Together, We Light the Way

I Forgive

The Course tells us that every cirumstance in our life is to be used to learn forgiveness. The first time I read this (a lot of years ago) I really had no idea what forgiveness was. Nor did I grasp the scope of this job. Yes, I read the words. Lesson 193 says “All things are lessons God would have me learn.” But somehow that just washed right over me without really sinking in. I’m not sure which part I thought He didn’t mean…the “all things are lessons” or the “God would have me learn” part.

That is not to say that in all these years I’ve failed to learn anything. It’s just that I’ve used the “pick and choose” method. I’ve learned from the experiences I’ve brought to the Holy Spirit for healing. However, there have been many more that I’ve held back, that I’ve decided to keep for one insane reason or another. There have been oportunities passed over through lack of effort; not believing I’m worth that kind of consistent effort. There have been lessons I didn’t learn because I took them to the wrong teacher. The ego doesn’t know anything and so cannot help me. Turning to the ego for help to get out of the universe it created is just another insane choice. Sometimes I failed to use an experience to learn forgiveness because I thought my grievance had something to offer me and so I wanted to hold onto it.

I’ve been studying forgiveness through Course 906: Healing Through Forgiveness. When I first saw the title I wondered how forgiveness related to healing. Now I know that they are the same thing. In fact, now that I understand what forgiveness is for and how to use it, I realize that forgiveness is what life is for. My life has become a classroom for forgiveness. It is one continual lesson in forgiveness.

The first thing I learned about forgiveness is not to make anything real. The mistake I had been making before was that I was trying to forgive an actual wrong that was causing me to suffer. Well, that’s real hard to do! The best I could do was to think of decent excuses for the other person’s behavior and then decide that made his behavior understandable and something I could overlook. There were some problems with this approach. For one thing, I found that sometimes my imagination failed me. Hard as I tried, I wouldn’t be able to think of what could excuse certain behaviors. Motivation was a problem, too. Sometimes I couldn’t work up enough of it to do the job. Then there were the people who didn’t, in my humble opinion, deserve forgiveness. Even when I did a pretty decent job of it, the forgiveness often didn’t take. I would go to all that trouble and be thinking what a superior kind of person I was for doing it, and then some errant thought or another would bring my grievance back full force.

That whole thing was just too complicated for words, which should have been a clue that I was using the wrong teacher. The ego always complicates things so that I will not succeed. Trying without success is its prime objective. The hallmark of the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is always simplicity. The truth is always simple. It doesn’t change or vary with circumstance. So, forgiveness with the Holy Spirit becomes a simple process I can always depend on in every circumstance. Forgiveness with the Holy Spirit is just the recognition that nothing really happened to forgive. I’m learning that anything I think I need to forgive is part of the illusion and so doesn’t really need to be forgiven. It didn’t really happen!

Here is an example of how this worked for me. I bought my daughter a birthday gift. I spent too much money on it and I used up a lot of time that I really couldn’t spare choosing the perfect gift. Well, she went out of town for her birthday and didn’t take the time to get her gift before she left. She has been home for a week and still hasn’t picked it up. The old way of forgiving would have been to list the excuses for her selfish and inconsiderate behavior. Well, you can see already that this doesn’t stand much of a chance of working. OK, now I’m going to take it to the Holy Spirit for healing. He tells me that the separation from God didn’t really happen and so all this stuff I think I am experiencing, including this thing with the apparantly unappreciated birthday gift, isn’t really happening. If it is not really happening, then there can be no consequences to make me feel unloved. Since it didn’t really happen, I can easily forgive both of us for what we didn’t really do.

The beauty of this is that it works exactly the same way in every circumstance. I don’t have to figure anything out. I don’t have to look for excuses for anyone. My forgiveness recognizes that it didn’t really happen. I forgive and it disappears. So, what about this gift sitting in my living room? It really happened. It happened to the tune of a hundred dollars and an hour of my time and it is definitely here. But, the funny thing is, after I asked the Holy Spirit to heal my thoughts and after I forgave her and myself for what we didn’t really do, that gift became lighter. It lost all that baggage I had attached to it. I no longer need anyone to pick it up. I no longer need anyone to appreciate my expenditure of money and time. The present is now just an expression of my love and love is light. Love has no expectations. If Susan never picks up her gift, it doesn’t matter. Forgiveness released all the strings I had atached to my love; they just disappeared. Forgiveness is just a change in perception. It helped me to see this whole thing differently. In fact, I’m thinking about re-wrapping it in red paper with hearts. I could get some real mileage out of this gift!

There are so many things that I need to forgive and this process works on all of them. It works on people, circumstances, things. Now I use forgiveness anytime I feel any form of discomfort whether it be guilt, fear, shame, anger or anything else. If I don’t feel complete joy then I know that there is something that needs healing. It is really so simple. I just forgive everything that disturbs my peace. I do it one disturbance at a time. Soon, there won’t be so many. The whole purpose of forgiveness is to see that what I thought was real and outside of me are only the projections of my thoughts. Now I am willing to see this and to allow them to be undone for me.

I used to think that forgiveness was something I could do or not do. It was good to do it,but not necessary. Now I see that forgiveness is necessary to my healing. It isn’t just a pleasant thing, but an essential thing. It doesn’t just release me from my misery, it returns me to who I am. Ultimately,forgiveness teaches me that there is nothing to forgive. Everything I forgive is just somethinhg I made up. It is really a process of un-building. I created barriers to peace and love. These barriers hold in place the guilt that makes separation seem real. Now, through forgiveness I am removing those barriers.

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