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121 Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

"Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in the mind, which cannot sin."
"Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself."

MT: I'm having a hard time concentrating, JC. Have a headache and my eyes are blurry today.
JC: Come as you are. The headache does not impede your connection with God. Neither does double vision. They are obstacles only if you assign them this role.
MT: I keep looking at the sentence, "Forgiveness is acquired." A surprising point you make. This is where learning comes in with the Course.
JC: Yes, and forgiveness would not be necessary had you not made up a world of sin.
MT: So when I have that knee-jerk reaction of dislike for someone, that's an opportunity to teach my own mind how to forgive itself.
JC: Exactly. That is what I mean when I say, "Give me your blessing, Holy Son of God." Because everyone who comes your way is a blessing, especially those whom you initially dislike.
MT: I remember what strong reactions I used to have to people. I assumed that it was their fault I didn't like them. I never questioned my reactions.
JC: Each and every one of them is your teacher and your key to happiness.

122 Forgiveness offers everything I want.

Doesn't get any clearer than that! I am the ruler of my (forgiven) universe. What a tangled web we weave, when we pretend we are weak, helpless, victims, and mortal! Here is God's promise. Thank you, Father, for the gift of life today. Thank you for our beautiful planet and all things that dwell on it.

123 I thank my Father for his gifts to me.

MT: Oh no, not this lesson! I really don't feel a grain of gratitude today. Chintzy Scott turned off the pilot to the fireplace! He wants to save his way to riches by scraping off every penny. Meanwhile, I have no heat, it's 61 degrees in here, he is out for the day and he stashed away the instructions to light the pilot. Also, my body is stiff from a 3-hour drive and the Pilates class yesterday. You need to set me straight, JC.

JC: I am always here for you.

MT: So set me straight!

JC: This path of complaints is your choice. If I took your choice away from you, then, in my opinion, you would have reason to complain.

MT: Deep down I must like to complain, blame and bitch, because I'm having a hard time with gratitude today.

JC: It is easy to be grateful for a banquet. Gratitude for a scrap of moldy bread is more of a challenge.

MT: It's all in what I choose to look at, then.

JC: It goes far, far deeper than the forms around you. What are the gifts of God to us?

MT: God gives us life to be lived, and that's enough for me.

JC: Now that you are feeling better, will you get out the electric heater?

MT: Nah, I'll take a hot shower and be on my way. Thanks, Friend!

124 Let me remember I am one with God.

Like a fish denying the existence of water, I thought to make up a separate self, apart from my very being. How wrong I was, and how utterly impossible the task!

Today, let me forgive my foolishness. It was no sin; merely a detour that led nowhere. Today, let me remember I am one with God.

125 In quiet I receive God's word today.

I got very angry yesterday, JC. I got angry enough to smash something, although I restrained myself. This morning I woke up with a surprising touch of the old anxiety and those worries that sniff around for an excuse to exist. Guess the anger wasn't good for me. I need redirection. I need your hand in mine.
JC: And so it shall pass. My hand never leaves yours.
MT: Thanks. In reading the lesson, I realize I'm angry at God too.
JC: Well, know that if you are angry at a brother, you are angry at God. There is no difference.
MT: I am tired to being a "good girl." I am tired of accommodating, giving up in order to get along.
JC: Love is not about giving up. Love asks nothing and gives all. Love sees that there is nothing to give up.
MT: I needed to hear that. The world of "stuff" became very real to me yesterday.
JC: Know that God loves you. Know that the flowers give of their perfume to you. Know that the grasses bend in the wind to greet you along the path. You are beautiful, a radiant creation of God. Nothing can change that.

