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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 6. 12-21-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 6

6 As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way, in anyone, whatever he may do, you will not look within, where you would always find Atonement. The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has no reason. The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.

Journal
“The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.”
Every time I hold a grievance I am establishing an illusion as real. When I do this, forgiveness becomes very difficult. A number of years ago I had a grievance against my in-laws and I was miserable in my grievance. I tried and tried to let it go and nothing seemed to work. It took me literally years to get free of that grievance. At that time I didn’t understand what the problem was. Now I can see that I had made the grievance real in my mind. I absolutely believed that they were guilty, and then I tried to forgive them. I have since learned that this never works.

Over the years since that time I have had other opportunities to look at this ego tendency to judge someone as guilty and then try to forgive them. It is painful every time. I had many learning opportunities when I was working, with my bosses, with co-workers, with customers and competitors, with uncomfortable situations. Each time I worked with this idea I gained more clarity about the way forgiveness works. I gained more certainty that there was only one way to forgive, and that is through accepting the Atonement.

The Atonement was placed in me to dispel illusions. It is always available to me, and to take advantage of it I need only to accept it. I don’t have to figure out a way to forgive, not myself and not others. I don’t have to do anything about the person or the situation. My only responsibility is to accept the healing of the Atonement. No matter how real the attack seems, how certain the guilt appears in the story, the Atonement simply finds the Son of God innocent. It sees everything else as an illusion and therefore meaningless. So it doesn’t matter what they do because what they do is an illusion.

Now that I have accepted the Atonement for that situation with my in-laws, it is clear to me why I struggled for so long, and why I felt like I was justified in my judgment of them. I felt attacked and deep in my subconscious mind was the belief that they were right in their judgment of me. At that time, I was unable to look within. I was too afraid that they somehow knew the darkness hidden in me, and that if I looked that is what I would find. So I had to keep my eye on them instead. Making them guilty was my way of avoiding the self-condemnation I felt. I remember slinging guilt onto everyone involved, hoping it would stick to some of them and leave my own culpability unexamined.

All of that misery, and for what? As it turned out, guilt isn’t real anyway. There is not guilt in me, and therefore no need to displace guilt onto someone else. There is no reason for guilt, no value in it. I still see guilt where it does not exist, but now I know that I am mistaken. I know that guilt is only an illusion as are the stories that represent guilt. Nowadays when I notice guilt thoughts I am pretty quick to accept the Atonement instead. I see the belief in my mind that someone is guilty, then I talk to the Holy Spirit about it and release it to Him. I accept the Atonement and allow the belief to dissipate as my mind settles into peace.

What I am especially vigilant for is guilt disguised as something else. For instance, when my son was in trouble I felt sorry for him and I felt afraid for him. I called this love, but it was really guilt. That is the tricky part, where ego tries to slip guilt into the situation by calling it something else. “That poor man,” is the same thing as “That guilty man.” And, “What is going to happen to that poor man?” is the same thing as “What is going to happen to that guilty man?”

My son is not guilty of anything. He is simply playing out his illusory story of separation. I am playing my part in his story. It is not a matter of right or wrong. It is simply not true, not real. It can be difficult for us to disengage from the story when the story plays on our fear and our guilt, but we can do it. I saw that in my own life. I saw that as I was able to distance myself just a little, just enough to remember that there is another way to see, I was able to ask for help. I was then able to ask for the Atonement, and to be comforted and brought to peace. Through true forgiveness my part in our story became more helpful because it was coming from a peaceful place in my mind.

The question is never going to be, “Can I forgive what the person has done?” It is always going to be, “Can I accept the Atonement in this situation and realize that we are all innocent?”

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 5. 12-20-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 5

5 Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again. A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.

Journal
Christmas is a good time to look at these relationships and to notice when and how I am holding myself to the past through holding my family to their past. On Christmas I will be with my children and their families. My prayer will be to receive help and guidance to see them as they are, not as I thought they were. Jesus is telling us that it is not hard to do this. He says it will take a minute, even less, to be freed from the past. I can do this.

Every other year, everything happened at my house so I would be very busy and distracted as I got things prepared and played the hostess. This year it is going to happen at my daughter’s house, so I am free to observe and to decide and to accept the Atonement each time I notice that I am holding onto the past. As often happens when I make a decision for God, all things fall into place so that I can best use the opportunity. Even knowing this, I am in awe at the perfection of this situation, how everything is arranged for my good.

