This is another amazing Lesson and a classic forgiveness exercise, where we see that grievances are the problem and miracles are the solution. There is much power and  much promise in this Lesson and it is eminently practical. The entire Lesson is written in the prose of iambic pentameter. All Lessons from Lesson 98 on are written in this kind of blank verse, which reverberates like the beat of a heart with its rhythm of ten syllables per line and the accent on the second syllable. Thus, reading it resonates in our minds in ways that bypass our conscious awareness, somewhat perhaps like listening to a symphony.

This Lesson provides us the key to our release from the hell and darkness that we put ourselves in as a result of our decision to hold grievances. Our grievances may not even be all that apparent to us. We have become so accustomed to judging that we easily dismiss the little annoyances, small irritations and frustrations that cause us to lose our peace, and then wonder why we are feeling so distressed or depressed.

Interestingly enough, the course considers any grievance, no matter how small, no different than murderous rage because either way we are not at peace and therefore not able to experience the miracle. We need to stay very aware of our thoughts and stay very vigilant as to whether we are making a choice for the ego or the Holy Spirit. When we are aware of the decision for the ego that is the time to ask for help of the Holy Spirit that we may choose to see differently. We are turning our interpretation of what we see over to Him for His interpretation. " We will reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stop before it sees." (W.78.2.2) Because it is such a reversal of our conditioned way of seeing, we need His help. Thus we learn that we can be helped to see past " the shield of hate," (W.78.2.3) which hides the miracle.
   

What is the shield of hate? It is when we don't see our brother or ourselves as the Son of God, but instead accept their reality to be a body and personality, separate and different from everyone. It is a projection of our inward condition that we put onto our brothers, and now we see our unhealed perceptions projected onto them. What we now see are the difficulties that we experience with him, the pain we believe this person has caused us, his neglect of us, all the little hurts we have felt in his presence, any bodily flaws, and his mistakes, or even sins, as we perceive them. All these things for which we condemn anyone constitute this shield of hate. It keeps us from seeing the Christ in him. It keeps us from seeing his innocence and thus from knowing our own innocence. It is failing to see that we all share the same nature, both that of the ego and of our spirit. There are no victims and perpetrators. When we side with the 'victim' we are refusing to see this sameness. We are choosing to judge, instead of hearing the call for love in our brother and recognizing it as our own call.

" Perhaps it is not yet quite clear to you that each decision that you make is one between a grievance and a miracle." (W.78.1.1) Each and every decision we make reflects the ego mind, or our right mind where the miracle shines forth in love and forgiveness. When I watch my mind, it is apparent to me that I make constant judgments, hold expectations, make demands, and assign roles and ideals that I think others should accept. When they don't live up to them, I get upset. Yes, bodies do things that seem to justify our anger, but the truth of them is not what the body does. When we only see what bodies do or say, we only see that which is described as the shield of hate. This is the shield that hides the light and keeps us from seeing who our brother really is. It also keeps us in the dark. " Each grievance made the darkness deeper, and you could not see." (W.78.3.4)
   

Our task, on behalf of our own healing and happiness, is to allow the shield to be lowered, so that we can see what has always been there: our brother's true nature, the Son of God shining in the light where he has always been. " We will not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in silence to behold the Son of God." (W.78.2.3). I am the one holding the unforgiving perception of this brother, and now it is up to me to lower this shield of hate by looking at my unforgiving thoughts and being willing to choose the miracle instead. That is why healing any relationship does not take two of us. It only takes healing of my own unhealed perceptions, by letting go of the ego's interpretations. " Let miracles replace all grievances." (W.78) As long as I hold grievances in my mind, which I project onto my brother, I will never see who my brother really is. It is my concept of myself, based on my choice for the ego, that is " a silent barricade before the truth, and hides it from your sight." (T.31.VII.7.1)(ACIM OE T.31.VII.74)
     

