Sean Reagan

It can be but my gratitude I earn.

A Course in Miracles makes an interesting point in this lesson. It notes that we have good intentions, that we are perfectly willing to be kind and generous and merciful, but that our efforts are always conditional upon receiving praise and honor in return.

We’re happy to give, we just want to be sure that we get something in return – we want our ego stroked.

And inevitably – because the outside world is the picture of an inside condition (T-21.in.1:5), and because we conceive of God as external to us – this becomes our model of God: a giver whose gifts always come with strings.

No wonder we are unhappy. No wonder the world is full of suffering. It is very hard to be happy and at peace, when everything we have and everything we give is yoked to conditions with which we may or may not agree and to which we may or may not have given assent.

Ultimately, this reflects the confusion of associating guilt with God, because we do not recognize the power of our thinking. If our giving is conditioned on receiving something of equal or greater value, then we are not actually giving. We are taking. We are not realizing that our actions – which make us and others unhappy – are guided by our thoughts, which are under our control. God has nothing to do with it.

Why do we take? Why do we make giving conditional upon what we can get? The answer is, because we believe in the scarcity principle, which is the hallmark of all bodies. There are limited resources (water, food, shelter, companions, et cetera, we are in competition with one another for those scarce resources, and what I gain you must lose, and vice-versa.

But why do we believe this? Why do we accept such a grim and unhappy picture?

Because we believe we are guilty, and do not merit anything better.

And this is an error.

God blesses every gift you give to Him, and every gift is given Him, because it can be given only to yourself. And what belongs to God must be His own (W-pI.197.5:1-2).

But in order to know this, we have to be kind and generous without any thought of return. We have to decline to attack and instead commit to cooperating with our brothers and sisters. Not upon expectation of some return or some other form of bargaining. Just because we are ready to accept on faith that love – inclusion without exception, giving without condition – reflects what we are in truth. Only then will we remember the “never-ending joy” that is our inheritance as God’s children (W-pI.197.5:3).

No suggestion is made that this is easy; on the contrary, the reason the Course exists and is in our lives is because it is not easy.

So the work is to be grateful and to serve others and, when we notice that we are doing this because we want praise or social status or some other benefit, then we just shrug and say, “there goes ego again.”

It’s not a big deal. In fact, just noticing it as it happens is restorative. Noticing it means noticing its effects, and noticing its effects means noticing we don’t want those effects. It is at that juncture that we take the Thetfordian step – there must be another way.

And, indeed, that way is inevitable.

To everyone who lives will Christ yet come, for everyone must live and move in Him. His Being in His Father is secure, because Their Will is One. Their gratitude to all They have created has no end, for gratitude remains a part of love (W-pI.197.7:3-5).

Do not judge against yourself because ego still has a place in your thoughts, and its effects are still rampant in the world. Rather, be grateful when you can for whatever you can be grateful for – a flower, a friendship, a moment of quiet. When you exclude someone from love, gently remind yourself that this is not how Christ thinks, and then do better, even a little.

As we practice gratefulness, we begin to perceive a new world, one in which we are not pitched against each other in competition, but rather learning together that we are one, and that Love holds everything.

In that world, we begin to sense a new God, and we sense, too, that every act of kindness – however small, however grudgingly we extend it, is given to God Himself and received by God Himself, Who is not separate from us, and the effect is joy. The effect is peace.

We begin to perceive God everything and in all things, even those that challenge and haunt us. Everything becomes an opportunity to bless our own self, and in that blessing, to become yet more grateful.

←Lesson 196
Lesson 198→

I have a function God would have me fill.

We do not appear to live in a world that is governed by the laws of love. There is suffering everywhere. There is war and famine. There is injustice. We may scrape some crumbs of solace and peace here and there, but we are ever under threat, and always our brothers and sisters are understood as enemies or potential allies, but never as wholly innocent.

How in such a world can we complete our function of completing God Himself?

. . . you have a function in the world in its own terms . . . Forgiveness represents your function here (W-pI.192.2:2, 3).

Forgiveness is the means by which we are able to let our illusions go. Creation does not wait for our return in order to be completed – what God created one cannot be divided – but rather our acknowledgment, our recognition that is – and it alone – is real.

Bodies represent limits; the world represent a limit. Creation, which is one and perfect “cannot even be conceived of in this world” (W-pI.192.3:1) because it has no form (W-pI.192.3:4). But forgiveness – which reflects a way of perceiving the world guided by the Holy Spirit – can translate into form that which is entirely formless (W-pI.192.3:5).

This is still an an illusion! It is still a dream but it is a dream “so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain” (W-pI.192.3:6).

By perceiving form as illusory, the specific form disappears, and is replaced by “the Word of God” (W-pI.192.4:1). This is still a symbol, but it is the final symbol, because in it both the fear of death and the attraction of guilt are undone (W-pI.192.4:2). The body thus becomes a teaching aid and the world a classroom, both of which can be “laid by when learning is complete” (W-pI.192.4:3).