126 All that I give is given to myself.

MT: It all comes down to what I want, doesn't it?
JC: Who are you, and what do you want? Most do not answer these two very basic questions in a whole lifetime.
MT: I am the Son of God. I want . . . well, JC, right now I'm stuck in wanting total, radiant health in my body, but I know that's not very spiritually correct.
JC: Nothing wrong in wanting health for your body. The body was made to serve well. The belief in sin and punishment--that sickens the body.
MT: If I want radiant health, the belief in sin and punishment must go, then.
JC: And this freedom you offer others, that it may be your own. You know whom you recently made into a sinner. You know the person you raged against.
MT: I thought my rage was quite justified. Most people would agree with me.
JC: Yet you want out of this collective agreement that makes up sickness and poverty and war and environmental degradation. Don't agree with "most people." You know Truth now. It remains for you to act on it.

127 There is no love but God's.

MT: What about my grandchildren? I must say, if two children were drowning and one of them was mine, this one I would dive in to save first!
JC: Do not search for where you are lacking. Do not make yourself guilty for specialness. All expressions of love are of God. Your family is a laboratory, so to speak, where you learn about love, how to give it, how to receive it. From there it will extend to the whole of Creation.
MT: I get it--that was just my ego stealing the delight I take in my grandkids. But what about this: "Today we practice making free your mind of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes that you think are part of human destiny." How does this relate to this lesson? I don't see the connection.
JC: Love expands, laws contract. Laws are of man, love is of God. Man's laws were made to hide love. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"--the savagery of this law should be obvious. It denies redemption, obscures the Light. It punishes under the pretension of redeeming. It makes more of the behavior it would deter.
MT: So what does love mean? Please remind me.
JC: Beyond the sun and stars, beyond what the senses can feel, the eye can see and the mind imagine, there is love. It fills your body with life, it bathes every cell in its golden radiance. This is God. This you offer to your brother, so that you may receive it for yourself.

128 The world I see holds nothing that I want.

MT: OK, JC, you are on! I've let go of desire, and that's exactly my problem. I remember well, decades ago, my preparations for a week at the beach, for example, and the cruel disappointment when Father found out, at the last moment, that all hotels were full. I now want nothing, not even a tropical beach, so why get up in the morning? Perhaps you need to dictate another book that puts desire back in.
JC: What can I say? Your eyes have not seen the glory of the Father. The early lessons are meant to induce experience, but when you first did them you were not ready. Your fear was too great.
MT: Yes and no. I can go back to events and experiences, some of them overwhelming, but unfortunately very brief. They are not enough to sustain me.
JC: You haven't let go of desire. You now desire profound experience, do you not? You find yourself in limbo, and you want out. That is desire, as much as longing for the ocean in the heat of summer.
MT: Oh. You are right. That is what I want now, so that I shall search for.
JC: If you can give up the self that searches, you will have experience, not tomorrow but right now.

129 Beyond this world there is a world I want.

MT: But really? I still want this one I'm in, sort of.
JC: One thing is important to know: this is not the only world there is. You practice sacred detachment. You raise yourself above the battleground.
MT: So I know there is an option! I have a choice.
JC: Every instant of every hour you are choosing between God's world and the world you made.
MT: I forget . . . I forget, and my world becomes real again. But I'm so grateful, JC--I now have a choice, where I couldn't see one before. How marvelous that we now have a choice. We are no longer tossed about like dead leaves in the stream. You've taught us to swim.

130 It is impossible to see two worlds.

MT: Yes, JC, I understand how this is. The world perception makes up is internally consistent. It can be argued logically and given the appearance of truth and reality. With this course you lead us, step by step, to the basic premise on which this internal consistency rests, and you show us why the basic premise cannot possibly be the truth. The world we think we see then crumbles, and in its place is the experience of God. Our made-up world is like an upended pyramid resting on a single point, the "tiny mad idea" that we can be separate from God. Question this idea, and the rest of our world collapses.

The possibilities are staggering, JC. There goes everything that seemingly held me up and allowed me to function. No wonder I have been so fearful, my mind walking circles around the Great Fire like a coyote slinking in the darkness at the edge of camp.

JC: Let us use a less fearful image. When you leap, you learn that you can fly. Only when you trust enough to leap do you learn to fly.

MT: I'll make it even easier on myself. I will jump from rock to rock across the creek of the ego, God waiting on the far bank. I'm good at that, you know.

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