What is salvation?   "Salvation is a promise made by God that you would find your way to Him at last."(W.PII.Q2.1.1) It is a promise that is guaranteed. It is the end of all illusions. It is a time of our release from the ego thought system.  And when we experience our own release we will release others by bringing the light that is in us to the whole Sonship. In    tomorrow's lesson, Jesus tells us that salvation and forgiveness are the same. It is moving from a state of conflict to a state of peace and happiness. And in lesson 101 he says that the theme of all of the lessons on salvation is happiness. Happiness is a "key idea in understanding what salvation means."  (W.PI.101.1.2)

So what is our part in God's plan? It is simply to do our healing through forgiveness. And we do this through circumstances, people and events that show up wherever we find ourselves.   Everything in our day is for our learning. This world and our lives can therefore be considered as our classroom when used for learning purposes. What we are learning is who we are in truth. This requires undoing of all that is untrue. It is undoing how we see our special relationships,   of the events of this world, and the circumstances of our lives. It does not matter whether we judge them as good or bad because it is all helpful when used for our healing. This is our salvation. It is working with the Holy Spirit to undo the ego thought system through our willingness to release how we see everything now. It is to acknowledge that we are wrong about everything. To see independent of the Holy Spirit is to see wrongly. The Holy Spirit, Who abides in our right minds, shows us another way of seeing when we ask for His interpretation. We just need to be willing to ask. It is a willingness to surrender our own way.

We make mistakes but they are not sins. When we experience guilt we are judging our mistakes as sins. Jesus gently encourages us to do this forgiveness work on behalf of our own happiness. "I am asking you to give up so little and in exchange I am offering you so much. Why don't you do it?" (T. 20. VII.I.7-8) We have chosen suffering and are not happy here, no matter how well we have adjusted to the world. We can't be happy here because the world is not our home but rather a state of separation from Oneness. Yes, we have times of pleasure but they do not last. We seek salvation by fulfilling our needs as we define them to meet our requirements for specialness, but that only brings more suffering. The pleasure we seek is always at someone's expense and thus it brings more guilt, which means more pain. While we seem to gain when we get our needs met, someone always pays the price and so in the end all we really gain is more guilt. Thus the world was made to serve our specialness at the cost to us of more guilt and fear. With each challenge we set for ourselves comes more disillusionment. "You have made a thousand losing bargains at the least." (5.4) And with each bargain we make we think that this time it will be different. This time I will achieve happiness for all time. But we know that it never lasts.   

All we are asked to do is to dedicate ourselves fully to truth today so that we can remember who we are. (1.5) In that dedication, we let go of our own arguments of where our happiness lies. It can only come from undoing the guilt in our minds. Of course, we have other ideas of what we need to be happy. We think it is our specialness. But Jesus keeps assuring us again and again that we will never find happiness in the pursuits we take on to serve and support our special, unique and individual self. Does that make our pursuits bad or wrong? Absolutely not! The idea is not feel more guilty than we do when we pursue what we still think will make us happy. It is only to recognize more and more that our pursuits are taking us down the road to nowhere. We can never meet our needs by looking for them outside of ourselves.  The belief we hold that our happiness is in finding the right job, making enough money, finding the perfect relationship etc, is not where we will ever feel perfect certainty, meaning, happiness, fulfillment and completion.    When we come to a point of disillusionment in the realization that our happiness is not ever found out there, we are then ready to look for another answer. Then we become more motivated   to seek for salvation where it really is, which is in our right minds.

"How happy to be certain." (2.1) When we recognize where our salvation truly lies, then we will be totally happy in our certainty. While I am still holding onto beliefs that things in the world can make me happy, I am holding onto being right about where my happiness lies. This is the arrogance of the ego that thinks it knows. But today we are asked to embrace our mighty purpose, which is to forgive. It is to recognize that we have been wrong.  If you track the words certain and certainty, you will find that it is a strong theme in this lesson and comes up often together with words like faith, confidence, guarantee, etc. And when we focus on our one purpose, which is to heal the guilt in the mind, then everything that happens to us is happily invited because it can all serve us for this one purpose.

We experience ourselves as two selves, where we never can be certain. Truth is only on one side. Nothing is on the other side. So today we take a stand only on the side that is real. And when we do, we have certainty because again, it all boils down to purpose.  We will always be in doubt if we hold onto two selves with differing functions. One is believing that its salvation lay in the things of this world while the other is about accepting our part in God's plan for salvation. Our part is forgiveness.

For me, the work with the course has certainly increased my sense of confidence and trust in the path that I take to knowing the truth about myself.  I do have doubts and I still set goals that I think will serve my special needs, but increasingly I am willing to turn these doubts over to Him and to ask for guidance in all of my busy doings. We just need that little willingness and He will do the rest turning our doubt to faith. "Give Him the words, and He will do the rest." (9.1) He will open up the way for us. When we have evidence that we really can find peace and trust in the way appointed for us, then we will become convinced of the truth of this. Our part is to choose forgiveness and not worry about the effects. Our job is to let go of the ego thought system of guilt and fear and when we do, the Holy Spirit's love can extend through us. And thus "you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven."  (9.5)

