LESSON 122
Forgiveness offers everything I want.

Jesus tells us that forgiveness offers us everything we want: peace, happiness, a quiet mind, a sense of worth, beauty, safety, deep abiding comfort, joy to meet the day and more. What is more? It brings us home to the memory of who we really are. " My forgiveness is the means by which the light of the world finds expression through me. My forgiveness is the means by which I become aware of the light of the world in me." (W.82.1.2-3) Ultimately forgiveness becomes the means by which we learn that we have done nothing that needs forgiveness! " Forgiveness thus becomes the means by which he learns he has done nothing to forgive." (T.26.IV.1.6)(ACIM OE T.26.V.25) In other words, forgiveness undoes what never happened. We are innocent, never sinned, have done nothing wrong and deserve only love, which was given us in our creation. When the blocks to love are removed through the process of forgiveness, we will know that nothing we think we have done has changed us as the Son of God.
 
We are still completely loved. We are blocking that love with our judgments, grievances, expectations, demands, wishes, specialness, victim stories, opinions, values, judgments, strategies and manipulations. Thus, we can't know the glory of our Being. " The holy place on which you stand is but the space that sin has left." (T.26.IV.3.1)(ACIM OE T.26.V.27) This is the holiest of altars. It is a space made clean of our investment in sin and guilt. All that is required of us is that we commit to looking at how we are occupying that space with our obsessive, raucous, ego thoughts. We hold onto these thoughts only because of our fear of love believing that God will punish us for our crime of separation. " What but a miracle could change his mind, so that he understands that love cannot be feared?" (T.26.IV.4.6)(ACIM OE T.25.V.28) Jesus tells us that all that stands between this love and our world of guilt and fear is just a little hindrance. We are just a thought away from Heaven. In other words, what blocks the love is our meaningless thoughts that we have invested with meaning.
 
Yes, the benefits of forgiveness laid out in this Lesson are clearly what we all say that we want. Who does not want  " happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world?" (W.122.1.2) Jesus paints a picture for us that speaks to what we all yearn for. The problem is that we think we know how to achieve these benefits ourselves, meaning that we rely on the ego to tell us where our happiness lies. We identify the goals for ourselves that we think will bring about our peace and happiness, and then try to implement our own means. We think we know what we need to have a fulfilled life of joy and contentment. As long as we follow our own dictates, we will continue to believe we are reaching out for pleasure, but will, in fact, receive more pain, more guilt, and more fear. Clearly we are not convinced that this is so because if we were, every moment would be spent in forgiveness. We would be very vigilant of any thoughts of worry, distress, unease, anxiety, judgment, anger, anticipation, frustration, anything that kept us from the experience of joy. We would be very motivated to turn these thoughts over. We would be willing to see that the cause of our lack of ease and joy in our life is not about anything in the world. The cause is our own minds. It is our choice to hold grievances, and see others as responsible for our unhappiness.
 
We all have stories of what others have done to us and why we are the way we are. If we were fat, have difficulties in relationships, were without a job, or whatever were our situation, we always have someone we could blame and hold responsible. This is the film that is running in our projector (the mind) and projects a movie onto the screen that we see as our lives. Our thoughts, the film in the projector, are responsible for our experience in the physical world. Those thoughts are always based on guilt. When we tell our stories, we project that guilt onto others who have done us wrong. Or we deny our guilt and suffocate it, or stuff it, filling our lacks with what we think will satisfy. The only deep satisfaction that we can experience is through forgiveness. Forgiveness brings us back to the Self that is already whole and complete, needing nothing to fill the emptiness that we all feel. Forgiveness requires that we look objectively at our unloving thoughts. It is a process of undoing what we made. With forgiveness, what we made to hurt, harm, and blame can now be used to heal.

