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October-December, 2011

What Is Forgiveness?

by Rev. Myron Jones, O.M.C.

I’ve been teaching a series of lessons on forgiveness on ACIM Gather. The last one I did was from the Workbook, “What is Forgiveness?” This section has helped me understand the Course’s definition of the word forgiveness, but more importantly, it has helped me practice forgiveness.

So how does the Course define forgiveness? It begins by telling us that forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It has taken me a long time to accept this. At first it was completely unacceptable to me. Slowly over time as my willingness grew, I began to embrace it as my salvation.

I used to think I just didn’t understand this. How do I recognize he didn’t do anything to me when he so clearly did do it? It felt impossible! I jumped through all sorts of mental hoops trying to find the logic in it. Because I did not give up on it, and because I wanted salvation more than I wanted to hold onto my grievances, my understanding did slowly evolve into something the thinking mind could accept. But that did not meet the goal; it was just a steppingstone.

Now I’m going back to this section on forgiveness and reading it as if Jesus meant what he said, and meant it literally. What I thought my brother did to me has not occurred. I asked the Holy Spirit to look with me at one instance, one grievance and help me see it differently.

I am a sales rep for a chemical company and recently I nearly lost a big account. When this situation came to light there was a flurry of activity within my company; strategies designed, decisions made, and steps taken. We kept the customer. Within all that activity, there were numerous forgiveness opportunities.

As always, even in my anxiety over possibly losing this customer, I did what I always do. I watched my mind. I noticed that I felt resentment. I resented my customer who seemed to forget about all the many favors I did him, and the good service he received over the years. I noticed I felt afraid of losing the customer and all that would mean to me in lost revenue and lost status with my company.

I noticed that I was projecting these fears onto my customer, my company, and our competitor. These are grievances I knew I wanted to forgive, and my mind went all over the place with forgiveness as I made the situation real in my mind and then tried to forgive it. I made excuses for myself, for my customer, and for my company. The spiritual ego, always ready to jump in, said that they were doing the best that they could and, I being the spiritually superior one, should forgive them.

I recognized this right away as form of forgiveness-to-destroy as described in The Song of Prayer. I had just finished teaching on this brilliant supplement to A Course in Miracles. I was also studying with friends the Pathways of Light course 918: The Power of Prayer and Meditation, which is an in depth study of The Song of Prayer. This course describes the four attitudes of forgiveness-to-destroy. Course 918 describes the attitudes in this way:

The attitude of “gracious lordliness” where we see another’s mistakes and join with the ego’s belief that this is his reality. We compare our behaviors with theirs and deem that we are the better one, the more saintly.

The attitude of, “We are all sinners.” I am just as guilty as you. We both are guilty and unworthy for our sinful thoughts and behaviors. Here we look down on our brother and on ourselves.

The attitude of, “You have truly hurt me and I suffer, even though I do not show the hurt and pain I feel from your sinful behavior.” We make ourselves into a secret martyr. We are so good and the other is so bad.

The attitude of giving with strings attached to have your own perceived ego needs met.

After I called myself on the first attitude of gracious lordliness, I noticed other forgiveness-to-destroy attitudes in my mind. My favorite seems to be the attitude of the secret martyr, though in this case, I got around to all of them.

After I noticed these mistaken thoughts in my mind and asked for healing, I was able to see another thought, a true thought in my mind. My brothers did nothing to me. There is nothing to forgive. This is always true in every case, in spite of appearances that make it seem like sometimes the other person really is guilty. Sometimes those appearances are very convincing. I really did do all sorts of favors for this customer. He really does seem ungrateful. Appearances. I looked right through the appearances as if they were not there.

I saw that I felt afraid, not because of anything done to me but because of my beliefs, my thoughts. My fear was sourced not by my customer’s decisions but by my belief that lack and loss could exist within the Mind of God. I live in God. I cannot experience anything that is not God except in my imagination. There is no lack and there is no loss, but I imagined there was and so I was afraid of losing a customer and afraid of the lack I believed in. With the Holy Spirit’s gentle encouragement, I looked past the appearance of loss and lack.

The Holy Spirit also helped me to remember that fear is the natural result of guilt that occurred with the birth of the separation thought. It didn’t come from the betrayal of a customer. It came from my imagined betrayal of God. But that thought, the thought that I betrayed God, is too frightening to look at, so I spend my life creating scenarios to explain the fear and guilt in my mind.

With these scenarios, which appear as moments in my life, I have a less frightening explanation for my fear. After all, if I am going to lose a customer and stand to lose income, maybe even my job, then that explains why I am afraid. The true reason for my fear, the belief that I betrayed God, remains deeply buried in my mind, unacknowledged, but never the less creating this low level, constant anxiety which I explain away with more life stories. And, as an added bonus, I project my fears onto my customer or my boss and make it their fault. They are the ungrateful or unreasonable one. “See, God. They are the guilty one. Not me.”

This clever solution to the persistent feelings of fear and guilt in my mind is made very quickly and just as quickly denied so that I can go on believing it has nothing to do with me. It is so well done that I believe my own lie, and it seems fool-proof except I am left with that nagging feeling that something is wrong, very wrong. And in spite of my best efforts, I still experience guilt.

Luckily, I am beginning to wake up and recognize that what I thought was done to me has not occurred. I made it all up in a misguided attempt to protect myself from God. In spite of appearance, this is not happening, and nobody did anything to me. I am safely asleep in God, dreaming of guilt, fear, projection and blame. I am in God. I live and move and have my being in God. There is no guilt in God, and I am in God, so I cannot be guilty. There is no fear in God, so I cannot have fear in me. God is not wrong so there is no one to blame. And if I think any of those things are happening I must be delusional.

I cannot hold two diametrically opposed thoughts in my mind at the same time. I cannot hold onto the truth and at the same time believe in the appearance of fear in my life. I can remember and even understand the concept of innocence, but if I focus on the appearance of guilt and fear, I cannot believe in innocence. While I keep my eye fearfully glued to what seems to be happening to me, Heaven remains an elusive idea, something to wish for, to imagine I could have, but that will never be real to me. So I stand in paradise with my eyes tightly closed and dream I am in hell, too afraid to open my eyes and see the truth.

The other option, and the one I eventually chose, was to move past my fear and open my eyes. I looked with the Holy Spirit, and I wanted to see with the Holy Spirit. That is all that is required of me, my willingness to look and my desire to be healed. I talked to Him about my fears. I told Him my story and how it made me feel. I included all my guilty thoughts and all my angry, fearful thoughts. I told the Holy Spirit that I didn’t know how to stop thinking these thoughts, but that I trusted Him to correct my thinking and heal my mind.

I told Him that I was willing to accept that I am the source of the appearances in my life rather than the victim of the appearances. More than I wanted the grievances, I wanted the peace. And more than I wanted to continue to hide from my fear of God, I wanted to experience the Love of God. And as I looked away from the appearances and looked toward God, I experienced the peace and the joy that was always there.

© 2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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