Doubt will be gone and we will have certainty of purpose when we feel that we have been absolved of our errors. It is in our innocence that we know we are perfectly safe. It is when we  no longer fear punishment for our guilt. And thus there is no need for magic. The guiltless... "do not appeal to magic, nor invent escapes from fancied threats without reality." (3.2) In other words there is no need to seek for substitutes for God's love, which is what magic is. When we feel guilty, we expect punishment and need to protect ourselves by finding the magic solutions for our problems. Imagine instead of inventing escapes from your fancied threats, you rest in serene certainty knowing that you are perfectly capable of accepting your function and that you have been given everything perfectly to achieve this function. We have the course, we have our script for our lives, we have our teacher and our classroom. We are the author of our script, not God, but the Correction (the Holy Spirit), which is God's Answer to the separation, has been placed in our minds.  Everything is there perfectly for our awakening. Everything unfolds perfectly in time and space when used for healing purposes.  Imagine undertaking your function with full commitment and certainty of success every step of the way.

In the practice periods, we are asked to suspend our doubts for a while. Jesus knows that we have doubts. But when we take a few moments during the day, bring our uncertainty for healing and then connect with the certainty of his assurances, of His guidance and presence in our lives, we can experience how wonderful certainty can feel. There is a place in us where certainty abides. This is the place in us where we know the reality of who we are. It is the Self that has never left us. It is a place of total calm, of peace and of joy.

The world offers us uncertainty and doubt, but when we enter this place of total quiet, it is like entering the eye of the storm where all is still. This is the place where the holy child that resides in our quiet center can breathe the holy air for a while. There is a very poignant passage in lesson 182 that says "it is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son. It is this Child Who knows His Father. He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while. He does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which He can return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father's house." It is a place where our restless minds can have respite.

That is the value of our communion with God in our meditation time. We just need to surrender our goals, plans and doubt thoughts and sit in quiet, listening to His Voice. We just need to let go and let God. We are giving up our plans and saying yes to the part we are being assigned. We are allowing. We are accepting.

For some of us it can seem extremely hard to do. All of us have spent a lifetime building monuments to our independence. We live by the words of Frank Sinatra, "I did it my way." These are words that can be carved on our headstones and worn with pride in our lifetime. But independence allows us only to fly with the tiny wings of the sparrow when the wings of the eagle are available to us. There is a hard way and an easy way. I am slowly learning that with God all things truly are possible. That if we release our struggle to His Answer, we move from dis-ease to ease. Yes, it takes practice, yes it take discipline, but that is what time was made for. That is the only reason we are here. He who has the most toys at the end does not win anything except the most toys. And all we have done in acquiring our toys is to   trade the eternal for nothingness. In each moment we are making this choice for Heaven or hell.

If we will just take the time he asks of us to do the practice of affirming and taking a stand in accepting our part in God's plan for our salvation, then all the wonderful rewards are guaranteed. We are exchanging a little of our time in doing the five minute practice for peace of mind, certainty of purpose, happiness, release from pain, and a promise of complete success. All that is asked of us is time, which is really nothing since time is just illusory. In exchange for this we get everything. Do you believe that? If we did believe it, then our practice time would be something that we would do so very willingly, and in between practice periods we would hardly be able to wait for the next one. Because this is not the way we experience it now, he gives us so much encouragement and so many promises in these lessons, assuring us of the  wonderful benefits. He assures us that he is always with us, strengthening our weak commitment and dedication. He knows that we falter and get discouraged and wonder if the benefits that he talks about are really true. Realizing this, he offers us so many incentives. "In each five minutes that you spend with Him, He will accept your words and give them back to you all bright with faith and confidence so strong and steady they will light the world with hope and gladness." (8.1)

Yet we are attached to our pain and resist full release because we do wonder who we would be without our independence, our pain and the fleeting joys of our specialness. We are addicted to these highs and lows. We do recognize that the world gives us pain but we still have our own idea of happiness and we are not sure we want to release it. We still do think we know better and we still fear that we will be asked to sacrifice in ways that will compromise our freedom as we have defined it. We still don't trust God. But when we see that the cost to us is high and that the results in our lives have not been very good, then we become more motivated to listen to the Holy Spirit.

He is with us. We are not undertaking this practice alone. We approach this time with thankfulness that we can lay down all earthly tasks for a short time. So our practice periods should be a happy time and not a burden. It sometimes does feel very demanding, I find, and he knows that, which is why he is trying to really encourage us on the benefits of this practice and this discipline of laying down our "little thoughts and limited ideas" (11.1) and "spend a happy time again with Him." (11.1) And in that time we happily agree to take our part in God's plan for salvation and listen to His guidance on how He can use our strengths, our talents and our encounters with those around us for His purposes rather than our own.

Finally, a note of interest, we now have a lesson that is written in iambic pentameter, which I always find so very amazing. Notice that this means it is written in ten syllables with five pairs each and the accent is on the second syllable for each of the pairs. It has the sound of a heartbeat when read in this kind of rhythmic way. Actually in this lesson it does not start until line two of the first paragraph. The rest of the lessons mostly follow this same rhythm. To me this demonstrates the absolutely amazing mind that dictated the lessons with such beauty and wisdom. It is another bit of evidence for my mind that the dictation did not come from any earthly intelligence.

[Use 'Advanced Search' and Exact Phrase' option]