I am not a body. I am free. For I remain as God created me.
1. W-197 «It can be but my own gratitude I earn».
²Who should be grateful for my salvation but myself?
³And how but through salvation can I find the Self to Whom my gratitude is due? I
⁴I am not a body.
⁵I am free.
⁶For I remain as God created me.
I This lesson reveals a disconcerting and profoundly liberating truth: everything you know is your own mind. There is nothing “outside” of it. What you see, what you believe you live, what you interpret as the world, is nothing but the reflection of your thoughts. And that is why gratitude—like forgiveness, love, or suffering—can occur only within you.
When you choose to save yourself—that is, when you choose another way of thinking—the one who experiences that light, that relief, is you. No one can be grateful on your behalf for the gift you have given yourself. For the peace you attain does not come from changing external conditions, but from changing the story you tell yourself about them. And that story is your choice—always.
This is why treating yourself with love, compassion, and truth is not an act of indulgence but of spiritual intelligence. Because at the end of the day, only you live with yourself. Only you know what you tell yourself. And therefore, only you can feel the gratitude that arises when you stop attacking your mind and begin to see it as it truly is: free, innocent, and as God created it.
Father, now I remember the Love we felt as we beheld one another;
now I remember the Love we were and still are.
How could I ever have forgotten?
My heart overflows with gratitude.