151_160

151 All things are echoes of the Voice for God.

MT: It's a gorgeous day, JC. Easy to see the greenery and hear the birds as an echo of the Voice for God. Less easy when we're hit with ugliness and devastation.

JC: Ugliness and devastation are ways that you see things apart from God.

MT: I want to see and hear with God. Well, I must say that this expression, "echoes of the Voice for God," has a transcendent quality about it. I can listen for that music of the spheres above the raucuous noises of the world. A distant echo that one barely hears--it awakens a faint memory of what we left behind when we came. Perhaps I need to learn to listen.

JC: The Voice for God is always there, no matter where you are, because it is within you.

MT: So I can be a voice for God too . . .

152 The power of decision is my own.

MT: Today I decide with God. Yes, but . . . JC, I need help in following guidance. There are so many areas of my life where I keep things the same. You have told me, time and again, to call one person or another, and I seem to dig my heels in like a balky mule, and play computer games instead, or eat, or take a nap. Making contact is especially difficult for me. Or I make it difficult. Some people love contact, I do not. Some people seem to need to talk in order to think, I need to think ten times before I talk.

JC: You are not sure which is the Voice for God, and which is the voice of the ego.

MT: You got it. I am tired of fighting myself. At times, contact has been very painful, most recently with E, who lashed out at me for a totally innocent remark. I felt I couldn't open my mouth without setting him off. But I think the pain goes way back to my childhood. I was beaten back, over and over, when I tried to make friends with my sister and her circle, whose main entertainment was to trick me into panting after her so she could reject me. The world became a hostile place where shutting down was the best strategy. My brittle pride was established then: "if you don't like me, I won't even try. I am enough in myself. Let me show you how I can have fun all by myself. You come begging for my company, I'm never going to offer it." Sheesh, I just dove into this part of my personality, and now it's very real. And I don't want homilies from the Course, please.

JC: Do you see how you cling to a few negative examples? Do you see how you ignore those who profoundly love you? This is where the power of decision comes in. You can choose to see a hostile world, and you will create hell all around you. Choose to see the many large and small ways in which love is offered, and brush away the rest. You will be "right" either way, because you are making up the world as you go, moment by moment. By the way, forgiveness work with your sister might be in order . . .

153 In my defenselessness my safety lies.

MT: JC, I summon you to my side. The house is quiet, Scott sleeps (I woke up defending myself against his imaginary threats), the clock ticks. Outside, birds begin to welcome the dawn. Who am I? I think I am an old woman with a pot belly. I don't feel radiant right now. I am identifying with an aging body that right at the moment feels tight, slumped and achy. I have forgotten who I am.

JC: So refocus now. You cannot be this body.

MT: Why not? That's all I see right now.

JC: You are Spirit.

MT: I have vaguely experienced being not-this-body, but I guess I need a stronger experience of that. Please provide.

JC: What happened right now? Scared?

MT: I got distracted by the sudden decision: I want you to help me experience being not of the body, but I suddenly dove into the old fear: I'm afraid to ask, because if I do, this time the whole thing will turn out to be a scam, a fake, the Course did not get written, God does not exist, JC is just a figment of my imagination, and tomorrow I die, to be gone forever. Annihilated. I will have completed the fate I deserved all along. That's the full run of ego thinking, the thinking you and I have worked so hard to dispel. Here it is in its full regalia.

JC: When you attempt to take a stand with your power, you bring in the old despair: that you are weak and undeserving.

MT: Not only that. I ensure that I will have to keep on trying, because the old despair doesn't serve anymore. I feel like a hamster on a treadmill, going nowhere, its effort clearly futile, yet compelled to keep trying.

JC: Silence will get you where running won't.

MT: Meditation. You are right. I am shutting myself off from God by my machine-like thinking process.

JC: You asked for a clear experience of being Spirit. Open yourself to it now.

154 I am among the ministers of God.

MT: Good morning, JC.

JC: Good morning, Monica. May the awareness of God's presence grow with every word you write.

MT: With this lesson, you are expanding my function. Besides forgiveness, ministry. Teaching.

JC: That's the next step in your return to God. When you teach, you learn.

MT: They used to say, back where I grew up: "If you know, you do. If you don't know, you teach"--but I guess that was just a dig at the pompous windbags who pass for teachers in Brazil.

JC: Watch out for the unforgiving thought. Would you accuse yourself of purposely sending a confusing message?

MT: Rarely. Wait. Back in school, I wrote confusing essays when I wasn't up on the subject, in hopes that the instructor wouldn't have time or patience to sort out my blather. It worked sometimes ; )

JC: It came from fear of being seen as the slacker you feared you were, didn't it.

MT: Yes. But school is a game much of the time. I played the game well.

JC: If you saw the subject as of interest to you, would you have faked it?

MT: No, that would be dishonest and a betrayal of my own goals.

