.

MT: Sheesh, you are being rather stern today.

God: I want you to be the magnificent being that you really are. Your rightful inheritance is peace. But you have to stop indulging yourself. Did you ever hear me say, "Fat people shall not enter the Kingdom, the door is too small!"? Your task is to think like me, and learn to go past the appearances of the world. Open the doors of the Kingdom to those whose bodies are different, mangled, diseased, scabbed, distorted, or fat! The old and feeble, the young and beautiful, the large and the small, they are equally Spirit. You will learn that most precious lesson, along with them: you are not a body. You are Spirit.

MT: So today let me extend peace to all, whatever their body size or condition, through my forgiveness. Let me not forget my function. Amen.

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82 The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness. Let me not forget my function.

MT: Pretty involved sentence, the first one, but I take your words seriously. They are there for a reason. So I'm not the one who brings peace to every mind. I serve as a cable, so to speak.

JC: You don't feel much like a conduit for the light of the world this morning, do you?

MT: No. How did you guess! I feel like a cable that's corroded at both ends.

JC: You don't feel like writing, but here you are. That's a little willingness, and that suffices.

MT: Thanks for the reminder. I love the concept of “a little willingness" and "willing to be willing." The ego says I've got to dress up for the ball, the Holy Spirit says, come as you are, I can use all of you all the time. That is such a refreshing attitude.

JC: No preparation is necessary to come to your God--no rituals, no cleansing, no offerings of slain animals, no need to go to church. The holiest place on Earth is the one where an ancient hatred becomes a present love. You carry the holy place with you as a possibility at all times.

MT: Today, I remember my function: to practice forgiveness so that the Light can pour through me.

83 My only function is the one God gave me. My happiness and my function are one.

MT: You talk about me as if I were a tool. Tools have functions.

JC: And the happiness of a hammer is to drive nails. The happiness of a car is to drive. That is the Zen of motorcycle maintenance. Could you look at it in this way?

MT: Oh, OK. I was just feeling grouchy. But the word always struck me as a bit odd, even as I know you choose your words carefully.

JC: You think you have many functions: to post on this site, to attend the gym, to visit your family, to dig weeds, to pay your taxes and eat an apple a day. But they all do, or do not, fit into one overarching function: to forgive the world you made.

MT: If I see it this way, it makes no sense to argue with a tenant or to flick off the car that won't let me pass.

JC: That is correct. The concept of function warns you when you are off. You were created to create the good and the beautiful. You were created as an extension of God, just as a radio or a needle or a surgical knife are extensions of man. Your function is to create as God.

MT: A gun comes to mind. You didn't mention guns.

JC: The function of a gun is to kill. It is an extension of man's dark side, his detour into madness, his obsession with ending life, that of animals, of his brothers, of himself. It is the clearest example of the ego's delusional thought system. With a gun in his hand, a man feels like a god. How does he "prove" he is God? By destroying life, of course.

MT: What a terrible picture, after a century of war.

JC: That is why, in the dark days of the Cold War, Helen, Bill, and I wrote this book. The world was crying for a better way, a way out of darkness, a way home at last. They accepted their function, I fulfilled mine.

84 Love created me like Itself. Love holds no grievances.

MT: I feel sleepy. Sleepiness envelops me like a fog, just when I sit down with the laptop. I just want to go back to bed. These are the worst times, when I feel like a staggering, drunken elephant. I can hardly keep my eyes open.

JC: Remember the supervision meeting with Marianne and Anne, some twenty years ago?

MT: Yes, same sleepiness. Back then, fear of how Marianne might react kept me from saying what I had to say. So I got sleepy instead. It was great of Gary to notice it and not let me get away with going for a cup of coffee. Am I afraid of what I might see inside (there's nobody else around today), if I let myself look?

JC: Well, there's a reason that you are sleepy right now. What do you need to say that you're not saying?

