351-360

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351 My sinless brother is my guide to peace. My sinful brother is my guide to pain. And which I choose to see I will behold.

MT: Where do I need to apply this idea, in my life, today?
JC: To yourself, of course.
MT: Why of course?
JC: Dear sister, you are punishing yourself with a cough and red eyes and a cold.
MT: Nothing like a bad cold to remind me of The Body. I haven't transcended a thing yet.
JC: There is nothing to transcend. There is nothing to seek. Behold aliveness in, around, everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Aliveness shimmers and dances.
MT: To a dancing God, someone entitled his book. The idea was startling, yet I also thought, I've been waiting for it all my life. Waiting for a dancing God.
JC: Come dance with me, with God, with your brother today.

352 Judgment and love are opposites. From one comes all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself.

MT: You really play the opposites, don't you? This is as black-and-white as it gets.
JC: What about you, now? Are you in judgment, or in love?
MT: That was judgment. I wanted to show you how clever I am.
JC: And if I admired your cleverness, what would that get you?
MT: Guess I'd have to keep proving it with more cleverness.
JC: And thus you push God away. Clever/stupid is a misuse of the mind. It does not exist in the Kingdom.
MT: Show me the Kingdom!
JC: Open your heart, to yourself, to others. Come whoilly empty-handed unto your God.
MT: God knows the way to me . . . thank you, bro.

352 Judgment and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself.

JC: Are you in love right now, or in judgment?
MT: Well, I've got to live in this world, and that seems to require judgment.
JC: It does not. You could be completely without judgment, this very instant.
MT: Oh, JC, I feel removed from love right now. My mind is going full speed with Things to Do. Most have to do with Christmas, ironically the season of love. We turn everything around, don't we.
JC: A reminder: love your brother as yourself, love your God as He loves you.
MT: These things with which we cheapen, pollute and adulterate Christmas, they are worth the tinsel they are made of.
JC: Even less, when you use the season to create obligation and sacrifice, to maintain a false image of yourself.
MT: Today I relinquish the idols of Christmas. Today I open myself to the peace of God.

352 Judgment and love are opposites. From one
Come all the sorrows of the world. But from
The other comes the peace of God Himself.

JC: To know and to do are poles apart, are they not?
MT: I judge all over the place, I know. And I have asked to be released.
JC: It will take total willingness. Your willingness is only partial, intermittent and inconsistent at this point.
MT: So what does it take?
JC: How would I look on you? Look on yourself with kind, gentle, playful eyes. Therein lies the peace of God.

353 My eyes, my tongue, my hands, my feet today have but one purpose; to be given Christ to use to bless the world with miracles.

MT: I don't feel very miracle-y today, JC. Tried to get into gratitude--I'm alive, after all--but gratitude seems far, far away.
JC: You push it away any chance you get.
MT: Sheesh, you sound angry just like me.
JC: So you want a different JC, do you not?
MT: That would help. I don't need help to be separated, I do that quite well myself, thank you.
JC: So how are you now?
MT: The problem shifted. I don't feel so alone.
JC: You are never alone, but you can dream it. Dreaming is free, if not wholly without consequences.
MT: The consequences are in the dream too, aren't they?
JC: Yes. The world and its woes disappear when you realize there's nobody here to suffer.
MT: I rebel against this lesson, JC. I don't want to save the world, I just want to be happy. I just want to be left alone. For what purpose, I don't know.
JC: You want to be left alone . . . but you are alone, not as God goes, but as the world goes. You are free to do anything at all. Even to make friends.
MT: There's the Censor in my head, constantly judging my tiniest action, telling me I should be doing something else. This lesson feels like another edition of the Censor.
JC: So for company you choose the Censor.
MT: How about that! I do! It's the point you made in Chapter 31, Rules for Decision.
JC: Who walks with you today? Is it the Censor, or is it God?

353 My eyes, my tongue, my hands, my feet today have but one purpose; to be given Christ to use to bless the world with miracles.

MT: Y'know what this brings up for me, first of all? Being a peon in the Baptist church, obliged to go out and save the sinners. I know that's not what you mean, but . . .
JC: You could make it your mission to tell the world there is no sin. How would that be?
MT: A lot better! But if I don't raise my objections they fester, so I have to do it.
JC: I never said to repress the ego. But you must know it is not real and has no effects.
MT: OK. So today my purpose is, as always, to reawaken the memory of God in myself and those I meet. But let me remember the feeling state these lessons invoke:

"Father, I give all that is mine today to Love, to use in any way that best will serve the purpose that I share with It. Nothing is mine alone, for Love and I have joined in purpose. Thus has learning come almost to its appointed end. A while I work with Love to serve Its purpose. Then I lose myself in my Identity, and recognize that Love is but my Self."

