When Jesus says that God is the air I breathe, the food by which I am sustained, and the water which renews and cleanses me, he is talking in metaphors. It is a way of saying God is our Source of life and since we think of life as being sustained by food, water and air, our sustenance by God is akin to that. Our experience is that our body is our home. We want God to join us there and make our lives happier in the illusion. In other words, we want to add spirituality to our lives, as we know them. But to awaken is to remember that our only home and our only happiness is in God. Healing is not about bringing more light to the darkness. It is about bringing our false thoughts to the light so  they can be dissolved. In this way, the truth of our being can emerge from behind the veil.

What we think of as life is not what it is. The truth is that I have no life but God's. I function as if I were a body, separate from others, trying to find my way in the world, to be a success, to be happy, to be as good as I know how to be toward people around me, and to try to find my way back to God. Yet we can't come to God if we think we know the way. We must trust that it will be opened up to us as we are willing to undo what stands in the way. It is the simple recognition that we have never left Him. There is nowhere to go. Our job is only to bring awareness to what blocks us from the light. This means we have to look at our thoughts, recognize our judgments, and see how we are defending ourselves against the truth of who we are.

The truth is in our right minds. Our Teacher, the Holy Spirit within, is always available to us. His presence can be known to us more and more when the obstacles to the truth are released. In the undoing of false perception, we can see there is a choice. This choice is about making a decision to turn to the light of truth that is always available to us. The first part of the workbook is about undoing our wrong-minded perception. Through this process, we have been given an opportunity to see there is another option available to us. Until we were given this teaching that clearly identified the two thought systems in our minds, we were only aware of the voice of the ego, which seemed to be our only voice. Now we have some awareness of the fact that there is another Voice within us, and thus we can make a choice as to which voice to listen to. The only problem to be overcome is that the voice of the ego seems to be the most loud and persistent. Training and discipline are required to ignore this voice, because it can be very demanding.

When Jesus says, "He is my home, wherein I live and move," (W.222.1.3) it is again a statement of our true home with God from which we have never separated in truth. I remember as a little girl sitting in church asking God to reveal Himself to me, and, when I did not get any "sign", I finally gave up on the whole notion of God even though somewhere inside I always had a strong sense of a spiritual presence. I just did not know where to look to bring some confirmation of that feeling. I did not know to look in my own mind. I did not know the presence of God was as close to me as my own breath. I did not know it was a matter of uncovering the unforgiving thoughts and Love could then show ItSelf to me. My life is God's Life. My right-minded thoughts are God's thoughts. There is no one to seek and no one to save us. We must do the work of undoing what we have made that keeps us from the awareness that we are One with Him now. All we need to do is to apply this teaching to our daily lives and the experience of His Presence in us follows. What a relief that is! What a comfort!
 
Take in the words, "He covers me with kindness and with care, and holds in love the Son He shines upon, who also shines on Him." (W.222.1.4) These are such powerfully loving thoughts. I think of it as God's safety always holding me up and protecting me, no matter how the situation might look. We can enter the stillness and beauty this thought conveys and know that this can only come as a result of a deep contentment. When we are not content and feel restless we seek for something we could never find. This is the substitute reality Jesus talks about, where we turn to idols of specialness we think will make us happy. Until we learn that is not where our peace and happiness lies, we will keep looking for it there. Disillusionment therefore can be a gift that turns us toward looking for a better way, and the answer is given when the mind is open to another way.
 
I notice for me that the loneliness that has been such a big part of my life has to a large extent been released with the recognition that I am truly never alone. He walks with me and always has. Having the experience of His presence with us ends the longing. Knowing the steps we can take to open up to the awareness of His presence that are clearly laid out in this Course reconnect us to our heart. Any feelings of being cut off, of being alone in the world, of having no support, of being separate from everyone else, are healed in this process, when we bring them to the Holy Spirit.

We make but one choice over and over again in the Course. It is the choice to remember who we are. We are making this one choice over a series of small steps we take, but it is always the same choice. We are always choosing between truth and illusion, between love and fear, between forgiveness and attack, between Heaven and hell. There is no urgency, no rush and no expectation put on us as we remember to be loving and gentle with ourselves in this process. Feeling guilty by our lack of progress is still part of the ego game to keep us in hell. It is hard to remember it is not helpful to think that we can judge or fix ourselves or try to make ourselves holy, but only to look at the thoughts and smile with recognition that they are nothing. We just need to be willing to look at them unflinchingly and to turn them over. Looking from outside of the dream with the love of Jesus, we can smile in the recognition that the characters in the dream and the situations we encounter are all illusory. Yes, they seem very serious to us in the experience of the dream, but from a higher vantage point, with no judgments of good or bad, we see it all differently. Indeed, it all becomes a perfect classroom for healing.