MT: Aaarghhhh! I feel like a good girl, doing Daddy's bidding. I think I just went back to age five or eight. Funny how the mind does that. I think that's why studying the Course without active participation feels so irritating to me. It reminds me of rote, mindless repetition, the swallowing of food without chewing, bowing to petty bureaucrats protecting their fiefdoms. JC, one new idea appears once every twenty years or a hundred years, the rest is all mindless repetition. We're like lemmings. We'd rather follow, God forbid we should lead!

JC: Given that, watch who you follow. And forgive those who lead out of incompleteness, and the masses who follow them.

MT: Like George Bush? I do need to forgive the last election. Incredulity and despair washed over half of the country, it wasn't just me. But JC, I don't want to start talking about politics here. I set out to take in this lesson: Love created me like itself. Love holds no grievances. But maybe that too isn't it. I want to know what's bugging me this morning. Bad dreams?

JC: If you want light, you turn on the light. Analyzing darkness can never bring light.

MT: I am totally stuck.

JC: No, you're not. Get off it. Stuckness, sleepiness, despair, events of twenty years ago, the election, memories of childhood--these are all ruses of the ego. Do not fill your mind with these, all they do is deepen the cracks.

MT: I don't have to post. Nobody's going to fire me if I miss a day.

JC: Exactly. Now go with God, even if He seems a long, long way off. He knows the way to you.

85 My grievances hide the light of the world in me. My salvation comes from me.

MT: Always throwing the responsibility back on my lap! Are there no breaks for us weary souls?

JC: You call that a break, to indulge in grievances?

MT: Awww. It feels good sometimes. It connects me with others who share my grievances.

JC: That's how you start World War III. I thought you were a pacifist.

MT: You do recognize, do you not, that it feels good to sit on the pity pot, especially when I have company?

JC: Yes, but it is also behaving irresponsibly, and giving others the permission to behave irresponsibly. Enjoy it, but know what you are doing, and it's not pretty. Let me add that the ones with whom you share grievances--in the blink of an eye, they can turn against you!

MT: JC, you've taken all the fun out of self-pity, gossip and schadenfreude, the delicious feeling of being in the in-group as opposed to the out-group.

JC: I never said you "shouldn't" do it. My purpose is only to open up your eyes. Go ahead and play with your grievances. In a way, that's a path Home too, because you can never indulge unconsciously again. You can never take your grievances seriously again. There is Spirit behind it all, laughing all the while--the Laughing Buddha.

MT: The Laughing Buddha. I like that. Thank you!

86 Only God's plan for salvation will work. Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

MT: It's the dawn of Easter Sunday, JC. This is the day all Christianity celebrates the resurrection of the historical Jesus. I feel a certain reverence hovering over the land this morning. Any comments? The day should feel rather personal, but I guess personal is not the right word, because you are no longer in the flesh. What a gift you gave us, two thousand years ago and again with this book, the Second Coming of Christ.

JC: I learned the power of love, and love begs to be shared. No thanks are necessary, although gratitude cleans your mind of grievances, so you do well to cultivate it. This is the Great Opportunity, your resurrection, every moment that you choose again. Do not walk in darkness any longer.

MT: Darkness meaning?

JC: Darkness means holding grievances, muttering under your breath about all "they" done to you. Imagine the agony my flesh would have been forced to endure, had I railed against Romans and Jews, Caesar and Pontius Pilate, those who ridiculed me and spat on my face.

MT: So this is the lesson of the Crucifixion: nothing justifies attack. Grievances only make suffering worse.

JC: Nothing justifies attack. Attack sets you up against God, and it is self-perpetuating. It is the virus of suffering. Attack fans out in vast tides of pain. Look not at what they did to my body, but behold instead how I chose to respond.

MT: With your example you rendered attack obsolete. An anachronism. Thank you this Easter morning.

87 I will there be light. There is no will but God's.

MT: If there is no will but God's, and I am a creation of God, created in His likeness, my will and God's are one. This Course is about reconnecting with our God-nature, then. So I could have my heart's desire in a flash, when my mind is integrated in this way. The Garden of Eden story comes to mind, JC--man's long experiment with separation, when living became work. "With the sweat of your brow you will earn your bread." It's interesting that my most enlightening experiences have happened on vacation, when I feel like I'm in Eden--no worries, no cares, I'm here to enjoy life. That it were so all the time!

