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121 Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
MT: I'm dealing with Return issues after the Costa Rica experience, JC.
As I look around, the old separation that I carry around is there for
me to see. Back there, it was extraordinarily rewarding to engage with
others in therapy, to banter around, to try to gently coax a client out
of their fear, to simply share a trip to town. But now I look around me
and all I see is strangers, closed-off ghosts. They don't seem to need
me. My focus narrows down to maintaining the body, keeping it up to snuff.
I want to see my town, my circle, myself differently here. I want to bring
the lightness and joy that I experienced home with me. I want to fill
this odd vacuum that I now see and I know is not real. I want to forget
my body and remember my Self.
JC: Know that God Is, and nothing else is.
MT: Not meaning to be snide, but I don't see how that helps me right now.
I'm dealing with very human issues here.
JC: There is no God-versus-man. That is the root of separation, is it
not?
MT: Yes, what I am seeing now is a bunch of separate bodies watching their
separate TVs in their separate living rooms. And I, too, eat my separate
breakfast and then go about my separate day. This is what I am making
up, and I don't like it.
JC: You made a faulty choice way back. This is your chance to make a better
one.
MT: When I was a child, I decided this was a world that didn't need me
in it.
JC: Or a world that YOU didn't need and had no use for. But let me ask
you, what use are others to you here, today, in your street and neighborhood?
MT: You are suggesting that I reach out. That I use my brother as mirror.
That's a risk. To do that I have to be vulnerable, I have to soften my
heart.
JC: Well . . . ?!
122 Forgiveness offers everything I want.
MT: I feel sick with worry today, JC--no peace here. My daughter-in-law,
dear Nina, was hospitalized last night with pneumonia and kidney failure.
I will be driving up today to help, but I know that I can be of real help
only if I stay connected with God and our higher Self. I want to ask for
her to get well, but I know that real healing does not happen in the realm
of form. So I am asking to see this differently. I ask for your perspective,
rather than mine.
JC: Who needs to be forgiven, and for what?
MT: I need to forgive myself for the times, so long ago, that I forgot
who I was and how important I was to my children. There were moments of
clarity even back then, but there was a lot of despair and wanting to
check out of a world that I saw as unfriendly. I wonder if she is doing
just that.
JC: You don't know what she is doing. You only know what you think you
are seeing: a mother at risk, three young children potentially motherless.
You are engaging in fearful thoughts, right now. Remember that this could
be exactly what is needed for that family.
MT: Gifts may come in strange packages, you're saying.
JC: I am telling you that this may be the only way her Self knows to invite
God in.
MT: "Invited or not invited, God will be there." Thank you,
JC, brother, Friend.
123 I thank my Father for His gifts to me.
We are so quick to look at where we fall short. This is a day to look
at where we fall long.
What has God given me? Most recently, the privilege to post my daily blog
here! This writing brings to light, one by one, the dark corners
of my ego system. He gave me the undoing that's been going on for a quarter
century. The bedraggled gray bird that landed in my outstretched hands
in my dream of so long ago, in premonition of this Course, has grown
into an eagle, noble and powerful.
The Father installed a magnificent BS detector, as well, a skepticism
of false saviors and a critical eye for pervasive lies. What a long,
strange trip from a confused childhood in catholic Brazil with a Baptist
fundamentalist father and a mother immersed in mystical books! My Father
gave me the role of keeper of family history, the privilege of learning
from my ancestors.
Yes, this journey has been strange and wonderful, and if it were over
today, I would have nothing to say but: Thank you, Father, for your gifts
to me. You complete me in a way I could never have dreamed possible.
124 Let me remember I am one with God.
One with God . . . as I try these words on for size, I remember standing
on the pier in Santa Barbara, watching the waves: so this is what the
Course is trying to say. We're the waves in the ocean of God. We can pride
ourselves on being bigger than other waves, foamier, stronger, faster
than anybody else, sporting a nobler crest, gold medalists in the
Wave Olympics. We can think for a moment that there is no ocean, all there
is is waves! We can even think that the ocean is just a wave like us,
equally foolish and proud and vengeful and petty, equally full of itself.
But sooner or later we must fall back where we came from and be again
one. We never were not one. It was an impossibility, and it never happened.
We lost sight of this fact, and everything we did here became so important,
so essential, so urgent, when fact is: I am one with God, and
to God I shall return.
125 In quiet I receive God's Word today.
MT: I need comfort today, JC. Death is all too real to me right now. The
feeling is of dread, like there's evil loose on the land, what I felt
on 9/11. The feeling is of unjust, untimely death, and what for? Why would
Nina, of all people, go right now? Why not me? I saw low-cholesterol margarine
in the fridge, I guess she was trying to stay healthy the best she knew
how, and what for? Why not enjoy butter and margaritas and laughter and
dance?
