“…do not attempt to judge forgiveness, nor to set it in an earthly frame”

It is easy if not unavoidable to look at A Course in Miracles through the lens of another spirituality or religion. Just because the language seems familiar, we assume we know what it says. I spent many years straddling between two paths unaware that I was doing it. There's nothing wrong with that except that it's difficult to make progress, especially if the goal of the two paths is conflicting.

There is enormous resistance to the message of A Course in Miracles because its practice threatens the existence of the ego that we think we are. Practicing forgiveness as taught by the Course is asking the ego to choose a though system that will result in its undoing. From the ego's point of view, true forgiveness equals death. As egos we are consciously or unconsciously terrified of losing who we think we are, so as a defense we practice forgiveness in a way that looks like forgiveness, but instead of fulfilling its purpose which is to undo the separation, it reinforces it. This kind of forgiveness doesn't aim to heal the cause of separation. Instead, it makes the error real and reinforces our identification with our separated self.

The Song of Prayer supplement uses pretty strong language to describe this ego-centered practice of forgiveness. It calls it "forgiveness-to-destroy." It is forgiveness as interpreted or judged by our "earthly frame;" our body. This practice, while it may bring us some relief within the world, won't take us home. In fact, it will keep us firmly rooted in the dream of separation.

Forgiveness is the means for your escape. How pitiful it is to make of it the means for further slavery and pain. Within the world of opposites there is a way to use forgiveness for the goal of God, and find the peace He offers you. Take nothing else, or you have sought your death, and prayed for separation from your Self. (S-2.II.7:3-7 Bold mine)

Forgiveness-to-destroy has many forms, being a weapon of the world of form. Not all are obvious, and some are carefully concealed beneath what seems like charity. Yet all the forms that it may seem to take have but this single goal; their purpose is to separate and makes what God created equal, different. (S-2.II.1:1-3 Bold mine)

It is very easy to slip into forgiveness-to-destroy. We fall into the practice whenever we are afraid of God's perfect Love in which we cannot exist as individuals. The most obvious form of forgiveness-to-destroy is forgiveness as understood by the world. As bodies or egos, we believe there are other guilty bodies that have to be forgiven. We blame people for disturbing our peace and then decide to overlook their sin and forgive them. This kind of forgiveness does nothing to undo the separation. Instead of joining, it creates differences between ourselves and others by establishing that we are innocent and they are guilty. In contrast, true forgiveness shines a light in our mind that shows us that what we experience in the world is nothing but a senseless dream and that the only reason we are ever upset is because we believe that the dream is real and can have an effect on us.

The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. (T-28.II.7)

Similar to Forgiveness-to-destroy, "false healing" or "healing-to-separate," makes the separation real and increases our identification with the ego. False healing is concerned with healing the body and not the mind that projects the body. The Song of Prayer says that healing, "… can be false as well as true; a witness to the power of the world or to the everlasting Love of God."

False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a "nicer" one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet…. False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. (S-3.II.1:1-3,5)

We practice false healing whenever our intention is to heal or to change anything in the world. For something to need healing, it has to be real first. Having established that the body, the world or a situation we are in are real, we then use prayer, or the power of our mind to try to change the situation to what we think is better. Whether we want more money, success, a healthy body, peace in the world, our wanting establishes that there is an "I' that needs things to be different in the world in order to experience peace. Many spiritual paths use this approach. It has become very popular to use affirmations, repeat mantras or pray to God for solutions to our problems. There is nothing wrong with that and it may even work; our health may become better or we may demonstrate abundance, but what we are actually doing is trading one dream for another while we root ourselves further into the dream of separation.

In false healing, having established that we are separate, we then ask God or the Universe to help us or tell us what to do. Instead of taking our illusions up to Him and asking Him to dispel them, we define the problem from the point of view of our body; our 'earthly frame' and ask Him to validate it. What we are doing is asking Him to acknowledge the separation.

In contrast, within the practice of A Course in Miracles our focus is never on healing or changing anything. Instead of trying to manipulate effects; the body or the world, we deal with cause, which is only in the mind. As we notice lack of peace within ourselves, we realize that we must be believing the dream is real. So all we do is forgive so that the Peace of God is restored to our mind. Forgiveness shows us that we are the dreamer of the dream and that a dream can have no effect on us. This doesn't mean that at this level we have control over what we see. Our eyes may still see injustice, sickness, or a poor economy, but through the lens of forgiveness, we will not experience lack of peace.

A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. W.pII.13.1:1-3

We undo the dream of separation by withdrawing our support to it. It's our reaction to the dream that makes it real. Our lack of peace says that there is cause in the world so it must be real.

Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there is no cause. The cause a cause is made by its effects; the Father is a Father by His Son. Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation. (T-28.II.1:1-3)

All spiritual paths serve a purpose. They meet us where we are at and we should not judge them. As we become less afraid, we begin to see A Course in Miracles for what it is and not through the lens of another spiritual path. We begin to read it from the point of view of the mind that can choose again, rather than the body. But while we experience ourselves as a body, we don't try to change our thoughts because that makes them and the ego real. Becoming aware of them is enough.

Very often I notice myself falling into old thought patterns. I notice forgiveness-to-destroy and healing-to-separate prevalent within my thinking. It's automatic for me to deny error, for example. And I can't help but affirm truth when I'm hurt. I feel pain and the thought "There is no pain in matter," shows up almost as fast as the pain. I see myself trying to manipulate my situation by exchanging limited thoughts about myself for unlimited ones. But there is a calm forgiving presence in my mind that just watches it happen and does nothing. By not reacting to what happens in our lives (I mean mentally!) what we are saying is that nothing is happening in reality and that we are still in perfect Love as One with Him.

