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111 Miracles are seen in light. Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.

MT: The ego-mind rushes to try to make sense of the words. Light? Strength? The two images don't match. But I've learned enough of this Course to know that you really mean it.
JC: I challenge the so-called reality you learned in your childhood home. Not an easy task.
MT: Guess I need to remember that light does not make me into a babbling idiot, and that strength does not make me into a bully.
JC: Light and strength are attributes of God, yes. Together they are offered to undo your darkness and littleness. Because in the illusion you misuse light and strength.
MT: Soften my heart and strengthen my spine, JC. That is my will. I want to stand up to evil, but to do so while scattering the seeds of love.
JC: Evil does not need to be fought.
MT: I thought that was the function I was refusing to fulfill--to fight evil.
JC: Bring clarity instead. The world desperately needs a way out of darkness. That is your function, to use strength to bring light to the world.

112 Light and joy and peace abide in me. I am as God created me.

I refuse to be the personality, I refuse to congeal myself into form once more, I now return to my original state: a resplendent being of light. Hesitation, pondering, fear, procrastination: I pay no heed to these today. God Himself wills my return to Him. My return was written on the walls that stand through eons of time. My return is proclaimed by the seagulls that glide by the shore. My return is whispered in the wind and murmured in the clear rivers of snowmelt. My return is witnessed in awed silence in the desert, celebrated by lightning and thunder in the plain. I am as God created me.

113 I am one Self, united with my Creator. Salvation comes from my one Self.

MT: I pray, God, let us be One!
JC: A noble prayer, but the decision is not up to God. It is up to you to unmake a decision you dreamed up so long ago: to be separate from God. Sacrifice and effort and thought meant to changing God's mind are to no avail, because God's mind never excluded you from Oneness.
MT: Is the dream part of evolution? That we return to God better off for having developed a separate consciousness? I like this thought.
JC: To see it in this way helps undo any guilt you might feel, and this Course is, above all, pragmatic. There is profound learning to be had in playing the opposites. The Prodigal Son is better off for having wandered away from the Father. His faith is more solid from having been challenged. I seek to spare you suffering, but once the decision is made and the carpet of time unrolled, the Holy Spirit uses this experience, too, to bring you closer to God. Do not ask for suffering, but when it seemingly happens, know that it is an opportunity for learning, graciously offered to you.

114 I am spirit. I am the Son of God. I will accept my part in God's plan for salvation.

Don't know what to say, JC. I have no questions. I feel removed from God right now. Or from the lesson. Perhaps it's time to let go of the lessons. My mind is jumping ahead to Starbucks and the bike and the garden. I feel under the spell of my confused dreams just before I woke up. This is me, right now. Am I spirit? I guess so. Feel quite material right now, a dim 15W bulb. Need to unkink my body, get appointments at the Studio, get appt for bodywork. Want to let go of procrastination, but that too I procrastinate. You can take this procrastination, the big P of my life.
JC: Your life is divided. Your self is splintered. Procrastination is clear evidence of a splintered self.
MT (mildly irritated): So you've got a diagnosis, where is the remedy?
JC: The remedy is power. The power that God gave in such abundance, and which you think you do not deserve.
MT: Power is the remedy for procrastination. I don't get it.
JC: You are a fan of Mahatma Gandhi, so let's look at him. Did he procrastinate? Was he a powerful being?
MT: No and yes, of course. But he knew what the hell he was doing. He knew who he was. I don't.
JC: So the need, as you see it this moment, is to know who you are and to know what you are doing.
MT: Sheesh, yes. Right back to today's lesson. You have a way of doing that.
JC: So you see the reason for today's lesson, do you not? Even if you don't believe it right at the moment, there's a compelling reason for it. It is your way out. Who runs your life, the default programming of the ego, or the God in you? You rebel against your ego's shifting dictates and pompous pronouncements, and why not? It has never served you and never will. Are you willing to take your place among Beings of Light?
MT: Thanks for the redirection. I feel lighter. My bulb is up to 60W right now.
JC: You can choose to fire it up to a floodlight.

115 Salvation is my only function here. My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.

MT: I am fighting this process, JC. Is it a good fight, or a trick of the ego? Should I continue focusing on the Lessons, or go on to something else?
JC: Who are you, and what do you want?
MT: I am the Holy Son of God. I want peace that passes all understanding.
JC: From this reference point, how do you answer your two questions?
MT: Awesome! I just got in touch with a place in my mind, a place I visit often, where I am thrown back into the agony of choice. There Hell is. I've been there countless times before, probably on a daily or hourly basis. I need to shut the door to that place, to throw away the key.
JC: Not so fast. Where Hell is, there is Heaven too, both creations of your mind. The Holy Spirit will use every place in your mind, if you will open it for, so to speak, a celestial cleanup.
MT: Visit my "hell of choices" place, then, and show me how to see it differently.
JC: You go to that place and empty it out. See it as clean, empty, freshly painted. Open the door to God and invite Him in.
MT: This is profound--to open the recesses of my brain. God doesn't solve any problems I make up! Instead, God takes up residence in places free of problems of my making.

116 God's will for me is perfect happiness. I share God's will for happiness for me.

How could it be otherwise? I want to be happy. God wants me to be happy. End of story. The story is always about trials, and I give up my story. I erase the book of my life. I am ready to live happily ever after.

117 God, being Love, is also happiness. I seek but what belongs to me in truth.

MT: Don't know what to say, JC. It is curious that I can know that something is true and still not fully integrate it. Of course God is love and happiness. Of course happiness belongs to me in truth. I need a deeper experience of this, that's all.
JC: Ask for a deeper experience, and let yourself be guided by what comes next.
MT: It's usually nothing.
JC: Nothing is exactly what needs to happen. Give up your attempts to show God the way. The ego IS your mania for showing God how things should be. Just know that, if you are unhappy, or restless, or judgmental, you have decided with the ego, and then it is time to decide for God.
MT: I seek but what belongs to me in truth. How could I not receive it!.

118 God's peace and joy are mine. Let me be still and listen to the truth.

Mine. Mine! This is have, worth more than all the trinkets, houses, bank accounts, new cars.

Now let me be still and listen to the truth. It is this I sought when, as a girl, I primped before the mirror. It was this I wanted when nothing but the highest grade in the class was worthy of me. It was this I sought when I owned a house on the hill. It was the peace and joy of God I sought when I helped others, raised children, trekked in the wilderness, sat by the campfire in the evening. It was the peace of God I sought when I drank wine, ate chocolate, anguished over failure and got puffed up with success. God's peace and joy were mine all along, buried under the many doings that I believed would bring me peace and joy. Now let me be still and listen to the truth: God Is.

119 Truth will correct all errors in my mind. To give and to receive are one in truth.

MT: I think I have a feeling for what is truth. It is an energetic feeling in the body. But somehow, you are connecting the fact that giving and receiving are one, a true statement I know, with the correction of errors . . . oh, never mind. I thought I had a question!

JC: You thought they were separate thoughts, but they are one. Today, stay with the correction of errors, the dawn of truth in the mind of the Son.

120 I rest in God. I am as God created me.

If I am "as God created me," there is no need to huff and puff, strive and suffer. As Effects of God, we extend the quiet magnificence of God Himself. Like the child I once was, I can run out into the sunshine and breathe in the air of the Father's House. There is beauty and resplendent power in every leaf that moves in the wind, every drop of water in the morning sun. I am as God created me.

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