August 31st 2014  Lesson 166  

I am entrusted with the gifts of God. 

• Intention:  To remember that God and all His gifts are with me wherever I go.

• Practice: Spend thirty minutes twice today as we awake, and just before going to sleep to lay aside our limited understanding of things and let the sight of Christ come into our awareness.  In addition let us remember the gifts of God every hour of the day; remember that they are ours and ask that we become aware of them.  
   
• Application: -- All things are given us by God, who created us one with Himself.  We are never alone for He along with all His gifts are one with us, and His Will for us is perfect happiness.  What can oppose God's Will and be real?  The world we perceive contradicts God's Will, so it must be a dream and a poor one at that, for it gives us little chance for peace and without peace there can be no happiness.  We have but to remember the truth that God is always with us, that we are not alone, and that He is the only comfort we need.  Let today's thought remind us that of how fortunate we are to have God's gifts to help us face every seeming circumstance, to remember salvation is with us, and to offer these to our brothers. 
    
  God's will does not oppose.  It merely is.  We are not who we pretend to be, and there is One who walks with us who gently answers all our fears with this one merciful reply, "It is not so."  He points to all the gifts we have each time the thought of poverty oppresses us, and speaks of His Companionship when we perceive our self as lonely and afraid.   Let us acknowledge the gifts entrusted to us to give the world, and in the giving realize that we received it also for ourselves.
   
  Be happy today and kind, for this is the gift you give to your brothers.  Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust.  Your sighs will now betray the hopes of those who look to you for their release.  Your tears are theirs.  If you are sick, you but withhold their healing.  What you fear but teaches them their fears are justified.  Your hand becomes the giver of Christ's touch; your change of mind becomes the proof that who accepts God's gifts can never suffer anything.  You are entrusted with the world's release from pain.  Betray it not.  Become the living proof of what Christ's touch can offer everyone.  God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them.  He has shared His joy with you that you may share it with the world.   

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Insights/comments:

• God has given us everything; how can we lack for anything, suffer any loss, harbor any fear or guilt, or be other than completely happy and fulfilled?  Yet this is not our apparent state.  Instead, we see ourselves as alone, in need of protection, sad and fearful.  But the truth is alive within us when we remember God's gifts and feel the touch of Christ's hand on our shoulder reminding us of His presence, or see through His eyes the vision of who we really are.
   
  We are full with God, we lack for nothing and can therefore only give.  This is what it means to be full, like the ever full and unmoved sea that gives its water gladly to the sky; like the Sun that gives gladly of its light; like the love our Father gives gladly to us. Let us likewise give of the light we are to the world.

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I and my Creator are One.  

August 30th 2014  Lesson 165  

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God. 

• Intention:  To remember that God is always with us, we are part of Him and reside always with Him safely in Heaven.

• Practice: Spend thirty minutes twice today as we awake, and just before going to sleep to lay aside our limited understanding of things and let the sight of Christ come into our awareness.  In addition let us remember the Thought of God every hour of the day; remember that it protects us, cares for us, makes soft our resting place and smooth our way, lighting our mind with happiness and love. 
   
• Application: -- Look with the eyes of Christ past the forms and sounds of the world, past time and onto eternity.  Deny not Heaven.  It is yours today, but for the asking.  Ask to receive, and it is given you.  You need not perceive how great the gift of Heaven is, nor how changed you mind will be before it comes to you.  Still, ask with desire, even in your uncertainty for sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow.  When you have received you will be sure you have the treasure you have always sought. 
    
  Having received the gift of Heaven, what would you then exchange for it?  What would induce you not to let it fade away from your ecstatic vision?  For this sight proves that you have exchanged your blindness for the seeing eyes of Christ; your mind has come to lay aside denial, and accept the Thought of God as your inheritance.  Now is all doubting past, the journey's end made certain, and salvation given you.  Now is Christ's power in your mind, to heal as you were healed.  For now you are among the saviors of the world.  Your destiny lies there and nowhere else .
    
  Practice today in hope.  For hope indeed is justified.  Your doubts are meaningless, for God is certain.  We count on God, and not upon ourselves to give us certainty.        

