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Forgiveness

Forgiveness

Yesterday I spent the day with one of those customers that you cannot please no matter what you do for them. I recognized that I was judging and that I was resentful toward her. I used a forgiveness process and thought that I had done my work. But then I noticed that I was still having judgmental thoughts about her. I searched my mind for those thoughts and asked for another way to see. Again I thought I was through. Then when I got ready for bed and was putting the day to rest, I noticed that I felt very uncomfortable about this issue. Now not only was I unforgiving toward her, but I was unforgiving toward myself as I felt guilty for holding onto the grievance.

I thought about it and decided that this was one of those blessings in disguise. There was something within myself that needed healing and I just wasn’t getting it. So I asked the Holy Spirit to work with me in my sleep where I might be less resistant. This morning I saw that I was at the Forgiveness page in the workbook and thought how appropriate that was. And I am sure that it was no coincidence that the CD I was listening to yesterday was on forgiveness. Once we commit to awakening, what we need to awaken is provided. This customer is a perfect example of that, and the fact that what I needed to deal with it was right there at hand is another example.

I love Jesus’ discourse on forgiveness. I have read it with different ears at different times in my life, each time bringing me a little deeper into the meaning. This morning it was perfect for my forgiveness lesson. I read: Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. I have read that many, many times over the years. At first it was meaningless to me, then as I became more open to hearing it, I began to understand. It has opened to me as a rose, each petal offering a awareness that is perfect for my immediate need and ability to understand. As I grow another petal unfolds bringing me deeper into the meaning.

Yesterday, I was hung up on the idea that my customer really was wrong. I kept trying to forgive her for something she clearly did. I don’t know why I couldn’t see that while it was happening. I guess I just didn’t want to be the one responsible for my anger. I didn’t even want to admit I was angry. I found it so easy to find evidence that she was wrong. She was acting selfish and self centered. She cared only about herself. She was unappreciative. I attributed my “annoyance” with the heat, and lord knows it was hot! I was dehydrated and exhausted. I was frustrated in not being able to fix her problem. I had so many reasons for how I felt and so much proof that she was wrong.

But no matter what it looked like, I knew that I was kidding myself, and the energy of blame and accusation was so unpleasant that by this morning I was more than ready to get serious about forgiveness. In the end it was just so simple. I looked at the situation knowing, really KNOWING that my customer is completely innocent. The weather is completely innocent. Starting from that absolute and unassailable truth, I was able to look at the feelings the situation brought up for me, and ask myself why I recognize them.

I began this by thinking that she was selfish and self centered. How do I recognize selfishness? It could only happen if I have been selfish and self centered myself. I thought of times when I have acted in this way. I paid attention to how it made me feel when I thought of those instances in my life when I acted in a self centered way. It didn’t feel good. It felt heavy and dark; not at all like the joy and lightness I had been experiencing before this came up. I knew that I was willing to forgive myself for being selfish in the past, for being selfish now, and for any selfish behavior in the future.

I don’t know how to forgive, but I know that the Holy Spirit will step in and accomplish forgiveness if I come to Him with willingness. I have learned that it is not a matter of logic; it is not a job for the thinking mind. It is easy to read the lesson and know what it means intellectually. But those words are just pointing me in the right direction. They do not cause forgiveness. For forgiveness to happen, I must want it wholly. I cannot want forgiveness and also to be right about my grievance. If I expect to forgive and to reap the rewards of forgiveness then the way to have that is to want forgiveness above all things.

To forgive I must be willing to see that it is always myself I forgive. The more quickly I move out of the idea that someone or something outside of me is the cause of my discomfort, the more quickly I can allow forgiveness. I don’t have to do anything to make forgiveness happen, but only be fully willing for it to happen. Yesterday while I was distracted by my need to see my problems as caused by something outside me, I couldn’t forgive. I was trying to hold two completely opposing thoughts at the same time while I was trying to forgive and at the same time judge. This morning, all I wanted was forgiveness and suddenly I was laughing at my obstinacy of yesterday. What seemed impossible yesterday, today simply is.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Only My Condemnation Injures Me

Only my condemnation injures me.”