353 My eyes, my tongue, my hands, my feet today
Have but one purpose; to be given Christ
To use to bless the world with miracles.

MT: Don't know what to say, JC.
JC: Stay with the not knowing.
MT: You want me to perform miracles.
JC: I suggest that you offer love, as love has been given you. I suggest that you make that your function, for only that will give you peace.
MT: My purpose: to be an instrument of God's peace. I guess I can run with that!

354 We stand together, Christ and I, in peace and certainty of purpose. And in Him is His Creator, as He is in me.

"My oneness with the Christ establishes me as Your Son, beyond the reach of time, and wholly free of every law but Yours."
<I> am the Christ. This is the Second Coming, the moment that I give up my search for the Savior and instead accept that I am It. A game of tag with one player!
"I have no self except the Christ in me."
There is nothing to defend. No one can hurt me.
"I have no purpose but His Own."
I can let go of all striving, of stabbing at windmills, of pathetic attempts to control the sun, the wind and the waves.
"And He is like His Father."
How could the Christ not be like the Father?
"Thus must I be one with You as well as Him."
I am one with the Christ, therefore one with the Father.
"For who is Christ except Your Son as You created Him?"
God did not create a non-Christ. What a cosmic joke that would be!
"And what am I except the Christ in me?"
My every attempt to fight the Christ in me is an attempt to fight God. Enough of that!

354 We stand together, Christ and I, in peace
And certainty of purpose. And in Him
Is His Creator, as He is in me.

>We stand together, Christ and I

I do not walk alone. Who walks with me?

>in peace/And certainty of purpose

If I find myself troubled, divided in purpose, anguished over past or future, one thing is certain: I must have turned away from my Friend.

>And in Him /Is His Creator

How could it not be so, when God is the Giver of life?

>as He is in me.

This I share with JC: the God within. This we all share, saint and sinner: the God within.

355 There is no end to all the peace and joy, and all the miracles that I will give, when I accept God’s Word. Why not today?

MT: Friend, I have a hard time with these words. They take me back to Baptist days and appeals to accept you as my savior. I did, for a while. I was baptized, at age 14 a sheep of the Baptist flock. But the utter impossibility--for me--of doing all that the decision implied, preaching in the street corner, saving all the other sinners--quickly pulled me away from faith. I think you can understand.
JC: There was no one there to be saved. Salvation implied sin. You knew there was a fallacy somewhere.
MT: I was a child, you see. It was time to find my place in the culture, to find a mate, eventually to leave my parents' home. Happy times were shadowed by the mental bottleneck of trying to do the impossible--to be saved by good deeds. The push was constant--gotta do better, do more, not good enough, keep trying. And in the end you get crucified! What a !#&%! way to live!
JC: Having visited that ancient mental configuration, are you willing to let it go now? Hear God's Word: let it go. It was a bad dream. The world is waking up to a new dawn: the end of suffering.
MT: There is no need to preach to anyone! I can let that go. I can even buy a cabin in the woods and be a hermit!

355 There is no end to all the peace and joy, and all the miracles that I will give, when I accept God’s Word. Why not today?

MT: I think I have, doggone it! Stop bugging me!
JC: But here you are, doing the Lessons once more. What does that mean for you?
MT: Guess you're saying that I haven't accepted God's word, if I'm still struggling with the Lessons.
JC: There is a step you haven't taken.
MT: Complete surrender. I know. I still try to run things.
JC: And you do it with the severely limited resources of the ego.
MT: Today, let me be happy and content with the world I made.
JC: Look upon the world you made with the eyes of Christ, and it will disappear. In its place will be the peace of God Himself.

355 There is no end to all the peace and joy,
And all the miracles that I will give,
When I accept God's Word. Why not today?

Y'know, JC, these words bring back an ancient memory: I am just a child, the place is the tiny stucco Baptist temple in Brazil, my father who's the minister makes repeated, earnest, almost desperate appeals for us to accept Jesus as our savior. Make today the day! Join the throngs of the faithful! Come to your Redeemer! Be saved today and avoid hell! And I did raise my hand, not really knowing what I was signing up for, but it turned out I would be baptized the following Sunday.

