"God in His mercy wills that I be saved." The question then arises, "saved from what?" and Jesus tells us it is to be saved from all things that seem to hurt me. (W.235.1.1) What hurts me are my own thoughts, my opinions, my interpretations and my judgments. How willing am I to be saved from my perception that I can be hurt? If His "Will for me is only happiness," (W.235.1.2) the way I am seeing a situation that seems to cause me distress must be my decision, which conflicts with God's Will for me.
   
We can't mar our own perfection as given us by God in our creation as His Son. The prayer is just another way of talking about this as we affirm again that Love is what created us and made us sinless forever, always perfect and eternally safe. Clearly we don't feel that way much of the time. The reason we don't is because the ego always speaks first. In other words, the ego gives us its interpretation of everything first. It tells us to blame, to judge, to value our thoughts and opinions, which all support differences and specialness.

We think our reality is that of a body and personality relating to 'others' as separate entities from us. As a result, we are in competition with each other trying to achieve our happiness at their expense. What if we are wrong about ourselves? Jesus assures us we are. He says that while we think our separate will is the source of our happiness, it is actually the source of our pain and misery. Because we are confused about who we are, we don't know what we are doing, where we are going, what our best interests are and how to meet our real needs. Give over the picture you hold of yourself for a moment. Open yourself to question your perception of who you are. Jesus tells us, "God's will is all there is." (Clarification of Terms.3.6.1) Therefore, the separate will we think is ours does not even exist. That thought can terrify us. We want our existence, which is why we are here. The call to know ourselves as pure, innocent, and joyful beings of peace and love is also very strong. If God is all there is, we must be one with Him.
 
In Chapter 31, " The Simplicity of Salvation, " Jesus says "How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible [separation from God] has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all. Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants it to be true?" (T.31.I.1.1-5)(ACIM OE T.31.I.1) On the level of where we think we are, are we willing to consider how wrong we have been about ourselves. "Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult." (T.31.I.1.6)(ACIM OE T.31.I.1)
 
Our unwillingness points us to the authority problem. We think we have made another will, and we give power to that will by our belief. If all that we believe is not true now, we can deny the power of anything to hurt us.

Salvation, as taught in this course, is about healing our perception that we are separate, deficient, victims of the world. None of this is real, but it is not helpful to us just to be told it is all unreal or it is all illusion. Why? Because right now we believe in the reality of what we see, feel and experience. We believe our body is who we are, and we cling to this self we believe we have made. Denying what we believe would not be helpful to us. Yes, it is all unreal. None of it has any meaning, but while we are still believing in the reality of our bodies and the world, it is not helpful to deny what we are holding as true. What is helpful is to look at our beliefs, our concepts, our values, our feelings and our perceptions and be willing to question them. When we see that perhaps we are wrong in how we see them, we will be more willing to ask the Holy Spirit for His interpretation. We will become more willing to step aside from our perspectives and look to the truth within.

In Lesson 70, we are told that guilt and salvation are in our minds and nowhere else. "When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. In understanding this you are saved." (W.70.1.5-6) Yet what we have done is to put the responsibility for the source of our pain outside of our minds. We make people, events and circumstances outside of ourselves responsible for how we feel. We make them the guilty ones instead of looking at the guilt in our own minds that we have projected onto them. What that does though is make us feel like helpless victims.

If indeed salvation comes from me, and it is of my choosing, I am able, at any time, to choose to know the truth about myself. No one can save me but me. No workshop leader, no guru, no course, no psychotherapist, not even Jesus can save me. It is all about my choice, and that choice is reflected in my willingness to look at my thoughts, take responsibility for them, recognize that everything I see is a projection of my own guilt mirrored back to me, and be willing to release it. I am not saying there are not teachers that help us in pointing us to the truth and inspiring and motivating us, only that the work must be done by us.
 
