Part II.1 What is Forgiveness?
Lesson 221
Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still.
- Father, I come to you today to seek the peace that You alone can give. I come in silence. In the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind, I wait and listen for Your Voice. My Father speak to me today. I come to hear Your Voice in silence and in certainty and love, sure You will hear my call and answer me.
- Now do we wait in quiet. God is here because we wait together. I am sure that He will speak to you, and you will hear. Accept my confidence, for it is yours. Our minds are joined. We wait with one intent, to hear our Father’s answer to our call, to let our thoughts be still and find His peace, to hear Him speak to us of what we are, and to reveal Himself unto His Son.[1]
Notes and Personal Application: In yesterday’s devotional discussion, James and I talked about how challenging it is to accept that we are not bodies in a world in which just about everything we do is for our body and the bodies of others. We also discussed how the Course has given us both much inner peace and a sense of certainty of God’s love and devotion toward us, how we have come to understand the role of Jesus in salvation as a role model for forgiveness, as a brother who never forgot His Sonship with God and came to earth to experience humanity to reclaim us who have split from the Kingdom in a simulated reality caught in time.
Still, there are days that we both have a keen concern that while we practice in faith, faith does not necessarily make it true. And no matter how much we think something is true, it does not make it true in the sense of making us or anybody else an authority on God, on Jesus, or Holy Spirit. We know only that the Course rings true in our hearts and minds when we put it into a daily practice and that on a high spiritual plane, it makes sense. For the first time in our lives, we found a practice that we can do every day no matter how much it challenges us, no matter how much we may resist it, that when we do it, it begins to make perfect sense and gives us a kinder, calmer, and more forgiving approach toward God and all of Creation.
While practicing the Course and doing a lesson each day has changed our minds and attitudes in a positive way, it really has not changed the outward appearance or behaviors in ourselves and it has not necessarily solved our problems. While it is love and peace and joy in the relationships we keep in our lives, we have had to let a lot of other relationships go. The only thing that has changed is that we have practiced forgiveness with ourselves and with others. We are both loners and get deeply and perhaps even obsessively involved in our projects, and that has not changed. While my addiction to darkness is not the driving force in my life that it once was, I still am drawn at times to the meaningless tales of death, vengeance, and injustice that fill our Netflix and Prime Video offerings. And there are days I get a little bored and find our daily devotional irksome and farfetched.
Here then is what keeps drawing me back to the Course. This is what keeps me loving Jesus and opening my mind to the Reality of God. God gives me peace that goes past my body, my understanding, and all my experiences. When I quiet my mind and sit still before Him, when I ask Him for peace, I am given peace and it does not go away – ever.
If you were a constant onlooker in my life, it may appear to you that the peace of God leaves me. I get up awful cranky in the morning at times. The other day I growled at Zachary and told him not to even say my name or look in my direction until I had my first cup of coffee. I scowled at James and curled up in a ball on the corner of the sofa and it was not until the caffeine hit my system that I could look at either one of them with affection or appreciation. There are times I will think of someone from my past and remember how much I simply do not like them. It does not mean I have not forgiven them, mind you. It just means that I do not like the role they played as a human. I do not like the way they borrowed money off of me and never paid me back. I do not appreciate the lies they told me. I do not enjoy the fact that they took credit for my work. It was not nice. It did not seem to serve me well at the time, but oh the lessons I learned from what they did. There is nothing like experiential learning, and I remember to thank God for what they taught, to bless them for being my teacher, to absolve them in my mind from all that would otherwise protect projection and crush reality in my mind.
No matter how much I struggle with my humanity there is that Self within that knows that I am loved and cherished by God. I know that there is nothing I can do in my body that will make God love me more or less. His Love is constant and forever and is not dependent upon my actions – it is dependent upon who and what I am.
Peace be to your mind today. Bring your questions and concerns about the Course to Him. Jesus promises that when we ask for truth we will not be given lies. When we ask for Holy Spirit, we will not be given an unholy guide. Let all your thoughts be still as you come before our Father and seek the peace that can only come from Him.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 221. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
the friar patch 