Forgiveness… is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not….. Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God. (W-pII.1.5,4)

Listening, joining, and the Holy Instant

About ten years ago I went to the zoo with my daughter's Kindergarten class. All the moms were split into small groups and I shared my chaperoning duties with a mom who had just moved to town. Though I had never talked to her before, in our four hours together, she told me her sad story which ended with her husband cheating on her and a nasty divorce. It seemed random at the time that she would tell such a story to a stranger, but I've since realized that no interaction is ever without purpose. If you're not aware of its purpose, you can be sure that the ego is using it for its purpose of reinforcing the separation. Judgment is its key tool.

Over the years of practicing the Course and looking at my own mental activity as I interact with people, it has become clear that in any interaction there are simply two options: we offer peace by choosing to mentally join or we offer conflict by choosing to separate. Joining serves the right-minded purpose of awakening and judgment serves the ego's purpose of separation.

Thinking back on the way I listened to my new friend at the zoo ten years ago, I can't help but cringe. Though I was not aware of it at the time, my listening was laced with judgment. As my friend talked, my mind intuitively did what minds are designed to do; continue the belief in separation by finding differences. I had a good marriage and she didn't; she was unstable and I was stable. She was suffering and I was not. A mental inequality developed in my mind. I became the superior one in the area of handling love and marriage.

If we truly want to be helpful to someone in need, it is imperative that we notice these blocks that stand in the way of our listening. That day at the zoo, though I sounded kind, concerned and loving, I could not have really been helpful. By not being aware of the judgment in my mind, the gift I offered was that of separation, which is the source of all pain to begin with. Though on the surface the interaction seemed to be helpful, at a deep level it must have left us both dissatisfied.

In order to join, we must be aware of the obstacles that stand in the way of joining. As we listen to people, the first step is to notice the judgment in our own minds. This means that as we listen, we watch our own thoughts. We carefully take note of our reactions to what we are hearing. Notice your mind's attraction to opposition. Watch your reaction when someone is telling you something you don't agree with. Watch the anger rise. Or if you hear of a sad story, watch your outrage; your desire to protect the victims and your harsh condemnation of everyone you perceive as guilty. Watch yourself feel superior, inferior, right, morally justified, more spiritually advanced. All these reactive feelings make the separation real for you.

The second step is to forgive. As we notice the ego's agenda of separation in our own minds we forgive ourselves – we simply look and don't judge. To have an ego is no sin. As long as we see a face in the mirror, we have an ego like everybody else and it speaks loudly (even louder as you start to notice it more!) There is no reason to feel guilty about that. If you feel guilty. Notice yourself feeling guilty without judging yourself for it.

For a long long time noticing your ego as it seeks its purpose of separation is all that you may be able to do. Notice how it takes a stand for or against anything anyone says. Watch it send the senses out to look for evidence that differences are important. Watch how much you want to be right, how you want to blame, share your point of view, make a case that shows you in the most favorable light. Notice how much you want to be innocent; how you always must feel superior or inferior --- NEVER equal. Watch how you think you know better, how much you don't want to tolerate other people's view, or their habits.

This noticing becomes a kind of open-eye meditation where you progressively become fully aware of your mental activity as you interact with the people in your life. I found this excerpt from the writings of Pema Chodron that clearly describes this phase.

The first thing that happens in meditation is that we start to see
what's happening. Even though we still run away, and we still
indulge, we see what we're doing clearly. One would think that
our seeing it clearly would immediately make it just disappear,
but it doesn't. So for quite a long time, we just see it clearly. To
the degree that we're willing to see our indulging and our
repressing clearly, they begin to wear themselves out. Wearing
out is not exactly the same as going away. Instead, a wider, more
generous, more enlightened perspective arises.

As we notice the ego do what it does and do nothing about it, we begin to unmask it. Its movement in our minds becomes more and more obvious and it begins to have less of an effect on us. We are slowly releasing our identification with it. We begin to see it clearly in all its hate and ugliness. But still, we do nothing. We don't try to change it or fight it. It's reacting to it that perpetuates the belief in separation. However vicious it may appear, it can have no power over us if we don't identify with it.

When you least expect it you'll be listening to a friend, or even somebody you dislike and as you listen, you'll become aware of the ego's judgmental voice in your mind looking for differences that you can react against. You'll see clearly the ego's activity in your mind, but you won't be impressed with it. Then for just a second these barriers will disappear and a gentle, all-inclusive sense of love will take over. For an instant you'll lose track of the differences your ego was keeping tabs on and you will perceive only shared interests. All the differences in form that seemed so important will become meaningless.

A sense of joining in love and true compassion will bless the moment and you'll be experiencing what the Course calls the "Holy Instant." At that moment when you stop perceiving differences, you will have a glimpse of who you are in reality; beyond the body. You will understand the meaning of Matthew 18 verse 20, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (replace the word "joined" for "gathered.")

You will see that in reality you can only interact with yourself and that who you thought was a separate brother is nothing more than a projection whose only purpose is to help YOU go home. You will know who you are without your judgment, your defenses and your fear. That feeling, however fleeting, will have you so hooked that you will want to practice joining frequently – every time you have a seemingly casual interaction. And when judgment creeps in and you inadvertently offer separation, it will hurt so much that you will instantly choose against the pain.

The Course says "If you would let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you…… you would experience the attraction of the eternal. No one can hear Him speak of this and long remain willing to linger here." (T15 IX 5: 1,2.)

Your choice to join will transform your relationships and in your loved ones' faces you will see your own progress. By choosing peace in every situation you will become truly helpful to those around you. You will be letting them know, that they can also choose that peace and love that you feel. Your choice for peace will speak louder than any words. It will be informing everyone around you that there is a 'real alternative' to their suffering and just as you are making the choice for peace, they can make it too.

