Day 151

Today's Lesson:

All things are echoes of the Voice for God.

Today we learn that what we see is not necessarily the truth. We have been conditioned not to doubt the world we see. We tell ourselves that we need to see it to believe it. That we believe what we see to the last detail is strange, when we pause to recollect how frequently our eyes have been faulty witnesses. Why would we trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt, which we would hide with show of certainty?

Our judgment rests upon the witness that our physical senses offer us. This is the awareness that we understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice for God Himself.

Can this be judgment? We have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from us. We cannot judge. We merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. The ego guides our senses carefully, to prove how weak we are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in our guilt.

We believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what we see as reality with such conviction, the ego does not believe. It is itself alone that it condemns. It is within itself it sees the guilt. It is its own despair it sees in us.

Let God be the Judge of what we are , for He has certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice for God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness. Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin; unheeding of the body's witnesses before the rapture of Christ's holy face.

What can the body mean to Him Who knows the glory of the Father and the Son? What whispers of ego can He hear? What could convince Him that our sins are real? Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to us in this world. His lessons will enable us to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.

We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time we spend with God. We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back again as clean ideas that do not contradict the Will of God.

Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. All the threads of fantasy are gone. And what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers its perfection everywhere.

Spend fifteen minutes thus when you awake, and gladly give another fifteen more before you go to sleep. Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified. And we will hourly remember Him Who is salvation and deliverance. As we give thanks, the world unites with us and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I spend a good part of yesterday studying the information I received in preparation for my week-long certification training with Bob Proctor in Florida where I will be the week after next. I learned a lot during my studies, including the distinction between our five physical senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell) and what Napoleon Hill identified in his studies and reflected in his book "Think and Grow Rich" as the six intellectual properties that go way beyond our physical senses, as we learned in today's lesson.

Those six intellectual properties are perception, will, imagination, memory, intuition, and reason. These can be developed just like our physical muscles can. We just need to be aware of them and then work to hone and shape them.

Today's lesson tells us that we rely so much on our physical senses, often at the expense of what our intellectual faculties are screaming at us. Intuition is one that is often discounted. Yet I learned on Tuesday night at the session with my master teacher that science is starting to prove that we have memory and mind in our blood! We've all heard about "gut feelings," haven't we? What is that but intuition at work?

Today's text tells us that the Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. As long as we're thinking logically, why not trust the logic that points to Heaven?

The text goes on to say that if we are blessed and do not know it, we need to learn it must be so. This reminds me of another thing we talked about on Tuesday evening and that was the concept of gratitude. Gratitude goes way beyond saying "Thank You," although that's what many of us believe gratitude is. When we were little we were told that "thank you" was one of the magic words along with "please" and whenever we wanted something we were to say "please" and when we got it we were to say "thank you." Magic.

Gratitude is a feeling, not a word. This is not something that is taught, but, as the text goes on to say, the conditions of this kind of knowledge must be acquired for that is what we have thrown away. We can learn to bless, and cannot give what we have not. If, then, we offer blessing, we must have first had it to give. And we must also have accepted is as ours, for how else could we give it away? That is why miracles offer us the testimony that we are blessed. If what we offer is complete forgiveness we must have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for ourselves and learning we are guiltless. How could we learn what has been done for us, unknown to us, unless we do what we would have to do if it had been done for us?

To deny is the decision not to know. Just because we choose to deny something does not mean it is not true.

I remember being a little kid and wondering so many things about the world. I would sit for hours and think, and then be aware that I was thinking, and wonder if there were other kids around the world who were thinking that they were thinking. Earthly logic just didn't make sense to me. Why was the Catholic family living across the street from me less than we were because they were Catholic? Why was the one Black family in our town thought to be so different? What made us better than everyone else because we believed the way we believed? Why couldn't I ask these questions out loud?

Now I understand what today's text is telling us. Any direction that would lead us where the Holy Spirit leads us not, goes nowhere. Anything we deny that He knows to be true we have denied ourselves, and He must therefore teach us not to deny it. We were created only to create, neither to see nor do. The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing us what we can never learn. That is huge for me today as I think back on all those things I just inherently knew, but weren't things I was being taught. As a five-year-old I should have had a much cleaner slate, but I had already been reading for two years at that point, so my mind had a head start on external learning. The text says that the Holy Spirit has to introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex we cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But we who cannot undo what we have, nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon our minds, cannot see through it.

That's probably why the Johnny Nash song "I Can See Clearly Now" is so important to my friends Bonnie and Carolyn, each of whom chose that song as their life theme song on my radio show. Here are the words to that song:

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin' for
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

Look all around, there’s nothin' but blue skies
Look straight ahead, nothin' but blue skies

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

Even in the midst of the rain we've had for the past few days here in Fargo, I can see clearly now. And just as I write that, the sun pops up and I see blue sky as I look west out my window as the sun rises in the east. A miracle indeed!

Day 150

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(139) I will accept Atonement for myself.
(140) Only salvation can be said to cure.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I went to Minneapolis last night for a circle with our master course teacher Isis. That is always such an inspiration. I learned a lot and was reminded of several lessons I already know, but forgot. For example, Isis reminded us that absolutely everything that shows up in our lives we have attracted there. Everything. EVERYTHING. There is no "them" and "us" or "him" or "her" or "they." It is all me. When I can get that - REALLY get that - there will be no one showing up in my space with anything but exactly what I am being. No anger, no sorrow, no judgment, nothing but love, which is what I'm working on.

She said that what I'm seeing, I'm being and what I'm hearing, I'm saying. What a great reminder! The way I can measure how I'm learning this course is to look at the results in my life. Look at my relationships, my health, my happiness, my finances, etc. Everything that is outside myself is there because of what's inside myself.

