Lesson 85: Review: “My grievances hide the light of the world in me.”  “My salvation comes from me.”

When we forget that our salvation comes from within then there is a disconnect from our inner knowing that we are lovable.  

This is definitely the most tragic way to live life.  When we think salvation is from outside of us, we are definitely looking to someone else to fill this role.  Then we are always trying to live by someone else’s standard.  We forget that God is within and that we have the already perfect state of lovability within and it never changes no matter what.

Living by someone else’s standard means we will try to measure up- to get something that the ego can never accomplish.  The world teaches us that we will never be up to par and we will always be lacking.  This state of mind while we live is devastating.  This could be our unfortunate circumstance for sure.  The Course says that God so loves us because we are made in His image.  We are created with the same energy as God and therefore we are innocent and inherently good.  This means that we don’t have to look to anyone else to try to make us acceptable.  We are already fully ideal as we are because God says so and God created us.

This means we don’t even have to consider what the world thinks or religion or whatever standard our egos might want to try to live up to.

We can simply tune out from their messages and any behavior we might make to gain their good will. 

We don’t have to try to gain salvation because we already have it.  The Course says that since God created us, we are whole and healed as we are.  We don’t have to do or say anything to gain the favor of whatever Godly person evaluates whether we are worthy to receive salvation because God already decreed us so.  Therefore, we can just sit and relax and take it in that we have our salvation already in us.

We don’t have to go to the temple to try to convince God to pay attention to us and give us some favor.

When we feel that way then we can never escape the feeling of lacking something. 

When we are not sure whether God will give us His salvation in the end or now then we will  spend all of our time just hoping that God will come to help us.  But we will always sit in doubt because we will not be sure this will happen in the end.  This is a terrible way to live because we will always feel unsure and anxious. There will never be an end to our trying to do enough to win God’s favor in the form of our salvation when we believe God may pass us over in handing out salvation.  This is such a terrible way to live when we spend all of our time worrying.  And, we all do this at some level even if we are not conscious of it in the moment.

The fact is that this anxiety is always there unless we get to a place of simply being sure within that we are totally loved by God and that there is no error in the logic that salvation is ours because God deems us worthy. 

The Course says we are worthy no matter what we do,  This means everything because we are no longer sitting in a constant state of doubt.

This means we can spend our time being light and happy instead of wondering whether we will be in God’s good graces on any given moment.  

This is why this particular lesson is ever so important to integrate.  We need to have our certainty surely present when we go through our day to day existence in order to live in peace.  This doubt will nag at our hearts and wear us down emotionally over time if we don’t attend to it.  This is why this is so important to learn this deeply.  We need to get to a place where this awareness is vividly present in our minds so we don’t wallow in self debasement and go to the lengths of suffering over our being uncertain and anxious.

We are learning to totally give our selves the benefit of the doubt.  We have to trust in God’s defining of our innocence and perfection.  This is ever so important in order to do the Course.  When we remember that we are healed and whole as we are, then we feel good enough about ourselves to practically apply this lesson of inner knowing that we are just right exactly as we are.