Since it's Christmas Eve I wanted to share with you the Christmas message on T-15 X. which encourages us to join in celebration:

" Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. Release me as I choose your own release. The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.

The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. …. And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift you offer me."

Let us release our brothers from our judgment and join together in celebration. Merry Christmas.
 

Related post: A lesson in listening

Forgiving our parents: revisiting our self-concept

I had a very helpful dream about a month ago. I was having lunch with a friend when I noticed my father and his wife entering the restaurant. He saw me from the distance and rushed to greet me. He was visibly happy to see me. From a bag he pulled out a photo album and handed it to me. “This is for you,” he said and walked away.

The album was filled with photos that captured a moment from every encounter we’ve had since I was born until I moved out of Argentina when I was seventeen. It wasn’t very thick since my mother and father separated when I was 10 months old and I didn’t see him at all between the ages of two and sixteen.

As I leafed through the photos, what stood out was the love that I saw in my father’s eyes as he looked at me. As a child, though I tried not to think about it, the feeling I had was that if he loved me, he would make the effort to see me. Even though I had a happy childhood with an excellent mother, a part of me felt abandoned.

At the back of the album there was a scrapbook where my father had pasted articles that appeared in the paper about him including a very favorable eight page biography with photos highlighting his accomplishments. As I began to read, he appeared next to me. Looking into my eyes with a sweet, innocent smile he said: “Can you see me from this perspective?”

The thought that occurred to me as I woke up was that for most of my adult life, I didn’t know who my father was. All I was intimately familiar with were my thoughts about him. For a long time I looked at him and interpreted his actions through a thick layer of beliefs that I had developed about him as a child. Once we have a belief about someone, unless we are willing to re-examine it, it colors our view of them.

His actions only confirmed what I thought I knew about him. Our mind has a way of only noticing what validates our beliefs. Everything else, we literally don’t see. A Course in Miracles points this out early on in the preface:”What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. (Preface X.)”

Though I had a fairly good relationship with my father, a part of me blamed him for having abandoned me and assumed that his having done so had a damaging and permanent effect on me.

Sometime in my middle twenties I began to notice what I thought was the effect of my father abandoning me. I saw that though I outwardly appeared confident and outgoing, I was dependent on people’s love and approval. I needed to be noticed and appreciated and it was difficult to open up to people. I unconsciously feared that once they knew who I really was, they would reject me, just as my father had rejected me as a child. I blamed my father for the fact that physical touch from people I didn't know well felt uncomfortable, almost painful.

It is not uncommon to blame our faults, our reactions, and behavior to the way adults in our lives treated us when we were children. Many other factors like order of birth, social situation, education, religion, also seem to have an effect on who we become. This is obviously true at the level of form – we appear to be; both physically and emotionally, the product of our genetics and our upbringing.

But as long as we blame our parents, or the environment we grew up in for our feelings, defects, shortcomings or our unhappiness, we are tying ourselves to a limited self-concept that roots us in the ego-thought system of separation. The gradual building of a self-concept is the ego’s purpose. The Course tells us that “The building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the world is for.” (T-31 V.1:5) From the moment we are born, we learn who we supposedly are. It’s that identification with the self that prevents us from ever knowing who we are in reality. As long as we continue to ‘learn’ who we are by looking at our past and blaming others, we will strengthen our identification with a false sense of self and continue to live in an illusion. As long as we think we know who we are, the ego is safe.

Forgiving our parents is a first step in the direction of letting go of deeply rooted self-concepts that color the way we see. In the dream, my father urged me to look at him from a different perspective. Forgiveness always involves looking at a person or at a situation from a different perspective. As adults we have the opportunity to re-visit every assumption and interpretation we made as children and look at it through more mature, forgiving eyes.

After a fairly insignificant event, anger which until then had been masked as mild annoyance, surfaced one day in 2002. Before then, I thought I had a good relationship with my father. All the beliefs that I had been unconsciously holding about him rose to the surface and poured out. The pain felt like an open wound that keeps bleeding and does not scar. I knew exactly why I hated him. A trial took place in my mind. My interpretation of every one of our encounters was used as evidence against him. The verdict was that he did not love me and he was responsible for the way I was. If anyone cared to listen, I was able to come up with all the evidence that would prove him guilty beyond doubt.

For a while I paid lip service to wanting to forgive, but the resistance was like a granite wall. A part of me did not want to let go of the pain. That was the first time I became aware of how the ego wants and needs to suffer.

Eventually, I noticed a tiny desire to choose against the pain and the process of forgiveness began. I prayed daily for a change of perspective. I asked the Holy Spirit, which is the memory of God in our minds, for a new interpretation. A six year journey began in which I looked at every assumption, interpretation and story I had made about my father and let it go. I began writing this blog one night last year after one of the many opportunities I had over the years to practice forgiving him. http://forgivingeyes.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

Over time, it became clear that the reason I felt abandoned was not because my father left, but because I interpreted his leaving as irrefutable evidence that he did not love me. Through the forgiveness process, I saw that the reason my father chose not to see me was not that he didn’t care about me, but that he was dealing with his own set of difficult emotional problems that prevented him from being there for me when I was a child. I understood that he was doing the best he could. He himself had had a very difficult childhood.

As I forgave my father, I became free from the belief that I needed him to appreciate me and love me in order to be happy, self-confident, or at peace. It became clear that neither his words nor his actions could have an effect on me. It was always my choice to give him that power over me.

Sitting at dinner last week with my father, his wife and their three adult children, I experienced freedom for the first time. We had a delightful evening. My mind was quiet – there was no reaction to anything my father said or did. On the contrary, I felt this gentle loving sense take over me which felt almost impersonal, but thoroughly loving and compassionate. When I spoke, the words came out of this love so I spoke kindly and without effort. I was uncharacteristically interested in what they were saying. I was in the moment, celebrating every story, every joke. We sat around the table having the best time until after midnight. It was as if time stood still.