JC: Those are questions you ask about yourself, are they not?
MT: Yes. I am tired of my efforts to preserve health. If I were to go
tomorrow, what would I do today? Would I eat chocolate and order full-lead
at Starbucks? But all that is overrated . . . it doesn't satisfy.
JC: What satisfies?
MT: The only thing that satisfies is connection with God and my fellow
man. True forgiveness satisfies, nothing else will do. The feeling of
almost touching God's hand, that satisfies. Evolving spiritually, that
satisfies. Yes. The nectar of God is what I need.
JC: Which brings you right back to the lesson, if I may point out.
126 All that I give is given to myself.
MT: This morning, or maybe in twilight sleep, you gave me this thought:
when the "I" is no longer real, the whole world is the "I".
I am you and you and you. It's one of those ideas that you don't get until
you get it. There has to be a readiness in place to welcome the idea.
It's an energy-body felt sense rather than a thought. It even seems out
of place, JC, to talk with "you" because you is I, I is you.
Perhaps the pain and turmoil of the last few days led me to this point.
Whatever. I am thankful and delighted.
JC: And there is a tiny fear that you will lose it again. Which you will,
but only temporarily.
MT: I will probably float in and out of the Real World for the rest of
my life in this body, but yes: all that I give is given to myself.
127 There is no love but God's.
MT: Concentration is difficult here with the grandchildren, JC. I'm always
"on," and the two labs add to the confusion.
JC: And your fears and concern for the grandkids create more stress still.
I know. You forget that you raised four children yourself, and that they
were never seriously injured. They never had to visit the ER, for that
matter.
MT: In some ways, it is more difficult to raise kids now than it was forty
years ago. You have to take the task more seriously. They won't even let
a mother out of the hospital without a child restraint being installed
in the car. What do poor people do?
JC: The population keeps increasing, so they must find a way to get around
all the barriers imposed by society. How about there being no love but
God's? How are you with that?
MT: I think I've got the idea. No love but God's. I may think there are
different kinds of love: love for animals (mixed in with sorrow for how
we treat them), love for my grandchildren (more, somehow, than love for
other people's offspring), the "falling in love" that our literature
makes so much noise about, love of art, music, literature, learning. We
misuse the word. We fragment the concept into a thousand pieces.
JC: And the fragmentation has absolutely no effect, being part of the
illusion. There is only one love. The sun gives its warmth to saint and
sinner, young and old, to those who suffer and those who rejoice. All
these different loves you talk about, they are really leaves of a tree,
extensions of the One Love, that richness of feeling that comes from knowing
that you and God are One.
128 The world I see holds nothing that I want.
129 Beyond this world there is a world I want.
MT: I try to pay close attention to your words, JC. It's "beyond
this world," not "in place of" or "in addition to."
I look past all appearances to find God. I momentarily ignore this world
I made in favor of God's creation. You use the metaphor of walking through
a fog to the sun beyond. This must be important.
JC: It is. It is important that you do not give the world you made undue
importance. It has no importance, because it does not exist.
MT: We can get so worked over small events and things, frustrations and
trinkets. A woman I know watched with horror as her 10,000 diamond wedding
ring slipped off her finger and fell in the garbage disposer along with the
dinner leftovers she was grinding. If she had learned today's lesson,
she would know she was losing nothing.
JC: Peace of mind resides in today's thought. Learn it well. It will allow
you to fully enjoy whatever you do, what you have, what you make, because
you will not be attached to it.
MT: I look past all appearances to see the world I want.
130 It is impossible to see two worlds.
MT: This statement is so all-or-nothing: I'm impressed how you use ego
ideas to bring about change. It's masterful, JC.
JC: If you learn nothing else from this work, do learn to use what you
have at hand.
MT: To be pragmatic. I know I am much more pragmatic now than I was BC
(Before Course).
JC: So which world do you want to see now?
MT: I am immersed in grief and sadness, and I want to feel that. It's
a gift to me, JC, to be able to feel.
JC: Treat yourself with kindness, too, true kindness. This is an invitation
to see yourself differently. I will help take care of your body, if you
give your mind over to me.
MT: Most of the time, I have no idea what my mind is doing. Guess it's
avoiding God. It's far easier to take care of my body.
JC: We need a mind-scrubbing here, don't we?
MT: I think I have scrubbed my mind over the years, but it's still like
a pesky fly.
JC: The ego is your pesky fly. Your mind is serene and unchanging, as
God created it.
MT: This I will get today: it is impossible to see two worlds. I will
seek and find God's world today.
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