LESSON 121
Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

We think that what upsets us is what others are doing to us, events in our lives that are difficult and circumstances that seem to bring fear, anger and sadness. So the first thing we need to accept when we look at forgiveness is that nothing outside of us is the cause of our upsets. The only thing that is responsible is our own guilt and that guilt is projected out, so that now we see it in the world. Now Jesus goes to some lengths to describe what the unforgiving mind holds. " The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins. It looks upon the world with sightless eyes, and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life." (W.121.4.1-2) We are trying to prove that the guilt is in others, so that we can feel innocent and a victim of what others are doing to us. Now we see our projections poised to attack us.
 
" The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love no room to be itself." (W.121.2.1) Now we live in fear, believing that we need constant defense against the world. Jesus goes on to describe more about what unforgiveness produces: doubt, confusion, anger, fear, sadness, misery, pain, despair, and terror. The unforgiving mind sees no hope, is weak and blustering, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of stillness. It is a mind that is full of fear, has no peace, is sad, suffers, sees danger everywhere, has no hope, abides in misery, is confused about itself, terrified of darkness, yet even more afraid of approaching the light. (3.3) This mind is angry and has no place to turn for relief. Isn't this something that we can identify with as part of the human condition? No matter what it may look like, everyone who is here experiences the same thing, though for some it is more hidden than for others. What we don't recognize is that it is the guilt in our minds that produces it all. We don't think that forgiveness is the answer to all of our problems. We project the guilt in our minds and judge others for our own secret sins that we really believe are in us.

Is it possible that every problem has its source in unforgiveness? Jesus says that, " The secret of salvation [happiness] is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream."
(T. 27.VIII.10)(ACIM OE T.27.IX.86)

When we project our guilt onto others, we are covering over our own secret sins. If I hold grievances against you, I can make you responsible for my unhappiness. In actual fact, I am the one who has first chosen to throw my happiness away, but now I see you as having taken it from me. Now the mind is full of fear because the hatred I secretly believe is in me I now see outside. Everything that I hold against myself is what I see in the world. It is all self-attack. We can't exist with all this self-attack in our minds, which terrorizes us. Thus, we project it onto others and cover it over with our own specialness.

That is how the ego set it up, so that we would live with the guilt by seeing it outside of ourselves. The guilt is based on lies of the ego that we have bought into. The ego has convinced us that we are guilty because we sinned against God. Our individual identity is built on this idea that there is something lacking in us, a feeling that we have done something wrong, a sense of foreboding that we will have to pay for what we have done. As long as we don't understand the source of these thoughts, they will keep us in the cycle of sin, fear and guilt, with no way out. Another way to see it is the cycle of birth and death.

Now, in this never-ending cycle, Jesus hands us a key that offers us the secret to our release. When we chose the ego and chose to believe its lies, then the truth became locked in the right mind where the light of the Holy Spirit is. He is our inner Teacher. This is where our peace and joy reside. Guilt took the place of love with our choice for the ego. It was a choice to separate from the love of God. The way to find our way back to this love is to use the key to unlock the truth, which resides in the right mind. That key is forgiveness.

The question is will we choose to use it? We say we want peace and joy, and here we are given the way to achieve what we say we want. We say we want to live, but Jesus says that we hold a wish for death. So why is that? To us, death is equated with peace. It feels like it is the end of all of our suffering. If we look at what life is like here, as described in this Lesson, who would not want an end to that? Even so, we continue to look for happiness by trying to make life as good as possible, while all the time hiding and defending our pain. Jesus reminds us continually that we are not at home here and will not find happiness here. So the picture that he paints for us is pretty bleak. Yes, we can try harder, but he says no matter how hard we try to find happiness in our material things, in our relationships, in our accomplishments, it can't be found while we still hold onto this self-condemnation and in the end there is only death.

No wonder he says that there is no hope in this world. No wonder we feel despair. " The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair." (W.121.5.1) Who of us has not reached this point where, no matter how hard we have tried to make life work for us, in the end, relationships break down, our bodies get sick, we lose our jobs, or no matter how many things we have accomplished, we just feel empty and unfulfilled? Most of us adjust, smile bravely and just keep going, constantly trying to improve ourselves and try another avenue, when the road we have been traveling comes to an abrupt end. Now, somehow, this teaching shows up for us and hope is given that there is way out of this program of denial and projection and that we have mighty help available to us. Rather than being powerless puppets of the ego mind, we learn that this is a dream that we have been dreaming. We are actually the script writers for our lives. Those characters who have a role they play in our drama have been cast by us. If that is the case, how can we claim to be victims of this story? How can we say that birth was not our choice, that there is nothing we can do about the inevitability of our situation here, that our problems are all self-inflicted, and that the world and its laws are immutable?

Jesus tells us that the real problem is that we don't question any of this. " It does not ask, because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right." (W.121.5.4-5) It is a certainty that covers our uncertainty. We hang on, we defend and we argue for our perspective, unwilling to see that perhaps we are wrong about everything we currently think and believe. The most fundamental of these beliefs is that there is a world out there. We are now asked to question the underlying thoughts that have projected this world. To learn forgiveness requires a willingness to question all that we think we know.