Another thing I read in this paragraph that touched me deeply is this: “When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you.” I learn that there is no guilt in me by accepting that there is no guilt in my brothers. I am told by Jesus that God loves me unconditionally. God looks at me and He sees only what He created, not the dream character I made. I want to do that. I want to see my brother only as he was created. I want to know that the body I see with my body’s eyes is an illusion and meaningless. “God, please show me what You see.”

When I do this, when I look past the illusory body/personality, I will see innocence and perfection, because that is what is within each of us. No matter how deeply we bury it, our true nature, our Self, remains unaffected by the ego thoughts and beliefs. Jesus says it this way: “For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.” The Atonement has always been in us, just denied. As we accept it, we Awaken to our true nature, to love and peace and joy, because that is what we are. The way to the Atonement is through our brothers, so I am motivated to ask for the Atonement the next time I think I see a spot of guilt anywhere.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 4. 12-19-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 4
4 When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. The past is not in you. Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationships at all. Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to “solve” the past, and still to see them as they really are? Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?

Journal

I immediately thought of my oldest daughter, Sheryl. I have memories from her childhood that pop up into my mind that used to cause me extreme distress. Some of those memories still carry a sharp sting. I have spent her whole life trying to somehow make up for my mistakes as a mother, to somehow atone for my sins. And so I used that relationship as a way to solve the past. And all along, all she has done is love me. And, weirdly, her present love has not seemed as meaningful to me as my imagined sins. If I keep maintaining that past relationship with Sheryl, I will never have a present relationship with her.

Even as I write this (and I know that what Jesus says is true) I hear the ego mind dredging up old stories and insisting I can’t just pretend they didn’t happen. The ego mind says that they make me guilty and unworthy of her love. This is how the ego maintains the illusion, carrying the past into the present and assuring the future remains the same. This is the purpose of guilt, to keep the story going through blocking actual relationships. It stands like an impenetrable wall between our brothers and us, preventing union. There! Separation is assured and the ego gets to exist in the mind another day. Jesus is helping us to understand it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a simple way out.

“You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?”

I had a strange reaction to this. I don’t know how to express my feelings. I guess I felt silly. All this drama, all the tears and the frustration, the years of guilt and atoning, and Jesus reduces my angst to “idle wishes”? I also felt resistance from the ego mind to this idea. And maybe that is why I felt confused. I have prayed for release from the belief in guilt and when I am offered that release, I don’t want it. I don’t want to be wrong? Maybe. If Jesus is right that my worry and regret were over idle wishes, then did I waste my life agonizing over my sins? How could something so painful and persistent be reduced to idle wishes? Is this a joke?

And yet, as I think of this I feel a lightening in my mind, a burden lifted, a darkness dissipated. I will accept this extraordinary gift! I go back to the two sentences and I realize something else. Jesus is saying that in the past I had an idle wish to be guilty, and guilt precludes salvation, so I had an idle wish to remain outside salvation. Guilt was the way I assured this wish would be granted. Now I want salvation. I have experienced separation and I am through with it and want to return to my natural and true state as the divine being that I am. Jesus is just pointing out the obvious to me. If guilt is how I maintained the illusion, then keeping that idle wish in my mind will prevent me from achieving my new goal, which is to awaken from the dream of separation. It is just an idle wish, nothing more, nothing real or strong or immovable, just an idle wish. How could something so insubstantial stop me from accepting salvation?

Whooo! I’m feeling so light that I might float away!

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 3. 12-15-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 3
3 In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him, or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their own control.

Journal
If I want to love and feel loved, I must let go of the idea of guilt. Holding onto guilt precludes love. Seeing guilt in someone prevents true union with that one. In fact, seeing guilt outside myself increases my belief that I am guilty. I remind myself frequently how this works. I believe in guilt and this belief stems from the idea that I separated myself from God. I don’t want to acknowledge this unconscious guilt, so I project it onto others in the mistaken belief that if I see it outside myself then it is not in me. As long as it is outside of me I don’t have to do anything about it. It seems to be someone else’s problem.

There is only one way to deal with this self-perpetuating situation. I must break the cycle by taking responsibility for the guilt I see. As I take responsibility for the guilt I see, The Holy Spirit helps me to see differently. I have done this and though I am still working on this, I have experienced a lot of success. It is actually very simple. I am innocent and so is everyone else. There! No guilt! God did not create guilt so guilt does not exist. God created us innocent and so we are innocent. Again, no guilt!

