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16 Friday Oct 2020
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Tag Archives: Forgiveness
Lesson 297 Forgiveness Is The Only Gift I Give
24 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in ACIM
II. SECTION 8. What is the Real World?
Lesson 297. Forgiveness Is The Only Gift I Give
- Forgiveness is the only gift I give because it is the only gift I want. And everything I give I give myself. This is salvation’s simple formula. And I, who would be saved, would make it mine, to be the way I live within a world that needs salvation, and that will be saved as I accept Atonement for myself.
- Father, how certain are Your ways; how sure their final outcome, and how faithfully is every step in my salvation set already and accomplished by Your grace. Thanks be to You for Your eternal gifts, and thanks to You for my Identity.[1]
There are times I get a bit peeved with A Course in Miracles – repeating the same lessons, changing the wording a bit here and there, but still the same thing. This morning I caught myself thinking, Boy, am I glad the year in the Course is going to be over soon! Here we go again, another lesson on forgiveness.
While some people find repetition reassuring and calming, I get bored and cranky with it. Tell me something new! Can we go beyond forgiveness, please? But this is mind-training, Holy Spirit reminds me. Any great athlete, writer, scientist, any professional in any kind of field at all, realizes that repetition, practice, and becoming one with the chosen goal is the only way to accomplishment. Of course, I said. Of course. Forgive my ignorance, my arrogance.
I realize that forgiveness is indeed the only gift I give to receive. Beyond my basic human ego needs, which are wearyingly multitudinous, forgiveness is all I crave and the only thing I give to receive. For example, when I give my brother a few dollars, he is a few dollars richer, and I have a few dollars less. But when I wrap up forgiveness and tie it with a pretty bow and offer it to my brother, not because he is especially evil, but simply because he is in a separated state from God, I forgive myself for being in the same state. I cannot accept that beautiful package of forgiveness until I give it to my brother. It is the most loving gift we can offer one another here in the illusion because it establishes our mutual and true Identity in God.
As long as I dwell upon the lies, spite, greed, mockery, inhospitality, meanness, crude unmannerly ways, and general lack of goodness in my fellow human beings, I am not only denying their Sonship, but refusing to recognize my Self as the Son of God I was created to be. Whether the brother I offer forgiveness to accepts it or not, when I give it to him, it is mine! He cannot snatch it out of my hand and refuse to reciprocate. He cannot refuse to acknowledge it and toss it aside. When I recognize him as a Son of God and forgive the role that he plays in the ego in this realm, we are both forgiven. For him to keep it, he offers it as well.
In today’s lesson, we learn how to live in a world that needs salvation. Silver and gold do not compare, roses and diamonds are not going to cut it – forgiveness is the only gift we give. Within my circle of holy relationships, a brother is despised by his family for past wrongdoings. Nothing he does to make up for those unfortunate events changes their attitude toward him. Holy Spirit asks us to release this kind of relationship to Him. This is not a sacrifice, for our Heavenly Father seeks not to be appeased. We simply recognize the true nature of the special relationship, which withholds forgiveness and cherishes grudges. We cannot heal them, but Holy Spirit promises to do just that when we give the gift of forgiveness and move on!
Dear Heavenly Father: Let me not grow tired of my lessons
in forgiveness, for they teach me how to live in this world that needs
salvation. Let my heart and mind learn
that Love seeks Love – Love does not seek spite and grudges and
resentments. Love seeks Love – Love does
not exist in the vacuum of ego alliances that would use the past to project
unto the present and future. Love seeks
Love – Love does not exist in the dishonesty of building cases against another
and forming sides. Love creates union,
love overlooks, love understands. Let forgiveness
shine out through me and give itself to all, for mercy is the closest that we
come to love in this ego world. In
Jesus’ name. Amen.
[1] A Course In Miracles, Workbook for Students, 297. Forgiveness is the only…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, p. 447
Lesson 288 Let Me Forget My Brother’s Past Today.