“My condemnation keeps my vision dark, and through my sightless eyes I cannot
see the vision of my glory. Yet today I can behold this glory and be glad.”

All of my life I have thought that the world is the cause of my injury. I have thought that if only this person would not treat me this way, or if that situation had not happened, then I could be happy. My bad behavior could be explained as a normal reaction to someone’s attack, or because a situation provoked me. Even though I now know this is never true, my first reaction is still often that it is not my fault but someone else’s.

The difference now is that I don’t stay there. I notice when I am projecting and placing blame, and with the Holy Spirit’s help I withdraw those projections as quickly as I am able. I am now very uncomfortable when I am blaming and placing guilt outside myself, and just as uncomfortable when I do it to myself. I quickly change my mind. Well, sometimes I resist awhile, and it seems to require a lag in time for me to accept a new way to see it. But always, I do it.

This lesson speaks of dark vision and sightless eyes and this is an excellent description of what it feels like to blame and condemn. It is like dark clouds have rolled in and blocked the light from my life. I completely lose sight of who I am and my awareness shifts from the glory of being God’s only Son. In condemnation I see myself as only a body in competition with other bodies, living in time and space. I feel heavy, dark, and utterly lost. It feels foreign and yet depressingly familiar.

I think of identifying with the ego as being stuck in quicksand. It seems to draw me relentlessly down into the muck of ego thinking. The only way to free myself is to remember that nothing draws me except by my own decision to allow it. The ego is nothing without my support. I created it, and it is sustained only by my belief. If I withdraw my awareness from it, it will cease to exist.

This thought is both exhilarating and frightening. The quicksand of ego thinking may be an entrapment, but it is one of my own making. It may be depressing, but it is familiar and it is my own choosing. I seem to be reluctant to entirely give it up. What if I need it later? What if someone does something so bad that I don’t want to forgive it? What if I don’t like being glorious and want to be small and insignificant again? What if I decide that I can’t handle being perfect and joyous and miss drama and excitement and chocolate? The ego tries to entice me into not quite letting go.

But I must choose; one or the other. I cannot be God’s Son and have a little ego thinking in reserve. God is Whole and there is no separation in Him. There is no little of this and little of that. There is only God. To know myself as existing in God, I must know myself as complete and whole. So I practice letting go of ego thinking. I practice turning my attention from ego to God. I practice tuning out the ego voice and listening only to the Voice for God. As I experience the utter peace and joy this brings me, and as I notice how this contrasts to life as an ego thought, as a body living in fear and condemnation, I am more and more willing to choose God.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Lesson 210

I choose the joy of God instead of pain.

I was able to see this in my mind before I even began my lesson this morning. I was sitting at the computer thinking how much I have enjoyed my weekend and being home and I felt a sense of dread at having to leave next week to get back on the road with my job. Immediately I brought that thought to the Holy Spirit within and was gently reminded that I was not unhappy to be leaving and was not happy because I was home.

It is very easy to fall back into the habit of thinking that the world influences my feelings. I am grateful for the reminder that only my thoughts influence me because I don’t live in the world, but rather the world lives in me. Total responsibility is the beginning of the path out of pain and into joy. It feels heavy only when I am reluctant to accept it. Once I remember that responsibility is my way out, I am eager to accept it and to get on with it.

I have been doing this for a long time and am very happy with the changes that I have allowed in my mind. I am more vigilant today than I ever have been because I have practiced vigilance every day. At first it felt like a burden, but success is a wonderful motivator and now I am simply grateful to do it. It is hard for me to believe that such a simple thing as noticing the thoughts unlike what God would think and then being willing to have them changed is all that I need do. But apparently this is true. My life used to be a painful experience with brief moments of happiness. I had learned to exist on distraction and to call it happiness. This is no state for the Son of God to be in.

