A Course in Miracles Lesson 149

My mind holds only what I think with God.

When I am healed, I am not healed alone (Lesson 137).
Heaven is the decision I must make (Lesson 138).

Because we are not separate, when we heal, our healing touches all of life. In a sense, to heal is to join with our brothers and sisters, and to remember our shared guiltlessness together with them.

. . . see the Love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it is everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him with them. They are part of you, as you are part of God (T-7.VII.10:4-6).

To remember our innocence in Creation, and our shared unity as extension of Love, is what it means to be healed, because the memory of innocence dissolves the separation and all its apparent effects. In a sense, healing is a form of responsibility unto our brothers and sisters (broadly defined to include skunks, birch trees and asteroids).

In other words, this remembrance is active; it is a way of being in the world. It is a way of meeting one another and relating to one another that places the other’s well-being above our own, because we know that anything we give to the other, we give to ourselves. It’s not a painful giving, but a joyous one, a liberating one.

The gifts you offer to the ego are always experienced as sacrifices, but the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to you. They will always be treasured by God because they belong to His beloved Sons, who belong to Him (T-7.VII.11:4-5).

This is why we say that Heaven – a state of happiness because it is a state of remembered oneness, in which differences and valuation are entirely undone – is a decision that we must make. Really, we are saying that we have to want happiness more than we want to suffer. So we are looking at the ego’s thought system and seeing that it does not offer us peace and joy. In fact, it can’t. Understanding this is essential to awakening.

Perceive any part of the ego’s thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional and wholly undesirable and you have correctly evaluated all of it. This correction enables you to perceive any part of creation as wholly real, wholly perfect and wholly desirable (T-7.VII.11:1-2).

To see through ego is to see clearly, as through a lens of forgiveness, the real world where there is no loss and everything shines forever (T-13.VII.1:6-7). Wanting only this, we have only this, and having only this, we can offer only this. Offering it to our brothers and sisters is how we learn that we have it.

In this way, those who share this life with us – at the kitchen table, in the grocery store, on the highway in passing – confirm our holiness as we confirm theirs. It is a lovely, life-giving cycle of affirmation, in which together we remind ourselves that nothing happened and we remain as God created us.

Each lesson of A Course in Miracles is an opportunity to be healed of guilt, and of the fear, anger and hatred that are its bitter fruits. We do this by remembering that we go together, not alone, on this healing journey, and that the only decision we need to make is the decision to follow the Holy Spirit, who is the Voice for God.

Let us make it for one another today, and thus empower each other to offer the gift to everyone we meet today, friend and stranger alike. Our gentle recognition of each other as saviors is what save us. Let us assume no other burden but this one today, and thus learn it is not a burden at all but a joy.

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