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April-June, 2007

Wake Up and Go Home

by Gary R. Renard

Question:  There can be no true enlightenment without undoing the ego. Forgiveness is the means by which ACIM teaches that we ‘undo the ego,’ so can you tell us what your teachers say about forgiveness?

Gary: First of all on a cosmic level the ego is simply the idea that we have an individual identity that has separated itself from its Source. That idea is the ‘false collective’ us. There is just one ego appearing as many.

Forgiveness as taught by the great Masters like Jesus, undoes the ego. It accomplishes that by bringing people to a position of cause rather than effect. The traditional kind of forgiveness which the world practices keeps the separation intact by seeing others as having really done something. That idea is like the old Newtonian physics where you have a subject and object that are separate from each other.

By seeing others as separate, it keeps the idea of you as separate being real in your unconscious mind. It also keeps you in a position of being at the mercy of the effects of the world. You are then a victim of the world you see. Real forgiveness, as taught by the Masters like Jesus and Buddha, would see everything as being one and connected. Thus there’s not really anyone else who is separate from you. Therefore, to forgive another is to forgive yourself. This is more in harmony with the new physics because it teaches that you can’t really separate one thing from something else. This puts you in a position of ‘cause’ rather than effect because you realize that if you’re everywhere then the world is not being done to you; it is being done by you. Thus you begin to realize that the world is a projection of your own mind; one of your own making so you can forgive people, not because they’ve done something but because they haven’t really done anything! That kind of forgiveness we’ll call Quantum forgiveness as it undoes the idea of separation (the ego) in your unconscious mind. And this is because of an important law of the mind which ACIM puts this way, ‘As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself.’ There’s no getting away from this. If they’re guilty, you’re guilty and that’s what you’ll believe about yourself. But if they’re innocent, then you must be innocent because how you see the other person is simply going into your unconscious mind as a message about yourself.

Question:  So, is this the kind of forgiveness that Jesus not only taught but used as the catalyst by which to go Home? It seems very different than conventional forgiveness.

Gary: Yes. It’s through this kind of forgiveness that we realize the people we see out there are just split aspects of our own mind. A mind that thinks it’s separate, but that we can now allow the Holy Spirit to heal; to rejoin with our Self. You know, Jesus went through life 2000 years ago, forgiving everybody and seeing everybody as totally innocent. By doing that, he was looking past the body to what they really are, which is Spirit, and every time he did that it was as though he was rejoining with himself and becoming whole again. In that process of becoming whole again, he was actually awakening and returning to reality. So, when the Buddha said, ‘I am awake,’ he meant that he had awakened. And Jesus, in A Course in Miracles, is teaching us to awaken from what is the equivalent of a dream and return to what we really are, which is this idea of perfect oneness with God.

Question: Many say that disillusionment precedes enlightenment. Do you agree?

Gary: Absolutely. I think that at some point one has to become like the prodigal son in Jesus’ story. You have to realize the world is futile because of its impermanence. Then you discover that the only solution is to go Home because Heaven is permanent ecstasy and the world is ecstasy followed by horror. That’s the difference between non-duality and duality. One is permanent and the other is false. That’s what Jesus was talking about when He spoke of building upon the rock instead of upon the sand. The ironic thing is that you don’t have to give up the world at the level of the physical. You can live a normal life and that’s because Quantum forgiveness is done at the level of the mind which is ‘cause’ and nothing whatsoever to do with the level of the world, which is ‘effect.’ That’s why ACIM says this is a course in cause and not effect. By dealing with the cause you’re in a position of power. You have the power to choose to go Home to reality instead of staying trapped in illusions. On the way Home you start to have experiences that tell you what Home is like. Once you have those experiences, there’s no turning back because there is no comparison between the joy of Heaven and the world you used to think was real.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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