I was aware of the incredible freedom that comes from being in the presence of someone from whom you don't need anything. As I sat on a stool in the kitchen watching my father cook and later at the table seeing him laugh and talk, I saw only love in his eyes. There were no interpretations, no second-guessing. The fog had lifted and I saw him as he is.

My actions were natural and free. I didn’t need to impress him or do anything to earn his love. I felt loved, not because he loves me, but because love was in me.

“Salvation is nothing more than an escape from concepts” (T-31 V. 14:3)

The perfect set-up

“Everyone you offer healing to returns it. Everyone you attack keeps it and cherishes it by holding it against you. Whether he does this or does it not will make no difference; you will think he does. It is impossible to offer what you do not want without this penalty. The cost of giving is receiving.” (T-13 III. 5:4-7, italics mine)

Lying in bed unable to sleep a couple of nights ago I noticed myself getting increasingly angry as I thought about my daughter and a situation at school that I’ve been dealing with for over a week. At my daughter’s request, I’ve been trying to set up a meeting with her teachers so that we can look at ways in which she can improve in their classes. My daughter has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder), which makes it difficult for her to focus and keep on task. It has been my experience that with a little willingness on her part and some minor accommodations from her teachers, she is able to compensate and do fairly well.

The problem is that her teachers have been unresponsive to my request for a meeting. A week and a half after my initial request, I was feeling powerless and frustrated; a victim of the circumstances. I blamed the teachers first for not caring enough and the public school system for offering me no real recourse. There are almost no consequences to a tenured high school teacher who doesn’t do his or her job. I know the system fairly well since I was employed by a public high school district as a teacher for over 10 years.

As I considered the magnitude of my anger, it seemed disproportionate with the size of the problem. Compared to the financial hardship that some people are going through right now, or some of the ongoing atrocities that happen in the world, my pity party over three unresponsive teachers seemed pretty trivial. It was tempting that night to just turn off the light and force myself to sleep, forgetting everything about it.

But having been in this path for a while, I know that covering up anger is not the way to go. Lesson 5 of the Workbook, “I am never upset for the reason I think,” encourages us to practice looking at all the forms of upset, as the same, regardless of their seeming magnitude. To help us prepare for the exercise, the lesson suggests we repeat: “There are no small upsets. They are all equally disturbing to my peace of mind.” Though it appears that it’s the form, or the specific circumstances, that make us upset -- in my case I believed I was upset because my daughter’s teachers didn’t seem to care about her -- in reality, the only real cause of all our upsets is that we are choosing to perceive ourselves as separate from our Source.

By perceiving ourselves as separate bodies – cut off from our Creator -- we live the illusion that we are in exile living in a cruel, dangerous world. The pain and guilt that the separation has caused us is barely hidden below the surface in our unconscious mind waiting for the right opportunity to erupt. In a way, we are looking for excuses, big and small, to project that anger or pain onto others.

Whenever we see the world as threatening, or as the cause of our upset, what we are looking at is nothing more than a picture of our unconscious mind where the guilt and pain over the separation reside. This is why the Text urges us to “See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto yourself.” The world provides us with an opportunity to look at our guilt, which is otherwise hidden in our unconscious mind. We see it in our interpretation of the events that we witness or in the people with who we become in contact.

As we recognize that we are not upset because other people make us upset, but because we are looking at them through a thick veil of guilt, we have the opportunity to hand over our faulty perception to the Holy Spirit (the memory of God within us) who through forgiveness will transform it. As we forgive others what we are doing is forgiving the guilt in our own unconscious mind and getting closer to the awareness of who we really are.

By looking at the situations in which we are upset as a mirror of the guilt in our unconscious mind, we begin to recognize that nothing external has the power to take our peace away. One of my favorite quotes in the text is "The secret of salvation is but this: That you are doing this unto yourself," (T-27.VII.10.1)

The Course tells us unequivocally that our anger (frustration, fear, sadness, annoyance, distrust, etc.) is NEVER justified. That does not mean that we should deny our feelings or ignore them or try to stifle them. When we feel them, we simply notice that we must be perceiving with the ego and we forgive ourselves for it. After all, that is what egos do and our goal is not to make our ego better, but rather to withdraw our identification from it.

The reason we don’t justify our anger is that when we blame somebody else for our unhappiness, our frustration, our anger, what we are doing is reinforcing the belief that the world real. For somebody to be guilty, he first has to be real. A character in a dream can have no power of its own to hurt us. If we experience any pain it is undoubtedly because we have given that character power to hurt us within the dream.

So every time we turn on the TV and allow that politician to push our buttons; or when our best friend, our spouse, or our child says something that hurts us; or when we become desperately frustrated because the environment is falling apart; or when we allow our child’s teacher to take away our peace; we are making the world real. We are choosing to believe that there is a power outside of God; that the separation is real, and that the world can have an effect on us.

As seen through the eyes of the ego, the purpose of all problems, no matter how big or small, is to create a perfect set-up for us to fall into the trap of believing that we are separate bodies, subject to powers beyond our control. The problems will come in whatever the most compelling form is for us to believe them. Our kids, our work, our loved ones, our beliefs, the environment, politics, all are suitable subjects and will provide us with plenty of perfect set-ups. Once we fall for the set-up – and we know we have when we feel anger, annoyance, frustration, sadness, confusion, fear, etc – we have fulfilled the ego’s purpose of reinforcing the separation. The ego’s only hope of survival is that we believe the set-up is real and that we react to it. As long as we fight, the ego will remain alive and well.

