ACIM Workbook Daily Lesson 122, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 122 Forgiveness offers everything I want.

Lesson 122

Forgiveness offers everything I want.

1. What could you want forgiveness cannot give? ²Do you want peace? ³Forgiveness offers it. ⁴Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? ⁵Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? ⁶Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

2. All this forgiveness offers you, and more. ²It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. ³It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. ⁴And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. ⁵All this forgiveness offers you, and more.

Who Wouldn’t Want Forgiveness?

After yesterday’s lesson that made it clear what unforgiveness does, who wouldn’t want forgiveness? And now, we are being told the wonderful effects of forgiveness. Only if one doubted Jesus would one hesitate to forgive. I am always amazed anew when I have failed to forgive immediately. Why would I hesitate? I’m thinking about this seriously.

Sometimes I have realized that I was hiding from myself that which needed to be forgiven. I suppose it came to the surface when I was ready to let it go. Another reason is that when I first started the Course, I didn’t accept that the world is an illusion. I thought that I or someone else did something and was guilty of it. How could I just forgive when these actions or words had real effects.

There Is No World!

Honestly, I think that it is only when I slip back into a story as if it were real that I hesitate to forgive. This is why it is so important to me that I accept what Jesus is telling us. He calls this experience we are having an illusion, a hallucination, a fantasy. Do you think he is trying to tell us the world is not real? Oh, wait. He did say that, didn’t he?

²There is no world! ³This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. (ACIM, W-132.6:2-3)

Knowing this is true, I certainly want to forgive understanding what forgiveness gives me. I want the peace of God, peace that is never disturbed and that has no exceptions. Forgiveness gives me this and nothing else does. I want to know that I am safe and as I forgive the idea of a world outside God, what is there to fear? I want happiness every day and without a belief that separation is real, there is nothing to prevent happiness.

The world seems very real because we, the children of God with all the creative power of God made it to look and feel real. But it is not. Let us forgive the belief in it and the belief in guilt will go as well. Without guilt, there will be nothing to stand in the way of forgiveness.

Forgiveness Lets the Veil Be Lifted

3. 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. ³What would you want forgiveness cannot give? ⁴What gifts but these are worthy to be sought? ⁵What fancied value, trivial effect or transient promise, never to be kept, can hold more hope than what forgiveness brings?

4. Why would you seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything? ²Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, halfhearted willingness to hear, and less than halfway diligence and partial trust. ³Here is the answer! ⁴Seek for it no more. ⁵You will not find another one instead.

Clearing the Mind of Dead Thoughts

Without unforgiveness, I will see the Christ in everyone! Imagine that. Imagine that there is no one who causes the least upset, no one that is seen as other than the Son of God. How we would laugh at the idea of guilt. Jesus says that our memory would be clear of dead thoughts. Those would be the thoughts of separation and specialness, thoughts of hate, guilt, and fear, of pain, suffering and death. Without those thoughts, we would remember our Father.

I think of the silly things that used to seek. For instance, I wanted more money. and I wanted to be admired and respected. Actually, I wanted to be envied for all I had and was. Of course, to have all those things, I would need everyone else to have less in comparison. It is the only way this would work. Now, the thought of this has little appeal. Once in a while, I will feel unloved or unworthy in some way and will feel suddenly less than. But I understand the value in noticing this. I can forgive it once I see it. My mind is very nearly clear of this bit of foolishness for which I am grateful.

God’s Plan for Salvation

5. God’s plan for your salvation cannot change, nor can it fail. ²Be thankful it remains exactly as He planned it. ³Changelessly it stands before you like an open door, with warmth and welcome calling from beyond the doorway, bidding you to enter in and make yourself at home, where you belong.

6. Here is the answer! ²Would you stand outside while all of Heaven waits for you within? ³Forgive and be forgiven. ⁴As you give you will receive. ⁵There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God. ⁶Let us today rejoice that this is so, for here we have an answer, clear and plain, beyond deceit in its simplicity. ⁷All the complexities the world has spun of fragile cobwebs disappear before the power and the majesty of this extremely simple statement of the truth.