She also reminded us that we are created in the image and likeness of God, so what God creates He creates like Himself. That means that we have the same creative power and energy as our Creator, and what we create is in the image and likeness of us, which is like our Creator. That reminds me of something Wayne Dyer has been saying in many of his recent lectures. He says if you take a slice out of a pie and put in on a plate, you could say that that piece of pie is like that which it came from. If you have a cherry pie and cut out a slice, it wouldn't be a slice of pumpkin pie - it would be like the pie it came from. We are no different. We are like our Creator. Yet often we forget that and our egos get in the way. We are not our egos. Our egos are trying to make us THINK we are our egos, but we're not. We are who we are - and we end up thinking we are who we say we are. If we say we are our egos, that's not really the truth. All we need to remember is who we REALLY are, and that is the image and likeness of God.

When we get that - REALLY get that - everything else in our lives will fall into place. We don't need to worry about "fixing" anyone else or "helping" anyone else or "worrying" about anyone else. We just need to be who we really are. We need to think about how our actions are reflecting who we really are and start thinking like who we really are, not who we think we are when we're thinking like our egos.

We also talked a bit about guilt last night. Isis told us that guilt is really justification to keep doing the ego-based things we are currently doing. She said that if we slap someone and they slap us back, we can feel guilty about slapping the person because they slapped us back, but that guilt really allows us to keep slapping that person. It lets us stay in the behavior we are currently experiencing. I hadn't thought about it that way.

That may be a little confusing on the surface, but it's really very simple. Today's text helps sort this out a bit. It says that

"Forgetfulness and sleep and even death become the ego's best advice for dealing with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no one sees himself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war unless he believes that both opponents in the war are real. Believing this he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy him. Yet if he could but realize the war is between real and unreal powers, he could look upon himself and see his freedom. No one finds himself ravaged and torn in endless battles if he himself perceives them as wholly without meaning."

Today's review talks about Atonement - and Atonement is really Heaven. Today's text goes on to tell us that "In Heaven is everything God values, and nothing else. Heaven is perfectly unambiguous. Everything is clear and bright, and calls forth one response. There is no darkness and there is no contrast. There is no variation. There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is."

And this is what we can choose instead of whatever we're seeing in front of us, if it's not that vision of Heaven. Heaven is there and available for us as our birthright.

What will you choose? Love or fear? Guilt or release? Clear and bright or dark and contrast? When put that way, it's a pretty easy choice for me. Let's all choose peace and love. Now - in this instant. It's that simple.

Day 149

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(137) When I am healed I am not healed alone.
(138) Heaven is the decision I must make.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I'm preparing for a presentation I'll be giving in Florida next week for manufacturing supervisors. I'm going to tell this group how I'm using some training that's been around since the '40s to create positive cultures within organizations. What I'm noticing in the training is that, although created by the U.S. government during WWII, it is still very relevant today. So often we look for the next best thing when we haven't really mastered the fundamentals in our lives, and this training proves that.

It's really not a lot different from what we're learning in this course. We are learning here that focusing on the past keeps us from living in the present. When we concentrate on guilt, we end up being in a condemning mindset, and thus link the future to the past. When we listen to our ego, we believe in guilt and punishment and retaliation. When we manage our people from that mindset, we find ourselves in more of a command-and-control situation, with very little room for light and creativity and the best of the people we manage.

The training I'm going to be talking about in Florida really does have a component of light and inspiration built in to it; but when we're not looking for that, we will find whatever we need to support our egos.

When I think about Transcendental Meditation, which is what I was learning about this past weekend in Fairfield, Iowa, I am reminded that this technology is certainly not new. TM has been around since 1958, but meditation in general is probably as ancient as humankind. It's not really about the newest and best and shiniest and trendiest stuff ... it's about what works.

I have learned so much recently from people who were obviously way ahead of their times, but who knew things that are still relevant and, in fact, more people are finally ready to hear. One of the presentations this past weekend introduced us to wisdom from the 1800s, which really reflected the attitude of TM.

We heard literature from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Emily Dickinson from the 1800s; we heard about Einstein (1879-1955) who said "...neither evolution, nor destiny, only being." We heard about Eugene Ionesco (1912-1994) - a playwright of the absurd, who said "I became one with the one essential reality" and "No more fear, no more anxiety, only calm, certainty, joy."

These great minds had several characteristics in common. They had an inward direction of awareness, they experienced profound happiness and bliss, they concentrated on unity and eternity, they spoke of reality and truth, they told about naturalness and familiarity and they expressed the natural capacity of the human mind to have this experience.

It reminds me that our natural capacity - our most comfortable state of mind is our state of being, not of doing. Yesterday's text told us "make no one fearful, for his guilt is yours, and by obeying the ego's harsh commandments you bring its condemnation on yourself, and you will not escape the punishment it offers those who obey it."

Is this not great advice for supervisors, managers, and leaders within our organizations? Why are we looking for new programs and theories and training when the foundational, fundamental human capacity for happiness and bliss is already here?

Realizing that we don't have to learn a new system or program or theory takes so much pressure off the world. Remembering that our natural state is toward this harmony if we could just be still and listen seems almost too good to be true. But what we have been doing in our world isn't working. Are we finally ready to listen to what we Know?

That's my miracle for today - and for the rest of my life. When I am healed I am not healed alone. The entire universe will be affected by my decision to choose Heaven.

Day 148

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(135) If I defend myself I am attacked.
(136) Sickness is a defense against the truth.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I have just returned from the David Lynch Weekend at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. The theme for the weekend's activities was "Exploring the frontiers of consciousness, creativity, and the brain." I learned a lot and took tons of notes which I'll share as I can.

One of the most fascinating things to me was finding out about this university in the middle of Iowa. It was founded in 1973 and today has a K-12 school as well as the university where students are taught transcendental meditation (TM) as part of the curriculum.

We heard from John Hagelin, a quantum physicist and featured speaker in What the Bleep and The Secret, who is also a faculty member at the university. He wasn't able to be with us in person because he is working with the U.N. on a project to bring world peace through TM in New York, but he was with us live via satellite. He presented all kinds of medical statistics of the benefits of TM on not only the person doing the meditating, but the energy of the world.

He showed that when the square root of one percent of the population in any country is practicing TM, they can actually cause the collective consciousness of that country to move to peace. That means 2,000 people in the U.S. can meditate for the rest of the country. John Hagelin is working on a project right now with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of this university and the father of TM, as well as with the U.N., to get 35 countries to have the proper number of meditators in their country trained in TM by September of this year. That means that the square root of one percent of the population of 35 countries will be using TM to raise the consciousness of those 35 countries.

