Lesson 152

The power of decision is my own.

No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.

You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can truth have exceptions? If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief or joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.

Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first, the second has no meaning. But without the second, is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false. And truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.

This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices that do not appear to be entirely your own. And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you.

As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind; in all awareness and in all response. This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the truth apart from falsehood, and the false kept separate from the truth, as what it is.

Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? God made it not. Of this you can be sure. What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind that lives within a body that must die? You but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. He is not mad. Yet only madness makes a world like this.

To think that God made chaos, contradicts His Will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life; all this is arrogance. Humility would see at once these things are not of Him. And can you see what God created not? To think you can is merely to believe you can perceive what God willed not to be. And what could be more arrogant than this?

Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is. The power of decision is our own. Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. And it will take the place of self-deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son.

Today we practice true humility, abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove it arrogant. Only the ego can be arrogant. But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness, its changelessness and its eternal wholeness, all-encompassing, God’s perfect gift to His beloved Son. We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are; and lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love.

The power of decision is our own. And we accept of Him that which we are, and humbly recognize the Son of God. To recognize God’s Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived. And in humility the radiance of God’s Son, his gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father’s Love, his right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as our own.

Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false, and only truth is true. We think of truth alone as we arise, and spend five minutes practicing its ways, encouraging our frightened minds with this:

The power of decision is my own. This day I will accept myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be.

Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions, as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us. And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God, as it was meant to be.

In patience wait for Him throughout the day, and hourly invite Him with the words with which the day began, concluding it with this same invitation to your Self. God’s Voice will answer, for He speaks for you and for your Father. He will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the truth of God for self-deceptions, and God’s Son for your illusions of yourself.

INITIAL INSIGHT: “Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.”

Oh, my dear God, this is the most wonderful of lessons! I am so grateful to Jesus for this. I refer to this lesson frequently because it is the answer to why I am having any particular experience. Jesus is completely uncompromising in his words in this lesson. If something is in my life, it is there because I made a decision for it. Nothing is exempt from this. And if there is something missing, it is because I chose to omit it.

The responsibility for my life lies in my decisions, the choices I make. Sometimes the cause is apparent and I see how I invited a certain experience through the beliefs I was holding. Other times it is not so clear and I must ask for help in understanding how I brought an experience into my life. There are some experiences that are decided on for the lessons they bring to me but no matter what occurs how I choose to experience it is up to me. I can resent and hate the experience or I can love the opportunity it gives to me to further awaken. This choice will determine if I am happy or miserable.

There are occurrences that do not reflect the individual choices, but rather are the effect of our combined consciousness choices. Again, I can use these to heal the mind. I can ask what in my mind supports this choice. For instance, I support the global pandemic with my belief in sickness, suffering, and death. As my mind heals, I let go of these beliefs, and then I am not adding to the problem, but am instead, adding to the correction.

When I first started using this lesson, I turned it on myself. I saw my error and I felt guilty for it. I learned to think of this differently, though, and to realize that I am 100% responsible but 0% guilty. This freed me up to make good use of this lesson. Understanding that I am responsible for everything in my life means that if I don’t like what I see, I can change my mind about what I have decided. I can always choose differently. What is not to like about this lesson! I might see a difference in my life immediately or over the course of time as the lesson sinks in. I may not see a change because the change is occurring on a much larger scale and in a way that is not within my scope of awareness at this time, but it does change.

“Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true.”

It is essential that we accept the second part of this sentence if the first part is to be true. Either this lesson is entirely true with no exceptions or it is not true at all.  This is where we tend to go astray in our thinking. In order for this to be true, we must accept that we are exactly as God created us. Nothing has changed about that. What I am is a Thought in the Mind of God. I am not subject to sickness, to suffering, to death. If any of these things occur and they do occur in the illusion, I have chosen to experience them. They could not happen otherwise because God did not create them therefore, they cannot be part of anything He did create.

Even if we believe this there is a tendency to deny responsibility for certain things that occur in life. The ego response is to look outward for a cause and to project blame for the event on what we find there. I have had situations in my life that I could swear were caused by others. There was a time when I was betrayed by someone close to me and I could not, for the life of me, see how that was my doing. And yet, when I chose to forgive the whole situation, I began to see it differently, and what I saw was not betrayal at all. Even if someone wanted to betray me and believed they had done so, I cannot be betrayed if I don’t believe in betrayal.

Can it be that simple? Yes, it can. It is. Pain is a choice. Grief is a choice. Death is a choice. As long as I believe in these things, I will experience them. When I decide to believe only what is true, the untrue will be wiped away. This is the choice I must make. Let my mind be healed as I accept the Atonement. The Atonement is the plan put in place to restore me to my right mind, but I must decide on it. It will not be thrust upon me.

“You but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality.”

We made this world for the very purpose of experiencing duality. We wanted to have opposites so that is what we have. In this world, we made there is good and bad, happiness and sadness, sickness and health, etc. But in God, there is only God and God is Love, God is Life. This is how we know that God could not have created the world. There are no opposites in God. If my experience is not one of love, joy, health, life, and other attributes of God, then I know that I must have made it. God creates through extension of Himself. He does not create what does not exist within Himself. He is not insane. We are.

DAILY APPLICATION: When can I let this go? When can I change my mind? How long will it take? What do I have to study and practice and do to accept the Atonement? Jesus says that this day, this very day, I can accept myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be. This day. Right now. He also gives me a practice because he knows that I may not be ready to do so. But I could. I could make that choice right now because it is not hard to be what I am. I need the practice only if there is still a desire to be something else. The power of decision is my own.

If I need encouragement, here it is.

Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. And it will take the place of self-deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son.

I gladly release all false concepts of myself, and In true humility, I ask my Self that She reveal Herself to me.  

INSIGHTS FROM HOLY SPIRIT: This is a message from Holy Spirit about something that was a problem for a long time before I finally let it go.

As I was sitting here thoughts of what I need to do today started flooding my mind and I felt a need to get up and do something. When I start feeling rushed, I feel like I must wrestle this thought and subdue it, as if it is a thing outside my mind which I must fight against. I start thinking of ways in which I can get around this time crunch thing, ways I can change my life so that I have more time. And yet, even as I do this, I sense that this is not the solution.

Holy Spirit: Myron, the solution is never going to be to change the world. The world is just a picture of your thoughts. Look at the picture so that you can become more aware of the thoughts that are in error. In this case, you feel that time is to blame for your anxiety. There is just not enough of it. There are so many people and situations that place a claim on your time. It is their fault, too. Do you see a pattern, my friend?

If your life seems cluttered and time your enemy, it is because this is how you have chosen to feel. Choose to dedicate yourself to the kingdom and let Me add all other things to your life. It is not necessary for you to do anything about your life unless I specifically direct you to do so. Place your time under my direction. That is the power of your decision. It is the only decision you need make.

Me: Holy Spirit, I agree, and am grateful for the simplicity. Sometimes, though, I am not certain if I am listening to you or to the ego.

Holy Spirit: My precious child, you choose the voice you are listening to. How can you not know which you chose? If you feel uncertain, it is because you are conflicted about whom you want to hear. The power to decide is always yours. Choose again.