A Course in Miracles Text Made Simple

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Chapter 29: The Awakening

Section VI. Forgiveness and the End of Time

Read A Course in Miracles, Chapter 29, Section VI. (pages 615-617)

How are forgiveness and peace related?

With forgiveness, the world of strife, misery and pain is over. Jesus tells us, “Forgiveness is your peace, for herein lies the end of separation and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. This is the ‘sacrifice’ salvation asks and gladly offers peace instead of this.” (1:4-5)

What does “Swear not to die, you holy Son of God!” mean?

Jesus brings us to understand that when we want to believe we are a separate body in a world of separation, we are wanting to dissociate from or remove from our awareness the memory of the one Life we live in the Mind of Love. When we want separation, we are wanting the death of our true Identity.

Jesus is gently asking us here to give up this wish for separation because it only gives us the experience of conflict, pain and death. God loves His Son and would not have this for his one Son and so it could never be. Jesus tells us, “You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one.” (2:2-6)

What are we being encouraged to change?

In paragraph 3 Jesus tells us, “Change is the only thing that can be made a blessing here, where purpose is not fixed, however changeless it appears to be. Think not that you can set a goal unlike God’s purpose for you, and establish it as changeless and eternal. You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. But you can not remove the power to change your mind, and see another purpose there.” (3:3-6)

We are being encouraged to change the purpose of what we think our “life” is for. We may originally have thought our individual life is for the purpose of being the decision maker of our our dream and making our dream of being special come true. In many places in the Course we are encouraged to ask ourselves, “What is this for?” In other words, what is the purpose of my wanting to continue this dream story? Do I still want separation or do I want to wake up from the dream of separation from God? What thought system am I reinforcing right now, separation or oneness?

What is the purpose of forgiveness?

The purpose of forgiveness is to let the purpose of the world be changed from dreaming of the death of God’s Son to the remembrance of our eternal Life as one with God. The purpose of forgiveness is to return to our Father and let go of wandering into dreams of death and being separate from our Creator.

We are forgiving ourselves for our wish to separate and are letting go of our dream of self punishment for our “sinful” desire to separate and have something for ourselves alone. We are learning that we no longer need to dream of crucifying God’s Son. 

Jesus encourages us by helping us remember that we can change our mind about the purpose of the world. He reminds us, “There is no death because the living share the function their Creator gave to them. Life’s function cannot be to die. It must be life’s extension, that it be as one forever and forever, without end.”  (4:9-11)

What does the world look like through the eyes of forgiveness?

Jesus joyfully gives us this answer: “How lovely is the world whose purpose is forgiveness of God’s Son! How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a little while in such a happy place! Nor can it be forgot, in such a world, it is a little while till timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.” (6:1-4)

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