It was very fascinating information, especially when it came to teaching kids these techniques. Statistics show that test scores are raised, stress is decreased, creativity, memory, moral reasoning, emotional maturity, reaction time can all be stimulated by TM. In fact, it has even been proven that IQ can be increased by practicing TM.

David Lynch, who has produced such films as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and the TV series Twin Peaks, spoke about his use of TM and the effects on his own creativity. He is on the board of trustees at the university and created a foundation two years ago to offer Consciousness-Based education in colleges and schools to help students become “wide-awake, energetic, blissful, creative, powerfully intelligent and peaceful human beings.”

Through David’s work, thousands of students are learning the creativity-enhancing, stress-reducing Transcendental Meditation technique in the US and around the world.

David is now launching a new program “Teaching One Million Students to Meditate.”

Donovan is a legendary singer, songwriter, and musician whose string of major hits starting in the mid-1960s included Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man, and Catch the Wind.

Donovan is actively involved with the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace where he is fulfilling his 40-year desire to bring the Transcendental Meditation technique to students.

He actually studied under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with the Beatles in India, and we had a chance to meet him this weekend.

All of the information I learned this weekend showed me - in concrete terms - how important this work is, not only to myself but to the world. Everything I'm learning by studying this course reinforces my desire to move from fear to love. I'll try to write more about what I learned as I can incorporate it into my miracle-mindedness.

Just meeting Donovan was a miracle!

Day 147

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(133) I will not value what is valueless.
(134) Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

I will post this today for tomorrow's lesson and add more notes when I get back.

Day 146

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(131) No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.
(132) I loose the world from all I thought it was.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I'm in Fairfield, Iowa this weekend at the David Lynch retreat at the Maharishi University of Management and am learning a lot about love and fear - I'll have more time to post when I get back to Fargo. Suffice it to say that Transcendental Meditation has miraculous healing benefits for individuals and the world. I took many notes and will share on Monday.

Day 145

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(129) Beyond this world there is a world I want.
(130) It is impossible to see two worlds.

Miracles I'm noticing:

Today's text helps remind us about today's review by helping us understand the distinction between perception and knowledge - which could represent the two worlds it is impossible to see. There is nothing partial about knowledge. Every aspect is whole, and therefore no aspect is separate. Perception, at its loftiest, is never complete. Perception can reach everywhere under the Holy Spirit's guidance, but no perception, however holy, will last forever.

Every miracle we offer to the Son of God is but the true perception of one aspect of the whole. Though every aspect is the whole, we cannot know this until we see that every aspect is the same, perceived in the same light and therefore one. Everyone seen without the past thus bring us nearer to the end of time by bringing healed and healing sight into the darkness, and enabling the world to see. For light must come into the darkened world to make Christ's vision possible even here.

Again, this reminds me of the analogy we're using for my company, Bock's Office. If you go to a movie and react to the flickering lights on the screen as if that were the reality, you would not be making a real difference in the outcome of the movie. If you wanted to make a real difference, you would have to go up to the projection booth and change the actual film in the projector.

That's what we must do in our own lives. The projection is simply a measure of our perception and, no matter how perfect our perception is, it will never be complete: the projection on the screen of our lives is merely showing the world our perception. Every day we show people who we are by our actions and words. Only by getting to the root cause - changing the film in the projector - can we show the world who we really are, and that can only happen with the Holy Spirit's guidance. Knowledge is far beyond our individual concern. We who are part of it and all of it need only realize that it is of the Father, not of us. Our role in the redemption leads us to it by re-establishing its oneness in our minds.

Today's text also tells us that our own perfection is unwitnessed in this world. God knows it but we do not, and so we do not share His witness to it. God waits our witness to His Son and to Himself. The miracles we do on earth are lifted up to Heaven and to Him. They witness to what we do not know, and as they reach the gates of Heaven, God will open them.

So our job here is to start noticing those miracles - where our thoughts shift from fear to love. Rest assured that even if we don't realize all those miracles all the time, God does. Our job here is to open our eyes and notice. Notice when you smile at someone on the street and it gives them a spring in their step that wasn't there before. That's a miracle. Notice when you let someone go in front of you in line at the grocery store. That's a miracle. Just notice what you notice and you'll see miracles everywhere. That's what will combine your witness with God's. That's what brings us back together instead of separating us. Miracles are everywhere - just start noticing them!

Day 144

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(127) There is no love but God's.
(128) The world I see holds nothing that I want.

Miracles I'm noticing:

Today's text does a great job in defining the world I see. The world I see is built by the ego, and everything the ego tells us that we need will hurt us. Although the ego urges us again and again to get things, it leaves nothing, for what we get it will demand of us. It is programmed to exist in a scarcity mentality, and, since it is based on fear, it sees separation instead of unity - separation from the things as well as the people. What we think we need will merely serve to tighten up our world against the light, and render us unwilling to question the value that this world can really hold for us.

The Holy Spirit knows that everything we really need He provides for us, and will renew them as long as we have need of them. He will take nothing from us as long as we have any need of it. But He really knows that everything we need is temporary, and will last only until we step aside from all our needs and realize that we already have whatever it is we really need.

It's so much easier, then, to leave all our needs to Him. Under His guidance, we will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is always on the journey's end, which is His goal.

Today's text also tells us that whenever we are tempted to undertake a useless journey that would lead away from light, remember what we really want, and say:

The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ, and where else would I go? What need have I but to awake in Him?

As I think more about the distinction in my everyday life between fear and love, I'm reminded of a story from Monday's and yesterday's local paper about a small school here in North Dakota where three of the graduating seniors have qualified for and will be competing in the state track meet about 200 miles away from their town. That's a great accomplishment for a small school, and something every athlete works and trains hard for. The problem is that that school's graduation ceremony is scheduled for Friday night at 7 p.m., and there's no way the students could possibly get back in time, even if they flew. The students were being forced to choose between competing at the state track meet and graduating, and all three of them chose the track meet.

