1. What, then, remains to be undone for you to realize Their Presence? Only this, you have a differential view of when attack is justified and when you think it is unfair and not to be allowed. When you perceive it as unfair, you think that a response of anger now is just. And thus you see what is the same as different. Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at all it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form, will hide Their Presence. They are known with clarity or not at all. Confused perception will block knowledge. It is not a question of the size of the confusion or how much it interferes. Its simple presence shuts the door to Theirs and keeps Them there unknown.
2. What does it mean if you perceive attack in certain forms to be unfair to you? It means that there must be some forms in which you think it fair. For otherwise, how could some be evaluated as unfair? Some, then, are given meaning and perceived as sensible. And only some are seen as meaningless. And this denies the fact that all are senseless, equally without a cause or consequence, and cannot have effects of any kind. Their Presence is obscured by any veil that stands between Their shining innocence, and your awareness that it is your own and equally belongs to every living thing along with you. God limits not. And what is limited cannot be Heaven. So it must be hell.
3. Unfairness and attack are one mistake, so firmly joined that where one is perceived the other must be seen. You cannot be unfairly treated. The belief you are is but another form of the idea you are deprived by someone not yourself. Projection of the cause of sacrifice is at the root of everything perceived to be unfair and not your just deserts. Yet it is you who ask this of yourself, in deep injustice to the Son of God. You have no enemy except yourself, and you are enemy indeed to him because you do not know him as yourself. What could be more unjust than that he be deprived of what he is, denied the right to be himself, and asked to sacrifice his Father’s Love and yours as not his due?
4. Beware the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else’s guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else? And is it innocence that you attack upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not safer to believe that you are innocent of this, and victimized despite your innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there must be loss. Someone must lose his innocence that someone else can take it from him, making it his own.
5. You think your brother is unfair to you because you think that one must be unfair to make the other innocent. And in this game do you perceive one purpose for your whole relationship. And this you seek to add unto the purpose given it. The Holy Spirit’s purpose is to let the Presence of your holy Guests be known to you. And to this purpose nothing can be added, for the world is purposeless except for this. To add or take away from this one goal is but to take away all purpose from the world and from yourself. And each unfairness that the world appears to lay upon you, you have laid on it by rendering it purposeless, without the function that the Holy Spirit sees. And simple justice has been thus denied to every living thing upon the earth.
6. What this injustice does to you who judge unfairly and who see as you have judged, you cannot calculate. The world grows dim and threatening, not a trace of all the happy sparkle that salvation brings can you perceive to lighten up your way. And so you see yourself deprived of light, abandoned to the dark, unfairly left without a purpose in a futile world. The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought injustice to the light within, and there has all unfairness been resolved and been replaced with justice and with love. If you perceive injustice anywhere, you need but say:
By this do I deny the Presence of the Father and the Son.
And I would rather know of Them than see injustice, which Their Presence shines away.[1]
The end of injustice starts with me and with you. We no longer let anything about the world strike us with a sense of hurt, pain, or betrayal. We realize our function in Christ is to forgive and show mercy and we welcome all opportunities to do so. It can be as mundane as someone we hold near and dear showing themselves to be selfish and uncaring toward children. It can be the persistent adultery of our father or our mother, our wife, or our husband. It can be war crimes that nearly wiped out our family lines. It can be the neighbors who seem to enjoy rubbing their status, wealth, and good fortune in your face. Childhood abuses, mean teachers, crooked politicians, greed, lust, and corruption – we forgive it all because to not forgive is to fail to recognize our true and holy Selves with Them, the Father and the Son, the holy Sonship and Brotherhood of God Who is with us and for us and is us – now and always.
To embrace truth, we must let go of all that would confuse our perceptions of God’s grace and mercy. To embrace truth, to make the transition to God’s Kingdom, we must see this realm for what it is and deny its ability to touch the Sonship, to have one effect upon the universal innocence of Creation, to wipe our mind clean of all of the warped programming and instilled doctrines of a realm built upon a lie, built upon fear, and lack and loss. Such a realm can only be an illusion – an ongoing cycle that thrives upon blame and guilt, sin, and sacrifice. It is a game that has no winners, offers no hope, and ends in loss for we cannot gain our innocence and purity by taking it away from another. We cannot get to Heaven on the backs of those who did not make it through.
In the happy game of salvation, there are only winners. All pain and sorrow, all the injustice that the world would seem to heap up in piles to make us cry out in dread and terror, the slights and slurs, the cattiness and dogged bitchiness are simply a denial of the Father and the Son.
In your personal devotional habit today, read over this section carefully and personally apply the concepts to your own life. What are you finding hard to forgive? What issues about the world or certain people in the world are you holding in your mind instead of the Father and the Son? As I search my mind, I realize that all the times I laugh and roll my eyes at James’ ongoing house renovations to others, I am not acknowledging the beautiful gifts that his imagination and loving handiwork has brought into our lives. All the times I talk about the indignities a loved one put me through as a child, I am not recognizing the purity and innocence, the holiness and love. And all the ways in which I groom my peevish pets, the ones who do not return phone calls, the ones who chew with their mouth open, the ones who call in the middle of the night just to chatter in my sleepy ears, the ones who complain too much and do too little…To look upon the Father and the Son, I must choose to see only Them. And when I choose to see only Them, my perception is cleansed and I can see the love, the good, the worthy. A wonderful healing takes place for I have opened a channel for miracles.
To understand the concepts in this Course, we must not be cavalier! Of course it is not okay to abuse children, to rape and kill, to be rude and uncaring, selfish, and coarse. But the past is the past and it cannot be undone by sifting through it for nuggets of guilt, seeking to punish and hold others accountable for the ways in which it hurt us and keeps us trapped in the hellishness of blame and shame. As humans, we seek our innocence through the guilt of others; as Christ we find our Innocence, our holy Self through the purity and holiness of others. It is a matter of what we choose to seek and believe about our selves. It is a matter of being willing to forgive what can only be overlooked to move forward. For what I hold against you, I hold against myself. For we are one and this cannot be changed, for this is how God created us.
Today and always let the Presence of the Father and the Son shine away all the lies and illusions of fear, limits, and injustice that the world would heap upon our consciousness. Refuse to get caught up in debates, conversations, and gossip that would obscure the holiness and worthiness of others. Be the one that takes a stand against the low mind, the dimmed wits, and the threatening gloom that would hide the happy sparkle that salvation brings and extends to all.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 26 The transition. X. The end of injustice. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons, visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 