Forgiveness looks at the set-up, recognizes it as such and does not buy into it. It recognizes it as a dream that can have no effect on reality. The Workbook says that “Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred,” (W. PII. 1. 1) By forgiving the guilt we see in others, what we are really doing is undoing the guilt in our own unconscious mind. The Course entreats us to “See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto yourself. In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God lies the conviction of your own guilt. (T-13 IX. 6: 1,2)”

When we forgive others, we take responsibility for the interpretation we give to what we see. And while the situation may not change immediately, or at all, all the mental effects that we suffered as a result of it – all the anxiety, the anger, the frustration, the sadness – will dissipate and we will experience peace instead.

As I forgave the situation with my daughter’s teachers that night, a sense of love and compassion replaced my anger. I was able to see that these teachers are doing the best they can at the moment and even if it appears as if they are not interested in helping my daughter, it is still my choice to suffer. In reality, nothing has happened except in my mind.

When we met with my daughter’s school counselor yesterday morning, being free from all sense of blame, anger and frustration, I was able to listen to some options I hadn’t considered before. Every decision came easily, inspired by love rather than anger. We were able to come up with a solution that gave my daughter a huge sense of relief. Later yesterday, one of the teachers sent me an email agreeing to meet with me and my daughter today. During the meeting, unclouded by my previous judgment of her, I saw her as she is. Without the past to cloud my judgment, I saw her as loving, helpful and encouraging.

For all I know, this teacher was always the way I saw her today. I may have completely misinterpreted her emails of the past week. What I’ve come to realize is that it does not matter who is right or wrong, or even what happened. Every problem exists first and ONLY in our mind and only there can it be solved.

These ego set-ups when given to the Holy Spirit, their purpose changes. As we recognize them and we pass them over to our right mind for forgiveness, we begin to see people and problems as they are in reality and not as the ego set them up by projecting them into the world (T-27.VII.2:2). Given to the Holy Spirit these set-ups become holy opportunities to inch our way back home.


"Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely." (T-17 II. 1,2 Italics mine)

Forgiveness is looking at the ego without judgment

As most of us who’ve studied A Course in Miracles for a while know, forgiveness is its central teaching. It is this practice which helps us, one situation at a time; withdraw our identification with the ego thought system so that we can become aware of our true Self as one Son of God.

As we become committed to the practice of forgiveness, we gradually begin to see everything through its lens. Forgiveness does not require us to do anything differently; it's simply an awareness that looks on what is happening and gently reminds us that what we’re seeing is not real. As Kenneth Wapnick often says, forgiveness is “looking at the ego without judgment.”

For the longest time as a student of the Course I didn’t know how to do this or what it meant. The intellectual understanding of it is helpful to a point, but it’s the practice that brings us the Peace which is our goal as students of the Course. I recently had a day in which I became especially aware of how forgiveness was operating in my mind.

Flying home from a workshop, I wrote in my journal about healing as a shift in perception. I wrote that to be able to experience a healing perception, it’s imperative to let go of the desire to be healed because if we allow the disease or the pain to take our peace we give it power over us by making it real.

As the plane begins its descent a strong feeling of nausea takes over me. In an instant it takes my sense of well-being and peace away. ALL I want is to get rid of this awful feeling.

For a second, I mentally laugh at myself. I realize that I’m not practicing what I just wrote in my journal. I’m feeling sick and I find it impossible to let go of my desire to be well.

When the flight attendant walks by, I call her attention and beg her for a diet coke. I don’t usually drink soda, but in my mind, that coke is going to settle my stomach. (My mother used to put it down a clogged drain, so it has to work on my stomach.)

As I wait for the coke I breathe in and out slowly noticing the nausea and praying I don’t lose it on the guy next to me who is engrossed in a bestselling thriller, completely oblivious to the colorful possibilities. Though I’m not at peace and I have not been able to let go of my attachment to the desire to feel well, I notice that I’m not condemning myself for it either. A part of me has been watching myself indulge in full body-identification without guilt. I’m not trying to change anything. I'm simply watching my ego act like an ego, but I'm not judging. I’m forgiving myself.

It’s as if I were watching the situation on a movie screen. The script has already been written. What’s going to happen is inevitable. Or maybe it’s one of those movies with several possible endings………but all of them have already been filmed. Will drinking a cup of coke help Aileen? Will she or will she not lose it on her seat? How will her neighbor react?

Though the script will unfold as it must, I become aware that though I don’t have control over the ending, I do have one choice. My choice is who I invite to sit next to me to watch the movie with me. It’s either Jesus (or the Holy Spirit), as a symbol of my right mind, or the ego.

Whenever we watch our movie with the ego, we're not really watching it anymore – we're in it, fully identified with the character on the screen. We’ve completely forgotten this is a movie and we think it’s all real and VERY serious. When we identify with the ego, we are the ego. There is no longer that forgiving perspective; we just react to the events of our lives. There is no space or awareness between what happens and our reaction.

It’s only when I watch my movie with Jesus that I gain this forgiving perspective. He’s the one who tells me…. Don’t take it so seriously, it’s just a movie…. and you’ve made it all up because you’re afraid of my Love…….

The coke comes. I drink it slowly and magically the feeling goes away as if it never happened. It served its purpose and now it’s gone.

Just a couple of hours later, I’m at my son’s last high school baseball game. He bats fourth, and it’s his turn to bat. After a couple of practice swings, he’s ready.

He has had a tremendous season. He’s ranked in the county, first in his league. Every at bat counts. There’s a guy in first base and two outs and as he swings, I mentally take a step back and I become aware of how much I want him to hit the ball. I can taste the elation of it flying high above the third baseman for a double. My peace and happiness at that moment are totally dependent on his hitting the ball – not for me, but because I want him to be happy.

He swings in the air and misses the ball completely. I feel it in my gut.

