In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. ²We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. ³If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive, and what we think is real. Creation knows no opposite. ²But here is opposition part of being “real.” ³It is this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. ⁴It is not really thus. ⁵Yet what is true in God’s creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. ⁶Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear. ⁷For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. ⁸Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come. Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. ²Decision lets one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. ³Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. ⁴It is spent for nothing in return, and time goes by without results. ⁵There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned. You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make. ²And even this but seems to be a choice. ³Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. ⁴You make but one. ⁵And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all. ⁶For truth is true, and nothing else is true. ⁷There is no opposite to choose instead. ⁸There is no contradiction to the truth. Choosing depends on learning. ²And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. ³In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. ⁴But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. ⁵Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. ⁶Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are, and what your needs must be.

Today’s idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. ²For healing is the opposite of all the world’s ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states. ³Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. ⁴It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone. Sickness is isolation. ²For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. ³It gives the body final power to make the separation real, and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh, which it can not surmount. The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them. ²It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. ³In sickness must he be apart and separate. ⁴But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all Its parts intact and unassailed. ⁵In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered, and without the unity that gives It life. ⁶But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God’s Son. Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. ²But healing demonstrates that truth is true. ³The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. ⁴To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. ⁵Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. ⁶So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real. Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. ²Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. ³Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing but offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.

My Facebook feed showed me this beautiful prayer from a book called "The Heart of A Course In Miracles" by Michael Mirdad. I love this so much and just wanted to share. Be still, and know that I AM God Be still and know that I AM Be still and know that I Be still and know Be still. This reminds me of the significance of both the “Be Still and know that I am God” and the I am statement. Sending love! ❤️

No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. ²For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. ³Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. ⁴When this is seen, healing is automatic. ⁵It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear. Sickness is not an accident. ²Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. ³And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. ⁴The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. ⁵The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself. Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. ²They are secret, magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. ³They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. ⁴In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done. Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? ²All this cannot be done unconsciously. ³But afterwards, your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself. It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your “reality” that makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. ²But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion. ³Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force, as far as your desires are concerned. ⁴Mistake not this for fact. ⁵Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. ⁶They aim at doing this, and it is this they do.

“Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? ²And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. ³It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. ⁴And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish. You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening because it must contain what threatens you. ²A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. ³The world is based on this insane belief. ⁴And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. ⁵For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart. Defense is frightening. ²It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. ³You think it offers safety. ⁴Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. ⁵Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, what you defend, and how, and against what? ²It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. ³It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself and needing your defense. ⁴What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? ⁵What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host? Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing of fear. ²It has no needs but those which you assign to it. ³It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. ⁴Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.