JC: There is no reason that it can't be so. The path is clearly shown you in this Course.

MT: What a monumental loss that was, when we decided to separate.

JC: Death was invented then, and a mighty cry appears in your literature as man realizes that, on the one hand, the body will not last, but denies his Spirit nature on the other, so he basically has nothing. Humanity chose a rocky path indeed.

MT: I can be on vacation all the time, you say. I know this is true, but it doesn't happen in my day-to-day reality. That's a strange state of mind, knowing something is so, and watching it be different.

JC: At that moment you come face to face with your illusions, and yes, that's a strange state of mind. You have one foot in each world. You see the dream for what it is—just a dream—but you are afraid of waking up to the unknown.

MT: So today, I remind myself (I need a LOT of reminding!): I will there be light, and since my mind is in accord with God's, there IS light. No more do I walk in the valley of the shadow of death.

88 The light has come. I am under no laws but God's.

JC: Good morning, Monica. I love you. You are a flower of God's creation. The lilies of the field bow down before you as you pass, and the birds sing your praises.

MT: OK, OK, take it easy. No need to lay on the syrup quite so thick. I am always uncomfortable with praise and gushing love fests.

JC: You would rather . . . . ?

MT: I would rather get down to business. Let's stay on task.

JC: Discussion of the lesson. Which is, the light has come, and you are under no laws but God's. You are behaving like the woman in the Bible, sweeping the kitchen while the others enjoyed my company. Is this what you want?

MT: No. I would like to experience the joy of God. I would like the light to come, and light also means lightness of being.

JC: Do you see how you made a law for yourself: "thou shalt not enjoy thyself while the dishes lay in the sink"?

MT: I was uncomfortable with your expression of love, that's why I called us to task. Expressions of love always seem to require a like response, like obligatory love. Also, I picture you as a male, and the praise might be a way to get my guard down. I know this is crazy.

Jc: No, this is sad. You create a barrier because, one, you feel obligated to respond in kind, and two, you look for guidance to ancient traumatic experiences with males, instead of asking the Holy Spirit.

MT: Men use women for their pleasure, and then they call you a slut.

JC: That is an old rule your mother made and you accepted as gospel. It does not apply to all males, not even most males. It never did apply to you. It definitely does not apply to me.

MT: Question assumptions, you are telling me.

JC: Question assumptions. Wipe the slate clean so God can write His laws down. The laws of men no longer apply.

MT: Ah, that it really were so!

JC: It can be so today. You can dwell with me today in Paradise.

89 I am entitled to miracles. Let miracles replace all grievances.

MT: This is me, right now, as I am. I sat here for the peace of God, but there's the TV that S turned on.

JC: Difficult circumstances, but others have overcome circumstances exponentially worse.

MT: Concentration camps, you mean? Masses of humanity thrown together in squalor, no silence, no beauty, hunger and cold a constant presence. How does the mind overcome that?

JC: Some overcame those conditions. Some became walking miracles, surviving against all odds. Most railed against their oppressor, lamented their condition, and died without learning the ultimate lesson: I am entitled to miracles. But to reach that point, one must disengage from the concerns of the earth. This means forgiveness, letting go of grievances. Note the reverse relationship of miracles and grievances: you have one or you have the other.

MT: I can have my grievances, or I can have a miracle.

JC: Ask to be released from grievances, and God will show you the way.

MT: The "little willingness." Thank you.

90 Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved. Let me recognize my problems have been solved!

MT: I added the exclamation point, JC.

JC: Is good. So how to you want to play today?

MT: You inviting me to play? Like a child?

JC: And why not? Abandon all seriousness, ye who walk the world. You only have one problem, and that's already been solved. You thought you were an entity apart from God, but that was a laughable little slip. It's the only error you need correct.

MT: Thanks! I needed to hear that!

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