If you’ve been on this undoing path for a while, have you noticed that when you’re in ego, when you’re in the midst of fear, conflict or pain, there seems no way to relinquish it? The fear has induced temporary insanity. All you can see is suffering at that moment.
The ego invests all its persuasive strength in making sure you stay in this mindless state and at best, it will allow you to ‘problem solve’ through its means, within its closed-paradigm. But under no circumstances will it tolerate surrender to Love through forgiveness. The reason being that in the instant you surrender to Love, to God’s Peace…the ego ceases to exist in your awareness. And if we invite enough of these holy instants, the ego must disappear entirely.
A recent discovery for me has been a whole new understanding of Jesus’ forgiveness as he teaches in the Course. I realized that for 20 years I had not truly recognized and therefore accepted, a very important factor in the forgiveness process. To set the foundation for this piece, we need to recognize that nothing that is not of God’s Love, exists. Literally. Nothing that is not of Love has the power to do anything. God’s Love and Joy are all-encompassing; an opposite to these does not exist except in our belief. The source of all suffering lay entirely in our mistaken belief, and not where we think we ‘see’ it: in others, self, the body and the world. And the process of truly recognizing that nothing can threaten us involves firstly, defining what is of God’s Love, and what is of the delusional ego.
“All power is of God.
What is not of Him has no power to do anything.” T-11.V.3:6-7
So occurrences that we take for granted and defend ourselves against such as disease, conflict, pain, loss, scarcity and finally, physical death – are quite literally hallucinations. We see them, we feel them, yes. However this does not make them real. What appears to make them real in our experience is simply one solitary factor…our belief that they are real. And the ego trusts exclusively in what our body’s senses tell us is real. Yet it’s the ego itself that projects what we appear to see, what we seem to feel. It is 100% invested in trusting the body’s senses, over that of trusting in Love. That’s why forgiveness of what we appear to see or feel – is crucial to undoing the ego and its concept of suffering.
What we believe, we value, good or bad. Most of us don’t yet trust our Holy Self to show us the Real World of Love and Joy consistently, and we insist on still trusting (valuing) the body’s senses to tell us what reality is, ego-reality that is. While we continue to trust what our body’s eyes tell us is real – we cannot forgive. Jesus tells us that we cannot forgive something we still believe is real. It’s impossible. Nearly all our suffering arises from this misunderstanding about forgiveness.
” The ego’s plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and [cannot] overlook it.” T-9.IV.4:4-6.
“Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven.” T-9.IV.5:3-4.
Before we can forgive anyone or anything, we must first bring something of paramount importance to mind. That whatever upsets us, regardless of the severity of the problem, is not a part of God’s Love. It is not God’s Will. Only God’s Love exists, and that means that what you perceive that’s so upsetting must be unreal. And more than this – you are God’s Will, His Love in expression. So how can something masquerading as opposite of God’s Love, possibly harm you? It cannot!
God’s Love has no Opposite – Deny the Illusion
My teaching partner and soul buddy, Tomas Vieira, passed in Dec. 2010. Just after his passing, I fell into the most devastating state of confusion I’ve ever experienced. The subsequent ‘breakthrough’ experience was responsible for the most profound perceptional shift that I’ve had so far, in twenty one years as a Course student. Below is an excerpt from my article. Link to entire article: click here
“When I arrived back home in New Mexico after Tomas had passed, I slipped into a fearful state of confusion and grief. Rikki, our daughter, helped me to remember that only love is real. How could separation be real as well? How could Tomas be anywhere but here and now? After all he hasn’t gone anywhere. If there was grief, then there must also be a belief in separation…that Tomas had indeed died and that we could no longer communicate. On the night of my darkest time (even darker than when we nearly lost our daughter Rikki a few years ago), hell made itself known in my mind. Even with all the trust in Holy Spirit that I had developed (or more like despite all the trust I had developed) – it all appeared to fall away that night. What was left was a godless hell in my mind. That was when I realized I must be hallucinating. Either this was real – or I was delirious. I had two major breakthroughs at this time. My desperate desire to understand exactly what happened to Tomas, had overshadowed the trust that I had developed in Holy Spirit. The result was a dreadful sense of separation and I cried out for understanding. An answer came almost immediately but it wasn’t at all the answer I was seeking! I heard Tomas’ voice in my mind ask me this question: “Do you want to understand OR do you want peace?” – I got it. The need to understand was an ego ploy…choosing to accept without understanding would bring me back to peace and open communication with both Spirit and Tomas.
The second breakthrough came when I pulled an ACIM card and this is what it said: “…if you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely and for all time.” T-7.VI.8:9. And that-was that! From that moment on I let everything not of God, just fall away. Any thought, any emotion, any manifestation – they’re all just appearances and I choose to look past appearances to the face of Christ.
So the most astounding thing about all this is the lack of grief for Rikki and me. We see now how each moment that we consciously choose joy and peace, when we choose to be in the now moment without judgment, without believing a ‘story’; that Tomas is here too. It’s impossible to be separated unless we go into the personal mind, the past and sentimental (special) love which has nothing to do with the real Love we share. How can we miss Tomas if we’ve been blessed with the awareness that he is still here and more accessible than ever before?”
This perceptional shift was responsible for the following teaching that I implement in any instant of lack of peace.
