July 8th 2014 Review III 

Lesson 112 

• Intention:  To review two thoughts each the day

• Practice:  Devote the first and the last Five-minutes of the waking day reviewing the ideas for the day.  In addition repeat one thought on the hour and the other on the half-hour during the day.
    
  
• Application: -- For the two five-minute sessions, read over the ideas and comments given for each day's exercises.  Think about them while letting your mind relate them to your needs, your seeming problems and all your concerns.  Give the ideas to your mind and let it use them as it chooses.  Have faith that your mind will use them wisely, being helped by the One Who gave the thoughts to you.  Give direction at the onset; then lean back in quiet faith, and let the mind employ the thoughts you gave as they were given.
     
• Application: -- For the hourly and half-hourly exercises, Repeat one thought on the hour and the other one half an hour later and allow your mind to rest for a minute or two in silence and in peace.  Then return to your day but try to keep the thought with you, and let it serve to hep you keep your peace throughout the day as well.  These practice periods are planned to help you form the habit of applying what you learn each day to everything you do, so use the thoughts and they will serve you in all ways, times, places, and situations.  Take them with you in the business of the day and make them holy.
   
  For morning and evening five-minute reviews
  
  (93) Light and joy and peace abide in me.
  

  I am the home of light and joy and peace.  I welcome them into the home I share with God, because I am a part of Him.
   

  (94) I am as God created me.
  

  I will remain forever as I was, created by the Changeless like Himself.  And I am one with Him, and He with me.

  One-minute practice:  
  On the hour:
  Light and joy and peace abide in me.
  
  On the half hour:
  I am as God created me.
   

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Insights/comments:

• God created us as the light of the world; this is what we are; this is our function.  We can deny it, but we cannot change it in any way, and it is in accepting it that we experience the peace and joy of God.  All things are peaceful and happy when performing their function:  fish are happy when they can swim; birds are happy when they fly; the children of God are happy when we share our light with the world. 
  
  We could, with a little stretch, say the same for objects.  A light bulb, for instance, is made to give light, if it denies its function, it remains in darkness, but it is still a light blub, and when it accepts its function of giving light, we can "say" it is experiencing peace and joy.  I know this is a personification, but the deeper truth is that everything is a part of God, and therefore one with Him. 
   
• Practice, practice, practice!  It is in the practicing that the we remember our perfection.
   

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I and my Creator are One. 

July 7th 2014 Review III 

Lesson 111 

• Intention:  To review two thoughts each the day

• Practice:  Devote the first and the last Five-minutes of the waking day reviewing the ideas for the day.  In addition repeat one thought on the hour and the other on the half-hour during the day.
    
  
• Application: -- For the two five-minute sessions, read over the ideas and comments given for each day's exercises.  Think about them while letting your mind relate them to your needs, your seeming problems and all your concerns.  Give the ideas to your mind and let it use them as it chooses.  Have faith that your mind will use them wisely, being helped by the One Who gave the thoughts to you.  Give direction at the onset; then lean back in quiet faith, and let the mind employ the thoughts you gave as they were given.
     
• Application: -- For the hourly and half-hourly exercises, Repeat one thought on the hour and the other one half an hour later and allow your mind to rest for a minute or two in silence and in peace.  Then return to your day but try to keep the thought with you, and let it serve to hep you keep your peace throughout the day as well.  These practice periods are planned to help you form the habit of applying what you learn each day to everything you do, so use the thoughts and they will serve you in all ways, times, places, and situations.  Take them with you in the business of the day and make them holy.
   
  For morning and evening five-minute reviews
  
  Miracles are seen in light.
  

  I cannot see in darkness.  Let the light of holiness and truth light up my mind, and let me see the innocence within.

  Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.
  

  I see through strength, the gift of God to me.  My weakness is the dark His gift dispels, by giving me His strength to take its place.
   

  On the hour one-minute:
  Miracles are seen in light.
  On the half hour one-minute:
  Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.
   

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Insights/comments:

• Practice, practice, practice!  It is in the practicing that the perfection lies.
   

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I and my Creator are One. 

July 6th 2014  Lesson 110

I am as God created me.

• Intention:  To remember who we really are--the holy Son of God Himself.

• Practice:  The first Five-minutes of every waking hour as best you can, and remember to repeat today's thought between each practice session.


• Application: -- Begin with the following quote form the text:
   
  I am as God created me.  His Son can suffer nothing.  And I am His Son.
    
  Then thinking of this statement, try to discover in your mind the Self Who is the holy Son of God, the Christ in you, the Savior Who has the power to save whoever touches Him.  You are as God created you.  Today honor your Self.  Deep in your mind the holy Christ in you is waiting your acknowledgment as you, and while He remains unacknowledged and unknown to you, you remain lost and do not know yourself. 
   
  Seek Him today, and find Him. He will be your Savior from all idols you have made, for when you find Him, you will understand how worthless are your idols, and how false the images which you believed were you.  Today we make a great advance to truth by letting idols go, and opening our hands and hearts and minds to God.
     