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Insights/comments:

• We are a thought in the mind of God, and thoughts leave not their source.  This is a point we are often called to remember, for it is the basis for understanding who we truly are.  We are forever in God's mind so our safety is guaranteed, we cannot be hurt or injured in any way, and death is as meaningless to us as it is to God.  We are always at home with God, yet we dream the illusion of being bodies living in constant fear in a world that is seemingly full of danger, and the thought of death in one form or another is never far away from us.  We cherish the little tiny treasures we find here and there, and pacify our fears with temporary joys and transient peace.  Yet all the while, we reside in Heaven and in the mind of our Creator.  But for the habit of believing these illusions to be real, we would know that we are already at home with God, that we are perfect, Spirit, and free.  Our goal therefore is simply to replace our denial of the Thought of God with its acceptance, by remembering it often.  Regular repetition of thoughts of denial keep us in misery, but it is also regular repetition of the Thought of God that will free us from our illusions. .
    

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 29th 2014  Lesson 164  

Now are we one with Him Who is our Source. 

• Intention:  To look past every form of death and through Christ's vision see our brothers perfect holiness, our own salvation and the salvation of the world.

• Practice: Spend thirty minutes twice today as we awake, and just before going to sleep to lay aside our limited understanding of things and let the sight of Christ come into our awareness.  In addition let us practice seeing with the eyes of Christ everyone, everything, and every situation we come into contact with today. 
   
• Application: -- The eyes of Christ looks past the forms and sounds of the world, past time and onto eternity.  The world fades before His sight and He hears an ancient call to which He gives an ancient answer.  This is God's call to us to remember Him, and Christ today gives us His sight and hears for us, and answers in our name the call he hears.  This is His gift to us today. 
    
  Open the curtain in your practicing today by merely letting go of all the things you think you want.  Put away your trifling treasures, and leave a clean and open space within your mind where Christ can come, and offer you the treasure of salvation.  He has need of your most holy mind to save the wrold.  Is not this purpose worthy to be yours?  Is not Christ's vision worthy to be sought above the world's unsatisfying goals?
    
  With Christ's vision will we see the perfect innocence of the world.  Brother, this day is sacred to the world.  Christ's vision, given us from far beyond all things within the world, looks back on them in a new light.  And what we see becomes the healing and salvation of the world.  Our practicing today becomes our gift of thankfulness for our release from blindness and from misery.  All that we see will but increase our joy, because its holiness reflects our own.  We stand forgiven in the sight of Christ, with all the world forgiven in our own.  We bless the world, as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us, and offer it the freedom given us though His forgiving vision, not our own.        

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Insights/comments:

• To see with the sight of Christ means to see the eternal beauty that God created.  This vision means that we are one with Him Who is our Source.  This vision grows in us when we remember that we are all one; that we have a common source, and despite the superficial differences in form, we are identical.  God is the essential element in all that is, so how can anything be other that Himself.  God is the gold in all gold ornaments, the common element that makes them all identical beneath their apparent differences. He is the space in which all things exist, the space that surrounds, permeates and supports all that is, and outside of which there is nothing.  This is what Christ's vision sees; it looks past the superficial to the reality of what is real, lasting, true, and beautiful.  Would that we could look upon the world with such a vision, we would see its perfect innocence.
    

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 28th 2014  Lesson 163  

There is no death. Son of God is free. 

• Intention:  To look past every form of death and through Christ's vision see our brothers perfect holiness and our own salvation.

• Practice: God created not death so how could it be real?  In ever form it appears, we will today deny its reality by remembering that we live and move in God alone.
   
• Application: -- Death is a thought that takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshiping of death as savior and as giver of release.  Let us today recognize these forms of death and worship them no more.  How could anything die when God is the source and goal of all that is.  Let us remember this with our prayer today:
    
  Our Father, bless our eyes today.  We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything.  We live and move in You alone.  We are not separate from Your eternal life.  There is no death, for death is not Your Will.  And we abide where You have placed us, in the life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever.  We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is one with Yours eternally.  Amen.
          

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Insights/comments:

• To bodies the concept of death seems quite real, but remember that bodies are also an illusion and one illusion is just as unreal as another.  Just as fish live in the waters of the sea, inseparable from it; just as the birds live in the air, inseparable from it; just so do we live in God, inseparable from Him.  God is eternal, everlasting, unchanging, unending and He created us as Himself.  If death is unreal to Him, it must be unreal to us, appearances to the contrary.
    

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 27th 2014  Lesson 162  

I am as God created me. 

• Intention:  To remember this single sacred thought in our minds as the means for our own salvation.

