Lesson 70: My salvation comes from me.

“The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself.” ACIM T-27.VIII.10:1

Lesson 70 reprises what we’ve been told in Chapter 27.  When the tiny, mad idea that we could separate from God was pursued by the Son of God, the memory of God was planted within the Mind.  More accurately, the knowing of God can never be extracted from that which is Undifferentiated Oneness.  It can be imagined that a split occurs, but a split cannot be accomplished in Reality.

A Course in Miracles is a spiritual psychotherapy.  It addresses the mental deception we permit our Self to be drawn into.  Following the temptation to experience godliness outside of Godliness leads to an experience of identity.  There is no identity in God Mind, just Being.  Being is Loving, Luminous, Life. Being is Beautiful, Powerful, Inclusive.  Being is Timeless, Formless, Changeless yet Dynamic, Vital, Alive!

Jesus explains in Lesson 70 that God put salvation where it is truly helpful: in the mind.  The ego teaches us salvation is out in the world, external to us.  That keeps us on a hamster wheel of extremely limited awareness.  Learning that “My salvation comes from me” is the realization that the mental state of guilt, over-responsibility (for something that is imaginary and has not really occurred) and the madness that results can be healed — if we turn inward to the mind for the healing.  This is taking responsibility versus codependently insisting we’re responsible for something that has not happened (we’re out-picturing an inward condition ,i.e., hallucinating).

“Salvation comes from me” is the recognition that we have the power of decision.  We have free will to stop choosing the ego as our teacher.  Towards the end of his life, Ken Wapnick gave a workshop called “Healing: The patient must minister to himself,” described on his website this way:

Healing of others can never occur without the Holy Spirit’s healing extending through us. This 2012 workshop therefore focuses on the necessity of bringing to Him our ego thoughts so that His healing light can dissolve the darkness of our mind’s guilt. As the Psychotherapy pamphlet says: “Only the mind can be sick, only the mind can be healed.”

Moreover, since we are almost totally identified with the mindless body, indirect learning is needed wherein we focus on the worldly experiences of our special relationships as the means of leading us back to the decision-making mind so we can choose again: forgiveness over judgment, healing over sickness.

Physician, healer, therapist, teacher, heal thyself. Many will come to you carrying the gift of healing, if you so elect. The Holy Spirit never refuses an invitation to enter and abide with you.… Whoever He sends you will reach you, holding out his hand to his Friend. Let the Christ in you bid him welcome, for that same Christ is in him as well.… Remember the plan of God for the restoration of joy and peace. And do not forget how very simple are the ways of God:

You were lost in the darkness of the world until you asked for light.
And then God sent His Son to give it to you.

Lesson 69: My grievances hide the light of the world in me.

This is one of my very favorite lessons in A Course in Miracles.  The practice is a profoundly beautiful meditation.

In Lesson 69, Jesus makes this momentous statement, “We are literally attempting to get in touch with the salvation of the world.  We are trying to see past the veil of darkness that keeps it concealed.  We are trying to let the veil be lifted, and to see the tears of God’s Son disappear in the sunlight.”

The light of the world is what we are and where Reality resides.  The tears of God’s Son disappear in Son-Light.

“Salvation is our only need.  There is no other purpose here, and no other function to fill.”   Lesson 43 told us that salvation is the undoing of what never was.  Lesson 46 told us that forgiveness can truly be called salvation because it is the means by which illusions disappear.  Section VII (The Dreamer of the Dream) in Chapter 27 (The Healing of the Dream) speaks about healing our perceptions.

As I said, Lesson 69, provides us with a profoundly beautiful meditation which guides us to move through misty clouds to the brilliant light beyond.  Jesus tells us, “If you are doing the exercises properly, you will begin to feel a sense of being lifted up and carried ahead.  Your little effort and small determination call on the power of the universe to help you, and God Himself will raise you from darkness into light.  You are in accord with His Will.  You cannot fail because your will is His.”

Although in other sections of the Course, Jesus makes it clear that God cannot know we are here because we are dreaming and we are actually with God and have never left God, he uses the language, “God Himself will raise you from darkness into light” because the memory of God is always retained within us.  We call this memory the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is God’s Messenger, the Voice for God, humming the Truth always, and when we tune into that vibration is up to us.

