LESSON 101 God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.

1. 1Today we will continue with the theme of happiness. 2This is a key idea in understanding what salvation means. 3You still be­lieve it asks for suffering as penance for your “sins.” 4This is not so. 5Yet you must think it so while you believe that sin is real, and that God’s Son can sin.

2. 1If sin is real, then punishment is just and cannot be escaped. 2Salvation thus cannot be purchased but through suffering. 3If sin is real, then happiness must be illusion, for they cannot both be true. 4The sinful warrant only death and pain, and it is this they ask for. 5For they know it waits for them, and it will seek them out and find them somewhere, sometime, in some form that evens the account they owe to God. 6They would escape Him in their fear. 7And yet He will pursue, and they can not escape.

3. 1If sin is real, salvation must be pain. 2Pain is the cost of sin, and suffering can never be escaped, if sin is real. 3Salvation must be feared, for it will kill, but slowly, taking everything away before it grants the welcome boon of death to victims who are little more than bones before salvation is appeased. 4Its wrath is boundless, merciless, but wholly just.

4. 1Who would seek out such savage punishment? 2Who would not flee salvation, and attempt in every way he can to drown the Voice which offers it to him? 3Why would he try to listen and accept Its offering? 4If sin is real, its offering is death, and meted out in cruel form to match the vicious wishes in which sin is born. 5If sin is real, salvation has become your bitter enemy, the curse of God upon you who have crucified His Son.

5. 1You need the practice periods today. 2The exercises teach sin is not real, and all that you believe must come from sin will never happen, for it has no cause. 3Accept Atonement with an open mind, which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God’s Son. 4There is no sin. 5We practice with this thought as often as we can today, because it is the basis for to­day’s idea.

6. 1God’s Will for you is perfect happiness because there is no sin, and suffering is causeless. 2Joy is just, and pain is but the sign you have misunderstood yourself. 3Fear not the Will of God. 4But turn to it in confidence that it will set you free from all the conse­quences sin has wrought in feverish imagination. 5Say:

6God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.

7There is no sin; it has no consequence.

8So should you start your practice periods, and then attempt again to find the joy these thoughts will introduce into your mind.

7. 1Give these five minutes gladly, to remove the heavy load you lay upon yourself with the insane belief that sin is real. 2Today escape from madness. 3You are set on freedom’s road, and now today’s idea brings wings to speed you on, and hope to go still faster to the waiting goal of peace. 4There is no sin. 5Remember this today, and tell yourself as often as you can:

6God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.

7This is the truth, because there is no sin.