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321 Father, my freedom is in You alone.

>>I did not understand what made me free. . .
MT: I thought therapy might make me free. I thought self assertion, confrontation, plans for revenge, plans for suicide made me free.
>>. . . what my freedom is . . .
MT: I thought freedom was more. More money, more beauty, more admirers, more goods, more food, more car, more house.
>>. . . and where to find it.
MT: Since I looked for more of the same, more of the same is what I got.
>>I have searched in vain until I heard Your Voice directing me.
MT: Back then, I would have rejected your Voice as pure Pollyanna-talk. I put my faith in cynicism, on tearing down while sanctimoniously claiming to build. Yet I kept looking because deep down a Voice spoke, "Find a better way."
>>Now would I guide myself no more.
MT: I would guide myself no more. Not because "I shouldn't," or because the book says so. I would guide myself no more because I cannot. If I want to transcend the little local self, my mind MUST be guided by something beyond the local self, whatever one may call It. Most call it God.

322 I can give up but what was never real.

MT: Convoluted writing, JC! I guess you say, again, that what is real cannot be given up. Such as the boundless intelligence that drives the universe, the love that unites all living things. The lion shall lie down with the lamb. I used to think, how ridiculous is that? The lion turns vegetarian?
JC: The lion retains its lion-ness, the lamb its lamb-ness. What changes is the meaning you ascribe to death.
MT: More about that?
JC: As you give up your ideas and replace them with Truth, you realize there is no death, only recycling. Thus are you freed from your own dread of annihilation. Death is a concept that did not exist when there was no separate self. The Sonship took a long detour into the world of scarcity and lack. When you bit from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge you unrolled the carpet of time. Your task now is to walk back on that carpet until you are again subsumed into God and the eternal present. Then you become "as Gods." The things of the ego are but detours you take on that carpet.
MT: I get a sense of the transcendent when you talk like that. Something ancient and sacred gets stirred up in me.
JC: Welcome to higher realms of energy. That is where you were meant to abide.
MT: I love you, JC. Thanks for being by my side.
JC: I love you more than you will ever know.

322 (2006) I can give up but what was never real.

MT: I need this lesson today. Just got my hackles up with Jermaine, a woman
who refuses to take back an mp3 player I bought on ebay. JC, it has a short
in the headphone jack. There's no way she wouldn't have known, but she says
it was perfect when it left her house. I know that a loose jack connection comes from
major mishandling, and it's outrageous to try to sell it as being in perfect
working order . . .
JC: You lost your peace of mind.
MT: It's amazing how I can get triggered, just like that. I am open and
vulnerable early in the morning, I guess. Know what I'd like to do? Send an
email back saying f--- you, I'll write a buyer review that will curl your
hair.
JC: What defects of character are you seeing in Jermaine? What do you accuse
her of?
MT: She's cheap. She's craven and miserly. She sells her reputation for a
few bucks. She has no perspective, no grander view. Must be an old witch
pecking at the computer with knobby arthritic fingers. I know people like
that.
JC: Anything else? What kind of person, in your present view, rips people
off in this way?
MT: A grasping, cheap person. Eighty dollars in the pocket, and thinks she's
won. She's probably cackling right now about having unloaded her worthless
mp3 player.
JC: You know where this is all taking you. Denied parts of you walk out
there in Jermaine. What is she mirroring to you?
MT: Would I accuse myself of being cheap? I try not to, but I'm pretty rigid
about it. Craven and miserly? I remember well those sad years when I thought
losing a dollar was like bleeding a pint. Grasping and cheap falls in the
same category. But I do make a point of being honest, JC. I would never
unload a broken piece of equipment on an unsuspecting buyer.
JC: Knowing what you know now, probably not. But you know what it's like to
walk in her shoes, do you not?
MT: I've been there myself.
JC: I believe you are more at peace now. Now let light shine through the picture you made of her, until it covers the whole body and makes it beautiful and good . . . now bring in someone whom you call a friend, someone generous and giving. Let the light cover your friend and Jermaine, both. Now hold hands with her and your friend, and give the light you extended to both of them envelop you also in its boundless energy and love . . .
MT: I entered another state of being altogether. The rage is gone. Thank you, JC.

323  I gladly make the "sacrifice" of fear.
 
MT: Sacrifice? Of fear? What's that all about?
JC: You have worshipped at the altar of fear. Now you can at last sacrifice it, as the ancients did with animals to appease angry gods.
MT: That's a nice image to behold. I corner fear, tie it up, and slaughter it at the altar. Who wouldn't be happy at the prospect?
JC: It is the Great Undoing, where your world is turned right side up again, where the Son of God takes place at last next to the Father. All God asks of you is that you surrender the stones you have carried and jealously guarded as if they were precious gems.

323 (2006) I gladly make the "sacrifice" of fear.

JC: What does this mean, to you, this moment?
MT: It means that I've held on to fear as if it were a gem, when it really is just a lump of coal.
JC: Better still, it's really nothing. It is a fog that dissipates in the rising sun.
MT: I am especially grateful to have given up the fear of God. I grew up fearing God, but the fear turned out to be a manipulation, a man-made means of control.
JC: Fear of God was an attempt to solve a problem that didn't exist in the first place: the problem of your supposedly evil nature that needed controlling.
MT: Oh yes! I knew I wasn't evil. I think I did know that. How could I be exorcised of a devil that didn't exist? How sweet it would have been for my parents, instead, to acknowledge my holiness.
JC: They would have had to acknowledge their own as well. It would mean giving up their worldview, and they weren't ready.
MT: The sacrifice of Abraham's son comes to mind. My Dad was ready to put our heads on the chopping block, if he thought God required it. Talk about living in fear!
JC: It need not be so, dear sister. Wake up from the dream. The soft light of dawn heralds the brilliant sun of a new day.