As I do this work I find that I experience success and feel so good I can hardly believe it. This is my motivation to continue when it seems difficult. Then I will be back in the muck of ego thinking and be in pain. This was always hard for me to accept. I felt like there was something wrong with me and that if every time I was lifted up I simply fell back down that I would never get any place. This weekend a friend talked about the path as hills and valleys. She said that this is a necessary part of the journey.

When we do the work we wind up on the mountain top, but that doesn’t mean we are through. We then have to go back down to do more work, to allow more stuff to surface and be healed. This was really a helpful analogy for me. I went back and looked at some of the encouraging thoughts I received from my Higher Self, and realized this is what I was being told. I was worried because it seemed that I had fallen and actually I had simply surrendered to the process and was doing exactly what I was supposed to.

Holy Spirit, more and more I am beginning to realize that once I put my foot on the path home, everything in my life became exactly perfect for that purpose. I suppose it always was, but before my path was not purposeful and so I failed to recognize the perfection. I am grateful for it all.

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

Every so often I write down what I think about God and who I am and how it all works. It is interesting to see how it changes as I grow. It has also taught me that I don’t know anything. There used to be many times when I thought I had it all figured out. I just knew I was right. I laugh at that now. I’m sharing a version of like as Myron sees it and would love to hear about life as you see it.

God created His only Son who created His Son who created His Son, and on and on because extension of Its Self is what God does. He creates by extending Himself forever and so what He creates is exactly like Him. That is what extension is. It pushes Itself out in Love because It is Love and nothing else, and the Love returns to It and It is loved.

God is Love and nothing else. God is whole and complete. God is all that there is. So Love is all there is. Because there is only One and more of One, and nothing else, there is perfect undisturbed peace.

So everything is just rocking along when God’s Son had a creative thought. (Because the nature of God is creative and He creates through His thoughts, then all His thoughts are creative.) This thought was something like, “I wonder what it would be like to not be whole, to be something else.” This thought was discarded as impossible and everything went on in perfect peace as always.

However, the creative power of the mind of God’s Son, even in that small blip of time, made and considered a world of separation. In that bit of time, small as it was, the incredible mind of the Son figured out a way to make all of what we know as life, figured out judgment which had not existed before and how it could be used as a foundation on which to build this illusory world, worked out separation and time to separate events and to make separation seem real. It then had to decide… laugh this off or play in it awhile.

The Son forgot to laugh at it and played instead. He chose to consider this mad idea and realized that to make it work, he would have to forget that he made it up. Otherwise he would not get the full effect. To experience it, he needed to believe in it. So he did. His loving Father who would not conceive of limiting His Son, and so simply placed in the Mind a thought of Himself, a Correction of the Mind, so that when His Son was through with the game He could always find His way back.

And so we are. We had fun with separation and all its effects. We experienced lots of dramas, comedies, adventures, and tragedies. So what is all the guilt about? Well in the forgetting we set it up, we thought that we had destroyed God. God is whole and complete and here we have these entire worlds and billions of separate entities and so we made God what He is not. We destroyed Him. This is the horrible guilt that underlies everything we do. It is the source of every fear we have.

Now that we have chosen to wake up, God’s Correction is reminding us that God is love and that we cannot change that no matter how many dreams we have. We are allowing the message of the Holy Spirit to come to awareness in our holy mind through our dream characters. We are indeed waking up. The characters of this little group are among the first to do so on such a large scale I think, and it is very encouraging. Each character in the dream will wake up when the Mind is ready for it to do so.

In the meantime, back at the ranch, everything continues as it has been and always will be. Eternity is not disturbed by our little foray into time. God is not mad at our dream, and only honors whatever His Son chooses to create. Our dreams of guilt and fear are meaningless to God Who knows only love and perfection. We dream God is angry with us and God continues whole perfect and only pure Love. How could anger, disappointment, and punishment arise from pure Love. It is laughable.