My son is ready to hit again and again I notice how much I want him to hit the ball. I’m totally attached to the outcome of this at bat. I WANT to see him running to first base. If I could will him there, I would.

Yet, I’m still watching my movie with Jesus next to me and I’m fully aware that this desire, like any want or desire in the world is costing me the Peace of God.

He swings and misses again.

He swings a third time and for the first time this season, he strikes out. I see a brief wave of disappointment cross his face and a part of me sinks.

As he’s walking back to the dugout, I mentally ask for a change in perception. I can feel how much this desire has cost me. But as much as I ask for a shift in perception – as much as I’m paying lip service to wanting peace – I know that on this day at this moment, I don’t really want it. I notice it in my body. It’s subtle, like drizzle slowly showering my skin. It’s fear. It has a soft paralyzing effect – like the inset of a panic attack.

It’s fear of not having a body that can go to baseball games. This is fun, I tell myself. It’s also insane! And I sort of see that, but having emotions is fun. I’m addicted to the uncertain, to the ups and downs of life. I see clearly how we are all confused when we believe we are enjoying what is really the excruciating pain of being separated from Love.

This fear we all encounter as we progress in the practice of this Course, is what the Course calls resistance. It's the secret wish not to make progress. It's resistance to the Love of God which we think will swallow up our individuality. This fear is inevitable because while our right mind is committed to the Course, the ego is terrified of our progress. To the ego our success is its demise.

Chapter 30 tells us that if we find resistance strong we should not "fight it.” So I don’t fight it. With Jesus still at my side, I simply watch myself not want the peace of God. Forgiveness is stepping back and watching ourselves choose the ego without judging ourselves for it. Jesus says that forgiveness “is still and quietly does nothing….It merely looks and waits, and judges not.” (W-pII 1: 4:1-3)

Through the lens of forgiveness we can look at ourselves with kindness, compassion and love because with Jesus at our side we are able to see that none of the feelings we’re feeling through our temporary identification with the ego are real. No situation has had any effect on Who we really are. We remain One innocent Son.

With Jesus holding my hand, I watch Aileen on the movie screen suffer because she loves being a body watching her son on his last high school baseball game. I watch her fear – her resistance to Love. And I forgive her for wanting this human experience so much.

Living for enlightenment

I was in a workshop on listening earlier this month and during one of the discussions, the facilitator mentioned that when he plays golf, he doesn’t play for scoring; he plays for enlightenment. Instead of focusing on the score, he uses the game for the purpose of awakening. (Golf for enlightenment is the title of a book I haven’t read by Deepak Chopra)

As he was speaking, the thought came to me: “This is what I do: I don’t live for scoring, I live for awakening.” At some point during my years of practicing A Course in Miracles, I experienced a shift in purpose: from the ego’s purpose of separation, to the right minded purpose of forgiveness. As we practice and study ACIM, this shift is inevitable. When we practice forgiveness throughout our day, our purpose will eventually shift from trying to solve situations to our advantage to using the situation as an opportunity to undo the ego thought system with which we identify. Under the guidance of our right mind, we stop scoring and our purpose becomes awakening.

The concept of purpose is central to the teachings of A Course in Miracles. The word “purpose” appears 667 times; twice as many times as the world “miracles.” The Course says that the only question we should ask of any situation is “What is it for?” Only when we understand the underlying purpose for everything, can we use it for awakening.

Most of us begin our lives living for scoring. As we face new situations, we measure, compare, assess, categorize, evaluate, and then we solve the situation in a way that protects our best interest. We judge our worth by how successful we are at solving problems to our advantage and we are totally attached to results. Our purpose is do ‘do well,’ ‘to make it,’ ‘to get ahead.’ Our sense of self-worth depends on how well we score and our peace and happiness depends on our results. The purpose of our life becomes to score higher for ourselves, or for our group – our family, our church, our cause, our political party, our country and someday maybe even our planet. Scoring is based on judgment and it’s a full-time job that keeps our mind busy, completely unaware of our true nature in oneness with God. That is the ego’s purpose.

When we live for scoring, we define success by how close our results match our expectations. We are happier when we get what we want; we are unhappy, disappointed, sad, fearful, angry, apprehensive, annoyed, when what we see in front of us does not match what we think our lives should be. We are constantly arguing with reality. If what we are experiencing is not what we expect, we focus on changing our experience because we believe that we can only be happy when we get what we want. We drive our lives according our own judgment, unaware that we are serving the ego’s purpose.

At some point, if we continue to practice our forgiveness lessons, we may become subtly or overtly dissatisfied. We may begin to question the purpose of our life. Is life really about getting our way? We begin to notice that the happiness we experience when we get what we want is temporary. The next obstacle always seems to be around the corner. Or maybe we are getting what we want and we are still not happy. As long as we believe we know what life is for, the Holy Spirit’s purpose of awakening remains dormant in our minds, but as soon as we begin to realize that maybe we don’t have a clue what life is for, it surfaces.

Sometimes this shift is abrupt and can cause temporary confusion.

Chapter 17 talks about the effects this shift in purpose has on relationships as the Holy Spirit’s new purpose replaces the ego’s purpose.

When we offer a relationship to the Holy Spirit to use for His purposes the Course says (T CH 17 V 3:2) ….. “At once His goal replaces yours. This is accomplished very rapidly, but it makes the relationship seem disturbed, disjunctive and even quite distressing. The reason is quite clear…….In its unholy condition, your goal was all that seemed to give it meaning. Now it seems to make no sense.”

As the Holy Spirit's purpose takes over, we may become confused because suddenly all the goals we held dear for so long, are no longer appealing to us.