15 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in ACIM
PART II. SECTION 7. What is the Holy Spirit?
Lesson 288 Let Me Forget My Brother’s Past Today.
- This is the thought that leads to You and brings me to my goal. I cannot come to You without my brother. And to know my Source, I first must recognize what You created one with me. My brother’s is the hand that leads me on the way to You. His sins are in the past along with mine, and I am saved because the past is gone. Let me not cherish it within my heart, or I will lose the way to walk to You. My brother is my savior. Let me not attack the savior You have given me. But let me honor him who bears Your Name, and so remember that It is my own.
- Forgive me, then, today. And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness. He cannot be less holy than can I, and you can not be holier than he.[1]
This lesson is one that would give us all pause if our efforts to seek God would put us on a higher plane than our brothers! For they are our saviors – each and every one of them teach us, perfect us, test us, and prove our love for God and for our Selves.
Our brothers do not seem to be our friends, let alone our saviors, Lord! They abandon us in our hour of greatest need, fail to understand us when we simply need a bit of alone time; deny our right to setting boundaries, and mock and make fun of our efforts to grow and become all we can be.
It is much easier to relate to the historical Jesus who was always kind and good, healed the sick, cleansed the leper, and cast out devils. There He is tucked neatly away in history – we did not know Him personally; time and distance has removed any grating traits or unpleasant personality quirks from our awareness. This Jesus makes a good Savior.
Certainly our brothers have their virtues, but Lord! They are infuriating. Certainly you cannot be speaking of the people I know. This one constantly talks about herself and her grandchild to the point of making me want to gag. Could she be my savior? This one has done his best to manipulate me through silent treatments, snubs, and cutting remarks for years. How could he possibly be my savior? And those people in that organization, Lord! How could those bloated-with-their-own-sense-of-self-importance brothers possibly be my saviors? So and so called me for years in the middle of the night blathering to me about people I didn’t even know, and I am supposed to call him my savior? And those rude people who came to my house, ate my food, and sprawled on my couch, and then just pack up and leave without saying good-bye – are they really my savior, Lord? The ex-boyfriend who cheated on me; the ex-husband who didn’t pay child support or send his children birthday cards; the preachers who tried to molest me when I was a kid – how can they possibly be my savior?
Yet the lesson idea for today is the thought that leads the way to God and brings us to our Father. We cannot come without them. To have God, we must recognize that we are one with our brothers. It is their hand that leads us on the way to God. We must see our brothers’ wrongdoing even as we wish to see our own – gone, washed away with the past, never to be thought about, spoken about, or brought up again. We must not cherish their cruel jealousies, their lies, hypocrisies, meanness, unfairness, ridiculous self-posturing, sexual escapades, or infidelities within our minds. We must stop building cases against them and encouraging others to despise them. We must put down our weapons and see past their egos, asking Holy Spirit to open our eyes to their holiness and purity. Otherwise, we lose our way to God.
Our brothers are our saviors. We are not saved without them. We will forget and forgive their pasts and honor them who bear the name and likeness of God, for when we forgive and forget their pasts, we are forgetting and forgiving our own acts of ego and separation.
Astonishingly, in today’s lesson Jesus throws Himself right into the mix. He asks us to forgive Him! You will know, Jesus says, that you have forgiven me, when you behold your brother in the light of holiness. Jesus says that our brothers cannot be less holy than He is, and that we cannot be holier than our brothers. Meaning that we are in no position to preach at them, condemn them, or call them infidels. We are called to see them and us as a whole, and as one in Christ. As long as we see our brothers as separate, we are separate.
What did Jesus do that I must forgive him? He did not come into my heart like I was told He would and chase away all the darkness and make me pure and holy with no real effort on my own part. He pointed the way to my salvation, but He did not deliver me from the process nor spare me the saviors I chose to teach me the hard lessons that brought me back to the path to God. He stands by me through time but does not liberate me from my ego or the egos of my saviors. I want my way back to God to be a cool breeze, while Jesus has made it more like a brisk wind! I have to face my own darkness; I have to forgive those I do not want to forgive in order to be forgiven. And in doing so I have to forgive Him.
