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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 11 "GOD'S PLAN FOR SALVATION"
II. THE JUDGMENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
3 There is but one interpretation of all motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment, it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help. That is what it is, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and
only this is what he is asking for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting it as
you see fit.
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A COURSE IN MIRACLES
DAILY LESSONS
L e s s o n 121 Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
*
IAMBIC PENTAMETER BEGINS*
<
AUDIO>
<VIDEO>
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
Here is the answer to your search for peace.
Here is the key to meaning in a world which seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers which appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. Here are all questions answered. Here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.|
The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love no room to be itself; no place where it can spread its wings in peace, and soar above the turmoil of the world. The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite and release from pain. It suffers and abides in misery, peering about in darkness, seeing not, yet certain of the danger lurking there.| The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it sees, afraid and angry, weak and blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay, afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of stillness; terrified of darkness, yet more terrified at the approach of light.
What can the unforgiving mind perceive but its damnation? What can it behold except the proof that all its sins are real?| 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. It wants to live, yet wishes it were dead. It wants forgiveness, yet it sees no hope. It wants escape, and yet conceives of none because it sees the sinful everywhere.|
The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair. Yet it regards its judgment of the world as irreversible, and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair. It thinks it cannot change, for what it sees bears witness that its judgment is correct. It does not ask because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right.|
Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in a mind which cannot sin. As sin was 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. Through Him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made, and let it disappear. Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self, and Who can never sin.|
Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself. Each one awaits release from hell through you, and turns to you imploringly for Heaven here and now. It has no hope, but you become its hope. And as its hope do you become your own. The unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved from hell. And as you teach salvation, you will learn.
Yet all your teaching and your learning will be not of you, but of the Teacher Who was given you to show the way to you.| Today we practice learning to forgive. If you are willing, you can learn today to take the key to happiness, and use it on your own behalf. We will devote ten minutes in the morning, and at night another ten, to learning how to give forgiveness and receive forgiveness, too. The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same. Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiving towards one whom you think of as an enemy, and one whom you consider as a friend. And as you learn to see them both as one, we will extend the lesson to yourself, and see that their escape included yours.|
Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like, 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. It does not matter what the form your anger takes. You probably have chosen him already. He will do.|
Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture which you hold of him. Look at this picture till you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good.|
Look at this changed perception for a while, and turn your mind to one you call a friend. Try to transfer the light you learned to see about your former "enemy" to him. Perceive him now as more than friend to you, for in that light his holiness shows you your Saviour, saved and saving, healed and whole.| Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your "enemy" and friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them, and they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself.
Do not forget, throughout the day, the role forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving mind, with yours among them. Every hour tell yourself:
"
Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
I would awaken from the dream that I
am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,
and know I am the perfect Son of God."
~ Original Handscript of ACIM
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ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections
LESSON 121
Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
Sarah's Commentary:
We think that what upsets us is what others are doing or have done to us, the difficult events in our lives, and circumstances that trigger fear, anger, and sadness in us. 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. This is one of the hardest concepts in the Course for us to accept. The only cause of our upsets is the guilt in our minds, projected out and now seen in the world. We project the guilt in our minds and judge others for our own secret sins we believe are in us. 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 in our own minds belongs to others. Why would we do that? It is so we can feel innocent and like a victim of what others have done or are doing to us. Startling as it may be to hear, we actually want others to betray us! It comes from our belief that we have betrayed God and now we project the betrayal in our own mind onto others. We don't want to be responsible for the betrayal of God. We want others to betray us so the responsibility can be on them. We want this because it justifies our own anger and attack. The problem is that we now see our projections as poised to attack us, because, as we learned before, what we give we receive. In other words, the world reflects our own state of mind. It is an outer picture of our own inner condition. When our minds are full of anger and attack, we project it onto the world, and it is now seen as a dangerous place. We constantly fear the next thing coming at us.
"The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love no room to be itself; no place where it can spread its wings in peace and soar above the turmoil of the world."
(W.121.2.1) We live in fear, believing we need constant defense against the world. We live in a state of 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 full of fear, has no peace, is sad, suffers, sees danger everywhere, has no hope, abides in misery, and is confused about itself. It is "terrified of darkness, yet more terrified at the approach of light." (W.121.3.1) This mind is angry and has no place to turn for relief. Don't we all identify with this as part of the human condition? No matter what it may look like, everyone who is here experiences the same thing, although for some it is perhaps more hidden than for others. What we don't recognize is that the guilt in our minds produces it all. We don't yet believe forgiveness is the answer to all our problems.
Is it possible that every problem has its source in unforgiveness? Jesus says, "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 am making you responsible for my unhappiness. In actual fact, I am the one who first chose to throw my happiness away, but now I see you as having taken it from me, and I blame you. The mind is full of fear because the hatred we secretly believe is in us we now see outside, poised to attack us. Everything I hold against myself is what I see in the world. It is all self-attack projected out. Because we simply can't exist with all this self-attack and self-hatred in our minds that terrorize us, the ego has given us a solution---project it onto others and see them as the guilty ones. We push our own attack thoughts down and cover them over with our own specialness and false innocence.