" We will not let ourselves be blind to him; we will not look upon our grievances." (W.78.4.2) We stay blind to the Christ that vision shows us in our brother, and thus ourselves, when all we see is our grievances. True vision is hidden by grievances, and thus we stay blind to the truth. Jesus tells us that, in lowering our shield of hate and seeing who our brother is, we are reversing the seeing of the world. (W.78.4.3). In the seeing of the world, we are always only seeing our own grievances. We think that they offer us insights in how people really are and what their motivations are. We give our insights great credibility. We trust our way of seeing, which Jesus says is always wrong! Now we are called to release our misperceptions to the Holy Spirit, Who will reveal to us who our brother really is. We are totally blinded by our own assessment of people. We may have thought of someone as kind and now "see them for who they really are" as if we were led astray by our earlier perceptions, but none of our perceptions are the truth. We are always just projecting our own misperceptions onto others, believing that if we make them the guilty ones, somehow we can be free of our guilt.
 

When they seem to upset us, our responsibility is to look at the roles and expectations we have assigned to them. " Then let ask of Him Who knows this Son of God in his reality and truth, that we may look on him a different way, and see our savior shining in the light of true forgiveness, given unto us." (W.78.7.1) Ask with deep sincerity to see the truth. In some situations, it may seem like it takes a lot of time to really give up our carefully cherished grievances, but Jesus reminds us that it does not matter because that is what time is for. As long as you are using time for this purpose, do not get discouraged if the process seems to go on for months or even years. It need not take that long, but some long-held grievances may indeed be stubbornly held and nurtured, in spite of what seem to be our best efforts to forgive. When we truly ask the Holy Spirit to help us to see the truth of each brother, the miracle comes to the extent of our willingness. It may seem like we take some backward steps in this process, but our motivation increases with each miracle as more and more peace is brought to the mind.

There are people in our lives whom we are asked to select for this exercise. It may be someone we fear, hate, think we love who has angered us, a friend who is difficult to please, or someone who doesn't meet our expectations and the role we have assigned to them. It is our hurt, our disappointment, and our anger that point to the places in us where we are projecting guilt onto our brother. The first step in this process is to take responsibility for the guilt we project and recognize it as ours. By asking for help of the Holy Spirit and doing our part in taking responsibility for our upsets, judgments and grievances, the miracle will shift our wrong-minded perceptions.

As we pick a person to focus on, we recognize that some form of the darkness we see in them is in ourselves. Thus, it is only our own guilt that we are putting on convenient targets. As we consider the target of our projected grievances, we then ask the Holy Spirit to help us see this person as our savior. Isn't that an amazing thought? These very people, whom we sometimes can't stand, have been called into our lives precisely to be our saviors! Jesus reminds us of their importance in our lives, in that they actually hold the key to our salvation so that we can be healed of our guilt. That is not such a stretch when you think about it. How would we ever access our anger if they were not in our lives, pushing our buttons? The anger is already in our own wrong minds. We are helped to see that this is the case through our special love and hate relationships. And as our darkness is brought to the light, we can now see this light in our brothers. Again, the practice is with specific people, but ultimately it is generalized to everyone so that we will come to see all of our brothers as either giving love or calling for love, because it is the love that we see in ourselves that we now see all around us. Behaviors of others may not change, but the interpretations that we give their behaviors will change.

We may experience reluctance to take certain people off the cross to which we have nailed them with our judgments and grievances. The ego claims that we are justified in our anger against them. However, we read in Chapter 30 VI (ACIM OE CH 31 VII), " The Justification for Forgiveness", that anger is never justified. Why? Because, "A ttack has no foundation." (T.30.VI.1.2)(ACIM OE T.31.VII.70) The source of attack is always the ego thought system, but the ego is nothing so it has no foundation. However, pardon is always justified because it does have a sure foundation. There is no real attack because nothing real has occurred, because it is a dream of separation. "But you are merely asked see forgiveness as the natural reaction to distress that rests on error, and thus calls for help. Forgiveness is the only sane response." (T.30.VI.2.7)(ACIM OE T.31.VII.71)
 