Practicing the meditation in Lesson 69 is one sure way to tune in and Light Up.

Lesson 68: Love holds no grievances.

To be created by Love, like Love, is to hold no grievances.

How can absolute Love, total harmony, undifferentiated Oneness hold grievances?

“To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body.  To hold a grievance is to let the ego rule your mind and to condemn the body to death.” It is enlightening to view holding grievances in this way.

“Would you not be willing to relinquish your grievances if you believed all this were so?” Cherishing grievances turns out to be all-inclusive. It is the only way the ego does include everybody, even ourselves.  There is no one, your self included, that we do not resent, and who does disappoint.

To be free of resentment, anger, jealousy, disappointment, strife, conflict, attack, fear, betrayal … if that appeals to you, your motivation to practice this lesson, and experience its rewards, begins now.

Lesson 67: Love created me like itself.

The Son of God is saved by What We Are.

Love created You like Itself.  Holiness created You holy.  Kindness created You kind.  Helpfulness created You helpful.  Perfection created You perfect.  And each of these attributes are defined as Ideals, not human qualities.

You are part of God’s definition of Itself.  “If Love created You like Itself, this Self must be in You.  And somewhere in your mind it is there for you to find.”

During an interval of no-thought, “the awareness of a blazing light in which you recognize yourself as love created you” is possible to encounter.  Our minds are so preoccupied with false self-images that it is necessary to hear the truth about ourselves as frequently as possible: Love created Us like Itself.

This is the Voice of Truth, replacing everything that the ego tells you about yourself with the simple truth about the Son of God: You.

Lesson 66: My happiness and my function are one.

Form and content.

Function is content.  Happiness is form.  Though happiness can be expressed in many different forms, it arises from the Holy Spirit’s purpose that we awaken from the ego dream by practicing forgiveness.  In that way, function (purpose) equals happiness.  Happiness and function are the same.  “My happiness and function are one, because God has given me both.”

John Paul Caponigro

The ego argues endlessly with this idea.  That is only because ego needs to keep our attention.  Ego diverts us from listening to the Holy Spirit by offering us endless possibilities and varieties of anything and everything.  The Holy Spirit does not fight back nor dispute at all.  It merely sits and waits for us to voluntarily choose again; choose against all this ego drama and chaos and nonsense.  By choosing against ego, we open the door to Holy Spirit.

“The first premise is that God gives you only happiness.”

“The second premise is that God has given you your function.”

Think about this.  “You will listen to madness or hear the truth.”

“Today’s idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different.  On one side stand all illusions.  All truth stands on the other.  Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true.”

Note: Bold mine.

Lesson 65: My only function is the one God gave me.

Jesus is describing our one function is various ways that all boil down to the same thing:

Lesson 65: “My only function is the one God gave me.”  Anything else is ego temptation; ego substitute for Reality; ego imagination.

Jesus reiterates from previous lessons that the full acceptance of salvation as your only function necessarily entails two phases:

• the recognition of salvation as our function, and
• the relinquishment of all the other goals we have invented for ourselves

Reminder: Salvation is the promise, made by God, that we will find our way to Him.

The recognition of salvation as our function is the first step of the forgiveness practice.  The relinquishment of all the other goals we have invented for ourselves is the second step of the forgiveness practice: willingness to see another way; willingness to listen to Jesus and follow his guidance instead of the ego’s guidance.

Lesson 65 “places the key to the door of peace, which you have closed upon yourself, in your own hands.  It gives you the answer to all the searching you have done since time began.”

Count me in!

Lesson 65 has one of my favorite lines from A Course in Miracles:  “On this clean slate let my true function be written for me.”  So poetic and beautiful.  So pure and simple.  Let’s practice.

Lesson 64: Let me not forget my function.

Jesus begins Lesson 64 by explaining “Let me not forget my function” is another way of saying, “Let me not wander into temptation.”

The ego’s purpose for the world is to condemn us to oblivion: not remembering we are an extension of God-Mind.  As long as we are in a state of forgetfulness of being God’s Creation, the ego keeps spinning its pseudo-existence.  The sense of being “me” feels very real, and all appearances attest to its reality, BUT it is not!

