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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 12. 12-30-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 12

12 No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched his innocence in any way. His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly loving, is bright within you. Let us look upon him together and love him. For in love of him is your guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. I thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom You have created guiltless forever.

Journal
When someone’s behavior seems to threaten me it can be hard to accept that person’s innocence. For instance, when I was working there were people, coworkers and customers, who I had to learn to see differently. Sometimes it is a relative that I seem to resent and I seem unable to forgive, even one I love very much. But understanding that the reason it is harder is because it feels threatening helps me to become willing to see differently.

What is really happening in these cases is that I am fearful and so I am trying to defend myself. It really isn’t about the other person, it is about me. Isn’t that always the case? It is always about me. I don’t forgive others; I just forgive my projections onto them, or I defend those projections. I have one of those situations right now and I know that rather than forgiving I am defending. But I really want to stop doing that.

I love this paragraph because it is helping me to forgive and to return to peace. Jesus is letting me know that my projections onto my relative are not affecting him in any way. He is still innocent and as God created him, no matter how I see him right now. And, in spite of my distorted vision, I can still find him because his, “shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt and wholly loving, is bright within” me. Jesus says that we can look together, and I am taking him up on this offer.

I am not alone in this and that is the point, I am not alone. I will not heal my mind on my own, but my desire for a healed mind will allow my mind to be healed. So together, Jesus and I will look on my guiltless brother, and in doing so my own guiltlessness will be revealed to me. I close my eyes and I place my fear on the altar so there will be nothing blocking my vision.

Then, holding hands with Jesus, I “look” at my brother, not trying to see him differently, just allowing myself to see what was always there behind my fear. I am not making anything happen, but only allowing the truth to be shown to me. I am so grateful. I wonder how this will unfold in my story of this person and our interactions. I am looking forward to finding out.

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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 11. 12-29-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 11
11 You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God’s Sons unless you love them all and equally. Love is not special. If you single out part of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them unreal. You can love only as God loves. Seek not to love unlike Him, for there is no love apart from His. Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea what love is like. No one who condemns a brother can see himself as guiltless and in the peace of God. If he is guiltless and in peace and sees it not, he is delusional, and has not looked upon himself. To him I say,

Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity and be still. In quiet look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father that no guilt has ever touched him.

Journal
Clearly I have never entered into a real relationship with anyone because I have not loved all equally. I have some people in my life I love more or differently than I do others. I also have some in my life that I love less or not at all. I used to be very confused by passages like this. I thought it meant that the love I feel for my children, for instance, is wrong because it makes them special to me.

Now I understand that there is nothing wrong with the love I feel for my children. The problem is that I reserve that love only for them. In doing so, I have made love something it could never be. I have limited it, and love is limitless. So now I don’t really know what love is; I only know what I have made to take its place. Even the love I have for my children, the purest form of love that I can know in this reduced state, is tainted by the belief in guilt. This sentence stands out to me and I know that it is essential I understand and accept it: No one who condemns a brother can see himself as guiltless and in the peace of God.

So to make this very simple for myself, I am going to say what I want to do about this. I know that I want to remember love, real love, the love of God. I want to extend that love so that others will have that present experience, too. I think this must be possible because Jesus is asking me to do it. So here is my plan. I am not going to try to be more loving. I am going to increase my willingness to desire love above all things.

I am going to notice the signs that I am making someone special. It doesn’t matter if I see them in special love or special hate, I am going to be vigilant for signs of specialness. Then I am going to recognize that I have chosen the ego as my guide as to what love is and how to return to it, at which point I will change my mind and choose the Holy Spirit as my guide. I will ask that my mind be healed of the belief in special love and the belief that I need it. I will ask to be healed of the belief that there is an opposite to love and that it has some value.

Then I will sit in stillness for a moment and allow the healing to take place. I will give myself this present moment, this holy instant, in which I will accept the healing. The idea of special love and special hate is as ingrained as is the belief in guilt, so I will be patient and gentle with myself as I do this practice. If it takes time, then I will remember that this is now the purpose I have given time, and is the only value time has for me.

I am grateful for this understanding and I think that Jesus has given us the perfect prayer to use in our practice.

Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity and be still. In quiet look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father that no guilt has ever touched him.

I know that the Holy Spirit will bring into my mind the relationships that need my attention. In fact, I know the very one to work with right now, and so I will…  What happened first, is that I saw his guilt and seeing it I knew what it was that was obscuring the truth, So I rested my mind a moment and then I asked the Holy Spirit to show me his holiness instead. Then I thanked my Father that no guilt has ever touched him. This is a good practice.

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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 10. 12-28-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 10
10 Release from guilt as you would be released. There is no other way to look within and see the light of love, shining as steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son. And as His Son loves Him. There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless. You who have always loved your Father can have no fear, for any reason, to look within and see your holiness. You cannot be as you believed you were. Your guilt is without reason because it is not in the Mind of God, where you are. And this is reason, which the Holy Spirit would restore to you. He would remove only illusions. All else He would have you see. And in Christ’s vision He would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God’s Son.