• Practice:  Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep.  His dreams are happy and his rest secure, his safety certain and his body healed, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always.
   
• Application: -- Today we practice simply.  For the words we use are mighty and they need no thoughts beyond themselves to change the mind of him who uses them.  So wholly is it changed that it is now the treasury in which God places all His gifts and all His Love, to be distributed to all the world, increased in giving; kept complete because its sharing is unlimited.  And thus you learn to think with God. Christ's vision has restored your sight by salvaging your mind.
          

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Insights/comments:

• We are as God created us, perfect, Spirit, free!  This is the truth and nothing but the truth can be true.  We are all perfect Spirit and free, and there is nothing that we need do or can do to change that, for what God has created perfect stays perfect.  This, if we accept and embrace it, is our means to salvation for it frees us from all the guilt we feel about not being "good" enough for God to accept us.  He already accepts us for He knows our perfection remains as He created it.  We however, see only the illusion of our bodies and our limited ego mind and judge ourselves as lacking and unworthy.  But here Christ's vision can save us by reminding us of the truth about who we really are, looking past the illusions of the world to that truth that stays forever true--we are as God created us, perfect, Spirit, free!
    

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 26th 2014  Lesson 161  

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. 

• Intention:  To look past the physical body and through Christ's vision see our brothers perfect holiness and our own salvation.

• Practice:  Since bodies are but symbols for a concrete form of fear, we will practice today with this symbol of our fear.  We are all one, so we will look upon the body of a single brother, symbol of the rest, and ask salvation of him.
   
• Application: -- Select one brother as the subject of your focus.  See him first as clearly as you can, in that same form to which your are accustomed.  See his face, his hands and feet, his clothing.  Watch him smile, and see familiar gestures which he makes so frequently.  Then think of this:  What you are seeing now conceals from you the sight of one who can forgive you all your sins; whose sacred hands can take away the nails which pierce your own, and lift the crown of thorns which you have placed upon your bleeding head.  Ask this of him, that he may set you free:
    
  Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.  I would behold you with the eyes of Christ, and see my perfect sinlessness in you.
     
  And He will answer Whom you called upon. For He will hear the Voice for God in you, and answer in your own.  Behold him now, whom you have seen as merely flesh and bone, and recognize that Christ has come to you.  Today's idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of your fear.  And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to savior; from the devil into Christ.
          

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Insights/comments:

• We are all one in God.  To help us practice seeing with the eyes of Christ, we will focus upon what we see but look past it to what we know to be true, that this physical symbol we see before us is but a poor symbol of the perfect Spirit God created, and it is to that perfect Spirit we speak ask salvation of.
    
• When we put a stick partially into water it appears broken from a certain angle.  The appearance that we see is not the reality for we know the stick is not broken.  Just so, let us not be fooled by the optical illusion that we perceive when we look upon bodies, for their condition is not the true condition of the perfect spirit behind it.  See the body, but remember that it is but a poor symbol of what God created us to be--perfect, Spirit, free!

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 25th 2014  Lesson 160  

I am at home.  Fear is the stranger here. 

• Intention:  To remember that we are where God established us to be forever a part of His mind.  This is our home in God, where fear cannot exist.

• Practice:  Spend thirty minutes twice today as we awake, and just before going to sleep to lay aside all our interfering thoughts as one and listen to God's Voice within us.  In addition, we will listen and hear His Voice assure us quietly and surely that we are not a stranger to our Father, nor is He stranger to us.
   
• Application: -- We practice in silence today, giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible.  We spend this time with God, and He will direct our practicing today, for what we ask for now is what He wills.  Fear is a stranger to the ways of love.  Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself.  God created us as likened onto Himself and God knows not of fear, so it has no reality at all and must be an illusion.  We who fear are lost to our own Self as God created us; we have become a stranger in our own home, exiled from the reality that God created us to be.
    
  Fortunately God established a miracle to save us from our illusions.  Christ's vision in us does not forget who we are; His quiet Voice assures us that we are not the stranger in our home, but fear is.  Only when we look upon all with Christ's vision will we remember our true Self.  Who denies his brother is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come.
       

