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Study of Text, Chapter 9, IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 5. 2-6-15

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 5
5 Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear. Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it. Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent. By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it.

Journal
This is so simple it is hard to believe that we make it hard. In essence, there is no guilt and so nothing to forgive. No matter what I think I see, and what I think I think, I am innocent and so is everything else. I am learning to look past the appearance of guilt and thus not see it at all. As I look past the appearance of guilt, I see only holiness reflected back to me.

The Holy Spirit teaches me true forgiveness as I ask Him to look with me at my assumed guilt. He sees no effects from my error and therefore there are none. If there are no effects there is no error and I am free. In this way he methodically teaches me the ego does not exist and proves it to me as He teaches me I am innocent. This applies equally, and in exactly the same way to everyone.

I was just minding my own business yesterday when I was assailed by a sudden vivid memory of something I did in the past for which I felt guilty. It was like it was happening all over again the guilt was so strong and fresh. The way the ego would have me deal with this is to recognize that I sinned and am guilty and then to forgive myself for this.

Or not. Because now that it is real in my mind, I cannot be free of it. No matter how much I tell myself that I am forgiven, I still remember doing this real thing. The ego suggests I make amends somehow, do something to make up for my evil deed. I can’t do enough good things to undo what is real for me. The belief in that sin remains in my mind no matter what I do to atone for it, because I believe in it.

After taking it to the ego and getting no relief, I take it to the Holy Spirit and ask for forgiveness. The Holy Spirit looks at me and sees only God’s holy Son in His perfect sinlessness. There is nothing to forgive. Everywhere He looks, He sees innocence. Where are the effects of sin now? Where is guilt now? Without guilt, where is the ego?

I don’t need to know how this is done. I know only that when I released to the Holy Spirit the guilt I felt for the remembered error, the guilt was no longer there. My mind was purged of the ego belief I had sinned. Sometimes when this happens the undoing is so complete, I can no longer remember the imagined sin.

The most remarkable of all, is that I am learning true forgiveness. I am learning to disregard appearances and see innocence where I used to see guilt. I fail to do this perfectly, but the shift is occurring. There are many times now when I am aware of ego behavior and it means nothing to me. I see right through it to the innocence beyond it. I don’t see anything to forgive.

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgivness, P 4. 2-5-15

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 4
4 The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one, though not of the right teacher. The ego’s plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. By following its plan you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego always leads you. The ego’s plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it. This is where the ego is forced to appeal to “mysteries,” insisting that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from God. They are as sensible now as they ever were, because they speak of ideas that are eternal.

Journal
Jesus said even in the Bible that we must not judge and must forgive. He said we must love each other and treat others as we would want to be treated. We found this to be too hard and so we did not take his words literally. We called it a mystery as to how this works, and we just kept on judging and hating and failing to forgive. That is why we are still living the dream of separation.

It is not hard to do what Jesus said, it is just necessary that we want to do it. Our error in forgiveness (and all other errors follow from this) is that we made the offense real and then tried to forgive it. This is the ego’s plan for forgiveness and of course never works. On the cross, Jesus did not say, “Forgive these terrible people for their sin.” He overlooked their actions knowing they were just confused. They were acting out of ego thinking and the whole thing was meaningless because the ego is meaningless, the illusion is meaningless.

Jesus knew there was nothing to forgive and this was forgiveness. I used to be confused about this. If there was no sin then why did he ask that they be forgiven? I think (that if he actually said this) that he was modeling forgiveness for us. He was showing us that no insult, regardless of its seeming severity, is to be taken as sin. Everything is to be forgiven. Now that we are ready, he is telling us that nothing actually happened to be forgiven and that is forgiveness.

In Lesson 36, we are told that there is no sin. Our mind is part of God’s Mind and we are very holy. There is no sin in God so there can be no sin in us. None. Ever. So what could there be to forgive? If there seems to be sinful action, it can only be an illusion, an ego story, meaningless because it is not real.

I would not find anyone guilty because I want to release the separation idea now. I am ready to wake up. I cannot wake up if I believe in sin and guilt. I awaken to reality and sin and guilt have no existence in reality. When I am aware of an ego behavior, I know it is not in alignment with the Love that we are, but I remind myself that the Love that we are cannot be affected by ego. We remain sinless. This is what Jesus has told us from the start. Don’t look at the action, judge it is sinful and then try to forgive it. Simply look at your brother and know he is holy.

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 3. 2-3-15

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 3
3 The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would accomplish this through Him you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in the ego’s judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.

