We are so invested in our reality as a body that our entire identity is in the belief that we are these bodies living in a world that is real. We therefore also believe that we die when the body dies. The truth, says Jesus, is that " I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss and I cannot die." (W.84.1.2-3) We see death all around us and look on it as a certainty, but we aren't who we think we are. Our body is not our reality. We have the same characteristics as our Creator. We are love, eternal, formless, and forever as we were created. We have a glimpse of this truth, when we do the forgiveness work and experience the miracles that are our natural inheritance. When forgiveness is complete and the ego's offerings that substitute for the truth are finally released, we are in true perception, or what is called the real world. Jesus tells us that this is what awaits us, when we reach the end of this journey.
 

We believe that Jesus suffered on the cross because we project our ideas about ourselves as bodies onto him as a body. A healed mind feels no pain because there is no guilt in the mind to project onto the body. When the guilt that is in our minds is healed, we will know the truth of our reality as the Christ Self. We remind ourselves of the truth through these Lessons but the only way to experience this is through forgiveness. Thus, we must bring our misperceptions to the truth. We bring our self concepts, which include all of the beliefs about who we are, both the 'good' and the 'bad,' to the light of truth. It is about a willingness to not know, to not control life, to not grasp for certainty, to have a fundamental radical trust that emerges only when we get out of the way and let Him lead us. It means giving up our fixed ideas about everything and asking to be shown how to respond in ways that are helpful.

We still don't completely understand what forgiveness is, and what Jesus is talking about here is beyond forgiveness. Yet it is important that we understand that we can know our reality when we are ready to choose it. Choosing depends on diminishing our fear of Atonement by recognizing the false as false. The love that we are is in our minds, but we have been living with what is false for so long that we have come to think of it as true. Forgiveness is about removing the interference to the love that we are, but our fear of love keeps us in resistance. Resistance keeps us defending what is false so that we may stay invested in the illusion. We do this because we hold a lot of guilt, but what we are feeling guilty about is all false. It interferes with the love that we are. Once the false is released, the love that is in us can come to the fore. What keeps us from this love is when we attack, judge, evaluate, blame, accuse, defend, all to be let go of by releasing what is not true.

Simply affirming the truth has limited value, if we don't apply this teaching to the experiences of the day, where we see ourselves victimized by what someone has said or done. The Course is ultimately practical, and when we apply the Lessons, the results of our application show up in our experience. We are called to apply forgiveness to any situation that makes us feel vulnerable, anything that seems to hurt us psychologically or physically, anything that makes us feel angry or afraid, or even whatever makes us feel excited with anticipation. The idea is that in these circumstances, we are giving our power to what is outside of our own minds. We have forgotten that we must first have chosen to see ourselves as vulnerable. We have allowed our peace to be affected by outside circumstances. When we do have reactions to what seems to be going on around us, the idea is to use them as opportunities for forgiveness.

When we hold grievances, we are saying no to the love that we are. We are seeing in our brothers and sisters our own lack of love. Jesus urges us to " Let him [our brother] be what he is, and seek not to make of love an enemy." (T.19.IV.D.13.8)(ACIM OE T.19.V.d.102) What an important line that is! Every time we attack a brother, or hold a grievance against him, we are making him an enemy and blinding ourselves to the love that we all are. It keeps us from knowing our Self as Love. We can never know the truth about ourselves as long as we hold grievances in our minds and see ourselves as separate from others and hold beliefs that our interests are separate. We will only remember who we really are as we release our grievances and recognize our sameness. We do this by acknowledging our ego perspectives, not by pretending we are spiritual, but by turning our dark thoughts over to the Holy Spirit. It takes a high level of honesty and courage to take responsibility for everything that we perceive as starting in our own minds. Our reluctance to do that is based on our wish to make others responsible for our condition. However, in order to heal, we must see that everything starts in our own minds. Our minds are the cause and the world is the effect. Cause and effect are never separate.

