I am as God created me.I
1. Today we continue with the idea that alone brings complete salvation.
²It is the statement that renders all temptation powerless.
³It is the thought that silences the ego and completely undoes it.
⁴You are as God created you.
⁵This one idea silences the sounds of the world, removes all thoughts it ever held, and makes the world disappear entirely from sight.
⁶With this, salvation is accomplished.
⁷With this, sanity is restored.
2. True light is strength, and strength is sinlessness.
²If you remain as God created you, you must be strong, and the light must be in you.
³He who guaranteed your sinlessness must also be the guarantee of your strength and your light.
⁴You are as God created you.
⁵Darkness cannot obscure the glory of the Son of God. II
⁶You are in the light, and you are strong in the sinlessness in which you were created, and in which you will remain for all eternity.
3. Today we will again devote the first five minutes of every waking hour to attempting to feel the truth about you.
²Begin each hour with these words:
³I am as God created me.
⁴I am His Son eternally.
⁵Now try to reach the Son of God in you.
⁶This is the Self that never sinned, nor made an image to replace reality.
⁷This is the Self that never left its home in God to walk the world uncertainly.
⁸This is the Self that knows no fear, and cannot conceive of loss or suffering or death.
4. Nothing is asked of you to reach this goal except to lay aside all idols and images you have made of yourself;
²To go beyond the long list of traits, both “good” and “bad,” you have assigned to yourself;
³And to wait in quiet expectancy for the truth. III
⁴God Himself has promised that it will be revealed to all who ask for it. IV
⁵You are asking now.
⁶You will not fail, because He cannot fail.
5. If you do not meet the requirement of practicing the first five minutes of every hour, at least remind yourself hourly:
²I am as God created me.
³I am His Son eternally.
⁴Tell yourself often today that you are as God created you. V
⁵And be sure to respond to anyone who seems to irritate you with these words:
⁶You are as God created you.
⁷You are His Son eternally.
⁸Make a strong effort today to do the hourly exercises.
⁹Each one you do will be a giant step toward your release and a landmark in learning the thought system this course sets forth. VI
I This statement perfectly and succinctly summarizes all the teachings of this Course. This is the luminous evangelical message of Jesus. This is the single thought the sleeping mind must remember in order to transcend the dream of separation. Nothing else is needed.
But to accept a new idea, it is necessary to abandon the one that asserts its opposite. Thus, this is a Lesson for replacing beliefs.
I have spent more than ninety days training my mind to use it differently from how I was using it before, and at last I understand the purpose of all that practice. All that work was simply to understand who I truly am and why I believed myself to be something else. Today’s idea explains it to me: “I am the holy Son of God.” This is the answer to the famous question: What am I?
Now I understand why nothing I see means anything: I have been the author of those insubstantial meanings. Yet this disturbs me, because deep within I know they are not true. I have believed my own stories, and now I constantly recall them by bringing them into the present—but what is really happening is that my mind is absorbed in what I once imagined in the past.
Those stories—my thoughts—certainly have no intrinsic meaning, but to me they are very important, because I invented them and thought they were true, and all that I have imagined frightens me.
Now I want to see everything differently, for I have realized that everything I think I see is a form of vengeance against myself. That does not serve me, for it makes me suffer—but now I know that if I relinquish my own interpretations, I can escape all that madness. I need do nothing more than that.
In truth, I do not know what anything is for—but because I am afraid of that emptiness, I try to fill it with my own content.
I want to see! I want to see everything differently!
If God created me perfect, as His holy Son, my mind is the Mind of God; my mind is holy, and I am blessed. My holiness is omnipotent, and in my mind there is only Peace, Light, and Love. What else could there be?
If I think I see something else, it can only be illusions—things that are not true and that I can, and must, let pass; things I must forgive.
The Love of God sustains me, and I am the Love of God.
Because I am the Love of God, I am the Light of the world. My only function in this illusory world is to forgive the illusions I think I see.
It is very important that I do not forget that function; if I do, I will again believe that illusions are real and will harbor resentments—and that is terrible, for resentments completely obscure the Light in me, and I want there to be Light.
There is no Will but God’s Will, for God is all that exists.
God does not command, but in this world of light and shadow it is wise for me to focus my attention on the Light, which is the only real component of my mind, for shadows have no substance.
Before every scene, I will fix my gaze on the Light, not on the shadows, and then I will see miracles. Thus will I become aware that truly there is no problem, nor has there ever been one.
I thought I saw conflict everywhere because I believed that shadows had meaning. Now I know they do not.
Now Light, Joy, and Peace dwell in me.
II Matthew 25:31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory.”
III Like most of the five-minute-per-hour practices, today’s is a meditation exercise. Here you set aside all the attributes you have assigned to yourself, and then, instead of diving into your mind—as in most previous meditations—you simply wait in a state of stillness in which the only thing that occupies your mind is expectancy: the anticipation that your true Self will be revealed to you.
This is the first appearance of a meditation method that will become the predominant form of the Workbook during the second half of the year.
IV Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
V Whenever something disturbs you, say to yourself, “I am as God created me,” and you will witness a titanic struggle. You will witness your ego battling against the truth. The moment you pronounce those words, you will see how the ego, in a thousand different ways, will try to convince you that it is not true.
The first thing it will do is try to persuade you that it is you. That is the hardest part of its entire strategy to overcome, for although its only argument is that it is a voice in your mind—which is true—it in no way follows that this voice is what you are. You are not that voice. In fact, you are no voice at all. That is absurd. It is crucial that you understand this, because if you cannot disassociate yourself from the thought that you are that voice you hear in your mind, you are lost. From that point on, you will begin to see everything on its own terms, thinking that it is you who is thinking—which is not true at all. That is merely the ego manifesting in your mind the very idea that conceived it: the idea of separation.
To understand what is happening, you must notice that in the process of hearing that voice, your will plays no part at all. The voice of the ego always arises in your mind of its own accord, entirely unbidden—it comes suddenly, uninvited, and by itself. And that is what you call thinking. In reality, you are not thinking at all. You are merely witnessing madness; the fact is, you are so accustomed to that voice that you believe it is your reality. Recognize that although that voice appears constantly in your mind and is your most familiar personal experience, it in no way means it is valid, real, or well-guided. That phenomenon merely indicates that you have been deceived all along—nothing more. The proof is that that voice has never given you anything it promised and has never truly made you happy.
Again, be prepared, and you will see that when you say, “I am as God created me,” the voice of the ego will try to convince you that this is fantasy—and that what it says, on the other hand, is as real as the world you see, as all your memories, all your fears, and all your desires. It is not so. All that is as real as the dream you had last night, and now you think your waking dream is reality—just as you thought your nighttime dream was real while you were dreaming it. It is almost the same dream, with small variations, but its substance is identical: this one, too, is made of lies.
Awakening to your true Self may be very easy or very hard—it depends on you. As long as you believe you are in this world, you will always hear the voice of your ego. That will always happen—but it depends on you whether you listen to it or not. Hearing and listening are two very different things, and the only thing that distinguishes them is your will. Your ego wants to hijack your will. Do not let it. You are your will, and your will is free—precisely because you are as God created you.
You are not at all defenseless against the ego; you still have all the power. Use it well, and do not let yourself be deceived by its proposals. Be steadfast in your purpose, and inevitably you will awaken. Moreover, if you choose rightly, while you still dream you will have complete control over your dream and will witness many miracles. You will not awaken by your own effort, but you will be awakened—for that is your will, and your will is always fulfilled, for you are as God created you.
VI This Lesson is the third “giant step” of the Workbook. See the note for Lesson 61 for the list of all the giant steps.