If we hold onto our grievances, then we miss the opportunity constantly available to us to see that this person is " more than a friend" (W.78.5.4) and actually is our savior. In fact, this Lesson says that that is his role in God's plan. It does not mean that God has planned any of this, but it is part of the plan that we have set up as our script for our own healing. We have cast the characters for this purpose. It is our script that facilitates our awakening if we make this choice. Yes, we can resist and continue to hold onto our grievances, but in our resistance we chain ourselves to those against whom we hold grievances. Yet as we forgive, we free them and make their freedom our own. (W.78.8.3) Why would we want to keep ourselves chained in this way? " His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him where you laid the lilies of forgiveness." (T.20.II.9.2)(ACIM OE T.20.III.13)
 

Only with the help of the Holy Spirit is our release possible, yet Jesus tells us, " What you have asked for cannot be denied." (W.78.8.1) " And let the darkness be dispelled by Him Who knows the light, and lays it gently in each quiet smile of faith and confidence with which you bless your brother." (T.22.VI.9.11)(ACIM OE T.22.VII.59) All of Heaven rejoices and God thanks us! What a thought. Basically, it is our own thanks, but it is a beautiful metaphor nevertheless. Why would we not go there? How stubborn do we want to be? The ego urges us to keep our grievances, but the ego does not love us. The ego's existence depends on us holding grievances and seeing others as responsible for our pain. The ego's plan is for us to see ourselves as victims of others and at the mercy of outside conditions.
   

My experience with this Lesson is that this is a process and not an event. With practice and true willingness, we can release our thoughts of anger and attack to the Holy Spirit for healing. I have had experiences of working on this practice over several years with some people. One of them recently sent me an email asking ME for MY forgiveness! I had not heard from him for five years and when I finally did, I found that there was nothing to forgive. It was a beautiful demonstration of not getting attached to any outcomes or expectations in our forgiveness work. Remember, it is only for our own healing. It does not depend on anyone doing anything.

Remember, we are asked to apply this Lesson to everyone we meet. Every encounter is a holy encounter. There are no accidents in salvation. Those we are meant to meet we have met and will meet. We can apply this practice to ones we remember from the past and those currently in our lives and anyone we think about or meet.

" The Holy Spirit leans from him to you, seeing no separation in God's Son. And what you see through Him will free you both." (W.78.8.4-5) He sees no separation because there is none. We see differences with the body's eyes, but the Son of God is one Self and we are joined in oneness with all that is. We seem to be fragmented into many forms, but that is not the way the Holy Spirit sees us. He sees no separation in God's Son because there is none.
 

" Be very quiet now, and look upon your shining savior. No dark grievances obscure the sight of him. You have allowed the Holy Spirit to express through him the role God gave Him that you might be saved." (W.78.8.6-8) Our grievances are very loud. They harangue us with their raucous shrieks of what someone has done to us. Yet with forgiveness comes the peace, the joining, the love that embraces the truth of who we are as One Son. Thus, the very person that I chose to exclude from my love becomes my savior, showing me back to the Self that I am. I can be grateful that the images hiding the truth from my mind have been laid aside and in their place is the miracle. (W.78.9.1)
 

" We will remember this throughout the day, and take the role assigned to us as part of God's salvation plan, and not our own. Temptation falls away when we allow each one we meet to save us, and refuse to hide his light behind our grievances. To everyone you meet, and to the ones you think of or remember from the past, allow the role of savior to be given, that you may share it with him. For you both, and all the sightless ones as well, we pray:

" Let miracles replace all grievances."   (W.78.10.1-5)

TEXT

³⁹ The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities. It is therefore a means for developing potentials, which is quite apart from what the potential is used for. That is a decision. The effects of the ego's decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration here, but the Holy Spirit's decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need clarification. The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own vocation.

 

⁴⁰ Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, the ego can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create and therefore does not need the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning. This must be so, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as teachers and learners because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor teacher and a poor learner.