Journal
Release guilt as you would be released, says Jesus. There is no other way. I will not look within and I will not find the Atonement if I am holding grievances. Not even what I would think of as little grievances, or careless grievances. As he says in another place in the Course, “You cannot enter God’s presence if you attack His Son.” Within us is God’s presence, but I will not know this, will not see it, will not enter there while I still attack.

This feels right to me, but I was wondering how it is I reach the Atonement, which is the undoing, the healing, the correction, if I cannot see it within me for the dark clouds of guilt? It seems a catch 22 at first glance. But my experience has taught me that my desire will bring me where I need to be. I desire with all my heart to be free of a grievance, and it is done. I am in the Atonement, melting into It, blessed by It, loved by It. And if my desire is not complete, I will be healed to the degree I allow and this creates a stronger desire within me for the Atonement.

I am very holy and I want to remember that holiness. As Jesus says, I cannot be what I believe I am. I cannot be separated from God. I cannot be fearful and guilty. I can only imagine these states of being, because they cannot exist within the God’s Creation and there is nothing except His Creation. As I am able to remember and accept this, I find it impossible to assign guilt. When I get too deeply attached to a story, I forget that the story is not real and in believing in the story, I am unable to believe in the truth.

More than anything else I might think I want today, Jesus, I want to remember this truth. Each time I have a guilt thought about someone else or myself, please remind me to look again, this time with vision. How could that be true, that these holy sons of God could be guilty when they are so holy? How could there be guilt within God where we all reside? Yes we are guilty of many things in time, but time is not real and we are not in it. We are in eternity.

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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 9. 12-27-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 9

9 You who have been unmerciful to yourself do not remember your Father’s Love. And looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember how much you love Him. Yet it is forever true. In shining peace within you is the perfect purity in which you were created. Fear not to look upon the lovely truth in you. Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look past darkness to the holy place where you will see the light. The altar to your Father is as pure as He Who raised it to Himself. Nothing can keep from you what Christ would have you see. His Will is like His Father’s, and He offers mercy to every child of God, as He would have you do.

Journal
This step of my awakening is the hardest yet. I am very vigilant for ego in the mind, and with few exceptions am willing to see differently right away, and when not right away, eventually. I have pulled back the veil and peeked at what is behind it. I have felt love for everyone, real love that has no cause and has nothing to do with the ego mind. I have felt joy that has no cause in the world. But as yet, I have not sustained it. I have let the veil fall back into place.

I say it is the hardest yet because I have seen past he veil. I want it back so bad, and yet I trade that lovely visage for some distraction or some drama, some guilty thought. Also, the stories that distract me are the ones that represent my greatest fears and that are the most painful. So even though they are few, they occupy my full attention, and feel impossible to ignore.

Still, I am doing the work, putting them on the altar, asking for another way to see, giving all the willingness I have. I am turning away from the ego thoughts of discouragement and blame. Most importantly, I am forgiving myself for not accepting the Atonement fully at this time. I think what is helping is that the moment I returned to thoughts of guilt was in the past, even if it were only a second ago, it was in the past and the past does not exist.

Every present moment is filled with potential for success. That is encouraging, and I have actually learned to enjoy the practice of recalling myself to the eternal present. Without the past where is guilt now? Without focus on the past, the ego will cease to exist because I will not carry it into the future. The ego has so many objections to my hopefulness, but as I give each one to the Holy Spirit for re-interpretation, I see how hollow are the ego’s beliefs. This morning I choose to believe the promises that Jesus makes. In this moment I choose to believe that nothing can keep from me what Christ would have me see.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 8. 12-26-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 8
8 Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now. As yet it is not now. The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. When he has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. The moment that you realize guilt is insane, wholly unjustified and wholly without reason, you will not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.

Journal
Jesus is both acknowledging that we are not now living what is true, and he tells us, again, how it is that we can live the truth. We are suffering because we believe in guilt. It is that simple. When we decide to believe him and understand that guilt is not real, we will not be afraid to look within and find the Atonement and we will accept it wholly.

Right now Jesus says that we are lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon us from without. I had that experience yesterday. I was with family and it was mostly a peaceful and loving day, but there was one situation that was painful. There is a family member who I worry about, and there was some subtle friction there. Later when I was alone I felt the unease intensely.

Looking at it today, I realize that I lacked faith in my brother. I judged him and found him guilty. Guilt led to fear and that was the cause of my disturbance. The belief that his behavior could lead to something bad (projecting the past onto the present and thus assuring that the future does not change) was painful. It felt like I did nothing to deserve this and it wasn’t fair that I was suffering. (Beware of the temptation to see yourself unfairly treated.) My dark thoughts were painful and the pain seemed to come from the other person. (If only he would act differently, I could be happy.)

