With every action, we express on some level who we think we are and what we think we are here to do.

Today’s lesson concerns who we actually are.

Because God is all that is, everything He creates is actually an extension of Himself. God is perfect, therefore the “true self” of every created being is perfect as well.

That true self goes by many names. To some it is the Christ, to some the Buddha Mind, to some the Shekinah, and so forth. The light of this true self cannot be altered, modified, or uncreated. Free will gives us the freedom to choose whether or not to express that self, but its light cannot be uncreated; it can only be unchosen.

If I behave like a jerk in any given moment, my true self was not un-created through my loveless behavior. My choice of how to act does not alter God’s creation. My true self, in such a moment, was simply like a file in a computer that I chose not to download.

I am not, however, able ever to delete the file of my true self. For what God created cannot be uncreated, and we always have the chance to return to our goodness in any moment when we have strayed. That is the meaning of atonement—that we can choose again, and download the light at the center of who we are even if it had not been our choice to do so previously.

This is the journey of forgiveness, redemption, and enlightenment. It is the path of choosing—time after time after time—to express the self of which we are capable, the self which God created, even in a sometimes very confusing world.

The miracle is the choice to replace the fear of the ego mind with the love of the spirit mind. It is not always easy, but it is always life-changing.

Marianne Williamson