"Salvation and forgiveness are the same." (1.1) Both are about undoing the thought system of the ego.  They are the means of escape from the illusion of this false identity and this world. (2.4) Thus what is being undone is "what could never be." (1.3) And thus both salvation and forgiveness are illusions because they undo what never was.Yet they are illusions that will end this illusion and necessary while we think we are in this dream. What we think we have done, and has been done to us, is not the truth. It has never happened. What forgiveness does is only to undo "what was never done." (2.5)  So in effect, we need forgiveness for what was never done and salvation from what never happened. (2.2) Yet to us it seems that "truth and illusions both are equal now, for both have happened." (2.1) That is how we experience it. We experience both truth and illusion as coexisting, meaning that we believe there is both the separation and God. But they are mutually exclusive. They can't co-exist. And yet to the ego they do and thus we try to meld God and the world and body and spirit as real. But this can't happen as only one is true. Oneness and duality can't both be true. It is one or the other. If duality is true there can be no God and if God is true there can be no duality.

"The mind that sees illusions thinks them real. They have existence in that they are thoughts." (3.2-3) Our thoughts seem very real to us. We are asked to take these thoughts and all the secrets and to "open your secrets to His kindly light and see how bright this light still shines in you." (8.4) It is the only way that we can know the light that shines in us. Our thoughts block this light. As long as we hold onto these thoughts we will not be aware of this kindly light that shines in our mind all the time. We need the Holy Spirit as a bridge to our loving Self. Through forgiveness we achieve Christ's vision. But we are actually forgiving something that has never happened. "Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred." (W.PII.Q1.1.1) We are therefore forgiving our brother of our illusions of him that we have projected on him. "Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you." (C.5.5.8)

What we don't want to do though is to dismiss everything as being all illusion and thus telling ourselves that there is nothing to forgive. It is true that there is nothing real to forgive but our problem is that we are cavalierly dismissing that which we still believe.  Having said that, neither is it helpful to make the error real and believe that we are forgiving a real offense.  Jesus is teaching us not to take either side.  He wants us to recognize that although what seems to have happened is not real, we have given it reality in our experience and suffered as a result. Jesus speaks about this in Chapter 20 where he says "your question should not be 'How can I see my brother without a body?' Ask only, 'do I really wish to see him sinless?'" (T. 20 VII.9.1)  In other words we will see people in the illusion seemingly acting out behaviors that we are judging. It is not about denying what our body's eyes show us and what our brain interprets as good or bad, but being willing to release these judgments. When we see them in our brother, then we are projecting our own guilt on him. That is what we must take responsibility for. It all starts in our own minds. We see the illusion of someone having done something to us but nothing that has happened is real."The mind that sees illusions thinks them real." (3.2) So don't deny what you see or how you feel. Just be willing to have it all reinterpreted for you by the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit how would you have me see this situation?

Jesus says that the "Holy Spirit looks on what you see; on sin and pain and death, on grief and separation and on loss," (5.4) and he is completely unshaken by it because what He knows to be true is that "God is still Love and this is not His Will." (5.5) He sees it all as we see it, yet He holds the truth of who God is in our minds.  And that is what really strikes me most about this lesson. It is that any pain and suffering that we experience was not given us by God. It is all what we have made.

We are asked to undo the illusion without attack because if we attack it we make it real. We are asked instead to use the means given to us to have them undone. Thus we bring all of the darkness of our secret thoughts to the light for healing. And this is what time is for. The plan operates in time because we believe that time is real, yet it is really apart from time.

So often things seemingly happen to us or to others and we simply say it must be God's Will. And we just accept that God would bring grief and loss into our lives and that He would choose these things for us. We might then believe that we just need to accept that this is what He wills in order to bring trials for our 'character development.' It is the belief that what does not kill you will make you stronger. Yet this lesson disputes that. God wills only our happiness. He only gives us what is changeless. He did not create this world. This world is not real because it is apart from God. "All the world of pain is not His Will. Forgive yourself the thought He wanted this for you." (7.4-5) Now it is up to us to accept the healing for our wrong-minded perspective.

So whatever loss and suffering we feel in our lives, or whatever loss or suffering we see in the world, we really need to understand that none of this is God's Will. Obviously if we believe that the world is of His making then we will hold Him responsible for the mess that the world is in and for all the pain and suffering here. What comfort can anyone get by being told that the terrible things that they are enduring are God's Will? The truth is that "God still is Love, and this is not His Will." (6.8)

We hear that the trials and tribulations of our lives are there to teach us something that God would have us learn. Sometimes we think that we deserve the experience, other times we feel angry and resentful that God has sent this adversity into our lives. Or we may wonder what we have done to deserve this and end up feeling lost and confused as to why something like this tragic event has happened to us. We either resign to the experience or blame God for it. But Jesus asks us to "forgive yourself the thought He wanted this for you." (7.4) Our most profound pain is that we think God wants this for us. We are punishing ourselves yet believe it is coming from Him!

