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101 God's will for me is perfect happiness.

MT: So much for the God of my childhood, the God of vengeance, of fire and brimstone. But what brutally strong words you use:

"Salvation must be feared, for it will kill, but slowly, taking everything away before it grants the welcome boon of death to victims who are little more than bones before salvation is appeased. Its wrath is boundless, merciless, but wholly just." You go on to say: "Who would seek out such savage punishment? Who would not flee salvation, and attempt in every way he can to drown the Voice which offers it to him? Why would he try to listen and accept Its offering?"

Thanks, JC, for stating so clearly the error in my thinking and for not making me wrong for thinking it. Because that's exactly how I used to think. Here are the terrors of my childhood laid out for all to see.

JC: That was then, this is now. A new era dawns for mankind. Suffering is not bad or evil. It is merely unnecessary.

MT: Yes. Today I escape from madness. Today I accept that God's only will for me is total, perfect, all-encompassing happiness.

102 I share God's will for happiness for me.

Who wouldn't want happiness? I do. Trouble was, I thought God wanted me to be miserable! What a new reference point this is for my whole life: God, too, wants me to be happy. Happy as a kitten with her littermates. Happy as a dolphin frolicking in the wake of a boat. Happy as a mockingbird singing in the dawn. That is what God wants for me!

103 God, being love, is also happiness.

Yeah! Right on, JC! I well remember the knot in my throat when, with tremulous voices, people said, "God is love" and then went on to describe the hell reserved for those who don't behave. What loving God would condemn any of His creations to unspeakable torture? What loving God would even notice what we do in this fleeting dream of ours?

104 I seek but what belongs to me in truth.

Organized religion has me kneel before God (or the priest, more likely) and confess my sins. Perhaps temporary relief can be had in confession, but then the unwanted "reality" asserts itself again, if not today, then tomorrow for sure: I am a worthless sinner, waiting to roast in eternal fires of Hell but for the obscure and capricious grace of a blind, deaf and angry God.

And now I learn that forgiveness was mine all along! There was never anything to forgive! All Heaven asks of me is that I offer my brother the gift that God gave me: the recognition that we, together, seek for what belongs to us in truth. I cannot say, "Heaven is mine, but you are excluded because of the atrocious deeds you performed, the color of your skin, or the holy book you happen to hold as truth." God welcomes me today. I welcome my brother today. Together we enter the Kingdom.

105 God's peace and joy are mine.

I give what I want to receive. I offer forgiveness that I may be forgiven.
JC, I've become aware of a gap in how I relate to others. I think a
guardedness about me turns people off, but I really don't want friends. I am
quite comfortable alone. I think this has to do with today's lesson.

JC: You should have more friends, but you don't want more friends.

MT: I really don't. I am quite happy pecking at the keyboard, cleaning a
closet, or watching a movie. There are people who want company everywhere
they go, people who don't know what they are thinking unless they bounce it off someone else, but I am not one of them. I need company in homeopathic doses. I would
like to be doing more counseling . . . there's still pain stashed away
regarding counseling. I did so much in the way of training, licenses,
workshops, and it's gone to nothing. I feel defeated, professionally. I
could have been helpful and successful and busy, but I sabotaged myself at
every turn. I thought of myself as a powerhouse, but I turned out to be just
a few wet logs on a sooty fire.

JC: What is your heart's desire? What would you like from me?

MT: I want clarity. I want to see myself as others see me. I turn people
away, I know, but I know it only by inference. I want the Truth.

106 Let me be still and listen to the truth.

MT: My ego kicked up again yesterday, JC. It said, "Look at the patterns of your life. This self-sabotage dates back to age 13. When will you finally deal with it?"
JC: The chatter, the veiled accusations, the urgency: I say, know that they are not Truth.
MT: I could have looked at my many successes, but I chose to look at my failures.
JC: Looking at so-called successes helps only temporarily. What you must give up are your judgments of yourself based on past experience. Be still and listed to the truth: you are a magnificent creation of God. The past is over. It can touch you not. Today you can be with me in Paradise.

107 Truth will correct all errors in my mind.

MT: What is this business about truth, JC?
JC: Only truth is true. Nothing else is true.
MT: Oh. The best minds of our society, at the moment, are engaged in presenting the false as true. It is offensive to be lied to, doubly offensive to be expected to believe in the lies.
JC: You lament what you cannot change, a favorite occupation of the ego. While doing so, your mind feels busy and important, but it is in truth doing absolutely nothing.
MT: The mind is waiting, isn't it. For what, I cannot guess.
JC: It waits for nothing, because there is nothing at the end of the road. This road leads nowhere. Wake up!
MT: I so badly want to see, Friend. Help me see.
JC: This longing, that is a teaspoon of Truth. Be true to yourself. Reach out to your brothers in fearlessness and love today.
MT: Today I give myself the gift of a still mind, that I may recognize Truth.

108 To give and to receive are one in truth.

MT: There's that word again, JC--Truth. They are one IN truth?
JC: Giving and receiving are but an aspect of the Thought of God, a state of mind so unified that darkness cannot be perceived.
MT: There's something I don't get here. I can see that there is no giving or receiving, that they are both part of an exchange of love, and love is limitless by definition. Well, guess I did get it!
JC: "I will receive what I am giving now." This is the guidance of the Holy Spirit: what are you giving in this moment? Because that you will receive. This is not an idle thought. This is a law.
MT: Right now, you say? I am offering to the disembodied minds out there--my Internet groups--my struggle to understand.
JC: What is the offer? The struggle, or the clarity?
MT: Well, it's really my clarity. It's the love of God that eventually flows out of the words I peck. Don't remember ever being disappointed, either. I have received what I've given, with generous dividends.
JC: This is the yardstick with which to measure your smallest action, your tiniest thought: are you giving what you would receive? Because you will, with mathematical precision.
MT: That's the Law of Attraction that people are talking about, isn't it? It goes far deeper than a parking space or a slick new car.
JC: It reaches all the way to the Thought that underlies them all, the Thought of God.

109 I rest in God.

"Into His presence would I enter now." Today I surrender the "need" to work, improve, move forward, do (it helps that I have a cold) (did God send this cold to help me rest?). Let this be the seventh day of Creation, when, like God's, my mind is still. Today, in silence and awe, I enter into His presence.

110 I am as God created me.

I had a moment of clarity, as I sat down to meditate a few minutes ago--why not be totally here, right now, this moment? And then it passed, and now it's just a memory. I don't even quite know what happened. I long to see. Above all I want to see--but I guess there is a catch. The catch is, I want to see as long as I can maintain my separate self, the seer who sees a world outside the self. You are telling me, that doesn't work.
JC: For a moment, there was only the decision to see. And then the decision for separation rushed in once more.
MT: So what do I do? I feel helpless.
JC: Who put the helplessness there? Did God create you helpless, so He could practice charity on you?
MT: Aw, JC, you're being sarcastic.
JC: Yes, I am. This is a time for strength and light. This is the time to own yourself as a being of light.
MT: To have no name, no country, only life to be lived. To be as God created me, because I can be nothing else. Thank you, Friend.

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