 

⁴¹ Healing is the one ability which everyone can develop and must develop if he is to be healed. Healing is the Holy Spirit's form of communication and the only one He knows. He recognizes no other, because He does not accept the ego's confusion of mind and body. Minds can communicate, but they cannot hurt. The body in the service of the ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur unless the body has already been confused with the mind. This fact, too, can be used either for healing or for magic, but you must remember that magic is always the belief that healing is harmful. This is its totally insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly.

 

⁴² Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. Magic always sees something "special" in the healer which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. He may believe that the gift comes from God to Him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand God if he thinks he has something that others lack. You might well ask, then, why some healing can result from this kind of thinking, and there is a reason for this.

 

⁴³ However misguided the "magical healer" may be, he is also trying to help. He is conflicted and unstable, but at times he is offering something to the Sonship, and the only thing the Sonship can accept is healing. When the so-called "healing" works, then, the impulse to help and to be helped have coincided. This is coincidental because the healer may not be experiencing himself as truly helpful at the time, but the belief that he is, in the mind of another, helps him.

 

⁴⁴ The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. Unless the healer always heals by Him, the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistence since only consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free are whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict and teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always?

 

⁴⁵ Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. The "fearful healer" is a contradiction in terms and is therefore a concept which only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful. Fear does not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions. Healing never does. Fear produces dissociation because it induces separation. Healing always produces harmony because it proceeds from integration.

 

⁴⁶ Healing is predictable because it can be counted on. Everything that is of God can be counted on because everything of God is wholly real. Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by His Voice and is in accord with His laws. Yet if healing is consistence, it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding means consistence because God means consistence. Since that is His meaning, it is also yours. Your meaning cannot be out of accord with His because your whole meaning, and your only meaning, comes from His and is like His. God cannot be out of accord with Himself, and you cannot be out of accord with Him. You cannot separate your self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing His being with you.

 

⁴⁷ The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers, but he is not grateful to them. This is because he thinks he is giving something to them and is not receiving something equally desirable in return. His teaching is limited because he is learning so little. His healing lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness. Learning is constant and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the next. That is because by changing his mind he has changed the most powerful device that was ever created for change.

 

⁴⁸ This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God created it, but you think that you have changed it as long as you learn through the ego. This does place you in a position of needing to learn a lesson which seems contradictory-you must learn to change your mind about your mind. Only by this can you learn that it is changeless. When you heal that is exactly what you are learning. You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by realizing that he could not have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is only the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he can, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self is.

 

⁴⁹ If you see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at all. By changing your mind about his for him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image, or better, an idol which you may worship out of fear but which you will never love. The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will understand it. Understanding is appreciation because what you understand you can identify with, and by making it part of you, you have accepted it with love.

 

⁵⁰ That is how God Himself created you-in understanding, in appreciation, and in love. The ego is totally unable to understand this, because it does not understand what it makes; it does not appreciate it; and it does not love it. It incorporates to take away. It literally believes that every time it deprives someone of something, it has increased. We have spoken often of the increase of the Kingdom by your creations, which can only be created as you were. The whole glory and perfect joy that is the Kingdom lies in you to give. Do you not want to give it? 

 

⁵¹ You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him. To forget me is to forget yourself and Him Who created you. Our brothers are forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of me and Him who created me. Through this remembrance, you can change their minds about themselves, as I can change yours. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. I do not want to share my body in communion, because that is to share nothing. [Would I try to share an illusion with the most holy children of a most holy Father?] Yet I do want to share my mind with you because we are of One Mind and that Mind is ours.

 

⁵² See only this Mind everywhere because only this is everywhere and in everything. It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true. Come therefore unto me and learn of the truth in you. The Mind we share is shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they will be healed. Let your mind shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make them aware of the light in them.

 

⁵³ This light will shine back upon you and on the whole Sonship because this is your proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the Sonship because it is acceptable to Him and therefore to His Sons. This is the true communion of the Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone and, by bringing it to your appreciation, calls upon you to love God and His creations. You can appreciate the Sonship only as one. This is part of the Law of Creation and therefore governs all thought.

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