ACIM Chapter 13. IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 6-8
ACIM Chapter 13. IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 6-8
IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 6
6 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. If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for all your brothers. For so you learn that it is true for you. Remember always that it is impossible to condemn the Son of God in part. Those whom you see as guilty become the witnesses to guilt in you, and you will see it there, for it is there until it is undone. Guilt is always in your mind, which has condemned itself. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone. With everyone whom you release from guilt great is the joy in Heaven, where the witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice.
“Guilt is always in your mind, which has condemned itself. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone.”
This sentence says it all.
As I let go of guilt in all its forms, I undo the ego in myself and in the Sonship. It is the only way to undo the ego. Every time I forgive (or accept the Atonement for a brother), there is great joy in Heaven. Every time I fail to forgive, there is more suffering in my life and within the Sonship. This is unequivocal, and there is no compromising. It makes the choice simple and straightforward.
Do I want to be happy? Do I want to be at peace? Most importantly, do I want to wake up? Do I want to return Home, to know my Self, to know God? This is the way it is done. I accept the Atonement for all guilt thoughts. I forgive the very idea of guilt. If I think that someone else is guilty or if I think that some situation is guilty, then I have perpetuated the illusion, and I have condemned myself to suffering and death, along with all my brothers.
Does this mean that Donald Trump is not guilty? How about Biden or Kamala? The people who are responsible for the inhuman treatment of protesters? Those who destroy the environment to satisfy greed? The killers of baby whales and dolphins. The people who are deliberately or thoughtlessly cruel to helpless animals. How about pedophiles, murderers, and thieves? What if it hits home? What if the murderer kills someone I love and now will never touch again in this life? And what about the little things, the careless driver, the nosy neighbor, the bossy co-worker? Even them? Yes, it does.
And how can situations be guilty?
Well, if I think that I am unhappy because I am devastated by a natural phenomenon, like a hurricane or forest fire, I am saying that circumstances are the cause of my unhappiness. I have projected my unhappiness onto the world and said the world is at fault. If someone is upset because their house burnt down and all is lost, or because their company went out of business and now they don’t have a job, if something happens in the world and I think it hurts me, then that is an example of thinking the situation is guilty. That is projecting guilt onto the situation.
The ones that I notice these days are the quick judgments when I hear something sad or scary in the news. I think it is sad that so many people were lost to a warehouse fire. I don’t know them, but I can imagine their last terrified moments and their families’ grief. How could that not be a bad thing? How could I possibly see this differently?
Ego argues that fate is guilty, circumstances are guilty, and life is unpredictable and devastating. And ego life certainly is. But there is another way to see even these kinds of things, and I can know that other way if I am willing to let go of the ego interpretation and ask for the Holy Spirit’s interpretation. I look back on my life and recall many experiences that I thought were terrible at the time. Now, I see them as the path that got me here, and I do not regret any of them. I have come to look on the story of Myron as perfect for my purpose of awakening.
We will always see what is in our mind reflected in the world.
While fear is in our mind, fearful incidents will happen. If we continue to project and believe the cause is outside of us, then fear will stay in our mind, and fearful circumstances will continue to occur. Let us take responsibility for everything and allow it to be healed, and we will help the happy dream to become our reality.
I am reminded of Lesson 132.
5. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. ²Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. ³Ideas leave not their source. ⁴This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. ⁵It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.
6. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. ²There is no world! ³This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. ⁴Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. ⁵He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. (ACIM, W-132.6:1-5)
IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 7
7 Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light. And by projecting it the world seems dark, and shrouded in your guilt. You throw a dark veil over it, and cannot see it because you cannot look within. You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there. The thing you fear is gone. If you would look within you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace upon the altar to your Father.
“Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you will not see the light.”
I don’t know how to feel about this. I have let go of guilt in a big way, letting go of a lot of guilty thoughts and ideas, letting go of the belief that guilt is real, knowing that when I do see guilt, I can let it go, and knowing I want to let it go. And yet, I still am not completely free of guilt. I let it go much more easily than ever before, but it still pops up, and I still have to go through a process, even though it is shorter. I know that someday I will not see one spot of guilt within me, but when? That seems like a tall order.
I had two times today when I made someone guilty in my mind.
I saw myself do it, and I changed my mind. The first time someone close to me said something that seemed very unkind, I felt hurt. I reminded myself that no one can make me feel anything; only I do that. Yet, I still felt upset, and I blamed this person for my upset. I asked for help, and what became clear to me was that the person I was seeing as guilty was only afraid. Understanding her fear turned it around. I still had to talk to myself a few times during the day until, finally, I let it all go.
The second time it happened, I heard something about a close friend that upset me. This time, I got completely caught up in my own fear and forgot everything I knew about letting go. This went on for a short but really uncomfortable period of time. I saw that I was making guilty, and I knew that I had to stop if I wanted peace. I couldn’t seem to make it work, though. Finally, I told the Holy Spirit I needed His help with this. I didn’t know what to do.
Immediately, I realized that I was looking at a false image, and that was all that was happening. I got this false image from my ego when I asked the ego for help in interpreting the situation. I changed my mind and asked for the Holy Spirit’s help instead. There was a phone call, and both of us were comforted. The whole idea of guilt seemed silly. Guilt doesn’t have the hold on me it used to, but it is still in my mind. I really, really want it gone.
Am I still afraid of looking within?
Afraid of what I will see there? That can be the only reason that I would still project guilt onto others. I am willing to be healed, willing to know the truth that I am innocent, and there is nothing within that is frightening. It is strange that I would still be holding onto the fear of looking within and that I would still cling to guilt. The only thing I know to do is to do what I did today. When guilt stories come into my awareness, I will let them be undone. If there is something else for me to do, I am also willing to do that.
IX. The Cloud of Guilt, P 8
8 Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. For those who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the dark in which they shroud them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Within you is not what you believe is there, and what you put your faith in. Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. He does not value you as you do. He knows Himself, and knows the truth in you. He knows there is no difference, for He knows not of differences. Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? You can deny His knowledge, but you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you feared was there has been replaced with love.
We are caught in a cycle of guilt and fear.
At some point in our decision to experience separation, we experienced guilt, and now we are convinced of that guilt. We are afraid to look within because we believe we will see only darkness. So instead, we look for the darkness in our brother, and because we want to find it there, we do. But that only makes us feel guiltier for having done so, and guilt continues to blind us to Reality. I suppose it is the way we set it up so that the illusion would be continuous.
It can’t be true, though, because God is not guilty, and there is only God. He placed the Holy Spirit in us so that we would find our way out of this cycle of guilt and fear when we were ready. Now that we are ready, we have a decision to make. Do we still want to keep the illusion going? Do we want to continue watching these sad and awful stories? And do we want to continue to make everyone guilty so that we can avoid the inevitable and look within ourselves? There is a light within, placed there by God, and this light shines on the truth that there is no guilt to be found. It has been replaced by love.
12. Release the world! ²Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. ³God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. ⁴What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him. (ACIM, W-132.12:1-4)
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