Delaying the ceremony one hour would allow them to be back in time to graduate with their class. But the school board on Monday was adamant about keeping the start time where it was. According to the article, announcements already had been sent to out-of-town family and friends. The school board president added that "it's unfortunate for [the three students.]"

But on Tuesday it was reported that the other 15 graduating seniors and the parents of all the seniors had petitioned the school board for a later start time so the class could graduate together. According to the school board president, “The entire senior class and their parents are in support of changing the time. I want to do what’s in the best interest of all.”

Now I don't fault the school board president. It is evident to me that he is operating in a fear-based mode. He knows what he wants and it's to adhere to the rules, even at the expense of what's best for everyone. When others helped him see that love would provide a better outcome, he was persuaded to change his mind. It really is that simple. Love and light can provide a safe and happy outcome to any challenge, and the way to change the world is to change our minds.

Today's text goes on to say that we should follow the Holy Spirit (love) in joy, with faith that He will lead us safely through all dangers to our peace of mind this world may set before us (pressures to do the "right" thing as the president of the school board, for example).

That small act by the North Sargent High School seniors and parents is changing the world and bathing it in love and light. That's surely a miracle in real life! Thanks to the three athletes for following your hearts - and to the classmates who stood for what they believed in as well. You're a great example of miracle-mindedness!

Day 143

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(125) In quiet I receive God's Word today.
(126) All that I give is given to myself.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I love today's reviews because they are so simple, yet so profound. The words "quiet" and "receive" are very powerful because for many of us we aren't familiar with either of them. We were talking at our course gathering last night about how busy everyone seems to be - it's almost like a badge of honor. Kids are involved in so many activities and it seems summer is almost more busy than the school year. So quiet is almost counter intuitive to many of us. And, along those lines, the word "receive" is important because it goes a step further than just hearing.

I have made my 2007 mantra "Listen and Allow," which, to me, is similar to receive. In both cases I have to believe that I am worthy of the Word of God and all the other gifts that come along with that. In quiet it becomes easier to believe in my own worthiness, and therefore to not just hear, but also to receive - and allow.

The second review is equally profound for me because it includes me in everything I give. As I give to others, I automatically receive because of the oneness and inclusion the course reminds me of. I have often thought of my mother as a martyr - someone who would give everything to everyone else at the expense of her own needs; but when I remember today's second review I realize that it is not for me to judge what she does because it is given to herself as well. The reminder for me in this review, then, is not to judge anyone or anything else but just to allow. What we give ("good" or "bad," then) is given to ourselves.

Always wonderful conversation and much to consider after our Tuesday night gatherings!

Day 142

Today's Review:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(123) I thank my Father for His gifts to me.
(124) Let me remember I am one with God.

Miracles I'm noticing:

Being thankful and grateful gives a totally different vantage point from which to see everything. Today's text reminds us that "the past can cast no shadow to darken the present, unless you are afraid of light." And as I remember that, it becomes easier and easier to see people and situations only in the present - only in the light. Any time I find myself not open to what I currently see in front of me, I am reminded that it is probably the past through which I am seeing that person or that situation - either his past or mine. That should really be a reminder to me any time anything upsets or frustrates me. There should never be an opportunity to be frustrated or upset unless it's being shrouded in shadows from the past.

Today's text also says "To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present. The cloud that obscures God's Son to you is the past, and if you would have it past and gone, you must not see it now. If you see it now in your illusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there."

The present is the miracle. Seeing my brothers in the light instead of in the darkness I've created through my own nightmares is certainly what I would choose instead. Every circumstance is an opportunity to practice miracle mindedness. As I choose the light - love - peace - oneness, I choose the miracle.

Day 141

Review IV

Introduction

Now we review again, this time aware we are preparing for the second part of learning how the truth can be applied. Today we will begin to concentrate on readiness for what will follow next. Such is our aim for this review, and for the lessons following. Thus, we review the recent lessons and their central thoughts in such a way as will facilitate the readiness that we would now achieve.

There is a central theme that unifies each step in the review we undertake, which can be simply stated in these words:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

That is a fact, and represents the truth of What you are and What your Father is. It is this thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself. It is this thought that fully guarantees salvation to the Son. For in his mind no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares. Lack of forgiveness blocks this thought from his awareness. Yet it is forever true.

Our mind holds only what we think with God. Our self-deceptions cannot take the place of truth. So do we start each practice period in this review with readying our minds to understand the lessons that we read, and see the meaning that they offer us.

Begin each day with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace. Open your mind, and clear it of all thoughts that would deceive, and let this thought alone engage it fully, and remove the rest:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

Five minutes with this thought will be enough to set the day along the lines which God appointed, and to place His Mind in charge of all the thoughts you will receive that day.

After our preparation, we are merely to read each of the two ideas assigned to us for that day's review. Then we are to close our eyes, and say them slowly to ourselves. There is no hurry now, for we are using time for its intended purpose. Let each word shine with the meaning God has given it, as it was given to us through His Voice.

Each hour of the day, we are to bring to our minds the thought with which the day began, and spend a quiet moment with it. Then repeat the two ideas we practice for the day unhurriedly, with time enough to see the gifts they contain, and let them be received where they were meant to be.

We add no other thoughts, but let these be the messages they are. We need no more than this to give us happiness and rest, and endless quiet, perfect certainty, and all our Father wills that we receive as the inheritance we have of Him. Each day of practicing, as we review, we close as we began.

God offers thanks to us who practice thus the keeping of His Word. And as we give our minds to the ideas for the day again before we sleep, His gratitude surrounds us in the peace wherein He wills us be forever, and are learning now to claim again as our inheritance.

Today's Lesson:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(121) Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
(122) Forgiveness offers everything I want.