“To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins.”  What the ego has convinced us is unforgiveable sin worthy of being permanently condemned to hell is, according to Jesus, merely a mistake.  A mistake easily corrected … IF we desire correction.

So, the world is a backdrop, a theatrical set, that blocks the Reality “behind” it.  Everything we see in the physical world is obscuring, is an obstacle, to Truth.  To impress this point upon us, Jesus reviews the last few lessons:

• our function is to be the light of the world
• this function is given us by God
• only the arrogance of the ego questions the function God gives us
• only fear of the ego induces us to feel unworthy of the task assigned to us by God Himself
• the world’s salvation awaits our forgiveness
• forgiveness allows the Son of God to escape all illusions and all temptation to regard  himself as “other”
• “The Son of God is you” !!!

There is no other way to be happy than to fulfill the function God gives us: to be the Light of the world.

“Complexity of form does not imply complexity of content.”  The ego tries to keep us engaged with complex issues, problems, wonders of the world.  But the ego’s forms always out-picture a mental state of fear.  God-Mind is a simple, absolute state of Love. The choice is ours: default to the ego as our fearful guide and teacher … OR choose the Holy Spirit, God’s Messenger, as our beloved guide and teacher.

Lesson 63: The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness.

I am holy!

I have the power to bring peace to every mind.

“Remember that God’s Son looks to you for his salvation.  And Who but your Self must be His Son?” I am God’s Son and when I accept my role in God’s plan for salvation, I heal myself.  In healing myself, I discover I am the Son of God.

“How blessed are you who can learn to recognize the means for letting this be done through you!”  To serve as God’s conduit is to realize my Self.

“What purpose could you have that would bring you greater happiness?”  Purpose and meaning are not elusive; purpose and meaning are ever-present:

“The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness.  I am the means God has appointed for the salvation of the world.”  How?

Lesson 63:  “The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness.”  Every mind turns out to be One Mind.

Lesson 62: Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.

What is my function?  Forgiveness.

Forgiveness brings the world of darkness to the Light.

“Forgiveness is the demonstration that you are the light of the world.  Through your forgiveness does the truth about yourself return to your memory.”

Forgiveness is unlearning everything that the ego has taught. Forgiving is undoing belief.  Belief is not natural.  Belief is an overlay on Being.  Belief is judgment; it makes decisions.  There are no decisions in Heaven; just expansion, extension, creation.

“Your goal is to find out who you are, having denied your Identity by attacking creation and its Creator.”

“…thoughts of life may replace thoughts of death.”  Every attack calls upon weakness.  All forgiveness calls upon strength.  True strength.

Forgiveness removes “all sense of weakness, strain and fatigue from your mind,” Jesus tells us.

“Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world. I would remember this because I want to be happy.”

“An ‘unwilling will’ does not mean anything, being a contradiction in terms that actually means nothing.  When you think you are unwilling to will with God, you are not thinking.  God’s Will is Thought.  It cannot be contradicted by thought.  God does not contradict Himself, and His Sons, who are like Him, cannot contradict themselves or Him.  Yet their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God’s Son, if they so choose.  This choice does make the Son’s function unknown to him, but never to his Creator.  And because it is not unknown to his Creator, it is forever knowable to Him.  There is no question but one you should ever ask of yourself;–‘Do I want to know my Father’s Will for me?'” T-8.VI.7-8:1

Lesson 61: I am the light of the world.

“I am the light of the world” is a simple statement of truth, not “the epitome of self-glorification”.

The ego mistakes humility for self-debasement.  But true humility “consists of accepting your role in salvation and in taking no other”.  “It is not humility to insist you cannot be the light of the world if that is the function God assigned to you.” !!!

Today’s idea is:

• “a giant stride toward taking your rightful place in salvation”
• “a positive assertion of your right to be saved”
• “an acknowledgment of the power that is given you to save others”
• “it is the perfect answer to all illusions, and therefore to all temptation”
• “it brings all the images you have made about yourself to the truth, and
• helps you depart in peace, unburdened and certain of your purpose”

Think about “I am the light of the world” as often as possible today.

Tell yourself, “I am the light of the world.  That is my only function.  That is why I am here.”

Begin and end the day with this practice, “I am the light of the world.”

You are building a firm foundation as a bringer of salvation.  “God has built His plan for the salvation of the world on you.”