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?”
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