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control. The ego's very existence depends upon my believing this. The recognition that the world
and everything I seem to experience in it is of my own making brings instant release.

No one consciously hangs on to pain, isolation, fear and guilt. It is the quick forgetting referred to in
an earlier lesson that makes these decisions seem to be unconscious and holds the illusionary world
in place.

As I accept my Self as God created me to be, I free myself from the world of limitation and death.
Only I can make this decision, for it is only I who has made the decision to deny it. Today's lesson is
simply a reinforcement of the lesson, "Heaven is the decision I must make." Today I will practice
remembering that I remain as God created me to be.

I love the first paragraph of this lesson, but it also scares me. I am perfectly willing to accept the idea
that I am responsible for everything in my world, but somehow I am unwilling to accept that I have
the power to change it. Can I really have the power of decision as my own and if so, why do I not use
it? What is wrong with me that I choose misery, guilt and fear instead?

In my meditation this morning I asked Holy Spirit to show me specific places in my mind that I have
chosen to believe that the truth is not true. These were all familiar places to me. I knew they were
there and often I have pretended to myself that I wanted healing and even asked for healing. God
doesn't hear my false words that I use to fool myself; He hears, instead, what is in my heart and so I
choose to believe I can keep these exceptions to the truth and pretend they are the real world I
inhabit.

I am not going to waste any time trying to figure out why I choose pain over joy. I have asked Holy
Spirit to gently remind me throughout the day when I am making these choices. This day I am not
going to pretend circumstances are out of my control and that there is nothing I can do about
certain things in my life. I accept that God did not create me to be fearful and so if I am feeling
fearful I am trying to make my own truth to replace God's Truth. How crazy is that? I am not going to
try to reason with the ego or allow anything to cloud the issue. That is how I've kept these self-
deceptions in place for so long. If it is fear, God did not make it and it is not true.

Lesson 153 “In my defenselessness my safety lies.”

This lesson is one of those that asks us to do the opposite of what it seems we need to do to
function and survive in this world. This is because the ego confuses weakness with strength and
strength with weakness. In believing that we have separated ourselves from God, the only real
source of strength, we believe we are weak. From this belief in weakness, we imagine a world of
weakness. To compensate for this weakness, we make up substitutions for God's strength to cover
or hide the underlying belief that we are weak.

Believing that we have really separated from God brings with it the belief that we have succeeded in
harming God by tearing ourselves away from Him. To God this is impossible, but to a thought system
that believes that separation is possible and real, harm is inevitable. Believing we have harmed God,
we believe guilt is real and punishment is justified. Thus we believe God must be angry with us and
seeks to punish us. So we carry a belief in an angry God and expect His punishment in every
moment.

Lessons by Marlyn Marval Feb 23th thru April 9th 2015