We are now attempting to go beyond words to experience. But we continue to do the forgiveness work by clearing the thoughts that come up in our minds that disturb our peace. We are entering the holy instant in this deep place of peace so we could take it with us into the world and bring that light and that peace wherever we go today. If we lose our peace because of someone who seems to disturb us, we could always bring back to our awareness the truth of who we are with the thought, "God is with me. I live and move in Him." (W.222) It does not matter how busy we are with the doings of the world. The focus is not on what we are doing but what thoughts we are holding in our minds. Thoughts that block our awareness of the truth are what we bring to the Holy Spirit, asking Him to help us. We do that by constantly asking for guidance. "Holy Spirit, help me how to see this situation. Help me to know how to respond. Help me not to use my own idea of what to do here. Help me to know what to say and what to do. Show me the way." With willingness, in each moment that we turn to Him, the ego is increasingly dissolved. That is what time is for.
 
We are taking our judgments and raising them to doubt while acknowledging that the way we set up reality, and stubbornly refused to put it to question, is what has kept us in hell. Our judgments need to be questioned. Perhaps there is another way to look at this situation or this person. Perhaps I have been wrong. Perhaps I have been stubbornly choosing against my own happiness because I justified my way of seeing this situation, or this person. Now I am giving up my opinions and my need to be right. I am stepping back from my stories, and not justifying my anger.

Releasing our way allows us to be shown another way. To see God is to see our brother's holiness, and we can only experience his innocence by releasing our grievances. We have many people in our lives with whom we can practice this. They include our parents, children, siblings, partners, politicians, all of our special love and special hate relationships. Our special function in this world is all about forgiving these special relationships. We do so by looking at our thoughts, judgments, beliefs, and attitudes toward them as they come up, and be willing to release them to the Holy Spirit. That is the nature of the forgiveness work we are here to do. All of these thoughts are projections that come from our own minds, based on our own self-judgments and self-attacks. They are the things we don't want to acknowledge in ourselves projected outward. They contain our self-attack and self-hatred. All we see in anyone is an outward picture of our own inward condition. We are not at the mercy of the world. We need do nothing but look at our thoughts and be willing to turn them over. It requires the desire and the courage to be very honest with ourselves. When we find our mind defending, denying, justifying or projecting, we must remember we are choosing to be right rather than happy.

We can't do the forgiveness work without understanding the metaphysics of the Course. It makes no sense to be told, "Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred," (W.PII.Q1.1.1) when we are so certain we are right about what our brother has done. The whole point here is to recognize that there is no world and we are all figures in a dream. Thus, what I see "out there" is just a thought projected by my mind and acted out in my brother, based on a false idea of God's Son as a separate being and different from me. Instead of seeing with my eyes made by the ego to show me a world that does not exist, Jesus is asking me to look through his eyes and to doubt how I am seeing. And this requires giving up the idea that I am right. It means raising my judgments to doubt. "It [forgiveness/the miracle ] merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false." (W.PII.Q13.1.3)

Jesus talks about this, in the Manual for Teachers, in the section on open-mindedness, as follows: "As judgment shuts the mind against God's Teacher, so open-mindedness invites Him to come in. As condemnation judges the Son of God as evil, so open-mindedness permits him to be judged by the Voice for God on His behalf." (M.4.X.1.3-4)
 
We can see from this that our traditional definition of open-mindedness, which is to be accepting and open to everyone's perspective, ideas and opinions, is not the definition offered here. It is, instead, about letting go of our interpretation of what things mean so our minds can be open to seeing with vision, or again seeing through the eyes of Jesus, only holiness in every brother. As we do, we come to know our own holiness. Every time we let a brother off the hook for what we think he has done, we release him from the prison we have put him in and also are reminded of his innocence as well as our own. It takes willingness on our part to let go of our own distorted perceptions. Truly the  choice is for Heaven or for hell, and we are making this choice for ourselves.

To be open-minded is to be closed to our own interpretations and only open to those of the Holy Spirit. Just as Lesson 236 says, "Father, my mind is open to Your Thoughts and closed today to every thought but Yours." (W.PII.236.2.1) This transition, from our judgment of guilt to the Holy Spirit's verdict of innocence, is just another way of talking about forgiveness.
 
The other thing that is important in looking at forgiveness is to recognize that if we ever thought we have achieved complete forgiveness with someone, according to this section in the manual we have not, and will not, until we reach the end of the journey. So let's not get discouraged about our progress in the Course. As long as we are here, we have work to do in releasing our judgments. Welcome this opportunity instead of judging yourself for your judgments. "Forgiveness is the final goal of the curriculum."  (M.4.X.2.9)

" Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing." (W.189.7.1-3)

With judgment set aside, "What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God." (W.PII.Q1.1.7)