Jesus tells us, " Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in the mind, which cannot sin." (W.121.6.1-2) What is needed then to learn this Course is the " willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning." (T.24.IN.2.1-2) We are now being asked to open our minds to the teaching that is offered us, look behind our defenses and question what we now believe. Step by step, through these Lessons, we follow a new Teacher. " Through Him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made, and let it disappear." (W.121.6.4) That is the ultimate goal of forgiveness as being taught by Jesus through the Course. It is the undoing of who we think we are. We need to recognize just how threatening this can be to the concept of ourselves that we identify with. " A concept of the self if made by you. It bears no likeness to yourself at all." (T.31.V.2.1-2) (ACIM OE T.31.V.44) We hold onto this self-concept, which is why we resist these Lessons and get sleepy. When we do our meditation, we see the Course as too difficult to learn, and find many distractions that take us away from this teaching.

As long as we think that we are the victims of our parents, other people, and the world that we think made us what we are, we will resist accepting responsibility for this dream we made. We prefer the way we set it up because we want to be the innocent victims being acted on by others who are the guilty ones. We see the world as responsible for our unhappiness and thus is deserving of our anger and condemnation. What if we are completely wrong about all of this? Jesus says that we are!

Since we are the ones that set it up this way, we are the ones that can change our minds by being willing to look at our judgments and take responsibility for them. Now we can see our guilt and hate, which we prefer to make others responsible for, and be willing to see that it is in us. They are simply a mirror showing us what is in our own minds. The good news is that now we can do something about it. With willingness to look at the beliefs we hold, we have taken the first step in healing. Jesus says that what we have come to believe about ourselves is not even true! It is just a thought we hold that we are guilty because we believe what the ego has told us that we have done. We have done nothing. Now we can look at these thoughts of rage and murder within and smile at their unreality. It is all only a dream. Our reality remains unchanged. " Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self, and Who can never sin." (W.121.6.5)

Now everyone in our lives becomes our savior! Everyone we thought of as an enemy, everyone " who seems to irritate you, or to cause regret in you if you should meet him; one you actively despise, or merely try to overlook," (W.121.10.1) all provide us with opportunities to look at our own anger projected out. Everyone who gives us a bad time, who frustrates us, whom we believe has hurt us is, in fact, instead, helping us by giving us another opportunity to learn about who we really are in truth. This is the practice that Jesus urges for us when he hands us the key to our happiness. It is to take responsibility for our own projections onto others and see them in our own minds. It is to recognize how we use others to hurt ourselves and keep ourselves away from the love that is in our right minds. Forgiveness will undo this self-attack and open us to this love. It is not something we have to look for, but is always in us, blocked by our own judgments of others.

" Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself." (W.121.7.1) That is why giving and receiving are the same. Through forgiveness, we discover our true self. The "enemies" in our lives serve this purpose for us, when we see the world as a classroom for undoing the ego thought system. The Course calls them our special hate relationships. As we release them from hell, we release ourselves as well. They truly do hold the key to OUR salvation. Doesn't Jesus tell us that we are as God created us--- already perfect? Yes, we have taught ourselves that sin is real. " As sin is an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness must be learned by you as well, but from a Teacher other than yourself, Who represents the other Self in you." (W.121.6.3) Thus, the self we think we made must be undone through forgiveness, so we can truly remember who we really are.

We need the Holy Spirit because He is not part of this cycle of sin, fear, and punishment that is the cycle of our lives in the world. We keep going around and around in this cycle, projecting our guilt onto others, blaming them for our condition and expecting their wrath and retaliation in return. We don't have to look far to see this as a condition of this world, whether in our personal lives, the lives of others or with corporations, or world situations. We justify our fears, anger, despair by giving "evidence" for it in the mistaken belief that the world is causing our problems rather than that our problems are caused by our own mistaken perceptions. Our mind is the cause of what we see. When we heal our minds through forgiveness, our world will change to a happier dream.

We have been turning to the ego to figure our way through the difficulties in our lives and it has given us the same answers over and over. They are that we should look outside ourselves for the cause of our problems. The ego advises us to strategize about what to do, when we experience difficulties and its answers are never right. Its answers only bring more guilt, pain and attack in the form of problems in different forms. Given over to the Holy Spirit, everything is seen with vision and the miracle behind every problem shows us that the answer is always with us. When we feel attacked or betrayed, we are given another " opportunity to teach your own (mind) how to forgive itself." (7.1) The process for doing this is beautifully laid out in the practice instructions in this Lesson.

" The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same." (W.121.9.1) Jesus tells us that, through forgiveness, we will see both our 'enemy' and our friend as one. We will learn to see that there are no differences in our brothers. "And as you learn to see them both as one, we will extend the lesson to yourself, and see that their escape included yours." (W.121.9.3) This is what forgiveness teaches us, that we share the same interests, that all there is, is perfect Oneness, that this world of differences is not real, and that we all share the same need for waking up from this dream of death. Only by doing the forgiveness work will we escape from this nightmare.

In choosing someone to forgive, we do not necessarily think that those who " cause regret in you if you should meet him, one you actively despise, or merely try to overlook,"  (W.121.10.1) are forms of anger. Yet Jesus reminds us that it is all anger, no matter what form it takes. There are no degrees of difficulty or differences in the illusion. All anger is in our minds. We look for convenient places to deposit it, and with the forgiveness work, we are reclaiming it in our own minds and healing it there. Now the innocence that is always there in the mind is brought back to our own awareness.

The practice instructions for the longer practice periods are very specific and should be followed as described, with reminders throughout the day on the hour that " Forgiveness is the key to happiness. I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin, and know I am the perfect Son of God." (W.121.13.6-7) The reason we can awaken is because we are the ones whose dream this is. Now we can make another choice.

A Course in Miracles 

 

Chapter Eleven

God's Plan for Salvation    

I. Introduction               

ACIM OE TX. CH 11, I  

 

ACIM OE TX. CH 11, II

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