So when we are experiencing any kind of pain, it is important to remind ourselves that God does not want this for us. Sin, pain, death, grief, separation and loss, are not His Will. We are not asked to overlook or deny pain and suffering but to look on it and realize it is not the truth and therefore can't exist. The ego says it is all real, but when we look at it with Jesus, we see that it had no effect. He is showing us that we can look beyond appearances when we look with him. God is our refuge. He is our loving and compassionate Father. To think otherwise is to make Him into a capricious God who hands out punishment and goodies at will so that some of us have it all and therefore are the blessed ones! Or that He gives and takes away. If we have money we say that God has blessed us with abundance and when it is lost we blame God for having taken it away from us. None of this is true. His only Will for us is perfect happiness and perfect peace. He knows us as forever innocent and always worthy of His Love.

We have made God in our image, which just makes him a bigger ego. To us love is uncertain, full of fear, changing, not to be relied on, and altogether imperfect. Now we think that is how God is because that is our experience of love. So we project on God our own understanding of this capricious, changing kind of love and we tell Him that is what His love is like. We have projected our idea of love onto Him and now we think His love can't be trusted just like we don't trust our own love.

Freedom, happiness and salvation all lie in understanding that the world is not of God's making. We made it. It is an illusion. It exists as a result of our thoughts of sin and guilt. It is our thoughts that need correction. We do this by recognizing that what we are seeing is not the truth. We need to withdraw our investment in the stories that we have made up. We need to withdraw our investment from what we see with the body's eyes. The images we see on TV, the tragedies we hear in the news, the things going on around us in our lives, the sad stories of how we see ourselves as victims of the world---all untrue; all fearful images to keep the light of truth away from ourselves.

So what we need is the willingness to look behind our defenses and have the courage and honesty to bring our ego thoughts to the Holy Spirit for Him to shine His light in all the dark places in our minds that we are willing to expose to Him. Through this process we experience our salvation. When we don't judge our pain, our hate, our anger and our suffering, it can be  the doorway out of the illusion. We can choose use the experience of our difficulties for the purpose of releasing our guilt and fear and through that release who we really are is revealed to us.

We are asked to practice the lesson well today so that we can "Yet work miracles" (7.1) That is our function. That is why we need to accept the Atonement for ourselves so that we can recognize ourselves as the dreamer of this dream. And when we do then the love that we are shines forth in the world. "Salvation is my only function here. God still is Love and this is not His Will." (11.3-4) We are told that these are mighty words and should be repeated often as we do our five minutes of every hour, as we remind ourselves of this thought throughout the day and as we respond to any temptation to hold painful thoughts or experience painful events.

We left Bozeman, Montana  one Saturday afternoon believing that Don's cousin was doing better. Our time there with him was very lovely with lots of sharing and we were able to do a lot to be helpful to him. So we felt very good about our visit. However, later, we learned that he had taken a turn for the worse and was returned from rehab back to emergency and then placed in intensive care.  On our way home from Bozeman, I was asking the Holy Spirit for guidance and received a reassuring message in response to my feelings of anxiety. His words were comforting saying: "Be still. Know that all is well. There is nothing to be done. You are loved and gratitude is offered. Your brother's time is coming to a close. He is ready. Do not interfere. Thy will be done." And within a day of our return we learned that he had passed away.  Sadness came over me and but I was reminded of the lesson yesterday: that we are free of all limits, safe and healed and whole---free to forgive and free to save the world. Because the only truth is that we are spirit. And as one dear one seemed to leave, we were informed of the birth of a long awaited baby, a friend's first grandson. So the Holy Spirit gives us symbols of seeming comings and goings in this dream. And we truly can be grateful that only eternal life is real.

Jesus reminds us that, "there is no death because what God created shares His life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are One." (W.PI.167.1.5-7) So anything that causes me sadness, worry, guilt, frustration, can never be the truth. "Salvation is my only function here. God still is love and this is not His Will." (6.8)  So if this is the case, then God could never let this death, this suffering, this sadness, this guilt, be real. If we really want to experience His peace, we must bring these dark thoughts, that obscure the truth, to the light and allow the healing to be.  Jesus tells us to "let all fear be gently laid aside, that love may find its rightful place in you and show you that you are the Son of God." (5.5) Our dark thoughts of fear and guilt have not changed us. Forgive yourself for believing that you could be anything else but love. Anything else you believe you have done can't be real.

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