Miracles I'm noticing:

Yesterday at my radio show I played songs in celebration of the Fargo Marathon runners. One of the songs was Martina McBride's "Anyway" and that's what I thought of when I was doing my first meditation this morning. Here are the words to that song:

You can spend your whole life building
Something from nothin'
One storm can come and blow it all away
Build it anyway

You can chase a dream
That seems so out of reach
And you know it might not never come your way
Dream it anyway

God is great
But sometimes life ain't good
And when I pray
It doesn't always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
I do it anyway

This world's gone crazy
It's hard to believe
That tomorrow will be better than today
Believe it anyway

You can love someone with all your heart
For all the right reasons
In a moment they can choose to walk away
Love 'em anyway

God is great
But sometimes life ain't good
And when I pray
It doesn't always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
Yea - I do it anyway

You can pour your soul out singing
A song you believe in
That tomorrow they'll forget you ever sang
Sing it anyway
Yea - sing it anyway

I sing
I dream
I love
Anyway

This song represents the way I view forgiveness. Do it anyway. I will remember the truth that my mind holds only what I think with God, so there is no reason I can't do everything anyway. I think this song was inspired by a poem by Mother Teresa, someone who did everything anyway. What a great role model!

Day 140

Today's Lesson:

Only salvation can be said to cure.

"Cure" is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make the body "better." When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body, where it thinks the mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient perceives himself as well.

He is not healed. He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the dream he found a magic formula to make him well. Yet he has not awakened from the dream, and so his mind remains exactly as it was before. He has not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between.

Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.

There is no place where God is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide. This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever.

Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. It is not farther from us than ourselves. It is as near to us as our own thoughts; so close it is impossible to lose. We need but seek it and it must be found.

We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond appearances today and reach the source of healing, from which nothing is exempt. We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.

So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they take. We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing, which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but this can cure. Today we hear a single Voice which speaks to us of truth, where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal, quiet home of God.

With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and listening minds we pray:

Only salvation can be said to cure.
Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.

And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real. This will we learn today. And we will say our prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes, to hear the answer to our prayer be given us as we attend in silence and in joy. This is the day when healing comes to us. This is the day when separation ends, and we remember Who we really are.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I can't help but remember the part in The Secret which has gotten so much criticism in various circles. It's the section on health and healing where the woman cured her breast cancer by truly believing it had never been in her body. Every day, many times a day, she said "Thank you for my healing," and pictured her cancer being bathed in white light. She watched funny movies and didn't let anything but positive thoughts into her mind. And her cancer was "cured" in three months.

There are so many people who believe that kind of thinking is dangerous. How could we possibly cure ourselves of disease? We need pharmaceutical companies and HMOs and medicines and drugs and potions and chemotherapy and radiation. I'm not saying those things don't have their place in the physical healing, but who's to say that people do not have the ability to heal by their minds as well? Today's lesson shows us that the mind is not part of the body. It is used to heal the body.

In three weeks I'm going to be attending Bob Proctor's certification training in Florida and some of the pre-work I've been doing has been studying what Bob calls the "stick man" theory. It was created by Thurman Fleet, a chiropractor in the 1930s. It shows the distinction between the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the body. It is very similar to today's lesson in that it implies that the mind is not the brain, which so many people mistakenly believe. We can learn to change our minds and change our lives, which today's lesson also tells us when it refers to true healing.

I spoke yesterday to the tri-state IAAP convention participants (IAAP is International Association for Administrative Professionals) and it was an amazing experience. I felt like this was the best me I've been as far as my speaking engagements goes. As I learn to integrate what I'm learning here with the speeches I'm giving, I find that I'm much more effective and inspiring to my audiences. The speech was called "The 100% Factor: Ideas for Living Your Capacity" and it was based on my book The 100% Factor. I actually sold 50 books yesterday - the most at any one event to date, so I know there was something special about the entire experience; for me, and evidently for the audience.

I understand more all the time how what I learn from this course is practical and applicable to every single part of my life - personally and professionally and everywhere in between. Simply shifting my focus from fear to love has shown me time and again where the emphasis needs to be in my own life. As I live in that space more and more, I invite others to do the same. That will be my intention for the Bigger Small Talk Summit here in Fargo on June 27-28. Using open space technology, we will create an event where the participants set the agenda and everyone will get exactly what they intend. It will be exciting - and a chance to practice what we're learning here.

Miracles really are anywhere and everywhere - we just need to open our eyes to those possibilities.

Day 139

Today's Lesson:

I will accept Atonement for myself.

Today we come to a decision to accept ourselves as God created us. And what is choice except uncertainty of what we are? There is no doubt that is not rooted here. There is no question but reflects this one. There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question, "What am I?"

Uncertainty about what we must be is self-deception on a scale so vast, its magnitude can hardly be conceived. To be alive and not to know ourselves is to believe that we are really dead. For what is life except to be ourselves, and what but we can be alive instead?

It is when we are uncertain of our lives that we need Atonement. Our denial makes no change in what we are. But we have split our minds into what knows and does not know the truth. We are ourselves. There is no doubt of this. And yet we doubt it. But we do not ask what part of us can really doubt ourselves. It cannot really be a part of us that asks this question. For it asks of one who knows the answer. Were it part of us, then certainty would be impossible.

Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt ourselves and be unsure of what we really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this mean except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal is true?

Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. And they will come again until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are.

We have a mission here. We did not come to reinforce the madness that we once believed in. Let us not forget the goal that we accepted. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain. What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be, along with us. Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them, that they may know that they are part of you, and you of them.

This does Atonement teach, and demonstrates the Oneness of God's Son is unassailed by his belief he knows not what he is. Today accept Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of God. It is but this that we are asked to do. It is but this that we will do today.

Five minutes in the morning and at night we will devote to dedicate our minds to our assignment today. We start with this review of what our mission is:

I will accept Atonement for myself,
For I remain as God created me.

In thanks for all creation, in the Name of its Creator and His Oneness with all aspects of creation, we repeat our dedication to our cause today each hour, as we lay aside all thoughts that would distract us from our holy aim. For several minutes let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around the holy Son of God.

Day 138

Today's Lesson:

Heaven is the decision I must make.

In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive, and what we think is real.

Creation knows no opposite. But here is opposition part of being "real." It is this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is true in God's creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear. For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.

Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Decision lets one of conflicting become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. It is spent for nothing in return, and time goes by without results. There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned.