Two things happened here that made the situation seem oppressive; one is that the solution seemed to be that the other person had to change and nothing I said or did could affect that change. This left me feeling helpless and a victim. The other is that in seeing the other person as guilty reinforced the belief in guilt in my mind. This made me afraid to look within to find the Atonement and so, again, I seemed to be without a solution.

The saving grace is that I have been working on letting go of the belief in guilt. Throughout the unhappy experience I was watching for true thoughts in my mind and I found many. This kept me from fully accepting what the ego mind was offering. One thing I did that was very helpful is that I remembered Jesus saying in the Course that I can share my burdensome experiences with him and he would help me. So this is what I did. I let the emotion out, and as I cried I talked to him about how this felt. That did help a lot and opened me to more help.

Another thing that happened is that I have asked the Holy Spirit to use my sleep time to heal my mind. Evidently he did that. I woke up this morning feeling much better and I had a true thought bubble up to the surface. Upon awakening I had not thought about the situation with the family member, so I was surprised by this thought. The only thing happening right now is that he is not living the life I want him to live. I had to laugh at that. Why should he do that? Why would I think that was necessary?

The ego never gives up on guilt, though. I began to think about how depressing it is that I could go a whole day worrying and judging. I began to think that I am very far from awakening, and not the teacher of God that I profess I want to be. I started to think how much help I am given and that I am guilty for not doing better. The ego just loves the drama of all this as it waffles from “poor me” to “shame on me.” It would love to spend another day sad and discouraged.

Thinking these kinds of thoughts is like standing in quicksand. It just sucks me down into depression, and the more I struggle against it, the faster it does its guilty work. But if I sit still in the wake of the ego storm, just resting my mind in God, I feel the ego-induced emotions wash over me. I hear the ego self-judgment and fear thoughts, but it all passes and I find myself free of the muck. Then I give my willingness to the Holy Spirit to look within for the Atonement and let it do it’s beautiful healing work as I lay one false belief after another onto the altar to be undone. After that it easy for me to say no to the ego thoughts that try to once again get my attention.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 7. 12-23-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 7

7 The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you, and show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what He has saved you from. What He has saved you from is gone. Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it. The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always done so. He has seen separation, but knows of union. He teaches healing, but He also knows of creation. He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. Yet what He knows you do not know, though it is yours.

Journal
I often visualize the Holy Spirit as a bridge, with one side in the world and the other side in Reality. He sees what I believe but he knows the truth, and it is his function to teach me, to heal me, to undo the wrong minded beliefs in my mind, and lead me to the truth. He will do this through me, too, so that I can help my brothers as well.

Jesus says that what the Holy Spirit saves me from is gone. I have seen this happen many times. I will be struggling with an ego belief, suffering terribly, seemingly unable to let it go. When finally I have reached my limit and turn to Him with a sincere desire to be at peace, He heals me instantly. Often when this happens it as if the thought had never been in my mind.
Sometimes I can’t even remember the thought. If I do remember it, the
thought has so little charge that I laugh at myself for ever taking it seriously.

“Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it.”

This is a sentence I should have tattooed on me so I can refer to it all day, every day. Learning to believe this has been my focus for over a year now. Guilt is what keeps the illusion going, and is the cause of all suffering. It is the reason we are not having a happy dream. It is the reason the body gets sick. It is the cause of our unhappiness. When I started my practice of letting go of guilt, I did it one guilt thought at a time. Then over the last year or so, I have noticed guilt thoughts and simply asked that I be healed of the belief in guilt itself.

When I am thinking with my right mind I can’t imagine ever going back to the belief in guilt. Then something happens and I see the need for guilt and I pick it back up. The need for guilt stems from the fear of God. Just yesterday I had the thought that something a relative said was unkind and selfish. This was an expression of my belief in his guilt. When I looked at the thought he was guilty, I realized that it was covering up the belief that I was guilty of the same thing.

Until that moment, I had hidden that from myself. The real reason for the guilt placed on another or on myself is the often, unacknowledged belief that God holds my evil deeds against me. So either I fear my thoughts and bury them deeply in my mind, or I project them onto someone else in the hopes that God will condemn the other and not notice my own culpability.

What I have actually done is reinforced a belief that is not true for a reason that could never be true. God’s only judgment of me is that I am still as He created me. God did not create guilt so guilt cannot exist in me or anyone else. I have nothing to fear from God and so no reason to cling to guilt. As I became open to healing, I let the Holy Spirit do His job. I let go of the idea that this relative was guilty, and asked again to be relieved of the belief in guilt. That constricted and destructive feeling of guilt melted away.

I saw that both my relative and myself were simply confused and afraid, and the unkind thoughts were believed because we thought we needed to defend from an imagined danger. We were both looking at false images projected from minds that believed in guilt. This insane loop of guilt felt in the mind and projected outward as stories in our lives can and will be broken. Yesterday, I got the chance to weaken that chain.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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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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