I said the other day that our special function is forgiveness. Yet it is equally true that the form forgiveness takes appears to be different here in the world of form (T-25.VII.7:1-3). We choose different roles with correspondingly different teachers addressing different types of conflict. They have this in common though: each restages the victim/victimizer paradigm and each rests on the premise that in order for one to gain somebody else must lose.
We might say that salvation is the remembrance that nobody loses and everybody gains (T-25.VII.12:1-2). This is what forgiveness teaches us. But what does this mean in practical terms? It is one thing to read it in a book and quite another to practice it, let alone get anywhere with our practice.
We have to start where we are. We have to look at our lives and see the themes and issues and obsessions that occur and reoccur over time. The opportunity for forgiveness – to literally remember who and what we are in Truth – is always right there in front of us. But we have to see it that way. We have to engage with it that way.
I think we miss this sometimes – the simplicity of it, the clarity of it – because we are looking for something special and fancy. I know that I do. For exaple, I am often quite concerned about where I teach (does the worldly estimation of the college match my own estimation of myself) and what I teach (am I doing God’s work). These concerns can seem quite valid but they have to be seen for what they are – concerns with form. Yet all the while I focus on that level, I am met almost daily with a steady stream of students all of whom put me in the mind of either atonement or separation. The work of forgiveness is before me! And yet I miss it when I think that I should be teaching ACIM or at a more progressive or alt-ed type institution.
I need – perhaps we all need – to focus more on the content of our lives (which always testifies to either atonement or separation) and less on the form.
We have to remind ourselves over and over that projection makes perception (T-13.V.3:5)! We are looking at this world because we choose this world. There is nothing else to forgive! So long as the world we see and experience remains full of differences and changes, all of which lead ultimately to death and grief, then we are looking with the eyes of the ego, cringing beneath the lash of separation.
The way out is simply to be willing to look on the world and our lives in it with a new teacher. We must realize eyes that are grace-filled and forgiving and altogether not physical. Willingness is the key. Even a shred of it will pry open windows that have been long-locked. A little light is all we need to take another step, undo another block. Leaping into Heaven is sexy, but baby steps do just as well. There are no points for style!
The world – which includes your body and your psychological self – is there to be forgiven. It’s only other purpose – to distract you from remembering that you remain forever a part of God – has already ended. We cling to the remnants of a bad idea, the wispy trails of an error so brief – and so quickly overlooked – that it may as well not have happened. The jig really is up.
I know how crazy that sounds. But can we not feel some part of us lift at the possibility? That this is but a dream, long ago ended, and all that remains is to allow the memory of Truth to dawn again in our healed mind?
We don’t need another thing to be healed right now. Not another lesson from A Course in Miracles, not a new house, not a better teacher, not a higher income, not more time to meditate, nothing. Everything has been given and we all have it. There is nothing to do but seek out the font of interior willingness and turn the spigot as open as possible.