Lesson 213: Review:“I am not a body.  I am free.  For I am still as God created me.”  “All things are lessons God would have me learn.”

This lesson says, “A lesson is a miracle which God offers me, in the place of thoughts I made that hurt me.” 

We commonly cringe when we hear we are in line for getting lessons.  The ego says lessons are difficult and to be dodged. We do everything to get out of the line when it looks like we are assigned to some lesson. We do the whole spectrum of subtle and overt evading of our engaging with lessons.

The ego always associates lessons with true hardship.  The Course teaches us how to get out of that crazy tendency of avoiding lessons.

When we avoid anything, this is just a tactic for avoiding noticing our authentic feelings. 

We want to appreciate that sometimes we may not be ready to process certain emotions.  Therefore, it makes sense sometimes to not consistently do only a mode of managing our feelings by feeling them exactly when they come.  Sometimes we don’t know how to process them in the moment.  In these times we want to be gentle with our emotional processes.

Let’s delicately invite the feelings to be felt and be real when it feels like a good time to do that. 

Storing unprocessed emotions is not ideal for the regular habit.  

The Course teaches us how to get really comfortable processing feelings as well as being careful to be certain we stay in the present moment as much as we can.

Based in the moment, we allow feelings to come over us whenever is helpful. 

Sometimes it helps to just wait until we have space energetically or emotionally when we can truly give time and attention to what we feel.    We definitely want to make sure we give our feelings to God and ask for God to hold our hands when we are processing any feeling that feels difficult.

We want to make sure we don’t avoid habitually processing feelings because our egos generally deem them as tiresome.  We want to get better at learning when our emotions are in need for some processing.

It helps if we pay close attention to when our feelings are raw and vulnerable; and we may need to offer them space for healing in the way of being kind about them. 

We give them expression and appreciate that they are not always pretty and concise.  Sometimes we need to give them a voice in the processing.  It helps to listen to what the feeling is actually saying.  Often they are giving us a message.

It helps incredibly when we have advanced practice and developed skill in processing any feelings we may be avoiding.  We must discover that the lesson is not something we want to avoid because we have a back up plan to dealing with the lesson then it stops being frightening.  The Course teaches us that in response we can process our feelings adequately within our minds as well as with others and with God.

The Course gives us the concept of miracles as lessons. 

The miracle is the shift in consciousness.  The Course says that all experiences are either love or they are a call for love.

Therefore, when we see something that appears to look unpleasant- what the Course is calling our lessons- we in fact have this incredible tool that always works when we are in a pattern of avoiding some problem of lack of love. 

All we need to do is bring the miracle.

When we bring the miracle ourselves we have perfect healing.  Sometimes other people shift as well because the miracle consciousness is contagious.  But if not in some tangible shift, when we bring the miracle ourselves, our own shift in consciousness- to one of love-  works.  Then, we get all the infusion of love we desire.  We have the answer within us all the time.

God gives us the way to get out of our feeling of conflict about whatever is happening in the gift of the miracle.