  We will remember Him throughout the day with thankful hearts and loving thoughts, for all who meet with us today will serve to remind us of Him, the Christ in each of us, as we say:
  
  

  I am as God created me.
     

  Let us declare this truth as often as we can.  This is the Word of God that sets you free.  This is the key that opens up the gate of Heaven, and that lets you enter in the peace of God and His eternity.
   

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Insights/comments:

• God cannot change, for that implies there is something that God currently is not, and that by some process of change He can, perhaps, become that thing.  If there is something that God is not, it means that God is not perfect, not all-might, all-knowing, or all-present, i.e., incomplete and therefore limited.  The supposition means that God is not God, for by definition God is all encompassing.
   
• One may argue that if God is all encompassing then sin and all that we consider to be "bad" or negative is also a part of God.  This is an important query, for it raises the question of which is true and which false:  God's knowledge or our perception of things.   If one is true the other must be false.  First, we know empirically that 'one person's meat is another person's poison' so there is no absolute criteria for what we consider to be "bad".  Second, and more importantly, we recognize the limits of our perception and the fact that we do not discern the complete workings of the universe and cannot, from our limited perspective, experience, and skill, rightly judge the "goodness" or "badness" of anything.  Third, empirical knowledge shows that "bad" things often lead to "good" thereby contradicting our thinking that bad things lead to bad, and good to good.  This is enough to disqualify our ideas of good and bad are inconsistent and illusory. The conclusion then is that God is all encompassing, and there is no sin. 
   
  If God is omnipresent, and all-good, then sin and anything "bad" cannot exist.  If "bad" things exist, then God cannot exist.  Only one of these statements can be true, and clearly to our great benefit, it is the former, not the latter.

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I and my Creator are One. 

July 5th 2014  Lesson 109

I rest in God.

• Intention:  To rest in the eternal peace of God and offer this rest to everyone.

• Practice:  The first Five-minutes of every waking hour as best you can, and remember to repeat today's thought between each practice session.


• Application: -- Begin with today's thought:
    I rest in God
  Then close your eyes, and for five minutes and let this thought bring to you the rest and quiet, peace, stillness, and the safety and happiness you seek.  Let it carry you through storms and strife, past misery and pain, past loss and death, and onward to the certainty of God.  There is no suffering it cannot heal; no problem it cannot solve; and no illusion that it cannot turn to truth for you who rest in God. 
     
  Amid the turmoils and illusions of the world rest in the peace of God, and call to all to join you in your rest.  They will hear and come to you, because you rest in God and gave your voice to Him to let Him speak through you.  In Him you have no cares and no concerns, no burdens, no anxiety, no pain, no fear of future and no past regrets.  In timelessness you rest, while time goes by without its touch upon you, for your rest in God can never change in any way at all.  No more frantic fantasies or fearful dreams will come, now that you rest in God. 
    
  Each hour that you take your rest today, a tired mind is suddenly made lad, a bird with broken wings begins to sing, a stream long dry begins to flow again.  The wrold is born again each time you rest, and hourly remember that you came to bring the peace of God into the wrold, that it might take its rest along with you.
  
  

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Insights/comments:

• To rest is more important than to act, even thought it is action that accomplishes things in the world, it could not do this without rest--the better the rest, the better the quality of our action, so rest therefore is the foundation or basis of activity, and for that reason it is more important.  We can rest without acting, but action becomes increasingly difficult without rest, so do give resting the value it deserves, as the support and facilitator of action.
   
• We were created by God, who is present everywhere in space and time, so we can never not be with Him, and it is only in Him who is every-where and every-when that we can find rest that is peaceful and timeless.  We are one with Him who is everywhere, and so there is no real obstacle to our rest, for it is everywhere we are.  We need only bring our attention away from the turmoil of the world to the inner peace that is boundless and timeless, for that is where we are.  It is only more apparent when we consciously rest in God.

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I and my Creator are One. 

July 3rd 2014  Lesson 108

To give and to receive are one in truth.

• Intention:  To verify the truth of today's idea in our own experience by offering peace to everyone, and seeing how quickly peace returns to us.

• Practice:  The first Five-minutes of every waking hour as best you can, and remember to repeat today's thought between each practice session.


• Application: -- Begin with today's thought in the following form:
   
  To give and to receive are one in truth.
  I will receive what I am giving now.
  
  Then close your eyes, ad for five minutes think of what you would hold out to everyone, to have it be yours.  You might for instance say:
  
  

  To everyone I offer quietness.
  To everyone I offer peace of mind.
  To everyone I offer gentleness.
   

  Say each one slowly, then pause a while, expecting to receive the gift you gave.  And it will come to you in the amount in which you gave it.  You will find you have exact return, for that is what you asked.  It might be helpful, too, to think of the one to whom to give your gifts.  He represents the others, and through him you give to all.
    
  From today's lesson we will better understand effect and cause and will make much faster progress now.  Today's exercises are quick advances in your learning, made still faster and more sure each time you say:  "To give and to receive are one in truth."