The ego set all this up so we could live with the guilt and see it in others instead of ourselves. The ego has convinced us that we are guilty because it tells us we sinned against God by establishing our separate identity. Our individual identity is built on the idea there is something lacking in us. We have a vague feeling that we have done something wrong, a sense of foreboding, and a belief 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 this is that we are in a never-ending cycle of birth and death.
In this never-ending cycle of a closed system made by the ego, Jesus hands us a key. This key is forgiveness, and it offers us our complete release. We need this kind of help from outside our closed system if we are to escape the matrix. When we chose the ego and chose to believe its lies, the truth became locked away from our awareness. It is in the right mind where the light of the Holy Spirit reigns. He is our inner Teacher. This is where our peace and joy reside within our own minds. Guilt took the place of love when we gave our allegiance to the ego, and now it overshadows the truth within us. With this choice made to separate us from the love of God, our own will was established. The way to find our way back to the peace, love, joy, and innocence within us is to use the key that unlocks the door to the truth within; and that key is forgiveness.
The question is: "Will we choose to use it, now that we know of its power?" We say we want peace and joy, and now we are given the way to achieve what we say we want. We say we want to know eternal life, but Jesus says we hold a wish for death. So why is that? To us, death is equated with peace, since we hold the belief that it brings an end to all our suffering. If our experience of life is as described in this Lesson, who would not want an end to it? Even so, we continue to look for happiness here by doing our best to make our lives as good as possible while all the time hiding and defending our pain. We try against all odds to make a good life for ourselves, but Jesus reminds us continually that we are not at home here and will not find the happiness we seek through our own efforts. The picture he paints for us is pretty bleak. Yes, we can try harder, but he says that no matter how hard we try to find happiness in our material things, in our relationships, or in our accomplishments, it can't be found while we still hold onto guilt, self-attack, and self-condemnation. In the end, there is only death.
No wonder he tells us 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 the 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, and we lose our jobs; or no matter how many things we have accomplished, we just feel empty and unfulfilled? And of course, at the end, death awaits us. Most of us adjust, smile bravely, and just keep going, constantly trying to improve ourselves. When the road we have been traveling comes to an abrupt end, we just try another avenue.
This teaching has now shown up for us because we have heard an inner call. We now have hope that there is a way out of this program of denial and projection. We have mighty help available to save us from the tyranny of the ego thought system. Rather than being powerless puppets of the ego mind, we learn that this is all a dream we have been dreaming. We are actually the script-writers of our lives rather than the victims. We are the ones responsible for everything that seems to happen to us. Those characters that have a role in our drama have been cast by us for the purpose of helping us to heal our minds.
If this were the case, how could we claim to be victims of the stories we tell? How could we say birth was not our choice? How could we continue to believe there is nothing we can do about the inevitability of our situation here? How could we not see our problems are all self-inflicted? The world and its laws could no longer be seen as immutable. "Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of our Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real." (T.1.I.24.1-4) (ACIM OE T.1.I.27)
Jesus tells us the real problem is that we don't question our beliefs. "It does not ask, because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right." (W.121.5.4-5) Our certainty covers our doubts and uncertainty. We hang on, we defend, we rigidly hold onto our opinions and perceptions, 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 outside of us. 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) He tells us, "To learn this course requires 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) (ACIM OE T.24.I.2) We are now being asked to open our minds to the teaching offered us, to look behind our defenses, and to 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) To let the image of the self we made disappear is the ultimate goal of forgiveness, as 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 we hold of ourselves. "A concept of the self is made by you. It bears no likeness to yourself at all. It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son of God" (T.31.V.2.1-3) (ACIM OE T.31.V.44) We hold onto this self-concept, which is why we resist these Lessons. We find many distractions to take us away from opening up fully to this teaching.
As long as we think we are the victims of our parents, other people, and the world, we will resist accepting responsibility for this dream. We prefer the way we set it all up because we so much want to be the innocent victims being acted on by others whom we see as guilty. We see the world as responsible for our unhappiness and thus deserving of our anger and condemnation. What if we were completely wrong about all of this? Jesus says we are!
Since we are the ones who set it up this way, we are the ones who have the power to change our minds by being willing to look at our judgments and take responsibility for them. Others are simply a mirror, showing us what is in our own minds. The good news is that now we can do something about the reflection we see of ourselves. With a 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 true! It is just a belief we hold that we are guilty because we accepted the ego myth that we destroyed Heaven. The truth is that we did nothing. We simply accepted the tiny mad idea that we could separate ourselves from Love. Now we can look at these thoughts and laugh 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 can become 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) provides us with opportunities to look at our own anger and guilt projected out. Everyone who gives us a bad time, who frustrates us, or whom we believe has hurt us, is in fact 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 that we have put 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 in our right minds. Forgiveness will undo this self-attack and open us to the love we have blocked from our awareness. It is not something we have to look for. When we release our judgments, the love shines forth.
"Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself
." (W.121.7.1) This is why giving and receiving are the same. It is what is meant by, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Through forgiveness, we discover there is only One Self. The "enemies" in our lives are part of our 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. We are as God created us--- already perfect. We have not sinned, though 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 remember who we truly are.
We need the Holy Spirit because He is not part of this cycle of sin, fear, and punishment that reflects our lives. 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 that this as a condition of this world, whether in our personal lives, in the lives of others, with corporations, or world situations. We justify our fears, anger, and despair by giving "evidence" for it in the mistaken belief that the world is the cause of our problems rather than the knowing 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 answer over and over, which is to look outside ourselves for the cause of our problems. The ego advises us to strategize about what to do when we experience difficulties, but its answers continue to take us farther and farther down the rabbit hole. 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. It is to forgive and we will see everything differently. When you feel attacked or betrayed, you are given another chance since "Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself." (W.121.7.1) The process for doing this is beautifully laid out in the practice instructions in this Lesson.
"The unforgiving mind does not believe 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---We share the same interest. All there is is perfect Oneness. This world of differences is not real. And 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, he asks us to think "of someone you do not like, 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)We don't necessarily think of these people as a cause for 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 the anger is only within our own minds. We look for convenient places to deposit it in others whom we don't like. Through forgiveness, we are reclaiming it in our own minds and healing it there. Our innocence is always there in the mind and brought back to our own awareness through forgiveness.
The instructions for the longer practice periods are very specific and should be followed as described, with reminders throughout the day on the hour, "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 choose to awaken by taking responsibility for the dream that we are dreaming and by forgiving those we hold responsible for our state of mind.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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Chapter Eleven
God's Plan for Salvation
Voice and Music by Martin Weber, CIMS SonShip Radio
I. Introduction
1You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you
want to believe in error, you would
have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth,
you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to stimuli, but to stimuli
as you interpret them. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to
you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond
as if he had actually done so, because you have made his error
real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this, you
will overlook truth.
2 The analysis of ego-motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and
never without the risk of your own ego-involvement. The whole process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate your
own ability to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations
as if they were correct and control your reactions behaviorally but not emotionally. This is quite evidently a mental split in which you have attacked the integrity of your mind and pitted one level within it against another.
II. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit
3 There is but one interpretation of all motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment, it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help. That is what it is, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and
only this is what he is asking for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting it as
you see fit.
4 Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent to you, but this by no means signifies that it is not perfectly clear. If you maintain that an appeal for help is something else, you will
react to something else, and your response will be inappropriate to reality as
it is but
not to your perception of it. This is poor reality testing by definition. There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing
all calls for help as exactly what they are except your own perceived
need to attack. It is only
this that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality in which you
deny the reality of the need for healing by making
it unreal. You would not do this except for your
unwillingness to perceive reality, which you withhold from
yourself.
5 It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he
wants it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it
is, it is because you are unwilling to
give help
and to receive it. The analysis of the ego's "real" motivation is the modern equivalent of the inquisition, for in both a brother's errors are "uncovered" and he is then attacked
for his own good. What can this be
but projection? For
his errors lay in the minds of his interpreters, for which they punished
him.
6 Whenever you fail to recognize a call for help, you are
refusing help. Would you maintain that you do not
need it? Yet this
is what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother's appeal, for only by
answering his appeal can
you be helped. Deny him your help, and you will not perceive God's answer to
you. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation, but you
do need
His. Only
appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into
your awareness if you perceive them truly. And
all your sense of strain comes from your attempts
not to do just this.
7 How simple, then, is God's plan for salvation. There is but
one response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but
one Teacher of reality, Who understands what it
is. He does not change His Mind about reality because
reality does not change. Although
your interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain consistently true. He
gives them to you because they are
for you. Do not attempt to "help" a brother in
your way, for you cannot help yourselves. But hear his call for the help of God, and you will recognize your
own need for the Father.
8 Your interpretations of your brother's need is your interpretation of
yours. By
giving help you are
asking for it, and if you perceive but one need in yourself, you
will be healed. For you will recognize God's answer as you want it to be, and if you want it in truth, it will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer in the name of Christ brings the remembrance of your Father closer to
your awareness. For the sake of
your need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can answer
you.
9 By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that
His criteria are equally applicable to
you. For to
recognize fear is not enough to escape from it, although the recognition is necessary to demonstrate the need for escape. The Holy Spirit must still
translate it into truth. If you were
left with the fear, having recognized it, you would have taken a step
away from reality, not
towards it. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear and face it
without disguise as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then.
10 Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that
fear is an appeal for help. This is what recognizing it
really means. If you do not
protect it,
He will reinterpret it. That is the ultimate value
to you in learning to perceive attack as a call for love. We have learned surely that fear and attack are inevitably associated. If
only attack produces fear and if you see attack as the call for help that it
is, the unreality of fear
must dawn upon you. For fear
is a call for love in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.
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