I was a pretty serious kid, and I committed myself to the path. But . . . what was the path? Was I supposed to convert my schoolmates? Turn my English class assignment into an appeal for Jesus? Preach on the street corner and risk a salvo of rotten tomatoes? The scale seemingly tipped over heavily on the side of sacrifice. My father had published a history of religious persecutions in Brazil, complete with gory descriptions footnoted in Latin, that's what religion meant to him. But I was shy and, above all, yearned to belong. I wanted to be pretty, I wanted to be desired by men. I definitely didn't want to be crucified, even though that would represent the ultimate proof of my faith. So how to reconcile these two powerful opposing forces?

After a great deal of self-inflicted torment, I decided against God. I couldn't exist with an angry deity who demanded more of me than I could give, who probably didn't exist anyway. I was a 19-year-old by then, and I had a life to live. I would be a vociferous atheist for two decades, until the day that a new vision of God came into my life, the bedraggled bird of Spirit alighting in my outstretched hands.

So that's where I am at--ancient memories of a past long gone. Thanks for listening.

356 Sickness is but another name for sin. Healing is but another name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him.

MT: OK, I get it. You're talking to me, aren't you? The miracle is a call to God. It's the moment when I change my mind about who I am and can say, "I have no use for this sickness. The being of light that I am cannot be sick, cannot die." One does not see these things for a long, long time, but suddenly they become clear, and then it's as if they were right in front of one's nose all along. I noticed a tendency in me, and I believe it is in others too--the tendency to look at sickness, to examine the defect: "the spots before my eyes, are they there still? Are they bigger today?" "How is my cough this morning?" "Did I gain weight last week?" I call it vigilance, but it too is making the error real. I think it's really subtle, JC, it's a clever trap.
JC: Sooner or later, your sight must go forth to look upon Christ's face.
MT: That was an old lesson. I know about sight going beyond form.
JC: So you are ready to get it at a deeper level. Where is attention paid? Attention can be paid to sickness, or it can be paid to the Light beyond. Where attention is, that you make real.
MT: So if I focus on the sickness and then repeat 1,000 affirmations that it's not there . . .
JC: You are then working through layers of your own making. I am offering you a cosmic shortcut.
MT: Oh, I like that! A cosmic shortcut!

356 Sickness is but another name for sin.
Healing is but another name for God.
The miracle is thus a call to Him.

If I believe I am sick, I believe I am a sinner.
Healing is the Great Undoing of the world I made.
A miracle transcends time and space and allows God in.

Tonight, JC, help me see the truth in this.

357 Truth answers every call we make to God, responding first with miracles, and then returning unto us to be itself.

JC: How does this apply to your life, today, now?
MT: I've called to God and been answered with Truth, over and over. The miracle of the reversal keeps happening--my problems are not what they seem. They are not even chances for learning, they happen in a different sphere. There's no one here to have a problem! There's only Mind playing with Energy, making up what it calls a Problem but might as well call Blue or Haricot or Petunia. But what do you mean, Truth returns unto us to be itself? It goes around in circles?
JC: Truth will wash over you in ecstatic experience. It has done so before and will do so again.
MT: I fought Truth with all my being. What's that all about?
JC: It is what I call ego. You fight the moment of recognition. You delay, you deny, you avoid the instant when you must say: this is true, and nothing else is true. That is God.

357 Truth answers every call we make to God, responding first with miracles, and then returning unto us to be itself.

>Forgiveness, truth's reflection, tells me how to offer miracles, and thus escape the prison house in which I think I live.

And what miracles do I offer? I offer the miracle of forgiveness.

>Your holy Son is pointed out to me, first in my brother; then in me.

I see the Christ in those I thought were the Other, and I see they are the "I" who walks the world.

>Your Voice instructs me patiently to hear Your Word, and give as I receive.

The Voice for God reminds me of the power of sharing.

>And as I look upon Your Son today, I hear Your Voice instructing me to find the way to You, as You appointed that the way shall be: "Behold his sinlessness, and be you healed."

My sinless brother is the guide to peace. This is the way, provided by God Himself.

357 Truth answers every call we make to God,
Responding first with miracles, and then
Returning unto us to be itself.

MT: Just what do you mean, JC? You speak in charades.
JC: Truth is true, and nothing else is true. This is an experience, not a thought.
MT: So?! I make a call to God: Help me out here, I need truth.
JC: And the response is . . .
MT: Some form of clarity. Something I had forgotten when I got busy defending my ego.
JC: So that's the miracle, your first response.
MT: And "returning unto us to be itself"?
JC: Truth has never left you. You only saw it as something else. A beautiful sentiment, perhaps.
MT: Sounds like truth is the first glimpse of Reality.
JC: It is the Real World showing up for you.