" You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment." (T.3.VI.3.1)(ACIM OE T.3.VIII.63)
 

" If you but knew the glorious goal that lies beyond forgiveness, you would not keep hold on any thought, however light the touch of evil on it may appear to be. For you would understand how great the cost of holding anything God did not give in minds that can direct the hand to bless, and lead God's Son unto his Father's house." (T.29.V.6.1-2)(ACIM OE T.29.VI.35)
 

The realization that everything we have learned and have been conditioned to believe is wrong leads to humility. When we surrender our control over our lives and not constantly grasp for certainty, we will learn to lean on Him and follow Him in trust. Yes, we may know much about the ego's world of separation and how to 'succeed' here, but what do we know about a lasting joy and peace that is not dependent on anything in this world? As we learn to let go of our way and be willing not to know and to be taught, we allow the presence of the Holy Spirit to guide us out of our dream of separation and back to the awareness of our spiritual reality.

" You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all. Instruction in perception is your great need, for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept it, for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher." (T.11.VIII.3.1-8)(ACIM OE T.10.VIII.76)
 

" If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very gently and lead you back to God." (T4.I.4.7)(ACIM OE T.4.II.11)
 

Temptation is nothing more than a desire to hold onto our way of seeing a situation and justifying our grievances. We must have actively chosen to hold the grievance, but now we are holding someone else responsible, even though we made the decision to throw away our peace and project responsibility for that decision onto someone else. This is what makes us alien to ourselves. We now think of ourselves as attacking-egos instead of spiritual beings. Now we are showing a willingness to at least open our minds to the possibility that our way of seeing is wrong, and we do get lots of opportunities given us to exercise our willingness to forgive. God has given us many holy ones to help us with this task, and these holy ones are all of those whom we think of, who cross our path every day, whom we talk with, and even those we have not yet met.  Jesus now appeals to us to use the power of our minds to take responsibility for our decisions and be willing to bring our darkness to the light of truth.

" The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught." (T.IN.1.6)(ACIM OE T.In.2) It is beyond what can be taught because it is beyond the world entirely. The term "love," when used in this strict sense, does not apply to our earthly lives at all, but it does apply to who we really are---the Son of God, living in joyous communion with our Father in our heavenly home. Although love, as it really is, cannot exist on earth, it can be reflected here, and the form it takes is forgiveness. " It is the reflection of God's Love on earth." (W.60.1.5) Forgiveness is a bridge between the world of illusion and the reality of God's Love. As such, forgiveness itself, unlike love, is an illusion, a " happy fiction." (C.3.2.1). But the illusion of forgiveness "is the means by which the truth is represented temporarily," (T.27.III.5.5)(ACIM OE T.27.IV.33)  " a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth." (C.3.2.1) Forgiveness is," an earthly form of love," (W.186.14.2) a way in which the formless love of Heaven can be expressed in a world of form.
     

When we talk of loving everyone unconditionally, it might be more correct to talk of forgiving everyone unconditionally. To believe that we must love everyone unconditionally is simply to experience more guilt and the result would be a feeling of failure because no one here loves in that way until the ego is released. True love awaits us at the top of the spiritual ladder back home. There is no effort involved in reflecting love as it happens through us and not by us, when we bring our darkness to the light and clear the way for love to shine through.

While teaching the meaning of love is not the aim of the Course, teaching forgiveness is. Jesus goes on to say, " It [the Course] does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance." (T.IN.1.7)(ACIM OE T.In.2) So we must be willing to do the work. Forgiveness is the means by which the blocks to the awareness of love's presence are removed, as this passage from the Psychotherapy supplement tells us, " No one who learns to forgive can fail to remember God. Forgiveness, then, is all that need be taught, because it is all that need be learned. All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else." (P.2.II.3.1-3)

This path takes us from unforgiveness (a block to love), to forgiveness (love reflected on earth, which removes the block), and then to the remembrance of God's Love in Heaven. "[Forgiveness] will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him." (W.60.1.6)" The bottom line is that kindness and gentleness to all people, regardless of their situation, should be our guiding principle while we do our work.

TEXT

⁹¹ Only you can limit your creative power, but God wills to release it. He no more wills you to deprive yourself of your creations than He wills to deprive Himself of His. Do not withhold your gifts to the Sonship, or you withhold yourself from God. Selfishness is of the ego, but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how God created it. The Holy Spirit is the part of the mind that lies between the ego and the Soul, mediating between them always in favor of the Soul. To the ego, this is partiality, and it therefore responds as if it were the part that is being sided against. To the Soul, this is truth because it knows its fullness and cannot conceive of any part from which it is excluded.