I experienced something like this three years ago. I was studying and practicing the Course more than ever before, but the more I practiced, the unhappier I seemed to be. It didn’t make sense at the time that as I increased my commitment to the Course, my interest in living decreased. While in the past I had been a doer, always enthusiastic about the next project or idea; I now couldn’t find fulfillment in any of my accomplishments. I was no longer enthusiastic about finishing projects, making money, raising kids, traveling, etc.., I still did everything that was required of my role – nobody noticed anything different about me -- but, I wasn’t happy. I felt trapped in the illusion and all I thought I wanted was to awaken from the nightmare.

A very perceptive friend suggested a Workshop called “Leading With Mastery.” “It’s a four day workshop where you are called to articulate your life purpose,” she said. Without asking any questions I bought a ticket to St. Louis where it was offered, and enrolled.

I won’t describe the workshop because it’s beyond the scope of this post, but I’ll share that I came away with a strong, lasting, sense of purpose that has kept me going until this day. By becoming aware of my purpose, I found my Joy again. There’s not a day that I don’t wake up looking forward to the opportunities for growth that it will bring.

I learned that purpose is the lens by which we filter our experiences. Purpose is what gives meaning to our life. As we face any situation in the world, we can choose to see it through the ego’s lens or the Holy Spirit’s. T CH 26 VII 8:5 says that “Forgiveness is the only function here, and serves to bring the joy this world denies to every aspect of God’s Son where sin was thought to rule.” When we choose the Holy Spirit’s purpose of forgiveness, we can use our life as a means of overcoming the illusion. Every adversity looked at through Holy Spirit’s lens of forgiveness, becomes an opportunity to let go of our identification with the ego thought system. We begin to see that whatever is happening in our lives has no effect on who we really are. Through our adversities we find our way home.

Since scoring is no longer our goal, we don’t focus on solving situations. Through the Holy Spirit's eyes we see there is nothing to solve -- because what's in front of us is just a screen; a projection of the guilt that is the result of our belief that we are separate. Our job is to forgive every problem or person that shows up is our lives so that one situation at a time, we forgive ourselves and awaken to the knowledge that we are One.

This shift in purpose is one hundred percent at the level of mind. It’s only concerned with our focus, not with our behavior. We are not doing anything differently than we would normally do. We are not required to change jobs, relationships, activities, hobbies because one situation is just as good as any other to forgive. One activity is not holier than another. It's our purpose that makes everything we do -- whatever it is -- holy. We can be taking out the trash, or waiting in line with the Holy Spirit or with the ego. That is our only choice.

Any time we focus on changing the form a lesson takes, we give it power over our peace and happiness and by doing so we fall back into the ego’s purpose which is to root us further in the dream.

When we are anchored in the Holy Spirit’s purpose of forgiveness, our actions become inspired by the Divine. Our life appears to be easier, more relaxed. It feels as if we're hitting from the sweet spot. Problems still show up, but we don't take them seriously because they have no power to take our peace. The solutions we come up with are led by the Holy Spirit's Love that we are beginning to identify with. We experience peace of mind because our mind is no longer busy seeking to separate. Through the Holy Spirit’s purpose we see an underlying connection between all people as we recognize that we all share a common interest.

Instead of a battleground, the world becomes a classroom. We see each encounter and every situation as a lesson that can lead us out of the illusion. We accept the lessons in the form that they appear because we know we have chosen the curriculum to suit our needs and we trust that there can be no mistakes.

This quote from Ch 24 VI: 4 sums it up. Note that whenever the Course refers to “healing,” it’s the healing of the mind that thinks it’s separate, not the body.

"Forget not that the healing of God’s Son is all the world is for. That is the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it has. Until you see the healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world, by time and all appearances, you will not know the Father nor yourself. For you will use the world for what is not its purpose, and will not escape its laws of violence and death. Yet it is given you to be beyond its laws in all respects, in every way and every circumstance, in all temptation to perceive what is not there, and all belief God’s Son can suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not."

For another post on the subject of purpose click on the following link: http://forgivingeyes.blogspot.com/2008/01/living-on-purpose-egos-or-holy-spirits.html

Judgment, forgiveness and the spiritual experience

Practicing the Course's daily workbook lessons years ago, I became frustrated with myself. When I tried doing the meditations in the morning, I couldn’t keep my mind focused; at night I would fall asleep. I felt that if only I had better control of my mind, I would be progressing much faster. The course says that “The memory of God comes to the quiet mind.” (CH 23 I:1) My mind was anything but quiet. As I woke up in the morning it was as if the radio turned on and I had no control over the tuning dial.

So during the summer of 2001 I dropped off three of my children at camp in Maine, left the youngest with my husband back in California and flew to Virginia to spend a week at The Monroe Institute at their “Gateway Voyage” program. People go to TMI for many different reasons, but my main hope was that the Hemi-Sync technology, as the research I had read suggested, would help me control my wandering mind.

That first Saturday afternoon, I immediately felt comfortable with the casual atmosphere at TMI. The 23 participants and the two trainers seemed friendly and I could tell that if all else failed, it was going to be a fun week. I instantly bonded with my roommate who like me, was married and had young children. Within a couple of hours I had sought out the people that seemed to have the most in common with me. It was a very eclectic group, with people from all over the world and in every profession imaginable. There were only a couple of people in the group whom I judged as ‘out there’ in their new age beliefs, but I welcomed the opportunity to expand my horizons. Growing up Catholic and later becoming a somewhat rigid Christian Scientist I had some growing to do in the field of acceptance.

The program was intense. We spent five or six hours a day listening to Hemi-Sync tapes and in the evening there were lectures or activities. But there was a lot of free time which I spent with other participants swimming at the lake, walking, or practicing yoga. I wasn’t having the flashy experiences people described during our debriefing sessions, but I felt that something good was happening within me.

During every guided tape, I used the quiet intervals to practice my workbook lesson. With the help of the Hemi-Sync technology I was able to experience moments of complete stillness.

