MY MIND HOLDS ONLY WHAT I THINK WITH GOD

Lesson 148: Review of lessons 135 and 136

(135) If I defend myself I am attacked. In order for the idea of defense to enter the mind, the idea of attack must first have entered. The idea of attack enters of your own volition. It is immediately followed by the idea of defense. Where one of those two ideas enters, the other is not far behind (actually they are simultaneous). Attack/defense, defense/counterattack. This is one of the “sharp-edged” toys that the Course speaks about.

You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call you to make appropriate defense. Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. What do you defend? The self you made?

There is a better way. You can choose to see every “attack” as a call for love to which the appropriate response is love. You can also merely perceive the body as quite apart from you, and it will become a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over, and you lay it aside and move on. And then, like Jesus, you can say: “It is finished.”

(136) Sickness is a defense against the truth. Sickness is isolation. It is another sharp-edged toy. It is used to separate you from your brothers, making you different and special. Understand, however, that it does the opposite from what was intended at the outset. It may appear to show you there are differences between you and your brother, and may appear to separate you in that sense, yet it also necessitates you being with certain brothers to receive aid for the sickness. Thus you now appear to be dependent upon your brothers (and medicines) for healing, rather than being dependent upon God. So the goal of being apart from your brothers is less realized than if you knew you were healed and did not need their help to heal, but joined with them in light. Sickness is only used by the separated ones and is actually a call for love -- as love knows no sickness.

Lesson 149: Review of lessons 137 and 138

(137) When I am healed, I am not healed alone. Sickness is a dream that the body has the power to attack the universal oneness of God’s Son. Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself as both sickness and healing are dreams. It is just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, so both forgiveness and sin are illusions or dreams. Sickness/healing, sins/forgiveness – none of these are needed in Heaven where only truth abides.

As you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you or who cross your mind, or whom you touch or those who seem to have no contact with you at all, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great is your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions* upon legions will receive the gift that you receive when you are healed. As your mind is healed, you carry healing to the world, banishing sickness from the mind of your brothers as you go. When you choose to be healed, you choose healing for all your brothers. Jesus fed multitudes, and he healed multitudes. As you heal, you will do likewise.

Your function, then, is to let your mind be healed that you may carry healing to the world exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God. You offer the gift for everything!

*legion – 3000 to 6000 foot soldiers in the Roman Calvary, a very large number, many, multitude

(138) Heaven is the decision I must make. In the world you believe that there are alternatives to choose between: sickness or healing, tired or inspired, losing or winning, ego or Holy Spirit, hell or Heaven. Contradiction is the way you make what you perceive and think is real. In the world, the Holy Spirit often teaches you by contrast. Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Yet there is really only one choice to make: Heaven. Once this decision is made, all other decisions are resolved with it, for all other decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. When choosing Heaven you recognize you but make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Hell is now recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.

Lesson 150: Review of lessons 139 and 140

(139) I will accept Atonement for myself. Here is the end of choice. For here you come to a decision to accept yourself as God created you, and all dreams will then vanish, and only the truth of love will remain. Only acceptance can be asked of you, for what you are is certain. It is set forever in the holy Mind of God, and in your own. Atonement teaches and demonstrates the oneness of God’s Son. Today accept the truth about yourself. It is but this that you are asked to do:

“I will accept Atonement for myself,

For I remain as God created me.”

(W-139.11:3,12:4)

(140) Only salvation can be said to cure. “Cure” is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is what will make the body “better.” Is “better” what you are looking for? Or do you prefer to be completely healed and whole for all of eternity, nevermore to fall prey to the idea of sickness, or its aftermath of healing? The world’s forms of healing are merely dreams that substitute illusion for illusion. They do not heal.

The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different form the dreaming of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. Happy dreams lead from sleep to gentle waking, so dreams are gone. Thus they cure for all eternity. Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams.

Lesson 151: All things are echoes of the Voice for God.

No one can judge on partial evidence, and in this world, your “evidence” is incomplete. You do not know the judgment where everyone will be blessed and no one will lose. Yet there is such an answer to every situation. You will not find it by yourself, however, as your senses do exactly that – they SENSE, they do not KNOW. The ego guides your senses carefully to prove how weak you are, how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt. And this, it says, is yourself!

Do not listen to the ego. Falser witness to the truth cannot be found. Let the Voice for God alone be the judge of what is truly you. And let Him be the judge of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. He will select the elements in them which represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but the idle dreams of ego. Let Him reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening that seems to touch on you in any way. And you will see the lesson each situation holds, the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and Heaven’s blessing on the world. Your life is not part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, to the face of Christ in everything. You will hear no sound, then, except the echo of God’s Voice. Give thanks to Him Who restored your sanity to you.

Lesson 152: The power of decision is my own.

You cannot suffer loss or pain, nor can you tire nor grieve nor fear nor appear to be sick or in lack -- but by your own decision. You cannot even die without your own consent. NOTHING OCCURS BUT WHAT REPRESENTS YOUR OWN WISH, AND NOTHING IS OMITTED THAT YOU CHOOSE. And this is your world, complete in all its details. This is the world’s whole reality for you. If you believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true, just remember, truth cannot have exceptions. It is either all true, or it is not at all true. Salvation depends on you understanding this. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. As God created you, you must remain unchangeable; truth does not shift and change. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and in all response. Truth is all-inclusive if it be the truth at all.

Now let us look at the world. To think that God made chaos, contradicts His Will, invents opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life, is false. Humility would see at once these things are not of Him. And can you see what God did not create? What He creates is real, not illusory and contradictory to His Will. Be truly humble and accept what you have made as what it is: illusion.

If you will decide to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, then all you think you made in opposition to the Will of God will disappear. What will arise to your awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. It will take the place of self-deceptions you made to hide the truth. Be humble and accept that which you are. You are mighty, changeless, whole and all-encompassing. You are not a sinner or guilty or afraid or ashamed of what you are. You are immaculate, like to God in power and in love. The power of decision is your own. Decide with Him.

“The power of decision is my own. This day I will accept

Myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be.”

(W-152:11:3,4)

Lesson 153: In my defenselessness my safety lies.

The world gives rise to defensiveness. The world is full of threat. Threat brings anger, and danger makes attack seem reasonable, honestly provoked, and righteous in the name of self-defense. Yet defensiveness is a double threat, as it attests to weakness. If you feel that you must defend yourself, then you must also feel you are vulnerable and subject to being assailed. Attack is folly, a silly game a tired child might play when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he really wants (peace and joy).

Defenselessness is strength and testifies to the recognition of the Christ in you. Defensiveness is weakness and proclaims you have denied the strength of Christ in you and that you fear your Father’s anger. The choice made is between Christ’s strength, and your own weakness seen apart from Him.

Recognize that you need no defense because you are created unassailable, without all thought or wish or dream in which attack has any meaning. You cannot fear, for you have now left all fearful thoughts behind. In defenselessness you stand secure, serenely certain of your safety, sure of salvation; sure you will fulfill your chosen purpose, as your ministry extends its holy blessing through the world. You are untouchable in the light. What defense could possibly be needed by ones who are among the chosen of God, by His election, and by your own!

Lesson 154: I am among the ministers of God.