Lesson 134

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Let us review the meaning of “forgive,” for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a whim.

This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected, when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Truth is God’s creation, and to pardon that is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. Does this need pardon? How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth, and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind, as you regard yourself.

Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good.

Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt cannot be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first, by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

It is sin’s unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.

Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.”

The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies; the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which has been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.

There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for that is self-deception. Ask instead, “Would I accuse myself of doing this?”

Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms that render choosing meaningful, and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be, and as it is in truth. It is but lies that would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth; between the world you see and that which lies beyond; between the hell of guilt and Heaven’s gate.

Across this bridge, as powerful as love which laid its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster, and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.

He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead a star is left behind, to point the way to those who follow him.

Forgiveness must be practiced, for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world that leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought that it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.

Today we practice true forgiveness, that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lighting up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the reality we share with them. That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalog his “sins,” as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his “offenses” but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself, “Would I condemn myself for doing this?”

Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother, but were laid upon yourself.

Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will still be many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Would I accuse myself of doing this?
I will not lay this chain upon myself.

In everything you do remember this:
No one is crucified alone, and yet no one
can enter Heaven by himself.

INITIAL INSIGHT: Forgiveness is simple if we accept that this world is an illusion and our lives are just stories. In that case, there is nothing to forgive. We are not trying to overlook a real sin, instead, we are noticing what works and what doesn’t and naturally releasing what isn’t working. There is nothing to forgive in that. We are innocent of wrongdoing. This is honesty. Using the actions of others or ourselves to reinforce the illusion of good and bad is dishonest.

DAILY APPLICATION: Here is something I wrote about a couple of years ago.

This lesson managed to surprise me this morning. I have read it many times, and I have practiced it. I practice forgiveness all day every day, always on guard for an unforgiveness so that I can let it go. I have discovered the freedom of not holding a grievance and so I am a great believer in forgiveness.

This morning, however, I discovered something I never noticed before. This sentence really jumped out at me, offering me its special gift.

“You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true.”

When I see someone, myself or someone else or even a circumstance, as guilty, what has actually happened is, I have made an image of an idea and called it the truth. When I seek to pardon the behavior or the circumstance, I am assuring myself that the image I made is real and needs forgiveness. So, used in this way, forgiveness is a false way to make the illusion appear real in my mind, to make the illusion true.

Here is an example of what I mean. I discovered someone I know has been deceptive. I saw him do something dishonest, and this changed my view of who I think he is. It makes me think less of him. I don’t like how I feel when I judge and so I choose to forgive this person. Do you see what I did? I looked at this person’s behavior and made a judgment about it, and then forgave them for my judgment, then forgave myself for judging.

That used to seem like just the right thing to do, but in light of this lesson, what I see is that in forgiving their behavior, and in forgiving my belief that they were guilty and even in forgiving myself for judging, I am saying that all of this is real and true and needs forgiveness. I am completely and deliberately overlooking the truth so that I can further establish the illusion as real.

The truth is that anything not of God is an illusion and guilt and dishonesty are not of God, thus they must be an illusion. The only thing required of me is that I dismiss the illusion and see only the truth. If I want only the truth, the illusion will be so insubstantial that I will see right through it as if it is not there at all. And really, the illusion is not there, it is only a thought in my mind, a desire to see something that is not real.

Now that I know how painful it is to view a world built on lies, and to believe in that world, I am more than ready to see differently. Forgiveness used to seem hard sometimes because I thought I was looking past something real and was trying to see something I barely believed in. Forgiveness will never again be a way for me to move more deeply into the illusion. I am not going to be fooled again to think that I am forgiving something real so that I can see something else. There is nothing real to forgive.

So how does this affect my forgiveness process with the person I have begun to think of as dishonest and therefore guilty? Instead of trying to forgive him for being dishonest, I am looking past my judgment and asking to see the only true thing, the only real thing in this situation. I am shifting the focus of my inner gaze and looking through the illusion to the truth.

I am doing the same thing with my own sense of guilt. I am not looking past something that really happened, but looking through the “illusion of a happening” to the truth. The truth simply continues, unalterable and unaffected by illusions of good and bad. Actually, I see that I was the one being deceptive when I looked at the illusion and insisted it was real. So forgiveness turns out to be simple; it is the decision to believe only the truth.

INSIGHTS FROM HOLY SPIRIT: Here is a helpful message I received in a meditation.

Holy Spirit: Precious child, rejoice that your mind is gaining clarity. You see more clearly now that your struggle is not between yourself and someone else. You struggle only within yourself. It is as if you condemn your hand of misdeed and slinging your arm out as far as you can to distance yourself from the offending hand say, “It was not me, but yonder hand.”

And all along, no sin was committed. No wrong was done by hand or by you. You stand innocent. You have been playing in the field of infinite awareness and infinite creativity and that is all. You asked what it would feel like to be separate and now you know. In your separateness, you asked how it would feel to be guilty and now you know. My dearest, soon you will be ready to set your game aside and return to Self and begin to create anew.