JC: I am curious--what is your goal with this writing?

MT: To clear my own head on a daily basis. To reconnect with you and with God. This is my blog, and I feel a bit sheepish to be using this board as a blog, but what the heck, my experience is probably useful to someone, somewhere, some of the time.

JC: You begin to see the universality of experience.

MT: Yes. . . the old isolation, the feeling that I had to hide who I was in order to belong, that's largely a thing of the past.

JC: The best teachers use their own experience. Every word has a richness to it: "I benefit from this myself. I am teaching me, teaching others is a bonus and it may or may not happen." What others learn is up to them. Not every seed sprouts.

MT: God keep me from false humility, and save me from the windbag phenomenon: trying to be what I am not.

154 (2006) I am among the ministers of God.

MT: So?!!! I thought I was a minister way back, age 13, and look where it got me.

JC: Where did you think it got you?

MT: I made a fool of myself. Instead of earning my father's approval, I received harsh criticism at every step--in front of the people I ministered to, yet. I didn't know which way to turn. There was no pleasing him, ever.

JC: Knowing what you know now, were I your father, how would I have treated you?

MT: Well, you are different. You extend love without obligation or expectation. Nothing but perfection would have pleased Dad, while you are tolerant of every aspect of who I am (or fancy myself being).

JC: You are right. I love your anger and your kindness, I love your tears and your joy. What do you know about being critical and judgmental?

MT: Sigh. I did plenty of that, especially with my kids. Where Dad went, I still sometimes go.

JC: You are not the victim of the world you see . . .

155 I will step back and let Him lead the way.

MT: What pure poetry, and what an image! You walk ahead of me. I can relax, certain that you know the way. I remember well the profound despair in my being when I tried to do everything alone and comfortless. When things didn't work out perfectly I swallowed my tears along with the blame. I was a child doing the work of two grownups. No way I could ever measure up.

JC: I will never leave you. Count on the comfort of my presence. I smooth the path for you. I bend away the brambles and ward off the cougar and the rattlesnake. Songbirds add music to our step.

MT: I am free today. A loving God will never assign me a task for which I am not fully prepared. This is the Holy Grail, the cup of God's nectar. I partake from it today. The Son of God is Home at last.

156 I walk with God in perfect holiness.

MT: This is Sunday, JC. Sundays used to be church days for me, morning and evening. I got so sick of church, I can't begin to tell you.

JC: This is God's church: anywhere that a past hate has been transmuted into a present love. This is your religion now. The Voice for God is your minister.

MT: Tell me, why this Voice for God business? Why not Voice "of" God? A tiny preposition can yield so much meaning. . .

JC: I want to make it very clear that the voice is not God. You know that the ego sneaks in very cleverly. Your parents knew from their own experience: not everything that comes to you in mysterious ways is of God. I aim to give you tools to discriminate between the two.

MT: There are a lot of stray energies floating about, no?

JC: Yes. Energy can be used in myriad ways. Your belief and intent are key. Misguided egos make up misguided experience.

MT: So I need to ask first. . . to dedicate to God my openness and my seeking.

JC: And to call company to your side. Your connection with me is a superb filter. Others may use Archangel Michael or the Virgin Mary. The form does not matter.

MT: Thank you. I think I've come to the end of this exchange for today.

JC: Walk with God in perfect holiness as you move through the day. Your church goes with you. Make this your holy day, when you see your brother as your Self.

157 Into His Presence would I enter now.

MT: Once again, JC, the words convey a profound reverence. This is the Holy of Holies. Way better than being knighted by the Queen of England. I guess the ego tries to imitate God in all sorts of ways, but it always falls short.

JC: As it must. The rituals of the ego are pathetic attempts to evoke the glory of God.

MT: And we pay such rapt homage to them. When Queen Elizabeth visited Yosemite Park back in the 90's, two rangers forgot their way around the place they knew so well. They worked themselves into a frenzy about a dumpy little woman clutching a leather purse, and lost their lives in a head-on crash. As their respective spirits headed into that white light, they must have mused: what was the fuss all about?

JC: In your life right now, where are you misplacing reverence? What do you put on a pedestal and make into an idol?

MT: I like my new Honda. . . I got really worked up when I backed it into the van and cracked the bumper. For a few hours, I forgot that God Is. I forgot God Is again when I was quoted $600 to fix the damage. You'd think Honda would spare us those silly shiny bumpers. . .

JC: And if the damage was 50 cents, how upset would you have been?

MT: Hardly. Why do you ask?

JC: Six hundred dollars is a symbol, a piece of paper. Why do you assign greater reality to paper than to a metal disk? Do you see how arbitrary are your judgments? You decide what to be upset over, and just how much to be upset. You are seeing what is not there.

MT: A very early lesson, if I remember well. JC, you never cease to amaze me.

JC: Remember true reverence today: God Is. God is all there is.