Jesus tells us, if God in His mercy wills that I be saved, it is already done. As he reminds us in Lesson 229, "' Love, which created me, is what I am'. Now need I seek no more. Love has prevailed."  (W.229.1.2-3) He has kept my Identity untouched and sinless.  Nothing we can do can ever mar our perfection. So why do we need salvation? We are reminded in Chapter 11, "As God's creation It [salvation] is yours, and belonging to you It is His. Your Self does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation is. You are not saved from anything, but you are saved for glory. Glory is your inheritance, given you by your Creator that you might extend it. Yet if you hate part of your Self [another brother or sister] all your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God created as yourself without love." (T.11.IV.1.2-6)(ACIM OE T.10.V.31)
 
In other words, any hatred, dislike, and anger, we have toward any of our brothers and sisters are what keep us from knowing we are already saved. Such thoughts hide the truth of who we are from our minds. " Therefore, look only to the power that God gave to save you, remembering that it is yours because it is His, and join with your brothers in His peace." (T.11.IV.2.5)

The ego also developed a plan for our salvation. Its plan is to hold grievances against others so the guilt in our minds would be seen to rest on them rather than on ourselves. So we play the game of blaming everyone else for our circumstance. The solution offered by the ego to get rid of our guilt actually maintains it because what the ego's proposed solution does is keep the guilt alive in our minds rather than undoing it. So while blaming others seems to save us from our guilt, it only maintains it. " Ideas leave not their source." (W.167.3.6) This is such good news because it affirms we are not the victims of the world we see.
 
The ego's guidance is to do everything on our own. Part of the ego's seductiveness is that it tries to persuade us to continue to believe that if we simply select the right combination of options from all available ones, we can be happy. It might be the right relationship, the right career, the right place to live, the right investment, the right numbers on the lottery tickets, the right job, or any combination of the above. But what the ego keeps hidden from us is the underlying content of these choices, which is sin, guilt and fear and a belief in separate interests. " The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in which the fear is seen. For every dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they all are made." (T. 29.IV.2.1-5)
 
Now we turn to another Guide, the Holy Spirit who offers us the memory of God's Love for us. Only then can we make another choice. In the world, all of our choices lead us nowhere. Jesus shows us that the only really meaningful choice we can make in time is to allow the Holy Spirit's purpose to guide us whenever we make a decision. Instead of looking for the perfect ego dream as we see it, we are learning to release our own judgments on how everything should be. When we release outcomes and expectations, we are learning to live in the flow of God's grace. What that requires is to recognize that we don't know our own best interests. We can't even identify what is a gain and what is a loss.

The Lesson offers us a beautiful opportunity today to use as a practice when we are tempted to get upset. If I see something disturbing to my mind, I can immediately respond with "God wills that I be saved from this." (W.335.1.1) We can choose to look at the situation from outside of the dream, from above the battleground. From this perspective, we can see the unreality of it all. None of it has any meaning. When we withdraw support from the illusions of war and malice, they go down to dust and we see the beauty of our brother's innocence and thus our own.
 
Today we go together in confidence that God is on the side of our happiness. I need but look upon all things that seem to hurt me and with perfect certainty and conviction say, "God wills that I be saved from this." (W.335.1.1) Anything that is causing you pain and unhappiness is grist for application of this Lesson. Tell yourself with assurance that God would not have you suffer. God only wants your happiness. This means if our experience is anything but happiness, we can step back and realize we must be seeing wrongly. God's Will for us is perfect happiness. Feel His protection and safety all through the day. Look at what you are projecting onto others. Realize there is nothing in the world that can affect you unless you give it the power to do so. Bring anything that seems hurtful to you to the Correction of the Holy Spirit. Look without guilt or fear at everything that seems to be upsetting to you today and watch it disappear. Remind yourself again and again about His kindness and love for you. Let His Love be felt surrounding you, reminding you of your innocence, which is not of your making, but has been given in your creation.

"Nothing has ever happened to disturb the peace of God the Father and the Son. This we accept as wholly true today." (W.234.1.4-5)