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Insights/comments:

• To remember who we really are as God created us is to recognize fear for what it really is, merely an illusion.  We are at home in God whether we believe it or not, for that is where God established that we be.  This is not something that is open to opinion or discussion, it is a given.  Fear cannot be where God is, and since we are where God is, and God is everywhere, fear is nothing but an illusion.  To recognize fear as the illusion it is re-establishes our awareness of what already is, that we are at home in God and so have nothing to fear for we are at one with all-that-is.
• Salvation is the correction that simply reminds us of the truth that always is.  We are as God created us:  perfect, Spirit, free!  Let us remember this today and so remember that we are at home, and fear is the stranger here.

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 24th 2014  Lesson 159  

I give the miracles I have received. 

• Intention:  To remember that to give is how to recognize you have received.  It is the proof that what you have is yours.

• Practice:  Spend thirty minutes twice today as we awake, and just before going to sleep to lay aside all our interfering thoughts as one and listen to the God's Voice within us.  In addition, we will give the miracle of Christ's vision, which sees no separation between you and your brother, to everyone we come into contact with today.
   
• Application: -- We practice in silence today, giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible.  We spend this time with God, and He will direct our practicing today, for what we ask for now is what He wills.  Christ's vision is what we received, so give it as proof that you have received it.  You understand that you are healed when you give healing.  You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive.  You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that your are whole.  Their is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you.  
  
• This is the Holy spirit's single gift; the treasure house to which you can appeal with perfect certainty for all the things that can contribute to your happiness.  All are laid here already.  All can be received but for the asking.  Here the door is never locked, and no one is denied his least request or his most urgent need.  There is no sickness not already healed, no lack unsatisfied, no need unmet within this golden treasury of Christ.  Take from His storehouse, that its treasures may increase.
    

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Insights/comments:

• We can give only what we have, and everything has been given us by God.  We have only to give it away to others to truly know that we have it.  Our cup runneth over; we have all that we could ever need or want and so all we can do, in truth, is give.  When we are happy we easily give of our happiness, through gifts, words of encouragement, or even a simple smile.  The giving is the proof that we have happiness.  And when we are sad we also naturally give our sadness to others through attack, sad or angry words, frowns, and our saturnine mood.  The giving of such gifts prove that we have sadness.
  
  Just as easily and effortlessly, we can give of the treasures that God has given us.  Whatever the need may be, it already exists in the golden treasury of Christ.  Let us take from this forever full treasure house and give so that we can know we have it also.  Through Christ's vision we can allow ourselves to see the oneness in all things and thus share the treasures we have by giving them to others, and in so doing realize that we have it for ourselves as well.  

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 23rd 2014  Lesson 158  

Today I learn to give as I receive. 

• Intention:  To remember to see no one as a body; greet everyone as a child of God, acknowledging the he is one with you in holiness. 

• Practice:  Spend thirty minutes twice today as we awake, and just before going to sleep to lay aside all our interfering thoughts as one and listen to the God's Voice within us.  In addition, we will say our prayer for healing hourly, reminding us that we share His holiness and light within us.
   
• Application: -- Today we practice giving as we received.  We received from our Creator that we are one with Him, that we are minds in God's Mind and purely minds (as opposed to bodies,) sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because we were created out of love.  And we have not left our Source, remaining as we were created.  This is the eternal knowledge every child of God received, and only by this knowledge do we live.  It is by this knowledge that the oneness of the Father and the Son will come to every mind in time.  This we cannot give for it has been received already by every mind.  But what we can learn to give is Christ's vision that sees no separation. 
    
  Christ's vision does not look upon a body, and mistake it for a child of God.  It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin.  Christ's vision sees no separation.  It looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events without the slightest fading of the light it sees.  This we can learn to give and it must be given by all who would achieve it. 
    
  See no one as a body.  Greet everyone as the Son of God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.  Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ's vision has the power to overlook them all.  It matters not what form they took, nor how enormous they appeared to be, nor who seemed to be hurt by them.  They are no more.  And all effects they seemed to have are gone with them, undone and never to be done.
   
  Thus do we learn to give as we received.  This lesson is easy if we remember that in our brother we but see ourselves.  If he appears lost in sin, so must you be; if you see light in him, your sins have been forgiven by yourself.  Each brother whom you meet today provides another chance to let Christ's vision shine on you, and offer you the peace of God.  We practice seeing with the eyes of Christ today.  And by the holy gifts we give, Christ's vision looks upon ourselves as well.
    