It only feels difficult because we tend to get involved in the stories that represent the guilt we believe in. The stories seem to prove guilt, but that is backwards. The belief in guilt came first, then the stories are projected outward. Of course the stories seem to prove guilt, they were made for that purpose. (L 325: From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own.) Understanding that guilt was in the mind and then given form as a guilt story, we can then use the story to undo the belief in guilt.

I’ve talked about the relationship problems I had at work before I retired. I kept seeing my boss and my office manager as guilty. They did things that seemed to prove they were guilty. But eventually, I was able to look away from the story and focus on the lesson it presented. I saw that believing in guilt was making everything worse, and that in doing so I was robbing myself of love and peace.

So I asked the Holy Spirit to show me another way to see this. I had to turn it over to Him several times before I was willing to leave it with Him, but eventually, everything changed. I began to see them as innocent and I began to love them. It was actually amazing to me. The situation I had used to prove their guilt suddenly proved their innocence. As I let go of the idea they were guilty, I felt less guilt within myself. Now I don’t believe in guilt as much as I did before.

The stories are helpful in that they show us the effects of our beliefs, and offer us the opportunity to ask for correction. But they are not the focal point. The guilt came first, and then a story of that guilt was projected. (L 15: My thoughts are images I have made) It is the belief in guilt itself that we will eventually let go of. And every time we release one of our images, accept that it is just a false image, and allow the Holy Spirit to correct our thoughts, we come closer to letting go of the belief in guilt. One day we will make only beautiful, peaceful images because there will be no guilt in our mind.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 2. 12-13-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 2

2 Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release. No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is not shared, and so it is not real.

Journal
When I was growing up I was very much influenced by my mom’s relationship with my father. This isn’t unusual, of course, but how this worked for me is so perfect to help me understand what Jesus is telling us in this paragraph. My mom loved my dad, but she also hated him. He didn’t live up to what she expected of him. He was an alcoholic and when drunk was violent. He didn’t always provide for us the way she thought a man should, and I think that was really upsetting to her. She was very prideful when it came to being able to take care of yourself financially, and she was always concerned about what others would think of us.

When I got old enough to date, she started telling me what kind of man to marry. She talked all the time about marrying someone who would take care of me, who would provide a good living. She said I should marry a doctor or an engineer because someone in that profession would always make enough money. Since at that time in my life I was very rebellious and usually did the opposite of what I was told, you would think I would have ignored this. But I guess all those years of being influenced by mom’s fear of lack added up. I did actually marry an engineer, the first guy I knew who met my mom’s criteria for a safe marriage.

“No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship.”

That was my first husband. I married him for my own individual salvation. My mom believed that salvation lay in being taken care of and I believed her, so I did the only reasonable thing I could do considering my beliefs. Not that I didn’t like and love this man, but the relationship was built on a false foundation. I didn’t understand any of this at the time or understand my own motives enough to even question my choices. I don’t blame myself or my mom. We were both doing the best we could with what we had to work with at the time.

It is a good learning situation, though. Whether I had a clear understanding of the situation or not, there would have certainly been guilt. We cannot take what we think the other person has without feeling guilt for it. He had what I thought I needed and I took it and in my mind offered little in return. I was not consciously aware of this feeling, but I was uneasy in the relationship because some part of my mind believed I was a thief and I felt guilty for it. This also left me feeling more unworthy than I was going into the relationship. Though I was a very religious person at the time, it never occurred to me to turn the relationship over to God. I guess I missed Catechism the day they talked about that.

Perhaps if we had been older and more mature we might have made the relationship last longer, maybe even long enough for us to gain some wisdom. The love was there but the spiritual foundation was not. I displaced my guilt onto this relationship. I began to see him as the cause of my discontent. At that time in my life I could not have taken anymore blame, nor did I have the spiritual understanding to know the difference between blame and responsibility. So like most of us do a lot of the time, I refused to look too closely at myself and simply blamed him.

I think nearly all relationships begin as special relationships in which we seek to get our perceived needs met. It is what we know in this world of separate beings with individual needs. But if we are spiritually wise, we can use those relationships to learn differently. We can give the relationship to the Holy Spirit and use all the elements of it, the challenges that are going to rise in any relationship, to let Him heal our minds. It is in this way that the Holy Spirit transforms the special relationship into a holy relationship. If we keep our guilt they never develop into real relationships, but if we give the guilt to the Holy Spirit for purification, we can know what relationships are meant to be.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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