We need to be reminded that we think a thousand choices are confronting us, when there is really only one to make. And even this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. We make but one. And when that one is made, we will perceive it was no choice at all. For truth is true, and nothing else is true. There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the truth.

Choosing depends on learning. And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer us. Decisions are the outcome of our learning, for they rest on what we have accepted as the truth of what we are, and what our needs must be.

In this insanely complicated world, Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices we have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive and prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If we could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when we solve this one, the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.

The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain? Who hesitates to make a choice like this? And shall we hesitate to choose today?

We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being, brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.

Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight, we reaffirm the choice that we have made each hour in between. And now we give the last five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. As every hour passed, we have declared our choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. And finally, we close the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:

Heaven is the decision I must make. I make it now, and will not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want.

Miracles I'm noticing:

When it is broken down as clearly as today's lesson is, it seems easy to decide what it is we want. We want Heaven. But when people are asked that simple question: "What do you want?" so often they can't come up with an answer. It's too broad a question. And all our past baggage keeps us from feeling we deserve to have anything - or that past baggage makes us feel entitled to have everything without doing anything to earn it.

But maybe we don't have to do anything to earn Heaven - we merely have to make the choice to accept it. The text for today talks about our function in Heaven being creating. If we don't choose Heaven, we end up with our earthly function which is destruction, according to the ego, which also says that we have no function in Heaven. The ego would destroy us here and bury us here, leaving us as nothing and with nothing. When it is feeling overtly savage, the ego offers us hell instead of nothing. Gee - that doesn't sound like a tough decision to me.

Today's text says that we as ego really are "hell-bent" on proving that we (ego) are right and we will give up everything Heaven offers in order to be right about our view of reality. We have made up our own definition of Heaven and to our ego minds Heaven is the threat because it would mean that everything we have made up is wrong.

But wouldn't it be more desirable to have been wrong and gain the true meaning of Heaven? On earth there are so many times I can remember in my work where people would choose their present circumstances - miserable as they are - over any opportunity for things to be better if they made some changes because the unknown was scarier to to them than the current conditions which, although miserable, were known to them.

It reminds me of a quote by King Whitney, Jr.:

To the fearful [change] is threatening, because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring, because the challenge exists to make things better.

I see many people in the fearful mindset, especially as it relates to work. The text today tells us that the ego invests heavily in the past, and believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. Its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. This means that we must pay for the past in the future, and the future is created by the past, making them continuous without an intervening present. The ego tries to preserve its image of the past by responding as if it were the present. If we all followed the ego's dictates, we would react to everyone as if they were someone else, and this prevents us from recognizing them as they truly are - right now, in the present. And we receive messages from them - right now in the present - out of our own past because we are forbidding ourselves to let the past go.

No wonder we have so much judgment in the present!

The Spirit teaches us that we always meet ourselves, and the encounter is holy because we are. The ego teaches that we always encounter our past, and because we saw that past through unholy eyes, the future cannot be anything but the past, and the present has no meaning.

All we have is NOW, and we can make new decisions and choices NOW to ensure a completely different future. If we can begin to see our function in time as one of healing, we will emphasize the only aspect of time in which healing can occur - that's in the present. Healing cannot be accomplished in the past. It must be accomplished in the present to release the future. And - we still get to be right!! :)

Choosing Heaven is something each of us can do every day in every minute. And that will release the future to be what it is - which is more amazing that we could ever dream up in our ego minds. That's certainly a miracle!

Day 137

Today's Lesson:

When I am healed I am not healed alone.

Healing is the opposite of all the world's ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states. Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone.

Sickness is isolation, for it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make the separation real, and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh, which is can not surmount.

Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. But healing demonstrates that truth is true. The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real.

Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness is the name of truth, but not in truth itself. Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing but offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.

Just as forgiveness shines away all sin and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws that hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered. And the laws can be no longer cherished nor obeyed.

Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter, are the means by which the Holy Spirit urges you to follow Him. His gentle lessons teach how easily salvation can be yours; how little practice you need undertake to let His laws replace the ones you made to hold yourself a prisoner to death. His life becomes your own, as you extend the little help He asks in freeing you from everything that ever caused you pain.

And as we all let ourselves be healed, we see all those around us, or who cross our minds, or whom we touch or those who seem to have no contact with us, healed along with us. We are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift that we receive when we are healed.

Those who are healed become the instruments of healing. Nor does time elapse between the instant they are healed, and all the grace of healing it is given them to give. What is opposed to God does not exist, and who accepts it not within his mind becomes a haven where the weary can remain to rest. For here is truth bestowed, and here are all illusions brought to truth.

Today we ask that only truth will occupy our minds; that thoughts of healing will this day go forth from what is healed to what must yet be healed, aware that they will both occur as one.

We will remember, as the hour strikes, our function is to let our minds be healed, that we may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God.

Yet we must be prepared for such a gift. And so we will begin the day with this, and give ten minutes to these thoughts with which we will conclude today at night as well:

When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would share my healing with the world, that sickness may be banished from the mind of God's one Son, Who is my only Self.

Let healing be with us this very day. And as we rest in quiet, be prepared to give as we receive, to hold but what we give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that were ever imagined. Now we come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. Nor will we let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our purpose with this thought:

When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would bless my brothers, for I would be healed with them, as they are healed with me.

Miracles I'm noticing:

As I think about today's lesson and my experiences here in Chicago, I see many opportunities to reflect on the healing that I sense is taking place in me. Although I got very little business from this conference (and that was certainly my intent), there were many times when people did come to my booth that they felt they had been drawn there. I spoke with almost exclusively women, and most of them were looking for something more for their own careers than they were finding at their current positions. They were attracted to the booth for several reasons - something about the word "Transformational" in our name (Bock's Office Transformational Consulting) or the Bob Proctor materials on the table (which they recognized from The Secret) or maybe just the candy. But whatever drew them in, they knew there was more going on when we started talking.

