Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Freeing Ourselves to Be Unlimited Love

Forgiveness-to-destroy can also take the form of bargaining and compromise. “I will forgive you if you meet my needs, for in your slavery is my release.” Say this to anyone and you are slave. And you will seek to rid yourself of guilt in further bargains which can give no hope, but only greater pain and misery. How fearful has forgiveness now become, and how distorted is the end it seeks. Have mercy on yourself who bargains thus. God gives and does not ask for recompense. There is no giving but to give like Him. All else is mockery. For who would try to strike a bargain with the Son of God, and thank his Father for his holiness?

What would you show your brother? Would you try to reinforce his guilt and thus your own? Forgiveness is the means for your escape. How pitiful it is to make of it the means for further slavery and pain. Within the world of opposites there is a way to use forgiveness for the goal of God, and find the peace He offers you. Take nothing else, or you have sought your death, and prayed for separation from your Self. Christ is for all because He is in all. It is His face forgiveness lets you see. It is His face in which you see your own [face of innocence]. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.II.6-7)

Special relationships are always based on conditions. If the other meets our conditions, we are happy with the relationship. We may even be in “love” with the other person. But the moment the other strays from meeting our conditions, our response may range from irritation to rage. Our happiness has become dependent on the actions of another.

Both participants in the special relationship are slaves to their bargain to meet each other’s conditions. Guilt is always lurking, ready to be projected on the other for the least little whim. To keep the relationship together, we may forgive or overlook the other’s transgression, but not forget it. This is a form of forgiveness-to-destroy, for it maintains guilt’s “reality.” This is why the special relationship is central to maintaining the ego thought system.

The Holy Spirit will teach us that our only true and lasting happiness is in our eternal link with our Creator. God’s Will for us is perfect happiness. He has given us all His Love eternally. As we are willing to let the Holy Spirit be our Guide in all our relationships, we learn to let go of our demands for behavior and see past the body to the eternal Love that is the true Self we share with every brother. Now our relationships become holy as a means to join in Love and extend It instead of maintaining separation through projected guilt. This practice returns us to the freedom of unlimited Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Learning to See Past the Appearance of Guilt

Another form [of forgiveness-to-destroy], still very like the first if it is understood, does not appear in quite such blatant arrogance. The one who would forgive the other does not claim to be the better. Now he says instead that here is one whose sinfulness he shares, since both have been unworthy and deserve the retribution of the wrath of God. This can appear to be a humble thought, and may indeed induce a rivalry in sinfulness and guilt. It is not love for God’s creation and the holiness that is His gift forever. Can His Son condemn himself and still remember Him?

Here the goal is to separate from God the Son He loves, and keep him from his Source. This goal is also sought by those who seek the role of martyr at another’s hand. Here must the aim be clearly seen, for this may pass as meekness and as charity instead of cruelty. Is it not kind to be accepting of another’s spite, and not respond except with silence and a gentle smile? Behold, how good are you who bear with patience and with saintliness the anger and the hurt another gives, and do not show the bitter pain you feel.

Forgiveness-to-destroy will often hide behind a cloak like this. It shows the face of suffering and pain, in silent proof of guilt and of the ravages of sin. Such is the witness that it offers one who could be savior, not an enemy. But having been made enemy, he must accept the guilt and heavy-laid reproach that thus is put upon him. Is this love? Or is it rather treachery to one who needs salvation from the pain of guilt? What could the purpose be, except to keep the witnesses of guilt away from love? (A Course in Miracles, S-2.II.3-5)

There is no difference between battling an enemy or stoically accepting another’s “attack” as deserved punishment for our own guilt while “forgiving” the other for his attacks. Both hold on to guilt. Both reinforce belief that separation is true. Guilt can only be justified if we believe we have harmed God by disowning Him.

Yet God is eternal, changeless and cannot be harmed. The truth in us is an extension of His changeless Love. Our true Self retains all the characteristics of changeless Love, including innocence. Thus the perception of guilt is an hallucination, which could never be true. True forgiveness comes through the vision of Christ, which overlooks illusions as meaningless and having no effect.

Christ’s vision sees Love’s innocence everywhere. It recognizes appearances of guilt as calls for Love, calls to remember our true innocence. The ego is blind to Love and incapable of forgiving. That is why we must rely on the help of our inner Teacher to learn to recognize calls for Love and respond with Love. Thus we learn of the Love in us by extending It to our brother. This is how our true Self joins with the one Self we share with every brother.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Recognizing False Forgiveness

Forgiveness-to-destroy has many forms, being a weapon of the world of form. Not all of them are obvious, and some are carefully concealed beneath what seems like charity. Yet all the forms that it may seem to take have but this single goal; their purpose is to separate and make what God created equal, different. The difference is clear in several forms where the designed comparison cannot be missed, nor is it really meant to be.

