ACIM Chapter 13. X. Release from Guilt, 7, 8
ACIM Chapter 13. X. Release from Guilt, 7, 8
X. Release from Guilt, P 7
7 The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you, and show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what He has saved you from. What He has saved you from is gone. Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it. The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always done so. He has seen separation, but knows of union. He teaches healing, but He also knows of creation. He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. Yet what He knows you do not know, though it is yours.
I often visualize the Holy Spirit as a bridge, with one side in the world and the other side in Reality. He sees what I believe, but he knows the truth, and it is his function to teach me, heal me, undo the wrong-minded beliefs in my mind, and lead me to the truth. He will do this through me, too, so that I can help my brothers as well.
Jesus says that what the Holy Spirit saves me from is gone. I have seen this happen many times. I will be struggling with an ego belief, suffering terribly, seemingly unable to let it go. When finally, I have reached my limit and turn to Him with a sincere desire to be at peace, He heals me instantly. Often, when this happens, it is as if the thought had never been in my mind. Sometimes, I can’t even remember the thought. If I do remember it, the thought has so little charge that I laugh at myself for ever taking it seriously.
“Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it.”
This is a sentence I should have tattooed on me so I can refer to it all day, every day. Learning to believe this has been my focus. Guilt is what keeps the illusion going and is the cause of all suffering. It is the reason we are not having a happy dream. It is the reason the body gets sick. And it is the cause of our unhappiness. When I started my practice of letting go of guilt, I did it one guilt thought at a time. Then, over time, I realized that it was the belief in guilt itself I must release.
When I am thinking with my right mind, I can’t imagine ever going back to the belief in guilt. Then something happens, and I think I see the need for guilt, and I pick it back up. The need for guilt stems from the fear of God. Just yesterday, I had the thought that something a relative said was unkind and selfish. This was an expression of my belief in his guilt. When I looked at the thought that he was guilty, I realized that it covered up the belief that I was guilty of the same thing.
Until that moment, I had hidden that from myself.
The real reason for the guilt placed on another or myself is the often unacknowledged belief that God holds my evil deeds against me. So, either I fear my thoughts and bury them deeply in my mind, or I project them onto someone else in the hopes that God will condemn the other and not notice my own culpability.
What I have actually done is reinforced a belief that is not true for a reason that could never be true. God’s only judgment of me is that I am still as He created me. God did not create guilt, so guilt cannot exist in me or anyone else. I have nothing to fear from God and so no reason to cling to guilt. As I became open to healing, I let the Holy Spirit do His job. I let go of the idea that this relative was guilty and chose again to be relieved of the belief in guilt. That constricted and destructive feeling of guilt melted away.
I saw that both my relative and I were simply confused and afraid, and the unkind thoughts were believed because we thought we needed to defend ourselves from an imagined danger. We were both looking at false images projected from minds that believed in guilt. This insane loop of guilt felt in the mind and projected outward as stories in our lives can and will be broken. Yesterday, I got the chance to weaken that chain.
X. Release from Guilt, P 8
8 Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now. As yet it is not now. The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. When he has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. The moment that you realize guilt is insane, wholly unjustified and wholly without reason, you will not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.
Keith Kavanagh has a talk called The Gospel of Now. He says that ACIM is the gospel of now, and now that he pointed it out, I see it all over the Course. There is only now, and so we can heal and teach only now and awaken only now. I want to live the happy dream while still apparently here, and I can do so if I stay in the present. I cannot teach yesterday because it is not here. Nor can I teach tomorrow because it does not exist.
To watch The Gospel of Now by Keith Kavanagh, CLICK HERE.
Who I am as God created me is as available to me now.
Nothing about my Self has changed since the moment of creation. Why would it require so much effort to “reach” what I am right now? It is our belief in the darkness and our belief it comes from outside us that keeps us bound to the world. There is nothing outside us. Like God, we are all there is. So, this means that the world I think I live in is in me. Commonsense insists that this would also mean that there is nothing outside me to cause anything.
If I stop looking outside for what needs to be changed or for someone to accept my imagined guilt, I could look within where I would find the Atonement. I would discover my own holy Self, the Self my Father loves unconditionally. Imagine that!
³You are one Self, complete and healed and whole, with power to lift the veil of darkness from the world, and let the light in you come through to teach the world the truth about yourself. (ACIM, W-95.12:3)
Jesus talks about the veil as guilt, but you can’t be guilty. So what is guilt but thought? So that’s how I think of the veil of darkness that hides the truth from our confused minds. The veil is made of thought. When I am upset by anything or anyone, I remind myself that this is just thought. I am not these thoughts. I do not need to believe them. In fact, it would be foolish to believe them. I woke up last night to a worry thought. So, I got out of bed and did some laundry.
I know. That sounds funny.
It seems a strange way to practice forgiveness, but it works for me. I seem to need to be in movement sometimes to do this work. As I folded some clean clothes, I remembered that my distress was just thought and thought is a veil drawn over reality. I could escape the self-made hell I had put myself in with that thought.
Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. ²It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind. (ACIM, W-122.3:1-2)
So, how do I do this? I found my answer in 1. What Is Forgiveness?
3. An unforgiving thought does many things. ²In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. ³Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. ⁴It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.
4. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. ²It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. ³It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. ⁴He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. ⁵But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.
In paragraph 3, my error was described perfectly as frantic action, distortion, and furious attempts to smash reality. And in paragraph 4, I found my solution. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. And, ³It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. It takes some practice because the mind has grown accustomed to running amok and is such a thinking machine, but as I practice, I see that this is the only forgiveness process I need or want. It brings me peace and quickly, too. Now, I gladly forgive the belief in guilt each instant it occurs in my mind.
To watch Forgiveness Is Still And Quietly Does Nothing by Keith Kavanagh, CLICK HERE.