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!