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Insights/comments:

• Today's lesson is easy for us to apply to those with whom we have an affinity or even to those with whom we are neutral or indifferent, but it will take some focus to apply it with those we perceive as enemies, guilty of some “sin.”  Here then is the challenge, for if we can look at our enemies with Christ's vision, it means that our sins have been forgiven, for what we see in them mirrors the guilt within us; some sin we hide by projecting it onto others.  This is our work, today and for all days to remember that as we condemn another we condemn ourselves and as we bless another we bless ourselves.  Thus do we learn to give as we receive.

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 22nd 2014  Lesson 157  

Into His Presence would I enter now. 

• Intention:  To remember that God's holiness is always with me for He created me as part of Himself, and walks with me wherever I go.

• Practice:  Spend thirty minutes twice today as we awake, and just before going to sleep to lay aside all our interfering thoughts as one and listen to the God's Voice within us.  In addition, we will say our prayer for healing hourly, reminding us that we share His holiness and light within us.
   
• Application: -- We practice in silence today, giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible.  We spend this time with God, and He will direct our practicing today, for what we ask for now is what He wills.  And having joined our will with His this day, what we are asking must be given us.  Nothing is needed but today's idea to light our minds, and let it rest in still anticipation and in quiet joy wherein we quickly leave the world behind.
   
  From this day forth, your ministry takes on a genuine devotion, and a glow that travels from your fingertips to those you touch, and blesses those you look upon.  A vision reaches everyone you meet, and everyone you think of, or who thinks of you.  For your experience today will so transform your mind that it becomes the touchstone for the holy Thoughts of God.  Your body will be sanctified today, its only purpose being now to bring the vision of what you experience this day to light the world.  We cannot give experience like this directly.  Yet it leaves a vision in our eyes which we can offer everyone, that he may come the sooner to the same experience in which the world is quietly forgot, and Heaven is remembered for a while.  
    
  Into Christ's Presence will we enter now, serenely unaware of everything except His shining face and perfect Love.
    

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Insights/comments:

• The Bible verse Philippians 4:7 says:  Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  This peace is what we experience with today's lesson, a peace that leaves us in the awareness of that which is beyond our senses, our thoughts, our intellects.  Words cannot express it but it can be known as we let the light of God shine in us.  This peace reminds us of who we really are and Who is always with us.  We are in this world, but we are of God.  We walk among the objects and experiences of the world, but we are Spirits, of God.  Let us remember today our true nature and not be limited by the things in this illusory world of perceptions. 

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I and my Creator are One. 

August 21th 2014  Lesson 156  

I walk with God in perfect holiness. 

• Intention:  To remember that God's holiness is always with me for He created me as part of Himself, and walks with me wherever I go.

• Practice:  Spend thirty minutes twice today as we awake, and just before going to sleep to lay aside all our interfering thoughts as one and listen to the God's Voice within us.  In addition, we will say our prayer for healing hourly, reminding us that we share His holiness and light within us.
   
• Application: -- We practice in silence today, giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible.  We spend this time with God, remembering that He knows better than us, the way to salvation and freedom, the path away from illusions and onward to peace and happiness.  Let us spend as much time today as we can to step away from the illusions of the world which seem so real, and in silence think of Him, listen to His Voice and let it lead our footsteps to peace and joy.
   
  And we will hourly remember Him Who created us, who know our true worth and our true function, and who has guaranteed our salvation.  We will listen to His Voice and learn what He would have us do the hour that is yet to come; while thanking Him for all the gifts He gave us in the one gone by.  In time, with practice, you will never cease to think of Him, and hear His loving Voice guiding your footsteps into quiet ways, where you will walk in true defenselessness.  For you will know that Heaven goes with you. 
    
  There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you.  All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet.  The sent of flowers is their gift to you.  The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.  You are the hole child of God and all living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you.  Today let doubting cease as you remember with these words Who walks with you:
    
  I walk with God in perfect holiness.  I light the world, I light my mind and all the minds which God created one with me. 

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Insights/comments:

• God is with us always; what have we to fear; what worry or guilt need we have when the Source of all knowledge, wisdom and power goes with us; He is what our life is.  Where He is we are.  There is only one life and that life we share with Him.  Nothing can be apart from Him and live, for He is the life within all that is.  This alone is true and nothing else is true.  Let us remember this always and remember also the oneness it means we share with all our brothers and with all that exists.    

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I and my Creator are One.