ACIM Chapter 9. IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness P 3, 4

ACIM Chapter 9. IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness P 3, 4

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 3

3 The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would accomplish this through Him you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in the ego’s judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.

Sentence three really clicked for me. “By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created.” Here is an example of this from my older journal. I was working at the time.  

At yesterday’s sales meeting, I discovered that a team member had overlooked something important. This could have serious repercussions for me, so I immediately attacked him. I stopped myself as quickly as I could, but still, I did attack. I said something like, “You can’t do that. This is important.”

Just reading the words, it doesn’t seem like much, but in my mind, it was a full-out attack. If I said what my ego mind was thinking, it would have been more like, “You are such an idiot! How could you do something so dumb? You are attacking me with your behavior, and I’m going to return the attack. Then we will see how you feel.” Luckily, I do have a filter, and I generally use it.

This is the ego’s use of my abilities.

The ego uses everything as either an attack or a defense. The ego felt that his behavior was an attack on me and could affect my income. Its response was to do something about this. It wanted to defend by making him do better, which is an attack on him. I recognized this, and I was able to recover my senses and ask for healing before it got too far out of hand.

How is it that the Holy Spirit could use my abilities to share? In this same situation, once I allowed my mind to be corrected and returned to peace, I saw it as a situation to be resolved. I thought about it during the day and came up with some solutions. It was no longer about assigning blame and defending myself. Now, I can honestly say that I love this person. I see him differently. I see with greater vision because I asked for vision. Instead of projecting blame and assigning guilt, I just want to extend love and understanding.

It’s funny that during the same meeting, I discovered I had made a mistake that could negatively affect a member of the team. My first reaction was to defend and lash out (in my mind, at least), doing what the ego always does: projecting the fault onto others. I saw that desire right away, and I knew that wasn’t what I wanted. I looked at it again with the Holy Spirit and felt led to make amends. As I did this, the other person was gracious in accepting my apology and even insisting it was no big deal.

There is a world of difference between the ego’s judgment and the Holy Spirit’s judgment.

I have learned to value the peace and joy that comes from judging through the Holy Spirit rather than judging through the ego. The ego judgments pop up in my mind, and to the degree that I believe them, I suffer. But the truth is in my mind as well, and even in the middle of an ego storm of resentment and rage, I know what I want. Eventually, and usually soon, I choose peace.

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 4

4 The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one, though not of the right teacher. The ego’s plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. By following its plan you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego always leads you. The ego’s plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it. This is where the ego is forced to appeal to “mysteries,” insisting that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from God. They are as sensible now as they ever were, because they speak of ideas that are eternal.

Jesus said even in the Bible that we must not judge and must forgive. He said we must love each other and treat others as we would want to be treated. For a long time, I found this to be too hard, so I didn’t take his words literally. I called it a mystery as to how this works, and I just kept on judging, hating, and failing to forgive. Since finding the A Course in Miracles, I am doing much better, but I have not fully and for all time let go of judgment, which is why I am still living the dream of separation.

It is not hard to do what Jesus said; it is just necessary that we want to do it.

Our error in forgiveness (and all other errors follow from this) is that we made the offense real and then tried to forgive it. This is the ego’s plan for forgiveness and, of course, never works. On the cross, Jesus did not say, “Forgive these terrible people for their sins.” He overlooked their actions, knowing they were just confused. They were acting out of ego thinking, and the whole thing was meaningless because the ego is meaningless; the illusion is meaningless.

Jesus knew there was nothing to forgive, and this was forgiveness. I used to be confused about this. If there was no sin, then why did he ask that they be forgiven? I think (that if he actually said this) that he was modeling forgiveness for us. He showed us that no insult, regardless of its seeming severity, is to be taken as a sin. Everything is to be forgiven. Now that we are ready to hear it, he is telling us that nothing happened to be forgiven, and that is forgiveness.

In Lesson 36, we are told that there is no sin.

Our mind is part of God’s Mind, and we are very holy. There is no sin in God, so there can be no sin in us—none. Ever. So, what could there be to forgive? If there seems to be a sinful action, it can only be an illusion, an ego story, meaningless because it is not real.

I would not find anyone guilty because I want to release the separation idea now. I am ready to wake up. And I cannot wake up if I insist on believing in sin and guilt. When I am aware of an ego behavior, I know it is not in alignment with the Love that we are. So, I remind myself that the Love we are cannot be affected by ego. We remain sinless. This is what Jesus has told us from the start. Don’t look at the action, judge it as sinful, and then try to forgive it. Simply look at your brother and know he is holy.