The thought of not forgiving Jesus tears at my heart. How could I not forgive Him whom I love and cherish and adore? And yet He insists that as long as I see my brothers in less than a holy light, I have not forgiven Him, nor have I forgiven myself.
I pray then for such forgiveness!
[1] A Course In Miracles, Workbook for Students, 288. Let me forget my…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, p. 441
Lesson 215 – Love is the Way I Walk in Gratitude
03 Saturday Aug 2019
Posted in ACIM
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Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now
REVIEW VI
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Lesson 215
- (195) Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
The Holy Spirit is my only guide. He walks with me in love. And I give thanks to Him for showing me the way to go.
I am not a body. I am free, for I am still as God created me.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude. When I choose love, I am undermining the insane complications of the ego. The ego will never lie entirely – it would be too easy to see through – instead it blends truth and lies so cleverly that the lies and the truth look appear as one. Every special relationship in my life – family, friendships, professional, and carnal alike – have been poisonous smoothies the ego offers to take the place of the love relationship.
The relationships of the ego drive us insane. Sometimes people seem genuine; the next time you run into them, they won’t meet your eyes or smile. You’ll share some good news with them, and they will find a way to deflate you. They remind you of the past; building cases on long-gone trespasses in the interval between reunions; they don’t like the way you look, or you do not measure up in one way or the other. It could be a thousand different things, and yet you are in the dark, not knowing, – bewildered, wondering – what in the world did I do or say that turned them against me?
We are lovers and givers, according to the Course, being Sons of God, having the spirit of God, how could we be otherwise? At 34, I realized that somewhere along the line, I could no longer consider myself either. Silent treatment, lies, mind games, digs, mockery, manipulation, and outright hostility – at home, at work, in all my relationships, had worn me out. Eventually, it was too-dah-fucking-loo to liars, manipulators, cheaters, users, and those who hid hostility behind silence, and sly, hooded looks. The joy and freedom of stepping out of those so-called relationships far outweighed the semblance of love and affection that they sometimes offered.
Nasty emails, blatant accusations, suspicions, and dark insinuations – although a slap in the face – still seem like gifts. When you know the case, you can at least try to correct it. The clincher, however, is this: Truth and falsehood artfully combined – are impossible to sort through. There is no saving it, no matter how special.
On Thursday, I planned to make smoothies for the brothers at our Course study group. The iced coconut milk, frozen coffee cubes, and heavy whipped cream blended into a thick, frosty answer to the heat and humidity. However, in my distraction, I put two heaping teaspoons of salt in the blender instead of sugar. One sip, and I was forced to toss the whole delicious-looking thing. Having no more coconut milk, a new coffee smoothie with substitute ingredients replaced the original, but oh the pangs of regret!
This homey example is a good lesson on the reasoning behind why all relationships, special and otherwise, must start new. When the ego poisons our love, we must start fresh. We cannot sort through the lies and the truths, the envy and resentment, the joys and sorrows, any more than we can remove the salt out of an otherwise delicious smoothie.
Apostle Paul writes in II Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new has come: The old is gone, the new is here!” A cross-reference provided by biblehub.com, recalls Isaiah 43:18: “Do not call to mind the former things; pay no attention to things of old.” The Course teaches that the meaning of forgiveness is choosing to remember only the loving thoughts from the past – the ones you gave and those given you. The rest is forgotten, undone by Holy Spirit, as we bring darkness to light and show our willingness to forgive.