Nothing more serious than this has happened. You have carried around the effects of your imagination as if they were burdens you dare not lay down. You are weighted by guilt that has no source other than the desire to experience it. Bring every resentment to Me that we might see it in the Light of Truth, and that your thinking might be corrected. Let Me relieve you of the weight of condemnation, blame, and guilt. This is the only forgiveness needed, true Vision. Let us look on your “sins” and laugh at them, and then you will know they are forgiven.

When you have brought enough resentments, you will begin to understand that they are all the same. Then the truth will begin to dawn on your mind. You have become very good at looking at the errors and not making them real to you, not allowing guilt to enter into our work together. Do not worry about those times when you forget, and don’t be concerned that sometimes nothing seems to be happening. Trust me to keep my promises. I love you.

GRATITUDE: The Holy Spirit was right about all of that. I seldom experience guilt anymore, not in myself or others. When those thoughts come into my mind, I release them quickly. I have no interest in keeping them.

REGINA’S TIPS

Forgiveness is letting go of the mind. Or said another way, it is letting go of believing the chatter in one’s mind.

With that said, there are some helpful pointers in today’s lesson.

1. “Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception.” – I would word that this way: Because you think your thoughts are true, you think letting go of them is foolish.

It doesn’t matter if the chatter that plagues you now is fear about the future, a grievance against another person, a judgment against yourself or something else. The reason it is not let go and forgotten is because you think it is true. You think your mind is right.

Why do you think your mind is right? When there are so many people on the planet who would have a different perspective than you, what makes you so sure that your mind is right?

As one’s mind rises up to comprehend truth, one is happy. When one’s thinking is in harmony with truth, one is happy. If one is not happy, the current thinking IS NOT TRUE. You really do not need any other measure. If you are happy and at peace, fine; let your thoughts be. But if you are not, trust that your thoughts are wrong, and let them go. That is forgiveness.

2. “Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness … and merely says to them, ‘… what you think is not truth.’” – Whenever you are not happy, this is what you need to say to yourself: What you think is not truth.

When a situation is upsetting you, don’t try to figure it out. When peace comes, you will know what to do. Instead, realize your thinking is not true. (You know that, because you are upset.) And let your thinking go. The sooner you let it go, the better. You do not have to go deeper into suffering before you decide to let go of thinking that is causing fear or unhappiness.

3. “The strength of pardon is honesty, … it sees illusions as illusions, not truth.” – In this context we need to see ‘pardon’ as ‘letting go.’ Letting go is ceasing to put attention on it.

It was helpful for me to see that I was being honest when I chose to let go of mental chatter. It was also helpful for me to realize I was willingly deceiving myself whenever I kept my attention with mental chatter. I knew I did not want to deceive myself, so this helped me to let it go.

4. “[Forgiveness] opens up the way to truth.” – It was also helpful to realize that if I chose to believe my mind’s chatter, I was blocking truth. If I want truth realization, I must free up space within the mind by letting go of the mental chatter that crowds it.

5. “do not allow your mind to dwell” – Today’s lesson is speaking in specifics when it says this, but I feel this is good to remember as a generalization. Do not allow your mind to dwell on any thought. If dwelling is happening, distortion and deception are happening. Dwelling, distortion and deception go hand-in-hand.

6. “Forgiveness must be practiced.” – In the movie, “Peaceful Warrior,” Socrates said there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. “Wisdom,” he said, “is doing it.” In other words, to know about forgiveness, but not to practice it, is not wisdom. Wisdom is practicing it. In fact, wisdom is practicing it, not occasionally, but with every opportunity that is given. Each time you notice your mind dwells with a line of thinking that is not creating joy in you, be honest with yourself. The current thinking is not truth. And for that reason, let it go

MY THOUGHTS

Regina has a lot of helpful information in this tip. (https://awakening-together.org/tips-from-regina-lesson-134-let-me-perceive-forgiveness-as-it-is/). But this is the tip I found most helpful. If what I think does not make me happy, my current thinking is not true. So, I am going to stop dwelling on it and give my attention to what is true. Letting the untrue thoughts go is forgiveness. Regina doesn’t talk about the mind being healed during meditation or about the Holy Spirit doing this. But I have proven to myself that this works so I am sticking with it. It feels so right to me.

She also says another thing that I find helpful.

…to know about forgiveness, but not to practice it, is not wisdom. Wisdom is practicing it. In fact, wisdom is practicing it, not occasionally, but with every opportunity that is given. Each time you notice your mind dwells with a line of thinking that is not creating joy in you, be honest with yourself. The current thinking is not truth. And for that reason, let it go

I do this. I do it as soon as I realize what is happening. If I do it right away, forgiveness is simple and easy. If I hold onto the thoughts longer, then forgiveness is simple but not as easy. But regardless, I do it.