I was able to give away five or six of my POWER cards (using the acronym: Purpose, Open-Mindedness, Wisdom, Energy, Responsibility) and the four questions from the reality checklist on the back (1) What do you want, 2) What are you doing to get it, 3) How is it working, and 4) What might you do differently?). When I was able to explain our 3-D process (Discovery, Design, Deliver - wrapped in Dialogue) they really got it. They were engaged. They understood. And I got better at giving the overview more quickly and more engagingly. So I know the people who got the story got more than just the story. I got healed in that conversation and so did they. I was able to relay my passion to them and they got it.

I understand that there is more going on in our exchanges than meets the eye - and I realize, too, that there is a need for what we are proposing - I'm just not sure if this is the venue - in among all the fancy packaging and the slick statistics and corporate hoopla. We at Bock's Office are telling the truth, and those who are ready to hear it are hearing it. They want to work with us - they want to use our business model for themselves and become independent consultants and coaches because they can see the passion and ability to heal themselves.

Now to engage a paying client. I think as I continue to heal myself, I will find myself in more situations to share my healing. Maybe that's a better way to think about selling my services - sharing my own healing. Let's see how the Law of Attraction works for that idea!

Day 136

Today's Lesson:

Sickness is a defense against the truth.

No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic.

Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret, magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.

Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to us, quite unsought, which makes us weak and brings us suffering. It is a choice we make, a plan we lay, when for an instant truth arises in our own deluded minds, and all our world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are we sick, that truth may go away and threaten our establishments no more.

Sickness proves the body is not separate from us, and so we must be separate from the truth. We suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are we made one with it. Thus is our "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that we might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled.

Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks us live, but cannot overcome our choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.

God does not know of our plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which we thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. We can but choose to think we die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin.

Such is the simple truth. It does not make appeal to might nor triumph. It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile our attempts to plan defenses that would alter it. Truth merely wants to give us happiness, for such its purpose is. It knows, with perfect certainty, that what God wills for us must be received.

It is this fact that demonstrates that time is an illusion. For times lets us think what God has given us is not the truth right now, as it must be. The Thoughts of God are quite apart from time. For time is but another meaningless defense we made against the truth. Yet what He wills is here, and we remain as He created us.

We will give a quarter of an hour twice to ask the truth to come and set us free. And truth will come, for it has never been apart from us. It merely waits for just this invitation which we give today. We introduce it with a healing prayer, to help us rise above defensiveness, and let truth be as it has always been:

Sickness is a defense against the truth. I will accept the truth of what I am, and let my mind be wholly healed today.

Healing will flash across our open minds, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from our dreams nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in our minds. They will be healed of all the sickly wishes that they tried to authorize the body to obey.

Now will we realize the body is healed. The body should not feel at all. If we have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.

The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws we made it serve before. We need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If we let our minds harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, we have again misplaced ourselves, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick.

Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

I have forgotten what I really am, for I mistook my body for myself. sickness is a defense against the truth. But I am not a body. Any my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I am currently in Chicago at an organizational development summit, where Bock's Office has a booth at the Expo. I have spoken with several people here who have started talking about some of the messages from The Secret, or have been attracted to me because they want to talk about deeper challenges or opportunities at their companies than the surface things. I know there is no accident here. One woman came over to talk to me about her parents having raised her as a Christian Scientist, which she told me means they don't believe in hospitals or medicine. She had a falling out with her family because she believes there are times and places for medicine. I found it almost ironic that she was introduced to The Secret by her father who told her about it to extend an olive branch, and to show her that there is middle ground between their beliefs. I chuckle to myself because it is almost opposite of my relationship with my mother.

But how did these conversations come to that point? I know it is because I attracted them. As I see how this works in a situation where I know no one, but can talk about anything, I see how we really are more alike than we are different. I've spoken with people who have said they realize people are hungry for the kinds of things they are seeing at our booth. I have talked about my book and about Lance Secretan's book ONE, and also Bob Proctor's materials. It's been a blast and I'm looking forward to this morning's second keynote when Warren Bennis will speak.

Miracles are unfolding all around me and I'm blessed and grateful to be here - both in body and in mind.

Day 135

Today's Lesson:

If I defend myself I am attacked.

Defense gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this we do when we attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as we wish. Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself?

We operate from the belief we must protect ourselves from what is happening because it must contain what threatens us. A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on us to make appropriate defense. The world is based on this insane belief. And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart.

Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. We think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. Is it not strange we do not pause to ask, as we elaborate our plans and make our armor thicker and our locks more tights, what we defend, and how, and against what?

Whatever we defend must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself and needing our defense. What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worth host?

The body has no needs but those which we assign to it. It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and we but say our home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with our very lives.

The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from us, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

Defend the body and we have attacked our minds. For we have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which we think the body must be saved. We will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And we will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source.

These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This is the body's only real defense. Yet is this where we look for its defense? We offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but merely adds to our distress of mind. We do not heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for we fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful.

A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans that it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal that serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.

Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. Self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection, at the cost of truth. The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for, unless it makes its own provisions. The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals.

What could we not accept, if we but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is our good? While we are busy making plans for death, He has been leading us gently to eternal life.

Let no defenses but our present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only our defenses would conceal. Without defenses, we become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. And it will lead us on it ways appointed for our happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. Our followers will join their light with ours, and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with joy. And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses, which availed them nothing and could only terrify.

We will make no plans for how this will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty. For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and from every thought that blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize. And we are given truly, as we say:

If I defend myself I am attacked. But in defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my defenses hide.

Nothing but that. If there are plans to make, we will be told of them. They may not be the plans we thought were needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems which we thought confronted us. But they are answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered yet in need of answering until the Answer comes to us at last.

Try not to shape this day as we believe would benefit us most. For we can not conceive of all the happiness that comes to us without our planning. Learn today. And all the world will take this giant stride, and celebrate with us. Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise defensiveness in us and tempt us to engage in weaving plans, we are to remind ourselves this is a special day for learning, and acknowledge it with this:

This is my Eastertime. And I would keep it holy. I will not defend myself, because the Son of God needs no defense against the truth of his reality.