 

⁹² The Soul knows that the consciousness of all its brothers is included in its own, as it is included in God. The power of the whole Sonship and of its Creator is therefore the Soul's own fullness, rendering its creations equally whole and equal in perfection. The ego cannot prevail against a totality which includes God, and any totality must include God. Everything He created is given all His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being with Him. Creating is the opposite of loss, as blessing is the opposite of sacrifice. Being must be extended. That is how it retains the knowledge of itself.

 

⁹³ The Soul yearns to share its being as its Creator did. Created by sharing, its will is to create. It does not wish to contain God but to extend His Being. The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function. Its fullness cannot be contained any more than can the fullness of its Creator. Fullness is extension. The ego's whole thought system blocks extension and thus blocks your only function. It therefore blocks your joy, and that is why you perceive yourselves as unfulfilled. Unless you create, you are unfulfilled; but God does not know of unfulfillment, and therefore you must create. You may not know your own creations, but this can no more interfere with their reality than your unawareness of your Soul can interfere with its being.

 

⁹⁴ The Kingdom is forever extending because it is in the Mind of God. You do not know your joy because you do not know your own self-fullness. Exclude any part of the Kingdom from yourself, and you are not whole. A split mind cannot perceive its fullness and needs the miracle of its wholeness to dawn upon it and heal it. This reawakens the wholeness in it and restores it to the Kingdom because of its acceptance of wholeness. The full appreciation of its self-fullness makes selfishness impossible and extension inevitable. That is why there is perfect peace in the Kingdom. Every Soul is fulfilling its function, and only complete fulfillment is peace.

 

⁹⁵ Insanity appears to add to reality, but no one would claim that what it adds is true. Insanity is therefore the non-extension of truth, which blocks joy because it blocks creation and thus blocks self-fulfillment. The unfulfilled must be depressed because their self-fullness is unknown to them. Your creations are protected for you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your mind, knows of them and can bring them into your awareness whenever you will let Him. They are there as part of your own being because your fulfillment includes them. The creations of every Son of God are yours since every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole.

 

⁹⁶ You have not failed to add to the inheritance of the Sons of God and thus have not failed to secure it for yourselves. If it was the Will of God to give it to you, He gave it forever. If it was His Will that you have it forever, He gave you the means for keeping it, and you have done so. Disobeying God's Will is meaningful only to the insane. In truth it is impossible. Your self-fullness is as boundless as God's. Like His, it extends forever and in perfect peace. Its radiance is so intense that it creates in perfect joy, and only the whole can be born of its wholeness.

 

⁹⁷ Be confident that you have never lost your identity and the extensions which maintain it in wholeness and peace. Miracles are an expression of this confidence. They are reflections both of your own proper identification with your brothers and of your own awareness that your identification is maintained by extension. The miracle is a lesson in total perception. By including any part of totality in the lesson, you have included the whole. You have said that when you write of the Kingdom and your creations which belong in it, you are describing what you do not know. That is true in a sense, but no more true than your failure to acknowledge the whole result of the ego's premises. The Kingdom is the result of premises, just as this world is.

 

⁹⁸ You have carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is total confusion about everything. Yet you do not really believe this, or you could not possibly maintain it. If you really saw this result, you could not want it. The only reason why you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not see the whole of it. You are willing to look at the ego's premises but not at their logical outcome. Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? 

 

⁹⁹ Your creations are the logical outcome of His premises. His thinking has established them for you. They are therefore there, exactly where they belong. They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in your mind depends at any given moment on what you believe about your mind. Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the premises which will determine what you accept into your mind. It is surely clear that you can both accept into your mind what is not really there and deny what is. Neither of these possibilities requires further elaboration here, but both are clearly indefensible, even if you elect to defend them.

 

¹⁰⁰ Yet the function which God Himself gave your minds through His you may deny, but you cannot prevent. It is the logical outcome of what you are. The ability to see a logical outcome depends on the willingness to see it, but its truth has nothing to do with your willingness at all. Truth is God's Will. Share His Will, and you share what He knows. Deny His Will as yours, and you are denying His Kingdom and yours. The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to avoid pain. The undoing of pain must obviously avoid pain. Surely no one would object to this goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit says is true, but whether you want to listen to what He says.

 

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