In this group, first, there are the forms in which a “better” person deigns to stoop to save a “baser” one from what [the ego believes] he truly is. Forgiveness here rests on an attitude of gracious lordliness so far from love that arrogance could never be dislodged. Who can forgive and yet despise? And who can tell another he is steeped in sin, and yet perceive him as the Son of God? Who makes a slave to teach what freedom is? There is no union here, but only grief. This is not really mercy. This is death. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.II.1-2)

Belief in being separate from God is belief in death because it is belief in being separate from the Source of Life. The “life” we experience in the world is an illusionary substitute that excludes God/Love. Thus the ego never wants to truly forgive, for that would mean the acceptance of Love’s innocence. It offers instead substitutes for forgiveness that still deny Love’s unity.

To know our Self is to recognize our unity with the one Self that is in every brother. This would mean the end of the ego and so it has made tools to deceive us into believing we are forgiving while we are really attacking to maintain separation. We cannot see another as separate or different from our one Self and truly forgive. True forgiveness sees the face of Christ, the face of innocence, everywhere and in everyone.

It is time to let go of the ego’s deceptions. We do this with the vigilant practice of opening our minds to the Holy Spirit’s guidance all through the day. This willingness allows us to learn the Holy Spirit’s lessons in unity which shine away the shadows of the ego’s divisiveness. This is how we bring peace and Love to the world.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Freeing Ourselves from Guilt Forever

But to achieve this end [beyond all limits into timelessness] you first must learn, before you reach where learning cannot go. Forgiveness is the key, but who can use a key when he has lost the door for which the key was made, and where alone it fits? Therefore we make distinctions, so that prayer can be released from darkness into light. Forgiveness’ role must be reversed, and cleansed from evil usages and hateful goals. Forgiveness-to-destroy must be unveiled in all its treachery, and then let go forever and forever. There can be no trace of it remaining, if the plan that God established for returning be achieved at last, and learning be complete.

This is the world of opposites. And you must choose between them every instant while this world retains reality for you. Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom. Let it then be clear to you exactly what forgiveness means to you, and learn what it should be to set you free. The level of your prayer depends on this, for here it waits its freedom to ascend above the world of chaos into peace. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.I.9-10)

Our experience in the world certainly seems real. Yet its seeming reality rests on our belief that we have separated from the oneness of God’s Love. Beliefs can change and thus the seeming reality of the world is unstable. This unstable “reality” must be constantly defended by the ego. The ego must find ways to divert our attention from Love’s oneness with slight of hand that offers appealing substitutes for Love. This is the best the ego can do — offer imaginary substitutes that could never be real, dressed in appealing images.

Forgiveness to destroy is founded on making illusions seem real. Its central figure is the body, which defines separation and differences and is only capable of seeing differences. Thus the body sees separation or sin as real and then offers deceiving forms of “forgiveness” that do not forgive at all. They maintain the separation while seeming to assuage the perceived guilt within. 

To free ourselves from this perpetuation of guilt, we must learn to recognize the ego’s disguises for what they are. To learn these lessons, we must turn to the Teacher within with willingness to receive His healing insight. He will bring the lessons that free us forever from guilt. We will learn to set the ego aside and return to our Home in Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Returning to Love with Christ’s Vision

Ask, then, His help, and ask Him how to learn forgiveness as His vision lets it be. You are in need of what He gives, and your salvation rests on learning this of Him. Prayer cannot be released to Heaven while forgiveness-to-destroy remains with you. God’s mercy would remove this withering and poisoned thinking from your holy mind. Christ has forgiven you, and in His sight the world becomes as holy as Himself. Who sees no evil in [the world] sees like Him. For what He has forgiven has not sinned, and guilt can be no more. Salvation’s plan is made complete, and sanity has come.

Forgiveness is the call to sanity, for who but the insane would look on sin when he could see the face of Christ instead? This is the choice you make; the simplest one, and yet the only one that you can make. God calls on you to save His Son from death by offering Christ’s Love to him. This is your need, and God holds out this gift to you. As He would give, so must you give as well. And thus is prayer restored to formlessness, beyond all limits into timelessness, with nothing of the past to hold it back from reuniting with the ceaseless song that all creation sings unto its God.” (A Course in Miracles, S-2.I.7-8)

We have been diligent in learning the ego’s lessons that make the world we experience with the body seem real to us. We have become convinced that the world is real, not to be questioned. Questioning the world’s reality is heresy to the ego’s religion. Yet all the forms of the world are illusionary images. Believing illusions are real is the definition of insanity. We have taught ourselves to be insane.