Forgiveness is God’s plan for salvation. There is no other. I love the simplicity of this. I don’t have to wander the world in search of the way Home. Here it is. I just forgive all beliefs that are not true. I forgive the desire for them, and I forgive the belief that I am guilty for ever having desired something other than God. For Certain, I will not stand outside Heaven’s gate when entry is simple forgiveness.

Here Is the Answer!

7. Here is the answer! ²Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. ³Accept salvation now. ⁴It is the gift of God, and not the world. ⁵The world can give no gifts of any value to a mind that has received what God has given as its own. ⁶God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you.

8. Open your eyes today and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace. ²Forgiveness is the means by which it comes to take the place of hell. ³In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes, and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. ⁴What you will remember then can never be described. ⁵Yet your forgiveness offers it to you.

Forgiving Pain

Today, I am going to pay close attention to my desires. I am asking the Holy Spirit to show me what it is that seems more important to me than returning Home. I want to be aware of whatever it is I need to forgive. This morning, I thought about the pain I have been experiencing and I forgave that. I forgave the idea that I couldn’t be happy if there is pain. And I forgave the idea that I ever wanted it or deserved it or that it is real. I am keeping my mind open to anything the Holy Spirit wants me to know about the choice for pain so that I can forgive it.

Remembering the Gifts of Forgiveness

9. Remembering the gifts forgiveness gives, we undertake our practicing today with hope and faith that this will be the day salvation will be ours. ²Earnestly and gladly will we seek for it today, aware we hold the key within our hands, accepting Heaven’s answer to the hell we made, but where we would remain no more.

10. Morning and evening do we gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed. ²Begin in hopefulness, for we have reached the turning point at which the road becomes far easier. ³And now the way is short that yet we travel. ⁴We are close indeed to the appointed ending of the dream.

Jesus is encouraging us to have hope and faith in salvation. We are much closer now to our goal than we have been before. We know what forgiveness offers us and now we know that it is the only way Home. It is just a matter of practice at this point, and an open mind willing to see what needs to be forgiven.

Sink Into Happiness

11. Sink into happiness as you begin these practice periods, for they hold out the sure rewards of questions answered and what your acceptance of the answer brings. ²Today it will be given you to feel the peace forgiveness offers, and the joy the lifting of the veil holds out to you.

12. Before the light you will receive today the world will fade until it disappears, and you will see another world arise you have no words to picture. ²Now we walk directly into light, and we receive the gifts that have been held in store for us since time began, kept waiting for today.

In the past, I could not imagine reaching the real world in this lifetime in spite of the encouragement Jesus gives. But now I can imagine it. I see myself as close. There has been so much forgiven and so much happiness and peace as a result. I know it can be done because I know people who have attained this state. If anyone can do it, all can do it.  You can do it, too. We have no reason to doubt Jesus and every reason to believe him.

Forgiveness offers everything you want.

13. Forgiveness offers everything you want. ²Today all things you want are given you. ³Let not your gifts recede throughout the day, as you return again to meet a world of shifting change and bleak appearances. ⁴Retain your gifts in clear awareness as you see the changeless in the heart of change; the light of truth behind appearances.

14. Be tempted not to let your gifts slip by and drift into forgetfulness, but hold them firmly in your mind by your attempts to think of them at least a minute as each quarter of an hour passes by. ²Remind yourself how precious are these gifts with this reminder, which has power to hold your gifts in your awareness through the day:

³Forgiveness offers everything I want.
⁴Today I have accepted this as true.
⁵Today I have received the gifts of God.

A Simple Step at a Time

The way I and maybe everyone have learned is one simple step at a time. I began by forgiving others and then realized that I was only forgiving my own thoughts about them. I worked for a long time on forgiving myself for the many things I felt guilty about doing. And I learned to forgive situations and events that I resented.

I learned to forgive my grievances, my judgments, and my attack thoughts. Finally, I realized that everything is an image that is represented by a desire and so I forgave myself for my foolish desires. Since it all is sourced from my thoughts and beliefs, I saw that this was what I needed to forgive.

It got simpler and simpler as I continued to forgive. And since it is really just thoughts and beliefs that we are forgiving, I see that it doesn’t have to take a long time. Today could be the day for any of us, for all of us if that is our truest desire. And if not, that’s OK, too. But let us devote ourselves to God’s plan and be grateful that this is the lifetime in which we decided to go Home at last.

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 122 click here.

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