MT: So let me now enter into God's presence that I never left. Let me claim today my birthright. I am the prodigal son, and the Father rejoices in my return.

158 Today I learn to give as I receive.

MT: To give and to receive, again. I think I know this, and I practice it most of the time. I used to look out for the interests of others before my own, although BC (Before Course) I think it involved guilt. Guilt on my part, and it was an attempt to show my selflessness.

JC: An attempt to bind them to you with guilt, yes. Totally futile, I might say. Guilt separates.

MT: People resent the feeling of obligation, you mean. I know I resent it when others do it to me. So what is the difference from true giving?

JC: When you give truly you know, in your heart, that you want what you are offering. The gift is hollow when you leave yourself out of the equation. To show the door to the Kingdom to others, while leaving yourself out, is a particularly noxious form of specialness. It is unworthy of a Son of God.

MT: I think that was what bugged me about church, especially my father's Baptist congregation. They prayed with tremulous voices and eyes raised up to the ceiling, thinking that if they looked holy they must be holy.

JC: Hypocrisy needs forgiving too. You are condemning your father's congregation for a common ego stance. What do you know about putting on the appearance of holiness?

MT: Well, that's what I started out with--my looking after the interests of others before my own. I need help forgiving the congregation that was played such a large role in my growing up. I was jealous and angry that Dad put them ahead of us, his flesh and blood. It broke my heart when he spanked us in front of a whining parishioner--what was he trying to do, earn his place in Heaven, show God how holy he had become? But you did that with your mother--you rejected her because now everybody was family, or something like that. I forget the Bible quote.

JC: Your Dad misused that Bible text to attack you and curry favor with God. Yes, everybody becomes family when you think with God, but family becomes family too! You yourself become family.

MT: That's funny. I become family to myself. There is no separation.

JC: We are one, not many. We are one in the eyes of God. When you see with the eyes of God, there is no separation.

158 (2006) Today I learn to give as I receive.

JC: You cannot give without receiving. The question is, what do you want for yourself? That which you want you should give to others. Do you want anger, aloofness, guilt, preoccupation? Or do you want peace that passes all understanding? Give what you want to get.

MT: Good point. I want cheerfulness, humor, a playful attitude toward life. I want to release my body from the memory of old personality patterns.

JC: Where the body is concerned, I have sent you several messages that you should be teaching a physical discipline.

MT: Well, I can't teach a gyro class right at the moment, but I can offer attitude. Today, help me give cheer, play, and humor to those I meet.

159 I give the miracles I have received.

MT: Greetings, JC, Holy Son of God along with me.

JC: Greetings to you too, but I have been here all along. Even in the dead of night, angels watch over you.

MT: That is one expression Mother used frequently, and for which I am grateful. I have led a charmed life, thanks in no small part to my mother's belief in my angel companions.

JC: You received miracles, early on.

MT: Yes. I forget to be grateful, and I lose my sense of Self in finding fault with me. The miracle I have yet to receive is complete self-acceptance. But this statement is in itself a form of non-acceptance.

JC: Let all things be exactly as they are, and they will change of their own accord. The need for words comes to an end. You are home with the Father, and all is well.

MT: A bit of a paradox here. Human nature is to strive for change.

JC: Acceptance says, you are perfect underneath it all. You shall be with me today in Paradise.

MT: Imagine if we said that to the men--and increasingly, women--who crowd the prisons in this country. You are perfect as God created you. You are perfect just as I am. We are all Sons of God. The energy that makes your heart beat moves mine too.

JC: The world needs to hear these words. They are a balm to the wounds inflicted by the ego. You are part of the great plan. Do not waste one more second in attempts to achieve enlightenment--you are enlightened. Do not give a thought to fixing imperfections--you are as God created you. Look, instead, to broadcast the message: everybody is created perfect. Everyone who walks the Earth is a miracle.

160 I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

MT: Again, one of my favorite lessons, JC. Instead of a lame phrase like "I no longer have fear," you put together such a vivid metaphor. We banish fear, sweep it out in righteous indignation because it's an invader, a cockroach, a burglar. Yes, fear is more than a cockroach. It is a burglar that commands my time, resources, money. It robs me of the most valuable possession: my oneness with God.

JC: We all have a favorite lesson, I think. This is a favorite for you because it brings remedy to an old hurt. You stored away your strength and your light when you descended into fear.

MT: I felt like the chased cockroach. My sister, again. . . she thought she would be bigger if she made me smaller. She got illusory strength out of my illusory weakness. My weakness was a dream too, but as long as I blamed her I couldn't see that. She felt like a burglar to me, but she didn't steal anything I didn't give away.

JC: One correction: your strength is not yours to give away! You can pretend it's not there, that's all. Strength and light belong. They are family. They live with you in your home.

MT: My companions forever. They abide with me in the mighty fortress that is my God. Thank you for the reminder.