As the Holy Spirit uses what we made in the ego to undo the ego, we begin to awaken and as we do so, we remember to laugh at this tiny mad idea. We remember not to take it seriously; not to be upset when we judge, not to berate ourselves when we lose our temper, and not to blame our brothers for these things. We release the need to project. We once again become aware that we are the observer rather than a victim of our own story.

When we accept the full truth of who we are, we live awhile in our lovely creation without the guilt of thinking we sinned. We will be able to enjoy and revel in our creative powers because without guilt there will be no projections of anger, fear, frustration, hatred and the like. Once all of the aspects of the Mind have awoken to this lovely truth, the Mind will be purified and God will reach down to His Son and pull him up, as is so poetically expressed in the Course.

There was never anything wrong with the Son expressing His creativity by making up this story. It was not a sin and God is not angry. The error was in taking it seriously and believing we had destroyed our Creator by changing His creation which is in itself impossible. And even if that is what we intended, it is hardly a sin, but only a mistake. It is easily undone as we choose the Holy Spirit as our Guide rather than continuing to listen to the ego.

This is my present vision of who we are and how we got here. It changes a bit as I go along and I am sure it will change again. I do not know anything. Knowledge is of the Kingdom and my awareness is not on the Kingdom while I see myself as a body hurtling through space-neither of which exists! What an absurd but interesting story I have written. But the truth is in my mind and I am learning to want it. In not knowing, I empty my mind and make a place for the truth to come into my awareness.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Some Thought on Relationships

It can be very hard for some of us to let go of the need to fix. I understand this, because it has been a problem for me. What I always ask myself is this; what is my purpose? My salvation, accepting the Atonement for myself is my only purpose. As it happens, doing this for myself, I am doing it for all. I cannot save anyone else. I don’t need to save anyone else. To suggest that someone else needs my efforts on their behalf is to attack them. It is an attack on their invulnerability. If someone thinks they cannot live without me, I understand their pain because being in denial of their Divinity is painful. But I would never think I can restore them to their sanity. To think that someone needs me is to think that I need someone. I don’t want to teach that lie to them or to me.

A special relationship is one in which a trade is made. The two people agree to meet each others needs. When one or the other outgrows their need, or discovers the other person is no longer meeting that need, the relationship usually ends. If one or both of the couple feel that something is missing at that time, they can be sure that it wasn’t a loving relationship, but rather an exchange of needs. I don’t want to teach anyone that they are needy and that I am the one who can supply that need and make them feel whole because that isn’t true. And what I teach them I teach myself.

I always want to do the most loving and helpful thing at all times. This is good as long as I don’t become confused about what is the most helpful thing; what is loving. If I love someone I want them to be strong. I want them to know they are perfect and whole and without needs of any kind. I do not want them to think they are in any way needy. I do not want them to see me as special or different from them. I want all of my special relationships to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into holy relationships. This can be done at any time and under any circumstances. I don’t have to be with the person anymore. They don’t even have to be still in the body for it to happen. In fact healing takes place across all sorts of ego boundaries like time and space.

All that is required of me is to notice the thoughts and beliefs that indicate a special relationship, and to be willing to see it differently. This is the most loving thing I can do for myself, the other person and the Sonship as a whole. More importantly, it is the only loving thing I can do, and everything else is not loving regardless of how I have learned to see it.

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

Something I picked up from a Kenneth Wapnick book was the terms figure and ground. You may remember them from Psych 101. As I understand it, figure is what you are focused on and ground is the stuff in the background that you are aware of, but not focused on. What I have been doing is shifting my awareness so that I am seeing a different figure. If there is a psychologist out there somewhere reading this he is probably wondering where I studied. I am taking great liberties with the idea, but what it means to me in actual usefulness is that I can use the idea to remind myself where to focus my attention.

