Sunday, May 13, 2007

Lesson 134:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is...

What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is the instrument given for application of the miracle. It is the correction for our faulty way of thinking and perceiving. It shifts the mind from judgment, condemnation, and divisive perception, to the forgiven perspective of sameness and wholeness, where illusions are seen as one call for love and answered simultaneously with the love we are in truth… All for one and one for all as the musketeers say… No one is crucified alone, and yet no one can enter Heaven by himself

We are not of this world. We are at home in God, exactly as He created… We merely dream a dream of a world where we are exiled and beholden to forces not our own, and because we accord it value by our belief in it, this seems to be our reality. It is this perspective what must be forgiven; the mistaken thought that anything not of God, could exist… Here’s the simple part: Doing this is not our job! It is the Holy Spirit’s. We but merely ready ourselves but by bringing our twisted thinking/perception to the Holy Spirit and let them got to be reinterpreted for us. Then we wait with empty hands and open heart…

Now how does this look in this so-called life, , we ask? One must keep in mind that a cornerstone idea of the ego thought system is that someone else is responsible for what is happening to us; our pain, discomfort, fear… Any body will do, as long as it doesn’t rest my shoulders, and spoil my innocent self identity, yes?

In chapter 27 of the text, the Course says: “The ‘reasoning’ by which the world is made, is simply this: You are the cause of what I do. Your presence justifies my wrath, and you exist and think apart from me. While you attack I must be innocent. And what I suffer from is your attack”. So the actual application takes place from truth back to truth but addresses the detour into illusion the mind believes; that is we forgive each other for what has not been done to us. We’re not pardoning or overlooking what others have done to us, or to our ‘families, friends, country~ whatever is an extension of the self-concept, but the belief in the construct of attack all together…

Fundamentally, forgiveness is based on an inner shift in how we see ourselves. If our basic self-concept is in this so-called word of victims and perpetrators, where we are desiring to see ourselves as ‘innocent’, then of course we must believe that others have done to us, sinned against us, and cannot be forgiven. This puts us in a state where it feels we’re being ‘dreamed-up’ by some force outside ourselves and powerless… “No one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming for him. He becomes a part of someone else’s dream. He cannot choose to waken from a dream he did not make. Helpless he stands, a victim to a dream conceived and cherished by a separate mind… (T-27.VII)

Forgiveness is the instrument for remembering our true identity as Christ; for listening for one voice that joins us all in purpose. This, ultimately, allows us to recognize our nature in God; which is complete invulnerability and imperturbability… making is only natural to withdraw the judgments we projected outside ourselves. We begin to perceive the same people or situations differently, for we realize that behind and substantiating each one is the fundamental error or illusion we could separate from our Source. And with this comes a deep recognition that this could not be so.

Forgiveness is the gentle waking dream to replace all that we thought we thought before. We are now living in awareness of our internal guide, the Holy Spirit, which sees only mistakes that need correction…

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself. The evaluation process requires only a little willingness by us to question our interpretation of any given situation…

Do we want to be right or happy? Boy, that one statement from the course, when accepted completely, entirely blows the mind!!! Once considered honestly, one can no longer rely on any previous ideas of what happiness is, but must surrender utterly to God’s Will.

This simple criterion provides the means to shift from the closed to the open mind, allowing the Holy Spirit to show a new and healed perspective. The ‘being right-ness’ of the ego thought system is paid for with our happiness, in trade for the simulated feeling of innocence, loaded on the feeling-drug of ‘having been wronged’…

I love the passage in the Course that says: “Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated…” It hit me like a ton of lead one day while I was watching my children play. I’d been watching and judging for an indefinite time frame ~ till ~god knows~ whenever his mom saw fit to arrive to pick him up, that the kid visiting was a total pain in the ass and the present bane of my existence. The feelings I was having were so far out of kilter from the relative state of peace I was becoming accustomed to as my modes operandi; that it was like a loud speaker went off in my mind, with this phrase from the Course; “Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated!” Suddenly, truly, it sent me into a belly laugh I can still feel…

The Holy Spirit represents a Higher Court, which sees through and beyond, to the simple truth of what we are and nothing we have judged or felt guilty about is seen as real.

All this wasted effort on our part of repairing damage done, thinking what should have been done or will do next time, only serve to reinforce illusion in the mind that is trapped in the cycle of separation, guilt, blame and death which are the ego thought system. This is seeing error as real and then attempting to pardon the case we have already assigned judgment to…

The ‘Higher Court’ merely dismisses the case we’ve made against ourselves… “There can be no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God’s creations is bearing false witness to God Himself… Appeal everything you believe gladly to God’s Own Higher Court because it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. It will dismiss the case against you, however carefully you have built it up. The egos thought system maybe “fool-proof, but it is not God-proof “. (T-5.VI) Today, being Mother’s Day, brings to my mind one of my favs’: the powerful forgiveness lesson we’ll call my identity as ‘being a bad mother’, cherished by guilt and shame, I wore it like a scarlet letter. I remember the texture of the hopeless feeling of unforgivable destiny I used to carry with me around the ‘special relationship’ I had with this identity… When at last, I recognized that I could not keep this identity and recognize myself, the children an all children as God’s creation, I placed my guilty heart upon the alter, for the Holy Spirit’s reinterpretation, to be replace by the truth.

Christ-Love is what I see now, behind the shadows fondly referred to as my children. I feel the deep appreciation and joy that come from seeing my brothers as myself. Only through the Holy Spirit as the source of our sight and interpreter of our so-called lives, can we see forgiveness as it really is… This is the springboard… “All that is asked of you is to make room for the truth. You are asked to make or do what lies beyond your understanding. All you are asked to do is let it in; only to stop your interference with what will happen of itself… undoing is not your task, but it is up to you to welcome it or not… (T-21.II) Let today be a day where we allow all we thought be transformed through our willingness to forgive…

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

what was the child who was visiting doing?

Anonymous said...

I believe that the guilt we suffer as adults when related to our children is the guilt we suffered as children by being punished by the people we cherish so much!

danét said...

The wonderful thing about true forgiveness is that we cease to even remember details and hurts from past situations, but rather, with compassion, we join in a unified purpose of healing and love.

Anonymous said...

That sounds so good!