Journal
I was a little confused at first when I read this. But then I read it again and sentence three really clicked for me. “By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created.” Here is an example of this. At the sales meeting yesterday I discovered that something important had been overlooked by a member of the team. This could have serious repercussions for me and I immediately attacked him.

I stopped myself as quickly as I could, but still, I did attack. I said something like, “You can’t do that. This is important.” Just reading the words it doesn’t seem like much, but in my mind it was a full out attack. If I said what my ego mind was thinking, it would have been more like, “You are such an idiot! How could you do something so dumb? You are attacking me with your behavior and I’m going to return the attack. Then we will see how you feel.” Luckily, I do have a filter and I generally use it.

This is the ego use of my abilities. The ego uses everything as either an attack or a defense. The ego felt that his behavior was an attack on me and could affect my income. The ego response was to do something about this. It wanted to defend through making him do better, which is an attack on him. I recognized this and I was able to recover my senses and ask for healing before it got too far out of hand.

How is it that the Holy Spirit could use my abilities to share? In this same situation, once I allowed my mind to be corrected and I had returned to peace, I saw it as a situation to be resolved. I thought about it during the day and came up with some solutions. It was no longer about assigning blame and defending myself. Now I can honestly say that I love this person. I see him differently. I see with greater vision because I asked for vision. Instead of projecting blame and assigning guilt, I feel like I just want to extend love and understanding.

It’s funny that during the same meeting I discovered I had made a mistake that could negatively affect a member of the team. My first reaction was to defend and lash out (in my mind at least) doing what the ego always does, projecting the fault on others. I saw that desire right away and I knew that isn’t what I want. I looked at it again with Holy Spirit and felt led to make amends. I did this and the other person was gracious in accepting my apology, and even in insisting it was no big deal.

There is a world of difference in the ego’s judgment and the Holy Spirit’s judgment. I have learned to value the peace and joy that comes from judging through the Holy Spirit rather than judging through the ego. The ego judgments pop up in my mind, and to the degree that I believe them, I suffer. But the truth is in my mind as well, and even in the middle of an ego storm of resentment and rage, I know what I want. Eventually, and usually soon, I choose peace.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 2. 2-2-15

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 2
2 You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. You do not understand how to overlook errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them, or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. And if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.

I don’t see the real world; I see only the images I have made based on my beliefs. But I can see the real world, and I will see that world as my beliefs are corrected. This is the purpose of the Atonement, to guide me out of my errors and their effects. It is important for me to first acknowledge the error, and to desire to be free of it, and then to realize that what I have made cannot be undone by me alone.

This is my only way to freedom. Right now I am trapped in an illusory world of my own making, but that is temporary. I have been given the plan for escape. The Atonement is that plan. The thought occurred to me that a being with the power to make this world in all its complexity could surely figure out how to stop making it.

But the whole point of the dream world is to give us a place to experience ourselves as mortal. This world we made is where we discover what it would be like to be limited. From the belief in limitation it was impossible to believe we could be unlimited. That is why we needed a plan to extricate ourselves.

Thus we have a guide, and a plan for us but not of us, a plan made and operated outside of the belief in limitation. This plan will allow us to undo what we have done. It is so simple as to be overlooked. It really has only three simple components. We notice that what we are thinking is imprisoning us in this illusion. We decide that we are ready for the dream to end. We ask our Guide to undo what we have done.

That is all. It is simple and easy. It seems hard because our desire to awaken is not unopposed. There is still a part of the mind that values the story and is afraid to let it go. There is also a part of the mind that is afraid of change. What would it mean, how would it look? Are we in trouble for trying to change reality?

As we begin this process of awakening, the sleeping mind is reluctant to let go of its false sense of power to accept true power. In this upside down world, releasing our confused thoughts can feel like giving up, like losing. So we hesitate and try again to do it ourselves. It feels hopeless as once again we fail.

Our Guide takes all of this into account, our reticence, our doubts and uncertainties. He works with each of us individually, gently guiding us toward freedom, moving only as fast as we are willing to go, never coercing or forcing. Not that anything could force the Son of God, but even the appearance or sense of being forced is avoided.

In releasing our beliefs that we are separate and our beliefs that we are limited, our memory is going to return and reality will dawn on our minds. But we must not think that we can do this on our own. We have deliberately chosen to believe in limitation. It is this belief in limitation that limits our ability to undo what we have done.

We are not helpless, however. The Atonement Plan is in place, which uses the power of our desire to awaken us. In small simple steps, our Guide is reminding us of our power. All we have to do is follow His directions, and soon we will remember our desire to be what we are. Then it is done.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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