We have clearly demonstrated that we can learn. It is time to learn a new curriculum, the lessons learned through Christ’s vision. The moment by moment practice of asking our inner Teacher how to interpret all our perceptions will teach us to let go of the insanity.

As we accept Christ’s vision, which sees only the innocence of Love, we forgive the world for what we thought it was. We no longer need to defend, feel guilty or fear punishment. All the hallucinations we believed were real had no effect on the truth that we are Love created by Love. The truth of What we are cannot be changed because its Source is changeless.

It is time to pay attention to the signs that demonstrate our insane beliefs. It is time to ask for the Holy Spirit’s help to let them go so that we may return to the peace and joy of our Home in Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Finding Peace and Love in the World

And do not ever think you can see sin in anyone except yourself.

This is the great deception of the world, and you the great deceiver of yourself. It always seems to be another who is evil, and in his sin you are the injured one. How could freedom be possible if this were so? You would be slave to everyone, for what he does entails your fate, your feelings, your despair or hope, your misery or joy. You have no freedom unless he gives it to you. And being evil, he can only give of what he is. You cannot see his sins and not your own. But you can free him and yourself as well.

Forgiveness, truly given, is the way in which your only hope of freedom lies. Others will make mistakes and so will you, as long as this illusion of a world appears to be your home. Yet God Himself has given all His Sons a remedy for all illusions that they think they see. Christ’s vision does not use your eyes, but you can look through His and learn to see like Him. Mistakes are tiny shadows, quickly gone, that for an instant only seem to hide the face of Christ, which still remains unchanged behind them all. His constancy remains in tranquil silence and in perfect peace. He does not know of shadows. His [are] the eyes that look past error to the Christ in you. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.I.4:8-6:8)

The ego’s scheme to project our guilt on the world outside us keeps us at the mercy of outside forces. What people say and do can make us happy or sad, fearful or angry. Because we cannot control the outside world, we feel powerless to find release from the puppet strings that seem to control our life experience. But we are only subject to this external control as long as we believe we are separate and identify with the ego thought system. This is a choice for self-deception, which maintains our guilt, though it hides it from our awareness.

Christ’s vision is the means through which we can release ourselves from the seeming control of an external world. We need to learn that what the body’s eyes show us is not real and open our minds to Christ’s vision. His Vision sees only the innocence of Love reflected everywhere. Our reliance on the body’s eyes blocks His vision from our awareness.

We are not asked to deny what the body’s eyes seem to show us, but we are asked to bring these perceptions to Christ’s vision. Here we will see that the guilt reflected in our perception is not justified because the perception is not true. Beyond the mistaken perception is the truth of Love, unchanged and unchangeable.

As we practice this process of opening to Christ’s vision, we are less subject to the seeming whims of the ego’s world. Our level of peace increases. We are less reactive and defensive. We more frequently recognize calls for Love and respond with Love. This is the process of forgiveness and the benefit it offers.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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What Purpose Are We Giving the World?

As prayer is always for yourself, so is forgiveness always given you. It is impossible to forgive another, for it is only your sins you see in him. You want to see them there, and not in you. That is why forgiveness of another is an illusion. Yet it is the only happy dream in all the world; the only one that does not lead to death. Only in someone else can you forgive yourself, for you have called him guilty of your sins, and in him must your innocence now be found. Who but the sinful need to be forgiven? And do not ever think you can see sin in anyone except yourself. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.I.4)

The images of the world can serve one of two purposes, depending upon the guide we choose. The ego uses the world as a target on which to project our guilt. This scheme seems to reduce our own guilt, but only hides the guilt in our unconscious mind. The ego’s secret goal is to maintain guilt. The mechanism of projection serves its goal well by making us unaware that we have not let guilt go.

The Holy Spirit gives another purpose to the images of the world. These images serve as reflections of our hidden guilt. They thus bring to our attention the need for forgiveness. Our judgments disrupt our innate peace. This disturbance now becomes a reminder of the need to forgive.

With this need recognized, we can bring our perceptions to the Holy Spirit for help in seeing them anew with Christ’s vision. His vision will show us the changeless Love beyond the made up images that make our world. With His help, we learn that we remain Love as Love created us. It appears as though we are forgiving another, but we are really forgiving our own projected guilt that is being reflected back to us.

Every time we forgive, we free ourselves from ego limitations, and we free the world along with us. It is a journey of awakening to the unlimited Love we are.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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