324  I merely follow, for I would not lead.

The beginner's mind is willing to back off and ask: is there something I need to see here? Is there someone who can guide me? Can I learn from someone else who's been there? Now that I've gathered all the facts, what does God have to say about this endeavor? I'm only learning this late in life, and the ignorance of this principle stymied my life and career. I thought I had to be what I was not, and if I only pretended long enough, people would start to believe in me. Some did, but it was no good, because I didn't believe in me myself! The only way was through--to be willing to follow. To accept ignorance so I could be wise. To accept failure so I could be successful. To accept the darkest corners of my being so the light can, at last, shine through.

325 All things I think I see reflect ideas.

Projection makes perception. What I see with my body's eyes is made up in my mind. I congeal energy into form by the action of my mind, moment by moment, as I go. It follows that if I saw matter as the energy that it is, I could walk through walls. If I didn't congeal others into evil configurations, I could help them change into more desirable ones! I am the ruler of the world I see, but I have misused this God-like power to make up a world that I then berate and condemn--for sins I think I committed. The mind boggles at the thought. What a grand illusion we make up, together, by simple agreement. Enough of that! Today I will see the world I want. Today I will see a world forgiven, a world enveloped in the Light of God.

326 I am forever an Effect of God.

How powerful these simple words. I do not believe anybody in history had put them together before Helen wrote them down, forty years ago. I am forever an effect of God. This is fact, not subject to discussion or argument or questioning. I am part of a huge, incomprehensible, magnificent whole. I am part of God's creation, indivisible--and as the Founding Fathers profoundly said, "with liberty and justice for all." When I accept this fact, I am humbled and at the same time gloriously powerful.

Charles Garfield studied the "team effect"--when humans act together in concert, transcendence happens. He called it Peak Performance. We forget our separate needs, desires and goals. We subsume them into the greater good, and in doing so we venture onto ground never trod before, unleashing unimaginable creativity and power. When we forget the separate self, we are exhilarated. We drink from the cup of joy, we become one with God. To paraphrase Teilhard de Chardin, "for the second time in history, man discovers fire."

326 (2006) I am forever an Effect of God.

MT: These words put things in perspective, JC. I can create as God, but I cannot create God. Back when I was a teenager, I remember the headlines: "God is Dead." But, long live God! Methinks we did not succeed in killing God Is, any more than a wave can ever kill water. There's a hierarchy established here--or reestablished, or re-revealed because it was always there and always will be.
JC: Revelation is happening. Truth dawns in the minds of men.
MT: I so badly want to see things differently. There's a feeling of missing the point, somehow. That I am tiptoeing around the God-fire, afraid to jump in.
JC: Afraid that love will consume you. Which it will--but there never was a You to be consumed. There was only God.
MT: God Is!

327  I need but call and You will answer me.

That's part of being connected with God, isn't it? We are in constant communication, and no prayer or request goes unanswered. I need but call. Perhaps the answer is "no"! Do we know what's best? So many stories from my childhood entailed requests that, when fulfilled by magic, turn out disastrous. The foolish man asks for all the gold in the world, and is crushed under its weight. It's interesting to view this theme in the light of the Course. It points to the ego's intrinsic limitation, although no story ever put it so.

So what do I ask for? The only legitimate request, in this light, is for help in opening up to guidance. The genie is out of the bottle, and I cleverly ask for what's best for me, knowing that I do not perceive my own best interests. Better still, I ask to be shown--what's best for the community of man? What is my role in this cosmic play?

328  I choose second place to gain the first.
 
MT: Pray tell, JC, what new insights can I glean from these words?
JC: That now "second place" is a choice man must make. Having evolved to be "as Gods," now is the time to recognize the awesome order inherent in the Universe.
MT: I can never be God, so I may as well let God do Her job. But to "gain the first"?
JC: By reducing yourself to zero, you become infinity. Shouldn't be too hard to understand.
MT: So this is done in self-interest, really. What a paradox.
JC: Only because language leads to paradox. I am leading you to the world of no language, no form, no rank, where God IS, where nothing else is.
MT: God IS. Thank you.

329 I have already chosen what You will.

God and I, we is!--with apologies for the insult to syntax. God willed that I be, and here I am, in glorious unity with all that is. I represent the Word made substance. My mind is an extension of God's mind. Today I am with God in Paradise.

330  I will not hurt myself again today.

If I try to be God, I hurt myself. If I maintain the belief that I am a sinner, or if I project it onto my brothers and call them sinners, I hurt myself. If, in false pride, I affirm my littleness, I hurt myself. If, like a coward, I deny God "three times before the cock crows," I hurt myself. If I see my body as anything other than a temporary residence of Spirit, I hurt myself. This much said, how do I not hurt myself, JC?
JC: You clean up your mind of everything that you have placed between you and God. You step into nothingness and find everything, with God's arms open to receive you. What you think a solid barrier is only a bank of fog. You do not walk alone. There are countless guides and prophets waiting to greet you in this eternal community, the community of the atoned.

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