Miracles I'm noticing:

This is a perfect lesson for me today. I'm getting ready to attend my very first national conference as an exhibitor and I've been a bit apprehensive about what it will be like. I admit I've been planning some defenses - after all, my booth is next to the Wall Street Journal's booth! But I realize that all the planning I've been doing for this show is merely a defense against my own perception. Planning how I will defend myself against all this "bigger" and "more experienced" companies and organizations keeps me from being in the present and just knowing what I know.

I will be who I am and represent my company the best way I know how, and trust that the Answer will be there for me to hear, now that I've got all my attention focused on that instead of my defense.

That is a miracle!

Day 134

Today's Lesson:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Today we will review the meaning of "forgive," for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth.

This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected, when we can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Truth is God's creation, and to pardon that is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. Does this need pardon? How can we forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

Because we think our sins are real, we look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt cannot be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first, by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

It is sin's unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.

Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."

The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies; the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which has been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are we free to follow in the way our true forgiveness opens up to us. For if one brother has received this gift of us, the door is open to ourselves.

There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When we feel that we are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow our minds to dwell on what we think he did, for that is self-deception. Ask instead, "Would I accuse myself of doing this?"

Thus will we see alternatives for choice in terms that render choosing meaningful, and keep our minds as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended them to be, and as they are in truth. It is but lies that would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth; between the world we see and that which lies beyond; between the hell of guilt and Heaven's gate.

Across this bridge, as powerful as love which laid its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster, and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.

Forgiveness must be practiced, for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach us its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world that leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought that it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is our own reality. And yet it joins our minds with the reality in us.

Today we practice true forgiveness, that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lighting up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the reality we share with them. That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it it.

Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his "sins," as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his "offenses" but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself, "Would I condemn myself for doing this?"

Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now we are prepared for freedom. If we have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, we will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weigh across our chests, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains we sought to lay upon our brother, but were laid upon ourselves.

Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will still be many times when we forget its meaning and attack ourselves. When this occurs, we are to allow our minds to see through this illusion as we tell ourselves:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself.

In everything we do, we are to remember this:

No one is crucified alone, and yet no one can enter Heaven by himself.

Miracles I'm noticing:

As I was meditating on today's lesson, I was thinking of people whose "sins" I recall and what I realized is that I want to forgive my own "sin" of judging their actions. There is no one else. And I thought of another booklet my mother sent me from her church, regarding "new age" and "goddess" thinking and how thorough that literature was in disputing anything that would threaten the traditional church teaching. They really do have to be very knowledgeable about "the other side" so they know exactly what they are rejecting. But when I glanced through that booklet, it occurred to me that they way they were describing the "new age" material was very appealing to me. As I recollect - and I read through it very quickly, so didn't really absorb too much of it - it was talking about how "New Age" thinking doesn't seem to know enough about traditional religious teaching because it leaves out anything that is negative, or goes against traditional Western culture. But that's what I love about this teaching. I love that it focuses on the good and the unity of people. I love that this course teaches us not to discount what we have learned from our traditional beliefs, but to add to them.

So I thought about forgiving myself as well for judging anyone's beliefs who may be different from my own. Only then can we all move to a state of love and peace rather than fighting "against" something else. That's what I really don't understand. When each religion believes itself to be the only one, and only has one way of looking at the world, I can't see how we will ever achieve peace. So I must start with myself - forgiving myself for ever believing that my way will be the one way to peace. World peace starts with me - and with my own forgiveness.

That is my miracle for today.

Day 133

Today's Lesson:

I will not value what is valueless.

Today we will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on benefits to each of us.

We do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When we let our minds be drawn to bodily concerns, to things we buy, to eminence as valued by the world, we ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from us the little that we have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world.

Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things we think we want. Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more. The laws that govern choice we cannot make, no more than we can make alternatives from which to choose. The choosing we can do; and we must do. But it is wise to learn the laws we set in motion when we choose, and what alternatives we choose between.

There are only two, however many there appear to be. The range is set, and this we cannot change. It would be most ungenerous to us to let alternatives be limitless, and thus delay our final choice until we had considered all of them in time; and not been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice that must be made.

There is also no compromise in what our choice must bring. It cannot give us just a little, for there is no in between. Each choice we make brings everything to us or nothing. Therefore, if we learn the tests by which we can distinguish everything from nothing, we will make the better choice.

First, if we choose a thing that will not last forever, what we chose is valueless. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a value that is real. If we choose this, we are deceived by nothing in a form we think we like.

Next, if we choose to take a thing away from someone else, we will have nothing left. This is because, when we deny his right to everything, we have denied our own. We therefore will not recognize the things we really have, denying the are there. Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss, and nothing more.

Our next consideration is the one on which the others rest. Why is the choice we make of value to us? What attracts our minds to it? What purpose does it serve? Here it is easiest of all to be deceived. For what the ego wants it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that we may see how "innocent" it is.

Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer, which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will believe that he has served the ego's goals.

He who would still preserve the ego's goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictate of his guide. This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?

And so we come to the criterion for choice that is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego's goals to come between the real alternatives. And thus you do not realize there are but two, and the alternative you think you chose seems fearful, and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.

All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.

Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real. Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes each begin with this:

I will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find.

And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unencumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought:

I will not value what is valueless, for what is valuable belongs to me.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I've heard Marianne Williamson refer to today's lesson in some of her speeches - especially the part which says we don't ask God for too much - we ask Him for too little. It also brings to mind some of the controversy over The Secret - the part which says we concentrate too much on material things.

I believe that if we are valuing "stuff," then we are putting our value on that which is valueless. As today's lesson says, that "stuff" will fade away. But the choice we make for what has value has only two criteria: that we not choose this "stuff" and that what we choose is for "all" or "nothing." There is no in between. Choosing is easy when we remember that all things are valuable or valueless, and worthy or not of being sought entirely or not at all.

As I remember today's lesson, it will be easier to put my whole heart into those things I really desire. Instead of "stuff," I can see now that the things I desire are closer to "happiness," which is internal, than "stuff," which is external and time-bound.

I'm on my way to Chicago this morning for the Best of OD Summit and I'll remember this as I drive the 9 hours. What a great opportunity to be quiet and listen!