We were told, in the Lesson yesterday, that forgiveness is acquired. It is not something we can do on our own. We need to be taught by the Holy Spirit. Our part is the willingness to recognize our dark thoughts, our attachments, judgments, and specialness and to take responsibility for our projections. What we see in our brothers and sisters is just a reflection of the guilt in our own minds. We feel guilty and believe we deserve punishment. We then have others deliver that punishment to us. We hate them for the pain that we believe that they have caused us. The cause is always the guilt in our own minds. Without this guilt, any attacks would have no place to land, and we truly would see them all as only calls for help. We won't get this on our own, but need the Holy Spirit. Our part is to apply the Lessons as faithfully as we can, and use our experience in this world as the classroom for forgiveness. We rely fully on the Holy Spirit to teach us how to interpret every situation. The ego would tell us that the cause is in the world, and we are its effect. The Holy Spirit shows us that the world is an outward picture of our own inward condition and that changing our thoughts changes our experience.

If forgiveness offers us all of these gifts, why would we " seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything?" (W.122.4.1) What is it that we seek? Our focus is mostly to look for our happiness in things outside of ourselves that we think will make us happy. They are all trivial pursuits that have no lasting value. It is all about investing in the ego's mantra to seek but never find. Jesus tells us, " Seek for it no more. You will not find another one [answer] instead." (W.122.4.4-5) There is nothing wrong with pursuing another relationship, another job, more money, fame, recognition, a new home, a better body, or another vacation, but none of these things will bring us the deep peace, happiness and transcendence that we are hoping to find in these things. Only forgiveness, which is found in the mind and not outside, offers us what we are truly looking for. All answers to every problem are found within.
 
Behind every problem, every distress we seem to have, the answer awaits our willingness to bring our problems to the only solution that there is, which is the miracle. " Changelessly it stands before you like an open door, with warmth and welcome calling from beyond the doorway, bidding you to enter in and make yourself at home, where you belong." (W.122.5.3) What is calling us is our home. We find this answer in our right minds where miracles abound. This is our treasure house. It is all within. There is nothing to seek. It requires willingness and commitment to surrender our way, recognizing that we have been wrong about everything, but now help is available to show us the way. Jesus says that our commitment has been half-hearted, is less than diligent and has been with only partial trust in His answer. We ask for help, but then turn to our own solutions, not trusting completely that forgiveness shows us the way through. Or we determine what the problem is, and then ask for help for a problem that is not real. Only the problem of guilt needs to be addressed. It is the problem that stems from our belief in sin. Throughout the Lesson, Jesus keeps reminding us over and over that to turn within is the only answer. The ego mind has no answers for us.
 
Today I took a large box of incontinent products that I had bought for my 98 year old mother and found that I was given the wrong size by the clerk. The distributor is some distance from my home, and it meant another trip back again hauling the box back to the store. I had specifically indicated the size I needed, when I was there, but was given the wrong size. Now I had a grievance. I felt the imposition of this additional requirement in the midst of a very busy week as we are to be away for the next two weeks. As a result of our trip, there was much preparation to be done, including writing commentaries in advance. I felt anger at the salesperson, as well as myself, for not checking the size while there. I reminded myself that God did not bring this suffering. It was a choice that I was making to throw away my peace. Yet I found myself unwilling to just let it go. I marveled at my resistance and stubbornness in holding onto the anger. I felt justified in feeling distressed. This is an example of a choice point. I asked myself, do I want to hold onto my point of view and stay in hell, or bring my dark thoughts to the truth, and let them go? As you read this, you may see it as a small disturbance compared to something that you may be dealing with. Jesus says there are no small disturbances. Judgments are the oxygen of the ego, and as long as we are invested in the ego, we will relish our judgments.

Do we indulge our anger or choose to forgive it and accept the miracle of healing the mind instead? This invitation is always there for us. It is only about our willingness to choose to release our stubborn insistence that something should be different than it is. The question is, will I use this situation to keep myself in hell or will I turn it over to the Holy Spirit in the recognition that I don't know my own best interests, and I don't know what anything is for? I chose to ask the Holy Spirit to help me to forgive myself, so as not to use this situation to keep me from the love that is in my right mind. From this place I could smile at my reaction.

Is this situation that I described easier to forgive than a car accident, a grave illness, someone who has betrayed us? It does seem so, but Jesus reminds us that there is no order of difficulty in the illusion. It is all the same because it is all nothing. Anything that keeps us from peace is a hindrance that keeps us in hell. " Forgive and be forgiven. As you give you will receive." (W.122.6.3-4) Anytime I hold something against you, I am holding it against myself, but if I could see your innocence then I could know my own.
 
