Lesson 97: “I am spirit.”

This lesson says, “Spirit am I, a holy Son of God, free of all limits, safe, and healed and whole, free to forgive and free to save the world.” 

My experience of the religions I was involved in as a younger person was that there was generally pressure to believe a certain way, to follow to the letter the church’s doctrine. 

I also there felt stress about their wanting to convert other people because this was the “right” church, therefore, in order for everyone to get saved, I had to be on the job, converting as many and as often as possible. 

For me, this felt incredibly constricting.  I wanted to run right out of those churches because I never felt at ease or at home with that strict desire to convert others and the insistence that that particular church was better than any other.

The Course is absolutely wonderful for me because the book even says it is not the only right path. 

We just have to choose a path that works to get us to God and do it. 

That means that we don’t ever feel any pressure from the Course’s philosophy about adopting its principles so that we can believe certain things so that God will love us when we believe those “right” things.

I never feel concerned I have to get right out to the world and find people to join the Course group. 

I am grateful we don’t have to do anything like this.  The Course very much doesn’t want us to feel burdened with our list of inner should’s.

We don’t have to do anything we don’t feel called by the Holy Spirit to do and that makes my heart light and happy.  Definitely something that works for me because it gets me out of that ongoing ‘should’ battle that prevents us from doing other more pleasant things that are not framed in ‘should’ language.

That means we can be free to do exactly whatever appeals to us and resonates with our spirit.  We can choose how we want to be and think and act.  It is all our dream and we get to create it as we will.

We all are given the gift- a get- out-of-jail-free card. 

There is nothing hard going on here.  It is all just an easy pass as we go along our way.  We don’t have to do anything unless we are grooving about what it is.

That means we are absolutely free to go forgive and free to save the world if we want and if the holy spirit prompts us. 

There is nothing we have to do because the Course doesn’t have the kind of rules and dogma that we often find in the world.

This means we can enter that relationship we have with the idea that we could save the world if we want, and simultaneously be totally released within it. 

We can show up and do our part in just feeling love; this is how we save the world if we want to. 

But we don’t have to do anything because everything is already perfect as it is.

And therefore, we don’t have to jump through hoops in the world of religion, we can rather, just appreciate that there is absolutely NO pressure anywhere in the Course about doing anything to save the world. 

We do it because it is fun and we like it and we can.