A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 288, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 288 Let me forget my brother’s past today. 1. This is the thought that leads the way to You, and brings me to my goal.

Lesson 288

Let me forget my brother’s past today.

1. This is the thought that leads the way to You, and brings me to my goal. ²I cannot come to You without my brother. ³And to know my Source, I first must recognize what You created one with me. ⁴My brother’s is the hand that leads me on the way to You. ⁵His sins are in the past along with mine, and I am saved because the past is gone. ⁶Let me not cherish it within my heart, or I will lose the way to walk to You. ⁷My brother is my savior. ⁸Let me not attack the savior You have given me. ⁹But let me honor him who bears Your Name, and so remember that It is my own.

2. Forgive me, then, today. ²And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness. ³He cannot be less holy than can I, and you can not be holier than he.

I cannot come to God without my brother.

I wrote this last year.

That is the understanding that changed my relationships. I used to be very judgmental of others, and I held their pasts against them. I probably did this to them because I did it to myself. But I cannot go Home without all my brothers, and I do want to go Home. I want this more than anything. So now, instead of judging my brothers, I love them. I don’t love them because of anything they say or do or believe. I just love them, sometimes, despite all that. After all, these holy brothers of mine bear my Father’s name and are my saviors.

I Let Go of Their Past

Part of loving them is to let go of their past. I don’t find this easy to do, not yet, anyway. But I practice it often so it will get easier. I have a picture of my two daughters and me on my desktop. When I look at my older daughter, I have thoughts about her. Some of these thoughts are about a difficult time in her life. Some are about what she learned from that time and how it changed her.

I look at my younger daughter, and I think about her as well. My thoughts are about her past as well. Even if it is thoughts about what she said to me earlier today, it is about the past. These thoughts define these girls, at least in my mind. As I wrote this, I wondered if I could just look at them without any reference to the past. How could I do this? What would it be like?

No Thoughts, Just Love and Joy

I looked at the picture of each one with the desire to see past my thoughts of their pasts and to see them anew. When I did this, I felt such love and joy it made me cry. I see now how this works.  Trying to see something different doesn’t work; I just want to see it differently. I believe in the possibility, and I trust. I believed that I would have different thoughts about them if I didn’t see the past thoughts. That’s not what happened at all. I didn’t have any thoughts, I just felt love and joy.

I could do this for everyone. And I will do it for everyone. I will desire to see them, not as part of the illusion, but with vision. I will see them as they are. And without any judgments getting in the way, I will have a different experience. I will take their hand (figuratively speaking), and we will walk each other Home. Without judgments, there is nothing to keep us apart and nothing to keep us in the world.

This year, I see that I can refer to everyone’s past but also that I don’t usually.

I know their past, but it doesn’t define them for me. Other thoughts fill my mind instead. Love fills the space that was occupied by past thoughts. Sometimes, though, the past takes precedence over the present, and that changes the way I react to them. I feel the difference, and so I look at the thoughts with the Holy Spirit so that my mind can be healed.

For instance, I know someone who has mental problems that have led to suicidal ideations in the past. It could be that this is my mental picture of her, and if her behavior is erratic, maybe it is. But if that happens, the stress I feel lets me know that I need to forgive this idea. Once forgiven, my inner image of her changes.

I know about her past, and if I see a problem, I will act on it, but that realization doesn’t define her now. If it were to happen again, it wouldn’t define her then, either. It is something that happens, not who she is. When I used to believe that her past is who she is, being with her was a series of judgments about her present behavior. That was stressful. Forgiving (letting go) her past is healing for us both.

I see that when I hold the past against anyone, this is judgment.

Often when I think of my brothers and sisters, I get that rush of love that feels so good. And when I notice the contraction that comes from judging someone, I acknowledge it and then ask to see clearly. I do know that every brother is my savior, and every one of them has the potential to release me from the hell of judgment.

Paragraph 2 is of particular interest to me. In this paragraph, Jesus says that we forgive him as we forgive each other. This is because we are all one. I cannot love anyone if I don’t love everyone because I won’t understand love. And if I separate out who I love and who I don’t love, I will not know who we are.

Regina’s Tips

The ego uses our attention to keep us absorbed in illusion and ignorance. Our attention is usually focused outward on the ego’s ideas (thought) and perceptions (the world as perceived through thought).

Spiritual intuition uses the same tool that the ego uses—attention. However, spiritual intuition guides us to keep attention focused inward instead of outward. We are focused inward as we ask intuition, “What am I to do now? How am I to see this?” We are also focused inward as we practice awareness-watching-awareness or loving consciousness meditation.

Outward focused attention is guided by ego.
Inward focused attention is guided by spiritual intuition.

There is a third type of attention. It is fully involved in the moment with no “I” or self in it. Examples include being absorbed in creativity or being absorbed in nature.

When we are fully in the moment without ego chatter about “me,” we are in presence. We might call that merged attention instead of outward focused attention, because instead of the idea of me as a person looking outward at a world through “my” thoughts, it is awareness and scenery all merged into one happening.

Therefore:

Outward focused attention is guided by ego.
Inward focused attention is guided by spiritual intuition.
Merged attention is presence.

Which type of attention is active when there is a grievance? Is it outward, inward, or merged attention?

The answer is outward attention. Outward attention is attention that looks outward through thought, or more specifically, through the ego thought system. Outward attention looks at our brother through the ego’s chatter about the brother and what he did to me, or what I don’t like about him, etcetera.

