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31 I am not the victim of the world I see.

MT: Because I made it up, I guess. I was just playing, JC!
JC: The Son of God chose, for a while, to play the game of sickness, sin, and death.
MT: Guess any time I get angry I'm really playing the victim game.
JC: Which means you are playing the guilt game. Anger is merely the attempt to make your brother guilty.
MT: Looking back on it, I was really good at the guilt game. I didn't usually use anger--I preferred suffering. If I suffered long and obviously enough, someone would take pity on me.
JC: This is a new day. Today you can choose again. No need to play these childish games any longer. Today you can gaze upon the world with eyes of peace. Today you can look in the mirror and see the magnificence that you are.

32 I have invented the world I see.

MT: They are equally illusory, the inner world and the outer world. I walk the world hallucinating my story, the people in it, the places where the story develops. What would you tell me about my seeming world, JC?
JC: I know you have lost peace over the phone call you invented from the person you invented.
MT: OK, OK, this is making the language pretty convoluted. Yes, I did lose peace. You are either in Heaven not, and right now I'm not.
JC: Loss of peace comes from unforgiveness. You know that already.
MT: So I need to forgive my brother for what he didn't do to me. I am hallucinating a stalker--that's the worst scenario. My ego is expert at worst scenarios.
JC: And the best scenario is . . . ?
MT: That this is a chance to see men differently. He seems to think he was sent to guide me to the Light, to show me the Way--as long as it is HIS way, as long as I do what he says in the way that he decides. JC, I don't like to offend anyone, least of all someone who came to me through my teaching, but this event is hitting on an old vulnerability dating back to my teens. Mother taught me to protect men's feelings, never to say "no" lest their fragile psyches crumble. How do I say no to someone who claims to want the best for me, who brings me CDs and books and reprints--yet is curiously deaf and blind to who I am? Someone who only sees his invented picture of me?
JC: By seeing the Christ in him, you will see strength, not a fragile psyche. By seeing the Christ in yourself, you are released from any bonds of duty, guilt and obligation. Thus is the world renewed. You and your brother then walk on holy ground.

34 I could see peace instead of this.

Dear God, as this new day dawns and Nature renews itself with the return of the sun, I summon You into my heart. Let me be the instrument of Thy love today. Let me be the island of peace in the sea of turmoil. It is so because I say so, and my will united with Yours becomes the Will of God.

35 My mind is part of God's. I am very holy.

MT: Here I am, JC. Show me what I need to learn from these words.
JC: The acceptance of your holiness is the first step to the goal: to be one with God.
MT: And the others with whom I make contact today?
JC: You can be a beacon showing them their true nature.
MT: I don't feel very holy right now. I feel stress around my eyes and forehead. I am seeing problems in others.
JC: You are seeing problems in others, and that blinds you to their holiness and your own.
MT: I let a new vision come to me today, now. I breathe in Your Silence. My heart beats in the peace of God. Today I help the Son remember the God whom he loves.

36 My holiness envelops everything I see.

MT: Yesterday's experience, driving down the 101, was that a wonderful surrounding enveloped me. "It" inhaled the car forward with no effort. I thought, if this is vision, keep it coming!
JC: You are making vision something outside yourself. But, for however long, yesterday you ceased to exist as a separate self, so of course the car was inhaled forward with no effort on your part. There was no "you" to make the effort.
MT: I understand. The feeling is what I want, though. Understanding only jams the works.
JC: Thank you. You made it that time.

37 My holiness blesses the world.

No longer shall I underestimate the importance of what I say and do. I am the Way and the Light (and so are you, and you, and you!). Today I bring light to darkness, forgiveness to sin, peace to strife, love to despair and suffering and poverty.

