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71 Only God's plan for salvation will work.

MT: I am struck, JC, by what you said: " . . . [if you follow] two plans for salvation . . . the result can only bring confusion, misery and a deep sense of failure and despair." Your words really speak to me, because I've been in this despair place many times. But I don't see where I'm still relying on the ego's plan. I ask you to show me.
JC: Glad you ask, but I don't want to offer you any more chances to busy yourself with mind-cleaning. I suggest, instead, that you declare yourself saved. For example, you like to garden. You know you can spend all day pulling weeds, but you also know that planting a crop you want is a far, far better way to keep weeds out. Same goes for your mind.
MT: So I'm not busy enough with God's work?
JC: Let's say that I want you to completely give up the idea that you are flawed and defective. Ask God to plant a radiant new crop in the garden of your mind.
MT: Thank you. "Doing God's work" looks gray with sacrifice, like joining a parade of nuns. Planting flowers--yes, that's beautiful, resplendent and good.

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

MT: I love it, JC: "God is assigned the attributes which are actually associated with the ego, while the ego appears to take on the attributes of God." Voltaire used different words: "God created man in His image, and man promptly returned the compliment."
JC: I hear you. Now to talk about you . . .
MT: Ah, yes. So easy to discourse on nice turns of phrase while ignoring the content. I do not know what salvation is. Please show me!
JC: What do you see as God's plan?
MT: God's plan is that I accept my true Self, that I stop tilting at windmills, that I recognize the truth of my inheritance.
JC: And that you come back today to the home you never left. To do so, you give up grievances.
MT: Shouldn't be too hard. I think grievances are overrated, anyway. I no longer feel like attacking God, either. I'm fine with being forever an effect of God.
JC: There is nothing to defend! Welcome to the banquet of life.

73 I will there be light.

MT: We're not saying "I wish there was light, but . . . "
JC: No. You are stating your will, united with the will of God.
MT: So many times we can get what we want, even at the illusion level, by stating it as will rather than wish.
JC: But you will notice there is fear associated with that.
MT: Yes--what happens if I get beaten back and lose face!
JC: There shouldn't be fear in asking for the light, unless you extrapolate from what happens at the illusion level, where egos fight each other. This is not about one-upmanship. This is a claim on your birthright.
MT: Help me open my heart to let light in!
JC: The light is already in. Open your heart to others, to let light out. That's how it's done.
MT: Awesome! So much for selfish enlightenment!

74 There is no will but God's.

MT: Well, I thought God gave me will, but I misused it. Please clarify.
JC: There is One Will. The flower wills to bloom. The fox wills to chew off the leg caught in a trap. Every living thing lives by will. So do you.
MT: Will is one, then.
JC: Will unites all living things, but the ego dreams it can use will to separate. That's why I say this is all an illusion and never happened.
MT: You seem to be equating will with life and love, while for me the word evokes stern visage and clenched jaw.
JC: The ego negatively reframes all that comes from the boundless and infinite loving energy of God. Yes, will equals life equals love.
MT: As a living thing, then, I AM the will of God. How nice. There is beauty and strength in that.
JC: You ARE beauty and strength. You represent Him who sent you. United with your brothers, your will shapes reality, because it becomes the will of God. You are back where you started, before you spun off the dream of separation.
MT: In the beginning there was the Will, and the Will was with God, and the Will was God . . .

