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Forgiveness is the Only Gift I Give.

The more I do these lessons the more I see that each one offers me salvation if I choose to fully accept it. This one reminds me that forgiveness is all that I want and I can have it by giving it. If I did only this on a consistent basis, I would awaken from the dream. How could I not? It took me twenty six years to really understand what forgiveness is. Not because it is so hard to understand, but because I didn’t want it to be true. To understand that forgiveness undoes the idea that someone else is responsible and to blame, and that always I am only forgiving myself, was not a welcome realization.

Now that I am willing to be completely responsible for everything in my life, now that I am willing to let everyone and everything off the hook and see the world and my brothers as innocent, it all seems so simple and self evident that I cannot kid myself about it being a difficult concept to understand. It was just a hard concept to accept as true. Now that I have I am greatly relieved because I see the infinite value of being responsible. I see the power that it takes to create the illusion that the Son of God is powerless, so I know I hold the power within my mind to undo the belief and so undo its effects.

I no longer sit in my victimhood praying for someone to rescue me from what others have done to me. Now I find the whole idea of doing so completely insane. Thank you, God, for that clarity! It is not like discovering some great elusive truth so much as it is like suddenly opening my eyes and seeing what was always right before me. That I receive what I give has been the same journey. I accepted the idea as being true, but it was meaningless to me for such a long time. Sure I understood the words and understood the meaning of each individual word, but when you put it together into a sentence, you lost me.

I have to laugh at myself now that I have finally accepted the obvious truth. There is only one Son of God, and we are It. I give only to myself because there is no one else to give to. What is so hard to understand about that? Obviously I did not want to accept that I am not special. I needed you to be different from me because that was the only way I could appear special. How could I be special if we were all the same? And if we are different, separate, then it is impossible to understand that as I give to you, I give to myself. This is why for so long, I stubbornly refused to open my eyes and see what was right in front of me.

Now that I have seen the truth I first feel like crying at the wasted time (thank God I am eternal and so that doesn’t matter, and anyway time is an illusion). Then I feel like laughing in joy to see that I am not surrounded by strangers, but by my beloved brothers all of whom are part of my One Self. These are the same ones who just recently were seen as enemy and competitor and cause of all my grief, but no longer. It is a simple and natural thing to think first, “How can I be helpful?” when I recognize my brother is myself and my Love.

So what is left to do? As I sit here in the solitude of this hotel room all is calm and peaceful. When I leave, the world we have created to distract us from the truth begins its job and I get distracted! I start off with the idea that the one before me is my brother/my self, and before you know it, the ego part of my mind is insisting this guy is trying to steal my peace. And for a little while I am again warring with my brother, completely forgetting I war only with myself. But wait! It is different now because I know something I didn’t know before, and soon I am asking the Holy Spirit to help me see this differently.

This is what is left for me to do. I need to practice the truth. I need to forgive and forgive and forgive until I no longer choose anything but the truth. When I first accepted the truth I was so disappointed to find out that there was more to do. I just couldn’t believe how easily I gave up my peace as soon as I let my guard down, and I went through a period of real depression because I didn’t see how I was ever going to do this. Everyone and everything seemed to elicit a reaction from me and that elicited guilt which just made it all the worse. But I kept at it and now, instead of being upset that I have temporarily forgotten my identity, I am glad for the opportunity to look at and forgive error once more, knowing that this practice brings us closer to our truth. Now even my mistakes have gained great value for me as I see they are not sins but merely opportunities for remembering.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for being the ever present Voice for God within me. Thank you, Jesus, my brother, for overcoming the world so that I could know it can be done. And thank you for not abandoning what you started and for being with me always. Thank You for creating me holy, and perfect and unassailable. Thank you for extending Yourself and so making me like You. Thank You for loving me always.

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

I have been upset about something happening in my life. The details are not important because I really do see they are just symbolic of all the little dramas that I participate in. One drama is truly no different from the next one except in form. Sometimes, a drama comes along and I watch it for a few minutes, give it to Holy Spirit and go on as if nothing had happened which is exactly true; nothing happened. But sometimes, like now, I hold onto the drama and suffer awhile. After it is over and I have finally released it, I wonder why I did that. But while it is going on, I can’t remember how to get free of it, or seem unable to make that decision to do so. This used to be frightening to me because I thought it meant that somehow, maybe I really could not let go. If it was up to me and yet I was the one resisting, I was doomed. Circular ego thinking would keep me trapped longer. But over time, after watching this happen many times, I now understand that eventually I will come around to sane thinking because I can only stand so much pain.

I was talking to the Holy Spirit about this particular drama this morning and asking Him why I could not get lose from this, and what I needed to do. In my mind I saw myself standing behind bars, clutching them in a white knuckled grip, longing to be on the other side. The Holy Spirit told me to look to the right, and I saw the bars ended within a few feet. He told me to look to the left, and again the bars ended. They were connected to nothing above or below. The only way they remained upright was that I was holding them in place. The reason I was holding on so tightly was to keep the bars in place. As long as I looked straight ahead at my drama, and did not glance in any other direction, I was able to keep the illusion of being a victim in place.

I asked the Holy Spirit why I do this. He reminded me that just this morning He had guided me to read something that He had given Regina. It said:

You may ask why you would choose the pain of resistance when you could experience peace. The answer is simple and one I am sure you have not overlooked. You choose resistance because you choose not to know fully that which you are. Resistance serves your choice to know yourself not as you are.

Even now, I seem reluctant to let the bars go, and the Holy Spirit gave me a thought that I have invested a lot of time in this victim stance. I have gotten pretty comfortable in my suffering. But I remain both prisoner and jailer so it is up to me to make a new choice.

As I sat in silence listening to the Voice for God, I received another reminder; I am the ruler of my kingdom, I created this situation and it is good. It has brought me right to this moment that shows me what it is like to experience imprisonment, and it allows me to see that as easily as I did that, I can experience freedom. Both are in the kingdom of my mind. Which do I choose? I am the maker of all that I experience.

Acceptance of all that is, just as it is, allows all the resistance to melt away. I feel the knot in my stomach loosen; I feel the muscles in my jaw unclench. I no longer look at my creation (my drama) as something bad that I need to fight my way out of. It is perfect and brings me the gift of release. How can I release the energy of fear if I do not know I hold it, or why would I want to if I do not realize how painful it is? By experiencing it in a way that I can see and feel I recognize it as something that I do not want to choose again. And if I forget this lesson, I will set up another one to remind myself of what I no longer want. I could never be the victim of the world I see, but to know this is true, I must be willing to take full responsibility for everything that is happening in my life. And just on the other side of this acceptance is freedom.

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