358 No call to God can be unheard nor left unanswered. And of this I can be sure: His answer is the one I really want.

MT: In the call there is the answer already, I guess. They are one and the same.
JC: The call ends the separation in the holy instant. Whatever form the call takes--sickness, apparent loss, despair--God's answer is the same: come back to Me.
MT: And so ends the search, back at the starting point. Nothing here ever existed, because the impossible never happened. We cannot be separate from God, any more than a tree can exist apart from soil, sun, or rain. I feel blessed today, JC. Thank you for this day. Thank you for the sunrise and the tides, the dolphins that ride the waves and the cougar that stalks in the night. All God's creatures, and I one with them.

358 No call to God can be unheard nor left
Unanswered. And of this I can be sure;
His answer is the one I really want.

MT: Where does this certainty come from?
JC: It comes from a simple fact: in the calling is the answer already contained. The call to God extends the limited self into the transcendent realm of the Self, one with God.
MT: Well, I guess then the answer would be the only one I could possibly want!

359 God's answer is some form of peace. All pain is healed; all misery replaced with joy. All prison doors are opened. And all sin is understood as merely a mistake.

>God's answer is some form of peace.
When I am not at peace, I am with the ego. I make the error real. I misuse the Mind of God.

>All pain is healed; all misery replaced with joy.
Because pain and misery are equally forms of separation from God. With God, joy is the only possible state.

>All prison doors are opened.
The musty, dark spaces of the mind are opened to the Great Rays. Let life enter the abode of death.

>And all sin is understood as merely a mistake.
The Son of God gropes in the darkness in dusty clothes, with bleeding feet, but this need not be! We can choose to return to the lush gardens of our Father's House.

359 God's answer is some form of peace. All pain is healed; all misery replaced with joy. All prison doors are opened. And all sin is understood as merely a mistake.

>God's answer is some form of peace.
When I am not at peace, I am with the ego. I make the error real. I misuse the Mind of God.

>All pain is healed; all misery replaced with joy.
Because pain and misery are equally forms of separation from God. With God, joy is the only possible state.

>All prison doors are opened.
The musty, dark spaces of the mind are opened to the Great Rays. Let life enter the abode of death.

>And all sin is understood as merely a mistake.
The Son of God gropes in the darkness in dusty clothes, with bleeding feet, but this need not be! We can choose to return to the lush gardens of our Father's House.

359 God's answer is some form of peace.
All pain is healed; all misery replaced with joy.
All prison doors are opened.
And all sin Is understood as merely a mistake.

So this is the new alchemy! All ills that befall humanity have one answer, and that is to reach for God. Not in supplication, or begging forgiveness, or requesting special favors, but to reach for God as the Source of all light and strength. To reach for God as our equal. I know this last statement will raise eyebrows--after all, we are "forever an Effect of God." But I stand by what I said. God is my tennis partner, and I hope to always remember when to say: "Ball's in Your court! I've done my best, now it's Your turn!"

360 Peace be to me, the holy Son of God. Peace to my brother, who is one with me. Let all the world be blessed with peace through us.

MT: As the year ends, we are called to extend peace. This is not a book about religion or doctrine. It is a book about peace.
JC: Make no mistake. Without peace, you have nothing.
MT: We can march for peace, fast for peace, demonstrate for peace, but what is needed is a change of mind.
JC: Today, here, now--who needs to be forgiven, and for what?
MT: Well, I still have a cough, so perhaps I'm attacking my body! And I can't stop watching for deteriorating vision in my "bad" eye, even as I know that the watching makes more of the problem I seek to solve.
JC: Do you believe you deserve to be well?
MT: Guess not, not yet. Somewhere in the cavernous depths of my mind echoes a gloomy message: "better get holy fast! Time is running out!"
JC: Can you laugh at the idea of getting holy fast?
MT: To cram holiness for tomorrow's exam--yes, I can laugh at the very idea.
JC: Peace is simple. It waits for welcome. Peace to you who are one with me.

360 Peace be to me, the holy Son of God.
Peace to my brother, who is one with me.
Let all the world be blessed with peace through us.

I am one with my brothers, one with the world, one with God. Never need we wage war again.

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