75 The light has come.

MT: Delight has come! Did you intend the pun?
JC: No, but you can take it so. Words as such do not matter. The intention behind the words does.
MT: I feel less than peaceful. I think I reawakened conflict with a brother, with an email I just sent. He came into my life to help me forgive something or someone in my past. I need clarity in this situation. I need to see this differently, because this way of seeing him/me is keeping the light from me in this moment.
JC: What has love to say about this?
MT: You mean to see the Christ in him, I guess. Going inside, there is a grating feeling of being out of sync. It blocks the light. My ego wants to force him to hear me. He doesn't need to agree, but I want to be heard.
JC (softly): Your ego wants to be heard, doesn't it.
MT: So many in my past were deaf to me. I saw them as encrusted like geodes, some life inside but barely a flicker. The pain of not being seen, not being heard, it sticks in my throat.
JC: How are you not hearing your brother? How are you not acknowledging others? How do you walk the world locked up in a dream?
MT: I get hints of that sometimes, mostly from my son. It's progress to realize I'm doing it, even if after the fact.
JC: You can give the gift of presence, of witnessing another. In doing so, you shall receive. Your brother reflects back to you the light you bring, a thousandfold.

76 I am under no laws but God's.

MT: Right now, whether illusion or truth (more likely the former, given that I listen to illusions 99% of the time), I am in a semi-dream state, and when more awake, I size up my preparedness for a three-hour drive up north. Yes, that's all illusion. God's laws seem far away right now.
JC: One law you hold as Truth is that it takes three hours to drive to San Jose. Notice how firmly you believe that.
MT: You got me there. I do remember a couple of miracles related to time--that drive to Los Angeles, the hike up Bear Creek Canyon. Time lost its grip on me then. Or I let go of my grip on time, fatigue, struggle and boredom.
JC: Such are miracles. You step out of what you think is reality. It allows you to experience something totally different.
MT: I want to let go of a couple of laws I now see written in stone, JC.
JC: Why not all laws? Question laws. They are but convention, the power you give them the only power they have. Question laws, and you access awesome intelligence. Question laws, and you universe is never the same again.

77 I am entitled to miracles.

MT: I feel wrapped up in the ego "reality" right now. Not in a bad way, but still, God-presence seems far removed. To say that I am entitled to miracles is just a mechanical sentence to me at this time.
JC: But you are sitting down to write on the lesson. A little willingness is all it takes, and you are offering it. All angels and prophets come to offer assistance.
MT: So here's where I am, and I know where I want to be.
JC: Forgiveness is the means to be present with your full Self. Do not judge your state, lest you remove yourself still further.
MT: I hereby forgive myself for momentarily believing the ego "reality." I hereby declare that I am entitled to miracles.
JC: Your word, when joined with the Word of God, is law in the Universe.

78 Let miracles replace all grievances.

MT: All right, JC, I went into an old guilt space in response to my son's anger yesterday, and I am still suffering from the backwash of it today. I would like this lesson to clear that up. To list his faults: he's a control freak; his communication is mainly a request for agreement; he goes into a rage if I imply that he did anything wrong. I want to support him any way I can, but at the same time I want to be comfortable and free with him. I would like to say what I want without bringing on a tsunami of verbal attack.

So, let me behold my savior in my son, whom you have appointed as the one for me to ask to lead me into the holy light in which he stands, that I may join with him. I am willing to let go of my grievances, so that the light of God will shine on us both.

79 Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved.

MT: My mind is empty at the moment, JC. This journaling started from my desire to let go of problems, and I think I know the way.
JC: You think you know the way, but do you know the way?
MT: I have a feeling of incompleteness, a sense that there is a major breakthrough that I'm supposed to experience. Life is good, but . . .
JC: And what do you place in the way?
MT: Oh, I should read Obstacles to Peace, shouldn't I.
JC: You can do so, and benefit from it, but you didn't answer my question. What are you placing in the way of this major breakthrough?
MT: The idea that there must be a major breakthrough before I can be all that I can be? It nags at me, but then, that's just the ego's drive to strive, isn't it?
JC: Is it?
MT: I want answers, not more questions. I want you to kick me in the rear and tell me to go live in the desert for forty days.
JC: Oh, I see. You want me to act like all those who, in your personal history, knew better what you should do, and told you so.
MT: The authority I rebelled against! I'm trying to make you into a bogus authority.
JC: I work with you, not against you. Countless spirits and guides stand in wait, eager to assist. You do not walk alone.

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