If we focus our attention inwardly, we will find another thought system. It is the thought system that points toward truth. It may guide us to see our brother differently; it may guide us to inquire into our thoughts in order to see them differently; it may guide us to practice the Loving All Method with our brother and the situation; it may guide us to notice our self as unaffected awareness, etcetera. The specific guidance will vary, but the guidance will always be toward truth and away from untruth.

If our attention is merged, there will be no thought about our brother’s past, and there will be no current judgments about him. There will only be this moment as it is in joy.

My Thoughts

A few years ago, I took a year-long class designed by Regina Dawn Akers called Gentle Healing. She created it to bring dedicated students to Fundamental Wellbeing. I think of Fundamental Wellbeing as the path to complete Awakening. The part of the class I took that used the Lessons from A Course in Miracles. I had a lot of resistance to her class because it was not just A Course in Miracles. But I persisted and did it anyway. She uses other non-dual teachings as well as the Course, which was off-putting to me at the time.

But clearly, I was supposed to be doing it, leading me to Fundamental Wellbeing despite my resistance. That makes sense. As Jesus tells us in the introduction to the Daily Lessons, we don’t have to understand the lessons or even like them, we just have to do them. Since I was led to Gentle Healing, this rule seemed to apply here as well. I’m sharing this with you, so you know why I include her tips sometimes. I include the ones I found especially helpful and that don’t need an explanation of terms not found in A Course in Miracles. I think the tips she gives with this lesson are amazingly clear and helpful.

This is an entry from the past in which I was thinking about my father.

When I think about him, I think about all my beliefs about him. He was an alcoholic. He made our lives miserable and then abandoned us. And he made me special, then betrayed my specialness. When he wasn’t drinking, he was the best dad in the world, and somehow that made his drinking behavior all the more painful; his betrayal all the more unforgivable. He was a gifted speaker, songwriter, and singer. His heart was open and childlike; he was playful and fun. Though he had little follow-through, he had the capacity to dream things others could not fathom.

What if I could withdraw all my projections and surrender my perceptions? What if I could allow myself to see him without the armor of my judgments? Who would this man be? I imagine him not as my father but as another brother using his ego story to help him wake up. I see him walking his path through addictions and mental illness. He is trying on this mask and that one looking for something that fits, something that brings happiness and peace.

I see him presenting me with opportunities to look through my bag of ego tricks, to try first this one and then that one, to discard each as it does not work. He is moving on to his next rendezvous in this play, and me moving on to mine. Where is the attack now? Where is the betrayal, the abandonment? From this forgiven perspective, I meet him again, and I see him without those labels, those judgments, those projections –  all that I had created as his past. Now I see only the innocent Christ.

Holy Spirit, what if I could do this for each person I encounter?

What if I could withdraw each judgment, even as I make it? And withdraw it so completely that it leaves not a stain upon their visage. So that each encounter with that person is brand new, completely untainted by the last encounter? What if I could encounter a brother on the street and he knocks me to the ground, and yet I see only my innocent self interacting with my innocent self? Could I ever be so free of judgment that the past would not follow me around? Could I encounter that person later and not flinch?

Holy Spirit: Do you feel the fear and resistance at this thought, my friend? Allow yourself to do so. Don’t try to bury it. (I stop for a moment and feel the fear and doubt. I notice I feel overwhelmed and think it is too much to even try. It feels hopeless.) Those feelings, dear one, are the ego defenses designed to keep you forever in its world of separation. The ego warns you that you are being asked to go naked and unprotected into a dangerous world. You do not have to believe its lies.

Today you will encounter many people on whom you have projected a history. Do not try to see them without this history. Do not try to do anything. As you meet them, simply ask Me to show you what I see. Does this feel doable to you? Does this feel overwhelming and frightening?

Me: (I smile and then laugh.) Holy Spirit, I keep forgetting how easy this is. I keep forgetting that God is not asking for sacrifice. I can do this, and I want to do this. Thank you.

2016

The part of this lesson that holds my attention this morning is this: His sins are in the past along with mine, and I am saved because the past is gone. Someone I know is suffering today, and in the past, when this happened, he reacted badly. I have caused myself suffering because of my expectation that he will repeat his past. There is a present moment available to me, and in that present moment, there is no past and no future. This present moment is pure and beautiful, and it is where I find God.

Holy Spirit, please keep reminding me that I can be here now. I can be free of pain and suffering if I remain in the only moment there is. My friend is there with me, just as pure and beautiful, just as present with God in this holy instant, this moment that is eternally mine. I feel the pull of time, but I don’t want to go there. I know I can do this because I am God’s Son, and His Will is my will and is always available to me. And His Will is that I be with Him.

2014

This sentence holds my attention today: I cannot come to You without my brother. There is another sentence in the Course that is similar to this one, and I keep it near me in case I forget: ⁶You cannot enter God’s Presence if you attack His Son. (ACIM, T-11.IV.5:6) When I notice that I am judging myself or anyone else, I remember that judgment is an attack and that my very salvation depends on letting that judgment go.

The Son of God is all of us together. Of course, I cannot return to the Kingdom without my brother because the Kingdom is, by definition, whole. To leave anyone behind is to suppose I could bring loss into wholeness. If I were to do so, then the Kingdom would not be the Kingdom anymore. I would have to suppose that I could make of God what I have made of the ego. Fortunately, this is not possible.

I understand that I cannot continue to separate from, that is, to attack my brother and still enter the Kingdom. Now that I see how impossible this is, I am highly motivated to see past appearances to the reality of my brothers. We are not our egos; we are eternal, Divine Beings, the Holy Son of God. Holy Spirit, when I am tempted to think I know differently, please decide for me how to see my brothers.

Contemplation 2025

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 288 click here.

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