Let’s say that I begin my day with my lesson which tells me that it is in my defenselessness that my safety lies. Later that morning I am talking to a customer and realize that he is considering buying from someone else. For me the figure, that is what I am focused on, is trying to convince him to stay with me, and the ground, the program running in the background, is the idea that it is in my defenselessness that my safety lies. The more I focus on the figure, the further the ground fades from my awareness.

In the middle of all this, I notice that I have lost my peace and I start thinking about my lesson, so the ground comes a little into focus. I keep talking to my customer but at the same time, my mind is bringing the thought of defenselessness more into focus. It becomes my figure, and the customer is now my ground. In other words, the lesson becomes the most important thing in my life, and the circumstances surrounding this encounter at work become the background or the playing field or the school room, however I want to think of it.

While the customer interaction was the figure, the lesson was the ground. I chose to see this differently, and the lesson became the figure. What happens then? Well, I regain my peace and maybe through my peaceful approach I am able to say something to keep my customer, or maybe not. But I kept my peace, I practiced my lesson. My peace is a gift I give my customer as well. Anyway, thinking of it as figure and ground is just a clever way to visualize it and to remind me to make that all important shift in vision.

I was thinking about how this has worked in my life.  I started out with the figure being my poor pathetic life and the ground being how everyone seemed to be attacking me. Slowly over time this shifted to where my figure is still my poor pathetic life, the ground was everyone attacking me, but the ground is catching my attention more because I began to study the Course and am learning to think of attack differently.

Then I began to notice that my life and the attack syndrome are related and the ground becomes what I am learning from the Course. I become vaguely aware of the underlying cause of my unhappiness. I get to the point that my life and its dramas are still my focus,
but the ground is more defined as the Holy Spirit’s vision. It is still in the background but my attention is drawn to it more and more.

Now my figure is my life a lot of the time, but it actually shifts quite often to where my figure becomes the expression of the Holy Spirit, and my ground is the drama of the dream. They are more and more changing places. My goal is to always have the Holy Spirit as the figure, and “life” as the ground. I am very grateful for this change.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Lesson 139

I will accept Atonement for myself.

What does this lesson mean to me?
This lesson addresses the idea that I think I do not know what I am.
This is clearly impossible. What I am is in my mind. I decided to not
be aware of this and so made two parts of my mind; the part that
knows and the part that doesn’t. The Atonement undoes the part the
doesn’t know who it is. I only need accept the Atonement for myself,
and I will be accepting it for all.

How can I apply this to my life right now?
I will be aware today of when my thoughts are doubtful and fearful.
These thoughts come from the part of my mind that is in denial about
my true self. When I notice these thoughts I will bring them to the
right side of my mind so they can be corrected.

My message from Holy Spirit
Truly Myron, you know who you are. Thinking that you do not is a
decision you made, and then forgetting that you made the decision was
also a decision on your part. That is why Heaven must be a decision
you make. You decided against Heaven and so to have Heaven you must
change your mind and decide for it. The Atonement is the way you do
this. The Atonement is the undoing of your decision against Heaven.
Decide for the Atonement and you decide for Heaven.

To return to an idea from yesterday, this is not about your behavior,
or about changing any part of the illusion. It is not about doing
anything. You are learning to allow correction without experiencing
it as painful. This is another chance to practice this. Yesterday you
practiced relinquishing your need to be in control, and today a
similar process will be useful. Yesterday you visualized opening your
hands and allowing the pages of your Day Timer to gently fly away.
You were left with open and empty hands as you came to Me.

Today allow your hands to open and release the specialness that you
think of as yourself. Think of all the words that you use to describe
yourself. Imagine these self concepts resting on the palms of your
hands and then gently floating away from you. Do not be afraid that
there will be nothing left. These concepts are not who you are. They
are hiding who you are. Not one of them approaches the true glory of
your Self. I will be with you as you do this.

My message to Holy Spirit
I notice that there are some self concepts that I am reluctant to
release. I am willing to see this differently.

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