This sentence jumped out at me: "Those who see themselves as whole make no demands." In other words, when I make a demand (as taught by assertion training), I am seeing myself as lacking. A demand is an affirmation of lack!
If I get what I am demanding, I have "won" and my brother has "lost." In this way I perpetuate the illusion that maintains the world I see.
Let me today bless the world with eyes of peace. I am sufficient. I have all I need. My holiness blesses the world.

38 There is nothing my holiness cannot do.

JC: This IS a course in miracles, after all!
MT: Aw, JC, it's also a course in finding out who I really am, discovering my will, healing my relationships, becoming a Voice for God. But I feel a twinge of guilt that I can't walk on water yet. I can't even heal my body. So much for being a good student.
JC: Eliminate the word "cannot" from your vocabulary! That would be a start. The miracle happens when you do not admit the opposite into your thinking.
MT: Do you have some easy miracles for me to practice on?
JC: They are all easy. A miracle happens the moment you step out of your endless cataloguing, efforting, ranking, separating, sorting and selecting. The stepping-out is really the miracle, what happens as a result only a natural, unavoidable consequence.
MT: I keep thinking of the sweet, whimsical miracle of the coconut in Tahiti. In that moment, I discovered the miracle, and what a sparkling experience it was! I miss it so.
JC: The real miracle was the decision you made: that you would not waste your vacation time figuring out how to procure coconut milk, that wishing for it was good enough. You gave up on the struggle. Your wish was delivered to God's mailbox. In that brief moment, you gave up on littleness, and the gods rushed in to do your bidding.
MT: They did it because they might as well, I guess.
JC: Yes. The miracle happens because it may as well.

39 My holiness is my salvation.

MT: So, JC, you are presenting me with a pair of opposites: guilt and holiness. Y'know, I used to cringe at the word "holiness." For a while, I replaced it with "wholeness," but then I thought, who am I kidding, the Course is too smart for me to be changing words here and there. The words are chosen for a reason. So here is my prayer this morning: help me see the connection. These are two states we're talking about, two opposite states.
JC: You are either holy or guilty, yes. Which do you want?
MT: Guilt has been my companion forever. My son remarked that I looked guilty even when I hadn't done anything. Ken Wapnick talks about the jar of guilt that's passed around in a relationship. I held the jar of guilt in my marriage. If it rained on the picnic, it must be my fault, let me see . . . could I have stopped the rain, or was I terminally incompetent?
JC: Guilt is your knee-jerk response. What about holiness?
MT: I associated holiness with hypocrisy, eyes raised in prayer to a deaf God while planning the next scam. Guilt to me was a constant except for brief seconds when someone else was declared culpable. Holiness was not for me. I would rather look evil than holy/hypocritical. Yes, that's it--the choice I saw was between guilt and deliberate evil--that's how capable, intelligent men run airplanes into buildings! They momentarily escape the intolerable burden of guilt by being deliberately evil instead! It makes a certain crooked sense: If I am evil, I can't be guilty.
JC: So much for the insanity of the ego. Are you ready to see holiness instead?
MT: I need a new image to replace those pathetic eyes raised to a blind, dumb and deaf God.
JC: Today, hold hands with the dancing God. Invite God to the ball!

40 I am blessed as a Son of God.

MT: It's one of those lessons that go in one ear and out the other, JC. Five minutes from now I won't remember the words.
JC: Yes, I know this is so at the moment.
MT: You mean, it can change?
JC: Reread YOUR words. "Go in one ear and out the other." "I won't remember the words."
MT: The law of attraction at work! This is what I say, this is what happens.
JC: You are splitting the mind by attracting what you do not want.
MT: Yet I believe in stating what is real for me in the moment, no matter how illusory it turns out to be. I could write GOD IS and let it go at that, but then there would be no posting to any of these boards I faithfully follow. How can I be at peace with God and still do anything? I really mean the question. I'm stumped.
JC: You go from illusion to Truth, over and over. That is your process. Let it be what it is, and God will show up of His own accord. The Lessons are now only reminders of a state of mind that you will increasingly call your own.

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