ACIM Lesson 288 Let me forget my brother’s past today. This is the thought that leads the way to You, and brings me to my goal. ²I cannot come to You without my brother.
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 Love Them
I cannot come to God without my brother. That is the understanding that changed my relationships. I used to be very judgmental of others. 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 in spite of all that.
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 me and my two daughters 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. I don’t try to see something different; I just want to see something different. 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. 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.
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