I learned that the primary step in forgiveness is to consciously ask this question concerning the person or situation that has upset us: “Is this (my loss of peace) an expression of God’s Love and Joy?” And when we respond with “no”, we remind ourselves that NOTHING exists apart from Love. So this loss of peace is an ego hallucination. I learned that we must make an unequivocal choice to recognize that only God’s Love is real – all else is the ego. Now we can join Holy Spirit in letting our belief and therefore, our value of suffering be replaced with Truth. Without joining consciously in this step of choosing to deny illusion first – forgiveness won’t occur because we continue to choose illusion. And what we still believe in, Spirit cannot save us from. Now…once sanity has returned, we can move to the next step of forgiveness.
Jesus reminds us that the correction of fear is our responsibility. This is made so much easier when we remember that whatever upsets us, is the ego’s projection and not God’s Love. It’s important to make a clear distinction between the two.
“It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can result in healing. When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. That is why you feel responsible for it. You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this [is] a matter of willingness. You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.” T-2.VI.3.
“The correction of fear [is] your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not.” T-2.VI.4:1-2
There is a process to forgiveness. Prior to forgiveness is the recognition of the following:
The instant that we find ourselves ‘falling’ for fear (or pain, loss, anger, scarcity), that is where delusion sets in. We’re in the grips of the ego thought-system. Everything we perceive outside us in that moment is being projected outward (including our body). Now if we proceed to try to resolve the situation from within the ego’s thought-system, we will exacerbate the problem, as well as increase our guilt. Sin, guilt and fear is its never ending cycle. We must first acknowledge from our lack of peace, that we have fallen prey to ego delusion. No matter how seemingly real the pain or the problem seems; they are always ‘appearances’ and not real. Our escape occurs once we remember their unreality, choosing Love as our Guide, instead of fear.
So the first step in true forgiveness is to acknowledge and say to yourself:
1) I Deny the Lie, the illusion: I deny anything not of God’s Love, the power to harm me (or another)
2) I Accept true Reality: I accept that despite my discomfort, nothing in this very moment is wrong. I (or another) am safe, secure and loved. I acknowledge that God’s Love is all there is. Therefore “I” am perfect. I join with You (God’s Love) and remember there are no problems, only the temporary absence of Your Love in my awareness. And that means that I have placed an ego problem on my inner Altar instead of your miraculous and eternal Love. I recognize that I cannot have both, a) Your Love AND, b) still sustain an ego problem on my inner Altar together. I must choose which of these two to sustain on my inner Altar, either the problem or You. I release all anxiety in this instant, and rest in being ‘okay’ with this present moment. I allow all resistance to fall away into Your Loving acceptance. From this place of peace, I have a choice to make in this moment:
1) To choose to believe that something is still wrong, there is a real problem that requires solving, OR…
2) To choose to believe in God’s all-encompassing Love, where there cannot be an opposite. Therefore this problem must be a convincing ‘appearance’, only. I offer my willingness in this instant to look past this appearance and to surrender this to your Love. And I trust that it takes only an ‘instant’ for You to heal my mind which is the one cause of all perceived problems that I see. I accept this instant of healing…I accept Your Atonement…Amen.
“The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept unequivocally that healing is necessary. What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can error be corrected by any device that can be seen physically. As long as you believe in what your physical sight tells you, your attempts at correction will be misdirected. The real vision is obscured, because you cannot endure to see your own defiled altar. But since the altar has been defiled, your state becomes doubly dangerous unless it [is] perceived.” T-2.V.8
Here is an excerpt from our new book, The End of Death; The Power of Power, to be released in 2012. It’s a prayer that helps in shifting from wrong-mindedness to Right-Mindedness:
“Every fear, all pain and every concern I have about my own or another’s safety, is always my defense against God’s Love. I choose now to be mindful of every instance of fear, seeing fear for what it truly is – rejection of my Self as Love and innocence. In defending myself from fear, I make fear real in my belief. And by making it real, I reject the Love and guiltlessness that is my true safety, my Holy Self. In the name of God’s Love, I join His Will now – and we choose against fear and pain. In His Will I am safe. In His Will I remember that I have dominion over everything the ego made. And fear and pain are not His Will. When I allow myself to be consumed by fear or pain, I isolate myself from God’s Love as my Holy Self. I willingly accept only God’s Joyous Will for me and reject anything the ego uses to try to distract me from my One-minded path Home. Amen.”
Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright. W-190.1-4
If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God. W-190.3:3-4
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Oh my. So glad I found your blog. I’m new to ACIM since Jan. 1st. I’m just starting the last week or so to slightly awaken.
A lot of what you wrote I don’t get but I guess we aren’t suppose to try to get but just continue on.
I’ve subscribed to your blog.
Thanks for sharing,
Susie
Hi Susie, welcome! Don’t concern yourself if you don’t understand too much at this stage. All that is needed, is a genuine desire to let go of (forgive) old beliefs and values that have caused us suffering. Have you read our book, Take Me to Truth yet? If you’re not a reader then there is an audio version available for purchase here: http://www.takemetotruth.com/mp3-audio–full-audio-book-56.html It puts the Course’s priciples in very simple and practical terms. You may also like The Disappearance of the Universe (book) by Gary Renard. It’s very helpful! I wish you well on your awakening journey…Warm Blessings, Nouk
Is there a way to subscribe to comment replies?
Susie