Critically, the “laying by” – the letting go – does not affect the learner (W-pI.192.4:3). This reinforces the fundamental Course teachings that there is no world (W-pI.132.6:2) and we are not bodies (W-pI.199.8:7).

Really, what our practice of forgiveness teaches us, is that we are not bodies but rather minds, and absent a body, a mind cannot make mistakes (W-pI.192.5:1). Minds cannot die, and therefore are not subject to the scarcity principle. They cannot be deprived; they have no need of defense, and therefore no need to attack.

When we remember that we are childen of our Father in Heaven, we are not referring to the embodied self, much less a being in the world, but rather to Mind Itself. Forgiveness – because it discerns between what is false and what is true, which is the undoing of all illusions in the body in the world – teaches us that we are Mind.

Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son. Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness (W-pI.192.5:6-7).

This is the end of fear and anger and the beginning of true service, which is always the extension of justice and mercy. It rests on the understanding that nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists. Love holds everything; there is nothing else.

We are one, and therefore give up nothing. But we have indeed been given everything by God (W-pI.192.6:5-6).

It is this forgiveness teaches, because it is the only lesson we would teach the world. To be born again in Christ is simply to be willing to perceive only Christ in all people, places and things.

. . . hold no one prisoner. Release instead of bind, for thus are you made free. The way is simple. Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword over your own head. And it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free (W-pI.192.9:1-5).

The brother or sister who angers you is thus our savior by allowing us to remember that we are doing this to our self (T-27.VIII.10:1), and that we can choose to do something else. We can choose to remember what we are in truth – God’s Creation, perfect, pure and holy beyond the world’s ability to measure or imagine.

And in that memory, we are saved, and all our brothers and sisters saved with us.

Be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. It is he who asks that you accept the way to freedom now (W-pI.192.10:1-3).

We share God’s Love, and we remember we share it as we offer it to one another. It is our practice of forgiveness – which, in this context, means remembering our brother or sister is God’s beloved Child and thus merits only love and respect – that makes it so.

←Lesson 191
Lesson 193→

I am the holy Son of God Himself.

A Course in Miracles is a course designed to teach us what we are in truth. It is the solution to an identity crisis so profound that it has literally distorted the cosmos and made what is capable only of Love into an enemy. We are lonely and scared; we cannot escape either guilt or death.

And we do not see – we do not understand in any way – that we are doing this to ourselves.

You do not see what you have done by giving to the world the role of jailer to the Son of God. What could it be but vicious and afraid, fearful of shadows, punitive and wild, lacking all reason, blind, insane with hate (W-pI.191.1:3-4).

Lesson 191 meets the crisis head-on. It is the answer.

You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everyone set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be a part of everything, the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality (W-pI.191.4:2-6).

Most of us, on reading that, will appreciate it. We will like the way it sounds. And, from time to time, we may even believe it.

But we will not accept as a truth beyond question. We trust gravity more than we trust God. Indeed, we trust our ability to confuse and destroy Creation more than we trust God.

There is another way.

That way begins with allowing our learning process to include the idea that we are the problem – that we are, in essence, our own worst enemy. We are not trying to fix or heal or amend anything but our own thinking. It is very important we not resist this. We are not in this particular classroom because we’re good at remembering our Creator, we’re not here because we need to heal others.

It is not a crime against God or nature to be a slow learner – thank Christ it is not – but we do need to see our resistance clearly.

We are here because lessons like this one confound us. We are here to learn – however slowly, however ineptly – that salvation is a gift we give to our selves and to the world.

We utter a simple prayer today.

I am the holy Son of God Himself. I cannot suffer, cannot be in pain; I cannot suffer loss, nor fail to do all that salvation asks (W-pI.191.7:3-4).

Please see that the lesson invites us to say the prayer; it does not obligate us to believe it. We show up and do the work; we leave the proof – we leave the accomplishment – to a power greater than our own selves.

This is enough, because it humbles us, and in our humility we will go forth willing to at least do no harm. We may not be heralds of Heaven but we can at least be brothers and sisters whose commitment to mercy allows us not to make things worse.

That combination – our willingness to perceive the suffering of the world, to consider our role in its existence, and our commitment to finding a power greater than our own selves to facilitate healing – is literally what makes us Christ.

Jesus speaks in the first person in this lesson.

. . . join with me today. Your glory is the light that saves the world . . . Look about the world, and see the suffering there. Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest (W-pI.191.10:4-5, 7-8).

Say yes today, if not for yourself then for me. Say it for your children, or your neighbor. Say it for whomever – or whatever – your heart opens wide enough to love without question or condition. That person (or dog or horse or poem or place or whatever) does exist in you – you do hold them that way – and in that relationship, in that unconditional extension of Love – you are Christ.

Accept this and, with Jesus and all the saviors of the world beside you, extend it to others as well. When we observe the miracle of blessing extending from our mind to encompass all of life we will remember at last that yes, we are in fact, the Holy Child of God.

←Lesson 190
Lesson 192→

I choose the joy of God instead of pain.

This lesson is an application of the principle that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3). The suggestion is that pain is simply a “wrong perspective,” and therefore that seen rightly, all suffering ends. To believe otherwise is to accept a God Who is essentially cruel and capricious.

