LESSON ONE HUNDRED-NINETY-FIVE

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: The Course text is in bold face. The Guidance is in normal type In His Guidance, He has asked Me to capitalize the pronouns You and We as an acknowledgement of the Divinity of All of Us, an acknowledgement of Equality, an expression of His Love and respect for You. When You see the word ‘YOU’ capitalized in the Guidance, know that He is not just speaking to YOU, He is honoring YOU.

L e s s o n  195

Love is the way I walk in gratitude.  We show Our gratitude for being so Loved by God by loving in return, not just God but All Brothers and All Sisters.

¹ Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. In other words, those who think They’re victims.

The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others. And they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they. How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts! For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause, and who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more? – Yet this is how the ego thinks because it is quite loveless. – Your gratitude is due to Him alone Who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.  The full message of the Resurrection was that since death was shown to be unreal, then so must be all the lesser sorrows.

² It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering. But it is equally insane to fail in gratitude to One Who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is healed and suffering replaced with laughter and with happiness. Nor could the even partly sane refuse to take the steps which He directs and follow in the way He sets before them to escape a prison that they thought contained no door to the deliverance they now perceive.  And yet, how devoted are You to the Lessons which are given to facilitate Awakening?  And when You get a realization do You nurture it and facilitate its unfoldment growing?  The greatest Gift that You can give to God, the Holy Spirit, Me or a Brother, is to Awaken!  If You think there is a better Gift, then You are mistaken.

³ Your brother is your “enemy” because you see in him the rival for your peace, a plunderer who takes his joy from you and leaves you nothing but a black despair so bitter and relentless that there is no hope remaining. Now is vengeance all there is to wish for. Now can you but try to bring him down to lie in death with you, as useless as yourself, as little left within his grasping fingers as in yours.  If You understood but Good, You’d know It is unlimited.

Because You’ve limited Your minds, limits do govern Your world.

⁴ You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. Love makes no comparisons. And gratitude can only be sincere if it is joined to love. We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom. It will never be that some are loosed while others still are bound, for who can bargain in the name of love?  In the dream You do play favorites, all in the name of so-called ‘love’.  For the Love of God it surely isn’t.

⁵ Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. And let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you-the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death. All these go with you. Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off in our awareness from the unity we share with them, as they must share with us.  Even I am not truly Free until You All Awaken.

⁶ We thank our Father for one thing alone-that we are separate from no living thing and therefore one with Him. And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is Himself completion. We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing and we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us.  All Things are connected, and this Connection is known as Heaven.  Therefore, hell must be separation.

⁷ Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest a while. We offer thanks for them. For if we can direct them to the peace that we would find, the way is opening at last to us. An ancient door is swinging free again; a long forgotten Word re-echoes in our memory and gathers clarity as we are willing once again to hear.  Happy Silence fills the mind when You know that You’re connected.

⁸ Walk then in gratitude, the way of love. For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. What more remains as obstacles to peace? The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things and yet retain some other things still locked away as sins. When your forgiveness is complete, you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.  Love has but one Law: freely give and receive just as freely.

⁹ Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice, and revenge. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it, we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit where we are badgered ceaselessly and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future. Gratitude becomes the single thought we substitute for these insane perceptions. God has cared for us and calls us Son. Can there be more than this?  All this and Heaven too.  For Good is never static and constantly keeps flowing and expanding and You are an intrinsic Part of God/Good, which would be quite incomplete without You.

¹⁰ Our gratitude will pave the way to Him and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of. Gratitude goes hand in hand with love, and where one is, the other must be found. For gratitude is but an aspect of the love which is the Source of all creation. God gives thanks to you, His Son, for being what you are-His own completion and the source of love, along with Him. Your gratitude to Him is one with His to you. For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way to God.  And God walks with Us, for He walks as Us.

INTRODUCTION to Lessons 181 – 200

^I181:1 Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your willingness to make your weak commitment strong, your scattered goals blend into one intent. – All commitment does start with this one thing: just the little willingness to do it, whatever it takes.  So even if You do slip and fall, You get right up again. – You are not asked for total dedication all the time, as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain the sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only intermittently. It is experiencing this which makes it sure that you will give your total willingness to following the way the course sets forth.  How did He segue from the little willingness to total?!  (He is laughing hard!)  Only the ego would ask that question!  By now, don’t You think that You should know Me!  Give Me an inch of good, and I’ll give You back a mile of it.  Give Me a drop of Love, and I’ll return to You an ocean.

With what are We dealing but the Divine Qualities of God.  Life, Truth and Love.  Spirit, Soul and Mind.  Holy Divine Principle, Its Joy and Peace.  How precious are the attributes of God.  They are Your treasure.  And where Your treasure is, there is Your Love.

² Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons – by loosening the ego’s stranglehold that it has on You – and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision narrow and too limited to let you see the value of our goal.  What has it been that has severely narrowed Your horizons?

Well, what else but sir and lady ego?

We are attempting now to lift these blocks, however briefly. Words alone can not convey the sense of liberation which their lifting brings. – Yes, that day that Helen had, recounted in “Absence From Felicity”₁ is a perfect example.  Every day – and every moment can and will be like that! – But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself. Your motivation will be so intensified that words become of little consequence. You will be sure of what you want and what is valueless.  The ego will attempt to deter Your progress, tell You that You can’t sustain such an experience.  And yet the ego is always lying.  Do not believe it.  Tell it to shut up, and really mean it!

³ And so we start our journey beyond words by concentrating first on what impedes our progress still. Experience of what exists beyond defensiveness remains beyond achievement while it is denied. It may be there, but you cannot accept its presence.  For You are quite defended against It.  And what does live in the Silence but experience of perfect Love and safety. So we now attempt to go past all defenses for a little while each day. No more than this is asked because no more than this is needed. It will be enough to guarantee the rest will come.  One Holy Moment is but a promise of All which await Your invitation!

[Thank you Dear Brother]

*Sun~Rose is the scribe of the recently published book, “YOU ARE LOVED AND SAFE: PREP NOTES FOR EXPERIENCING GOD’S LOVE“, Jesus’ Guidance on the Miracle Principles

She is also author of, “RADIANT LIFE: RAW FOOD AND THE PRESENCE OF LOVE”

BOTH now available on amazon.com