What we are learning is to see the Christ in everyone. This is the meaning of seeing with vision rather than believing what our senses tell us. Mother Teresa saw this when she described everyone she helped as "Christ in his distressing guises" or as the Course says, " I do not know what anything, including this, means. And so I do not know how to respond to it." (T.14.XI.6.7-8)(ACIM OE T.14.VII.65) In other words, we are surrendering our own misperceptions and our current way of seeing, and bringing them to the light to be dispelled. It certainly does take willingness, and it is a choice that only we can agree to make. No one will thrust this on us as a requirement. The power of decision is my own. This power is in us, and the inner Teacher is also in our minds.
 
When we think we know, there is no room for learning. We must be willing to be taught, so that we can experience the fact that " Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world." (W.122.3.1) When our unforgiving thoughts or " dead thoughts" (W.122.3.2) are cleared away, we will have vision. These dead thoughts are our guilt, our fears, our self-hatred, unworthiness, specialness and all ego thoughts, in whatever form. They are all the thoughts that keep the memory of God buried in our minds. Dead thoughts keep us from vision, and without vision, all we see is our own projections of the guilt in our minds. We hold onto to our perspectives so tightly that we resist admitting we are wrong about everything. Jesus describes this as arrogance because we resist the message that we are innocent, that we are as God created us as complete, unlimited beings of light and love. As long as we hold onto our beliefs about ourselves and challenge what Jesus teaches, as just beautiful thoughts that don't apply to us, we are being arrogant. This only serves to keep the memory of God, which is in our right minds, locked away. Forgiveness offers us the key to unlock this memory. We do so by bringing these dead thoughts to the light and choosing against them. " You cannot give yourself your innocence, for you are too confused about yourself. But should one brother dawn upon your sight as wholly worthy of forgiveness, then your concept of yourself is wholly changed." (T.31.VII.2.4-5)(ACIM OE T.31.VI.69)
 
Think about all of the things you want. Think of all of your hopes and dreams that you pursue in the world. Pursuing them can never offer the gifts that Jesus lays out in this Lesson so eloquently. In fact, pursuing them only gives us " fancied value, trivial effect or transient promise, never to be kept." (W.122.3.5) In other words, we can and will pursue those things in the world we think will bring us happiness, yet this Lesson says it is forgiveness that offers everything we want. It is the doorway home to the Self that we are.
 
The Course-based definition of forgiveness is about releasing the dark dreams of guilt and fear that are in our own minds and that we project onto the world. It is the means by which we remember the truth of who we are and release the blocks that keep us from knowing our innocence and wholeness. Thus, it is the complete answer for all that troubles us in this world. It is one that is " clear and plain, beyond deceit in its simplicity." (W.122.6.6) Certainly this is unlike the answers we find in the world, which are extremely complex, yet unstable like " fragile cobwebs." (W.122.6.7)
 
How willing are we to see forgiveness as the only answer that will truly deliver everything we want? Another way this might be put is, how willing are we to take responsibility for everything in our lives? He urges us, " Do not turn away in aimless wandering again." (W.122.7.2) " The world can give no gifts of any value to a mind that has received what God has given as its own." (W.122.7.5) Again and again, we are urged to see forgiveness as the answer. It is an answer that won't change, and it can never fail. He tells us to be thankful that this is so. (W.122.5.1-2)
   
Can you see how much urging there is in this Lesson to stay with the answer he has given us, and " Do not turn away in aimless wandering again." (W.122.7.2) Jesus really wants us to remember the gifts forgiveness gives, because he wants us to be happy. When we recognize all the rewards that come from forgiveness, our trust will increase. Now we continue on with hope and faith, and carry the rewards of the practice periods into the day, not laying the Lesson aside, but retaining " your gifts in clear awareness as you see the changeless in the heart of change; the light of truth behind appearances." (W.122.13.4)
 
Be willing today to look at your dark thoughts. They are not who you are. Look at them with Jesus from outside of the dream. Recognize their unreality. The gifts of peace and joy are always present in your mind and are brought to awareness when the blocks to love are released through forgiveness. Regardless of what is going on around us, we can still be at peace. Peace is changeless and does not require that events and situations be any different than they are. Remember that these events and situations are actually our perfect classroom for applying forgiveness.

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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