And that belief, says the Course, is wholly erroneous.

Therefore, the dynamic we are looking at here is as follows: if God is real, then there is no such thing as pain. But if pain is real then there is no God (W-pI.190.3:3-4). Is this true?

If it is true, then we have effective demonstrated that we are bodies, “corruptible in death” and altogether “mortal” (W-pI.190.3:7). But if it is not, then we have learned something important about what we are in truth – namely, that what is created in Love cannot be other than Love.

It is your thoughts that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way . . . Nothing but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail (W-pI.190.5:1-2, 4-5).

We are apt to resist this. Perhaps we want to argue, my thoughts don’t make cancer or tsunamis. They don’t make school shootings or nuclear bombs. My thoughts today don’t make my parents abusive thirty years ago.

This is a form of level confusion – attributing the potential of one level (the material world – other bodies and objects) to affect another (the psychological, the spiritual) as if it were inevitable.

Dropping a rock on your toe will make your toe hurt, sure, but how you contextualize and respond to that pain is a decision you make based on your understanding of what you are in truth.

. . . it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness (W-pI.190.5:6-8).

This is not about denying the existence of the rock, or the toe, or the effects of the physical acting on the physical! It is important to understand that. The suggestion the Course is making is that those effects – those relationships – can only affect us with our consent.

We think that we are at the mercy of external circumstances, and that our experience is determined by what happens to the body in the world. However, the lesson emphasizes that we have the power to choose our experience of the world, and that we can choose to experience joy instead of pain. This reflects our acceptance of ourselves as God created us.

When we are confronted with pain, we are simply coming face-to-face with our willingness to accept the ego’s argument that we are bodies, and that our very lives – vulnerable, mortal, prone to suffering and deprivation – are evidence that God does not love us.

The solution to that argument – and the hurt it engenders – is simply not to engage with it. We become nonviolent with respect to ego.

Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quite place where Heaven’s peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you (W-pI.190.9:1-3).

We are invited to lay down our willingness to judge others, ourselves, and the world. It is a dubious skill anyway, one that brings at best a temporary happiness at having scavenged some crumbs in conflict with our brothers and sisters. Where anybody loses, even a little – and someone must, if another is to claim victory – then we remain confused, and pain is both the gift we give and the gift we recieve.

When we surrender our “right” to judge, and instead come empty-handed unto God, then all things are naturally translated into either love or a cry for love, and there is but one response to both: love. We learn again that “pain is deception” and “joy alone is truth” (W-pI.190.10:6).

←Lesson 189
Lesson 191→

The peace of God is shining in me now.

A core premise of A Course in Miracles is that we are healed now. Salvation is already accomplished. It only seems to take time to learn what we are in truth, and accept what we are in truth. As this lesson pointedly asks – why wait for Heaven?

Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all (W-pI.188.1:2-4).

These are such comforting words! When we simply rest and give attention to what is – rather than what might be, or should be, or could be – when we stop insisting on time at all – then we remember what we are in truth.

And that memory is all the healing we need – indeed, it is all the healing the world needs.

The peace of God is shining in you now, and from your heart extends around the world . . . it brings renewal to all tired hearts, and lights all visions as it passes by (W-pI.188.3:1, 5).

Critically, this light is of God – of Love – and therefore is not personal. It is given to all beings, and received by all beings. The “you” to whom the lesson refers (e.g., W-pI.188.4:3), is the unified Child of God, the sole extension of Creation. It is not an isolated individual, set apart from the world by the limitations of the body.

This can be confusing in the context of separation, when “you” is still experienced as separate. Of course the lesson is refering to me personally! However, the suggestion is – and has been over the past sequence of lessons – that even if it seems that way, it is not actually that way.

We are simply invited to remember that the peace of God – in order to actually be the peace of God – must be universal. Nothing can be excluded from it, and it cannot be contingent. Love holds everything.

These thoughts you think with Him. They recognize their home. And the point surely to their Source, Where God the Father and the Son are one (W-pI.188.7:1-2).

The shift here is important! We are moving from the body to the mind, where the thoughts of God are held, and are both given and received, such that all minds which believe they are separate are made one.

Therefore, when we contemplate the lesson for the day, our focus is not on claiming a special experience, but rather on recognizing what is true of all life, of all Creation. What is the light that cannot be contained? That cannot be limited in any way?

The peace of God is not a goal for which we must strive. It is not something we earn through merit or effort. It is our natural state of being. The only thing that keeps us from experiencing this inner peace are ego-based thoughts and beliefs. When we let these go, and simply rest in the present moment, then we experience the peace of God.

The lesson invites us to bring order to our mind by allowing it to remember its Creator and Source, and to rest there. In this way, we accept our true nature as co-creators of all things that live (W-pI.188.8:3).

. . . it is we who make the world as we would have it. Now we choose that it be innocent, devoid of sin and open to salvation (W-pI.188.10:3-4).

Our prayer today is to remember our Creator, Who is the light of understanding, and the Love we cannot help but share.

←Lesson 187
Lesson 189→