Index of Lessons
Home

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

Here's trying, once again, to take this thought in, JC. How quickly I forget. Where do I connect with others today, so that I may practice forgiveness? You show me. Show me what to do and what to say to those you send my way. Why, it's even a little haiku:

show me what to do
and what to say
to those you send my way.

"Let me not separate my function from my will." This is one of those sentences you drop on my lap and leave for me to puzzle over. My function is forgiveness. My will . . . I get it, my old concept of will had an attitude. Rigid and self-denying, it ran over other people to get its way. My father forced himself to do God's will, not seeing the contradiction implied. To see function and will as one, that's truly a thought revolution. Guess I needed this lesson, after all!

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

The light of the world, the Holy Spirit, is already there. I only think I made a world shuttered tight, a darkroom where light can enter not. My forgiveness is the Great Undoing, the Second Coming, the Awakening. It only takes one to bring Atonement to this troubled sphere and all its inhabitants. Why not me? My function is to open the way, to draw back the curtains of sin and suffering and let light stream in. It is a glorious dawn, this, the dawn of a forgiven world, and I the essential means to the Light.

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

And God is One. I sought to separate my function from my life and from God. Now I see that no matter what I do, the function that unites them all is forgiveness. I am here to learn forgiveness, whether I work cleaning houses or serve my country as ambassador to the United Nations. I learn forgiveness when I walk down the street, weed the garden, talk to the neighbor, or teach computer skills at the retirement home. Each of a day's events gives me a new chance to learn forgiveness, when seen with the light of God.

Today let me remember my function. I walk the world in perfect holiness today.

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

I was made by love, the life principle. Love is who I am. When I am tempted to feed grievances, let me remember: My Creator did not create this as I see it, therefore it does not exist. Here is the way out of suffering, misery, and loss. Here is the way to peace.

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

MT: Any time I do not experience joy, I am in grievance, I am in ego. Do I want to extend light, or to generate darkness?
JC: Yes. There are only two states, there are only two choices.
MT: Once more, you reinforce the idea that salvation is within. It comes from God, and God is within.
JC: Do not look outside yourself.
MT: Salvation comes from me. Today, show me where I may be looking outside for what resides within. This is my will.

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

MT: My plans for salvation are too numerous to mention--better health, good nutrition, sacrifice myself to save others, find something spectacular to do, laugh a lot, perhaps take Tai Chi lessons. Now you're telling me that only God's plan for salvation will work, so why am I even giving these plans a thought!
JC: Yet there are grievances.
MT: Yes, speaking of better health, I hold a grievance against medical care in this country. It is outrageously expensive and curiously mechanical. That's my judgment. Wish you'd do something about it.
JC: And your judgment that it is expensive, is it not placing value on the valueless, such as money?
MT: Well, yes it is. How does one completely give up judgments? I rather enjoy clobbering doctors and hospitals (until I need one).
JC: Behold the clobbering, because it is an attack on God. As if you could attack God.
MT: I get tired of being spiritually correct, though.
JC: Your defiant streak could be used to defy your ego. If you make up a grounds for a grievance, you do not see the grounds for your salvation. Come back to me!

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

When I say, "I will," I am saying "God wills." In the old thinking, there were two separate wills. But even now, fear still comes with the words, "this is what I want. This is my will." They seems pretentious. Humility was beaten into me, or I guess you would call it littleness, when I learned to get along in the world of Man.
JC: True humility acknowledges hierarchy. You are an effect of God. God is Father, you are Son, and therefore able to create as God.
MT: Coming back to little me, or big me . . . yikes, in writing these words, I clearly dropped back into the body. That was a strange sensation, JC.
JC: There is no need. You create as God.
MT: So what's all this about light? I grope in darkness.
JC: Come back to Me. Let there be light. You are appointed to be the bringer of light.
MT: Lucifer, Light Bringer, the angel who dreamt the Fall.
JC: Think of what this means--you dreamt a Fall that never was. Wake up. You are a light in seeming darkness. You herald the approach of dawn.

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

MT: You're jumping around here. Why are these two statements together? I don't see the connection.
JC: You don't see the connection because you have made up a disconnected world. Truth is, everything is connected.
MT: Let me try to understand. The light has come--I am "enlightened." This means that none of the world's laws apply to me.
JC: It depends on the meaning you give to the word "me." The world's laws have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the Self. The world's laws have everything to do with the ego-personality. When you let light in and see that you are not a body, your freedom automatically extends to infinity. The laws of this tiny sphere no longer apply. For now, it suffices that you question the laws of the world and realize that worlds upon worlds are stacked on top of this one, and that the laws you made to hide the truth apply only to this layer, the illusion you put together.
MT: The way to freedom, then, is to let go of the world I made, to see that it's not real and not Truth.
JC: When you see that, the light has come.

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

MT: Woke up with the sad thought: like Helen Schucman, I know the Course is true, but I don't believe it. Can't say it's anybody else's fault, either, because I haven't done all it says. In my quest for physical energy and release, I gave up on meditation. I lied to myself that yoga and Pilates and gyrokinesis were meditation enough. In the conclusion of the Workbook, you speak of the practice of "deep experience" --one of the rare places that the Course gives a specific direction for future action. So, I'm sorry, JC, but I have the feeling that this is it and I'm going to have to resign myself to the truth: I don't really believe I'm entitled to miracles. I know that giving up grievances offers peace, yes, but miracles? That's a barrier I haven't had the courage to walk through.
JC: Yet your life is better.
MT: Yes. . . my life is better. Even the physical is better than I dared hope. I would probably need a walker to get around without the teachers God sent my way, or you sent my way, whoever it was--there's help floating out there, I admit.
JC: Or floating in here. Help does not happen without acceptance.
MT: Help happens with joining, but I've been a miserable failure at joining. I could never suffer being an apprentice. I thought I knew everything, or if I didn't know, I could always pretend. I expect that this stance of mine is still in operation, as shown by my unwillingness to meditate.
JC: There is no magic in meditation. Yes, you are closed, but you are open too. You have helped a lot of people, while claiming to be selfish and closed!
MT: I am totally confused right now.
JC: Come back to me, come back to me. The door is open.

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

MT: Can't be simpler, really, JC. One problem, one solution. Yet I woke up with the old companion, anxiety, plus a tight neck. Must have had a bad dream.
JC: You did well to pass on the movie, when you found it dark and depressing.
MT: Perhaps I should do without movies, period! They are just a time filler and an excuse for popcorn. But I honestly don't have any intention of doing so, any time soon. I wait for my addictions to drop away, don't I. And many have. So I won't make a problem of addiction to movies, popcorn, computer games, even checking email ten times a day. But wouldn't it be nice to become addicted to what's good for me, like meditation, laughter, painting, hiking, and playing the guitar? Or even paying the bills . . . Anybody out there addicted to paying bills? Addiction is a matter of definition, isn't it.
JC: It is all a matter of definition. Whose definition will you accept, yours, or God's?
MT: But I can only dream that I have a choice in this. Invited or not invited, God will be there. What I thought was a problem turns out to be no problem at all, because God is inevitable.

Index of Lessons
Home