As the week progressed I noticed my mind slowing down. I felt more peaceful. This feeling translated into my being more open and accepting of others. Though my behavior didn’t change in any obvious way, I noticed that whenever I was having a conversation with someone I wasn’t reacting or judging what they said. I was more interested in listening than in talking. My urge to want to ‘fix’ people was considerably diminished. I was seeing past people’s age, shape, color, occupation, nationality, and seeing more of who they really were. Everyone was or had been in some kind of pain and everyone wanted to be happy. At the time I didn’t have much intellectual understanding of the Course (I hadn’t met Ken Wapnick yet), but without consciously trying, I was practicing forgiveness.

As we sat with our group for the last time on Thursday afternoon, all the judgments I had made faded and I felt appreciation and love for every participant. One of the program trainers warned us that our perception would have ‘shifted’ during the week and that we may perceive things differently as we reintegrated into the world. His warning did not prepare me for the experience that I was about to have.

On my first flight I sat next to one of my new Gateway friends. We chit chatted about the week, and then got into a conversation about writing, James Joyce and “Ulysses,” which had been a favorite a long time ago. I felt nothing unusual beyond a sense of being relaxed, as I would have felt after a vacation without the kids.

We said goodbye in Pittsburgh and went in opposite directions to catch our next flight. As soon as I walked into the airport concourse and saw hundreds of people walking in different directions, I noticed something was very different. My mind was not commenting, categorizing or judging. The radio was off. I noticed my breath - in and out - and each thought was clear and spread apart. I was deliberate and aware of my movement through the hallway; my awareness was so heightened that I noticed every little thing: a spot of spilled coffee on the carpet, a tear-drop on a sleeping child’s cheek, the deep blue of a woolen scarf on an old lady at the sandwich stand -- but my mind didn’t say a thing. There were no judgments made; no conclusions reached. I felt connected to everything by this all-inclusive awareness. A deep sense of joy took over me. I could not stop smiling and my eyes were filled with tears.

Because my mind was not categorizing/judging others, I felt free from other people’s judgment of me. I walked unaware and unconcerned about how I might look to others, or what they might think of me. I didn’t feel the extra weight I was carrying from my last pregnancy or notice the fact that my hair was disheveled because I hadn’t used a hair dryer for a week. I was so content with the love I felt within, that I didn’t need external attention or approval. While I usually thrive on not making eye contact with strangers at the airport, I wanted to look into people’s eyes to find the love that was below the surface.

The experience only lasted a few minutes – the sense of peaceful contentment, about a week. Within two weeks of the program my mind was again full of thoughts and judgments and besides the occasional snippet of silence; my ego has been back to its old tricks. The voice of the ego in my mind can be loud and persistent. It talks, comments, censors, categorizes and judges hoping I will pay attention – hoping I will think the voice is me. Moment to moment I have to chose if I will identify with it. I have control over the radio dial and I know I can choose my station. I often choose to tune in to forgiveness, so that when I hear the ego’s voice in my mind, I can use it to show me what judgments I have inadvertently made, and by asking for help, I can undo them through forgiveness and this, will eventually lead to permanent lasting Peace (and quiet!).

I occasionally have experienced short glimpses of oneness. Invariably they happen after I’ve been practicing forgiveness consistently. The purpose of A Course in Miracles as stated in the introduction is to “[remove] the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence.” In keeping with the Course’s aim, my goal has been to recognize what’s in the way of the awareness of love rather than seeking the spiritual experience. It’s the undoing of the ego thought system through forgiveness that leads us home.

The Miracle of Forgiveness

I've started this blog in my head about 60 times in the last couple of months. How do I begin? How do I explain everything that's happened in the last 15 years since I first found A Course in Miracles?

I decided to start in the middle of things. It's 3 am and I can't sleep because I'm busy hating my father. I woke up an hour ago, but my mind was taken hostage by this voice in my head that kept re-hashing his email of last night, plus every little selfish comment, every unfair treatment, and every unreasonable request he's ever made of me (I don't have to explain the specifics -- you have relatives too.) He's sucking me dry and it's just not fair. Not to mention he's done this to me in a half a dozen previous lives, but that's another story.

I suddenly become conscious that as long as I'm thinking of the past (what he's done to me) and the future (what I'm going to tell him when I speak to him) I am not present -- I'm lost in illusions. I decide to reclaim my mind.

I allow myself to feel the anger and then the pain. I feel it in my chest and for a second I wonder if I'm dying. I notice there's a wicked kind of pleasure in this feeling and that's why I resist letting it go. This is a HUGE step for me. In the past I've done some serious sweeping under the rug in the name of "happiness" and spirituality. I remember that the Course urges me to look for the monsters that hide in the closet. The Course says "Do not hide suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly to Him....Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His light and search your mind carefully for any thoughts you may fear to uncover...." T p. 243. This is how we undo the ego system: we bring all our pain out of the closet and ask the Holy Spirit to reinterpret it.

So I finally decide there must be another way. My own judgment of the situation has only brought me pain. I am open for new interpretation!

I close my eyes and I invite the Holy Spirit to look at the situation with me. I begin to own the situation through forgiveness. I tell my father mentally (inspired from Gary Renard's books and seminars) "You're not really there. I made you up. Everything you appear to be doing to me is a projection of my own ego and its purpose is for me to forgive. You can't hurt me, because you are innocent, spiritual, pure and perfect. I forgive you and I release you."

I sit with this for a while and soon, I see clearly that the role my father is playing, I've assigned to him. How can I blame him for acting out my own wishes? I forgive him for what he has never done. A sense of freedom envelops me. My pulse goes back to normal. I breathe easier. My mind is quiet again.

Related post: Forgiving our parents: re-visiting our self-concept