Forgiveness, another word for love, is selective remembering. It is based not on the ego’s dark and fearful shadows of the past, but the Holy Spirit’s selection, which is always loving, pure, and innocent. For me, the exercises provided in our lessons exposed hurts, fears, projections, and resentments that had sullied my relationships for years, especially the relationship with my Self. When I first started this Course study, I thought how simple and easy it would be. I would study the Course and finish another novel in my spare time. However, to expose the ego in oneself, to bring all that darkness to light, is one of the most arduous, time-consuming tasks imaginable. One brother from our study group says it reminds him of rooting out dandelions!
Let us learn to walk in gratitude with forgiveness, which is synonymous with Love in this realm. Let us become new and accept our brothers as new. Loving them and forgiving them so we can receive and keep the love and forgiveness offered to us. It sounds fairly undemanding, but the ego’s resistance makes the practice of this at least a one-lifetime endeavor.
It is not a Course for the faint of heart.
Lesson 210 – I Choose the Joy of God Instead of Pain
29 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in ACIM
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Part 1
Undoing the Way We See Things Now
REVIEW VI
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Lesson 210
- (190) I choose the joy of God instead of pain.
Pain is my own idea. It is not a Thought of God, but one I thought apart from Him and from His Will. His Will is joy, and only joy for His beloved Son. And that I choose, instead of what I made.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Personal Notes and Application: I choose the joy of God instead of the pain of losing another “dad,” another family member who died without our ever truly knowing and loving him. We bring the dark past to the light of the Holy Spirit and we ask for the joy of God instead of this pain. It was with us all day – as we visited our family and spent time with our loved ones – this underlying bewilderment of all that was lost, seemingly forever. I have been practicing the holy instant in the spare moments – on the trip here and yesterday throughout the day. Admittedly, at times the practice feels mechanical, and yet there are times it feels glorious and liberating – there he is, my dear and innocent father-in-law, in the holy instant with me, stunned and bewildered, but there at least where there is love and light and goodness, instead of that other place devised to keep us eternally separated from our true Selves.
When the troubling accounts began, I forgot to choose the joy of God instead of pain. I could feel my stomach knotting, a tension in my chest and shoulders, a steeliness in my mind that felt like hatred. Forgetting my prayers of quietness and peace, I spouted bitterness, my mind reeled with it. There was a false spirit of camaraderie, joining in with the others, throwing another log on the fire of meanness from the past. I chose the joy of God again, but only later, when I remembered. I know where the pain comes from – this realm of separation and despair. I can deny it all – this dream and this illusion, and instead of activating the past, I can choose to live in this joy-filled moment and enjoy our family, be thankful for the friends who come to visit, the kindnesses and love. How do I navigate through this realm and not get sucked in by the fear and hatred? My sister-in-law says we must forgive and not bring all that stuff up to rehash it again and again, and she is right. It does nothing but keep it alive in our minds, not healed, not undone, still harmful and dis-easeful, stressing our systems and doing us no good.
Yesterday our daughter and I discussed the Course – the concepts of the illusion, special relationships, and salvation from separation. She said she had always believed in what the Course says; she just didn’t know how to put it into words. Now we have the words. Now we have the instruction. Now all we have to do is study and apply!
Lesson 207 – I Bless the World Because I Bless Myself
05 Friday Jul 2019
Posted in ACIM
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Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now
REVIEW VI
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Lesson 207
- (187) I bless the world because I bless myself.
God’s blessing shines upon me from within my heart, where He abides. I need but turn to Him and every sorrow melts away, as I accept His boundless Love for me.
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
Personal Notes and Application: Today there is little time to explore the thorny grief and sorrow of losing a father whom we have come to love only through abstraction and forgiveness. That perhaps will come later after the demands of house and property, packing and travel, family and funeral. At this time, we will bless the world because we bless ourselves by spending time with God, where He abides within our hearts, where we can turn to Him and every sorrow and conflict melts away as we accept His boundless Love for us.
Let me meet my father-in-law in the holy instant. Let me welcome him with open mind and arms – forgetting and forgiving the hardships and hurts from the past. Let me see only his true Self, a Son of God, created holy and innocent and eternal. In Jesus name. Amen.