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Insights/comments:

• To give and to receive are one in truth.  This is easily verified by our experience for it means that whatever we receive is what we have given.  If we wish to know what we gave, we have only to look at what we are currently receiving.  This will sometimes not be a pleasant revelation, and one that we may wish to deny, for it places the ability and responsibility for our current experience squarely in our own lap.  To understand the truth of this principle is to understand the key to making our experience more to our liking.  To deny the truth of this statement is to believe in random chance, and victimization.
   
• We cannot be victims for we are the holy children of God who created us like Himself.  Nothing can victimize God the all-mighty, so none can victimize His children.  So if we believe that we are victims, it is only our own self-created stories about ourselves that we believe, which are simple errors that we can release the moment we realize them to be errors and decide to be free of them and their imagined effects.  Non can subjectate the holy children of God.  With the knowledge that giving and receiving are one in truth, we are now well equipped to guide our lives along a more harmonious path.   
  
• We know from our own experience that we receive joy when our gift to someone brings them joy, even a simple smile gives us joy when we see it light up the face of another, or at least lessen their pain in some small way, in the same way we feel when another offers us a smile or the gift of their presence.  To think kindly of someone is to offer them a gift of joy, and far more so when we offer forgiveness.  The gift of forgiveness is our function, it brings us happiness and offers happiness to the world. 
  

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I and my Creator are One. 

July 2nd 2014  Lesson 107

The truth will correct all errors in my mind.

• Intention:  To remember that the truth will set us free of all illusions.

• Practice:  The first Five-minutes of every waking hour as best you can, and remember to repeat today's thought between each practice session.


• Application: -- Begin with today's thought in the following form:
   
  Truth will correct all errors in my mind,
  And I will rest in Him Who is my Self.
  
  The truth as established by God is the antidote to the illusions of the world, which quickly disappear when truth is realized. We are not made of flesh and blood and bone, but were created by the selfsame Thought that created us Spirit, perfect, and free.  We have mistakenly forsaken the eternal oneness of our Higher Self for the temporal variety of our ego self.  Fortunately our Higher Self has not forsaken us, but welcomes us whenever we choose to spend some time with Him in silence and in truth.  Let us be with Him and He will gently lead us to the truth, which will envelop us and give us a peace so deep and tranquil that we will return to the familiar world reluctantly.
  
  Remember to be with your higher Self as often as possible today, returning to the world each time more and more grounded in the truth we experience with Him.  This is our function today, to let truth correct the errors in our minds, and set free the world, as we are set free.

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Insights/comments:

• Errors are merely illusions that remain unrecognized for what they are.  Like dreams, they appear real to the mind asleep, but are far from truth, and are only recognized for what they are upon our awakening.  This is the nature of errors, they seem real and we, believing them to be, interact and function as though they are real.  We are not sinful for our beliefs, we are simply in error, and this is what truth corrects by its presence.  In the light of truth, we awaken and now see clearly what is real and what is not.
   
• What is our state of mind without illusions?  Remember when in your meditations or at other times, when perhaps for a minute or maybe even less, when the silence was complete and nothing came to  interrupt your peace; when you were certain you were loved and safe and free.  Now picture what it would be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and to eternity.  Now you have a hint, not more than just the faintest intimation of the state you mind will rest in when the truth has come. 
   
• Without illusions there could be no fear, no doubt, and no attack.  When truth has come all pain is over, for there is no room for transitory thoughts and dead ideas to linger in your mind.  Truth occupies your mind completely, liberating you from all beliefs in the ephemeral.
  
  

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I and my Creator are One. 

July 1st 2014  Lesson 106

Let me be still and listen to the truth.

• Intention:  To understand what giving and receiving really means.

• Practice:  The first Five-minutes of every waking hour as best you can, and remember to repeat today's thought between each practice session.


• Application: -- Begin with today's thought and question:
   
  I will be still and listen to the truth.
  What does it mean to give and receive?
  
  Then we close our eyes and open our minds to inner stillness, laying aside the conflicts of the world that offer other gifts and other goals made of illusions, and listen for the answer to our question. For each five minutes every waking hour that we spend listening, a thousand minds are opened to the truth.  Anyone who pauses to ask that truth be given them will hear the truth of God's holy Word along with us.  Today we keep God's holy Word by receiving it and giving it away to the world.  We thereby teach and demonstrate the truth about giving and receiving that we listened to and learned from Him. 
  
  Remember to reinforce you choice to hear and to receive the Word by this reminder given to yourself as often as possible today:
    
  

  Let me be still and listen to the truth.
  I am the messenger of God today,

  My voice is His, to give what I receive.

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Insights/comments:

• The bible says to:  "Be still and know that I am God."  We are as God created us, as perfect as Himself, but having given our attention to the voice of our ego, the voice of who we think we are, we do not hear God's voice within us.  It is there shining like an ever lasting Sun, open and available to us, but for the clouds of our misunderstanding about who we really are.  The solution is to listen, with as much attention as we can muster, so we can remember who we really are and what really means to give and receive.  
   
• We must hear for ourselves so that our conviction is strong enough to dispel the ego's voice within us.  We must remember that God's gifts are given to all and shared by all, and that it is in the sharing that we keep them.
  
  

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I and my Creator are One.