Lesson 259
Let me remember that there is no sin.
Sin is the only thought that makes the goal of God seem unattainable. What else could blind us to the obvious, and make the strange and the distorted seem more clear? What else but sin engenders our attacks? What else but sin could be the source of guilt, demanding punishment and suffering? And what but sin could be the source of fear, obscuring God’s creation; giving love the attributes of fear and of attack?
Father, I would not be insane today. I would not be afraid of love, nor seek for refuge in its opposite. For love can have no opposite. You are the Source of everything there is. And everything that is remains with You, and You with it.
Journal
Any time I have even the slightest grievance against another it indicates I believe in sin. This is the same thing as believing in guilt. This belief stands between me and my remembrance of God and of who I am. This belief is a barrier to love and to peace and to happiness. Sin is just a belief in my mind and has no reality at all, so all I have to do to be happy and at peace is to change my mind. I would have to be insane not to make this choice.
Regina’s Tips on What Is Sin?
The best analogy I know is the analogy of the ocean. At the surface of the ocean, waves appear. Each wave is temporary, like the body and the personality. The water in the waves appear to be affected by the weather, just like you seem to be affected by the world and the mind’s thoughts. However, the water that is part of the wave isn’t really affected. It may sometimes appear calm and sometimes appear highly agitated, but it is always water. It doesn’t become blood or seaweed. It is forever unaffected by the weather.
At the same time, in the depths of the ocean, the water is untouched by even the appearance of being affected. The weather at the surface does not reach the depths at all.
In the same way, your true Self is not affected at the surface, where there is the appearance of affected. And the appearance of affected does not exist at all within the depths of your Self. At the depth, there is no judgment, duality, ignorance or outward focus at all.
Our function now is to return the unaffected attention, which has been at the surface, to the depths of the Self, so it may know itself as it has always been.
My Thoughts
Jesus is always directing us back to our Self. He wants us to know that not only are we not the ego, but we are also not affected by the ego. It may appear so, as Regina pointed to in her analogy, but in reality, we are still as God created us and He created us sinless.
Regina’s Tips on the lesson
Today we contemplate the depths of the Self. We realize that awakening is realization of the depth as our truth. We accept that at the depth, there never has been judgment; there never has been duality; there never has been ignorance; and there never has been outward focus. The depth of the Self has always been only aware of itself.
My Thoughts
There has never been a sinful self. There has always only been Self. This is true now as it always is. I am innocent and if I want to know this, I must know it for everyone. I will to know the truth.
Past Entries
This is a series of entries spanning several years. Each entry seemed helpful to me so I left them all.
From the beginning of studying the Course, I was quick to embrace these words. Having been raised Catholic with confession and penance being the basis for that religion I loved the idea of no sin. However, I did not embrace it out of love, but out of fear. I desperately wanted to no longer be condemned and that was the appeal. I did not really give up my belief in sin; I just quit using the word, but when I hold a grievance against someone, or even myself, I am really thinking that they sinned against me, or I sinned against them, or more frightening, against God.
As I was writing this I thought how glad I am that I don’t do this very much anymore. But then the Holy Spirit helped me to see that there are many subtle ways in which I express my belief in sin. And even if I only held onto one grievance it shows me that I believe in sin.
Finding Sin In My Special Relationships
I was eating supper with my daughter and we started talking about relationships. I talked about special relationships and why neediness and love are not the same thing. I could see by the look on her face that she totally disagreed with me. I noticed that I had a reaction to her disbelief. As I listened to myself I realized that I was defending my position. I ended the conversation, but it was enlightening for me to be aware of how I felt. I was surprised at my reaction. Holy Spirit, why did I feel so attacked by my daughter simply because she didn’t agree with me? It is not like that is any big surprise.
Holy Spirit: Your experience is a good example of the belief in sin. When you saw the obvious disbelief on your daughter’s face you felt like she was sinning against you. No, you would not use that word, but this is the underlying belief. Look honestly at your beliefs right now. How do you feel? Please do not police your thoughts; just be honest.
Me: I hate that look on her face. She is wrong and I am right. She would be happier if she saw things my way. She doesn’t respect me. She doesn’t believe in me. I feel stupid for talking to her about this. I don’t like the way I feel about myself when I think how defensive I felt; I feel embarrassed when I think about it. I feel angry with her and angry with myself. I feel fearful of losing her love and admiration and respect. I feel grateful to uncover more specialness in my relationship with my kids.
Holy Spirit, I see how I felt like she was sinning against me as she seemed to be breaking the secret bargain that comprised our special relationship. I see that I was sinning against myself as I believed that I am less or more according to what others think of me. I see that I believe I am sinning against God when I create my own self-concept or allow others to do so. It feels like I am saying that I am usurping God.
Holy Spirit: Thank you for your willingness to be honest. The belief in sin, whether it is directed toward yourself or others, causes you to suffer. Without that belief, you and your daughter were simply exchanging thoughts.
Me: Well now that I think about it, we were not exchanging thoughts, I was pontificating, and she was not sitting in admiration of what I had to say. I resented that. This is another way I saw her as sinning against me. As I look at this in my mind it is like finding something ugly and embarrassing in my house, something I don’t want to look at or for others to see. I want to stuff it in the closet or under the rug and pretend I didn’t see it.
Holy Spirit: Yes, I know that this is the first reaction you have. You believe that the sin is real and so you think you deserve punishment. You are afraid that you will be punished by others as they think less of you, and even by God and so you cringe away from Him. Rather than waiting for God to punish you, you punish yourself by accepting the feelings of embarrassment and failure as if they were fully deserved. You think that your punishment of yourself will abate God’s punishment. But I assure you that God does not judge you or punish you. That is not love, and God is only Love.
The first step to seeing differently is to be truly honest about how you are presently seeing things. The next step is to be willing to see another way. This is what you have done this morning. You have asked me for healing and it is done. Be vigilant today for other opportunities to recognize and release the belief in sin.
Me: Thank you Holy Spirit. I am not afraid of the word sin anymore. I am willing to see it as it appears in my mind. I am very willing to give it to you for correction. I am willing to see that sin is not an ugly thing to be hidden in the closet. It is nothing; just an error in thought to be corrected.
Sickness and Sin
This is too funny. I woke up this morning asking God what we would be doing today, feeling happy to get started. Then a thought of a friend came into my mind. I have an ongoing grievance against this person’s attitude. I know how ridiculous it is but I seem unwilling to let it go. I told the Holy Spirit that I really don’t want to hold onto this any longer. I don’t want my attitude toward her to stand between me and Heaven. I asked for help.
When I opened the book for today’s lesson and saw the word sin, I understood that this lesson is perfect for me today and sin applies to my thoughts about the relationship I have with my friend. As I read my journal I had to laugh. It is as if the answer to today’s challenge is held in the conversation with Spirit that I had three years ago. I thought I had allowed healing of that wrong-minded thought at that time, but evidently, I could only allow some healing at that time. The circumstances seem different this time around, but the error is the same.
I seem to hold some value in keeping my friend on the hook for her behavior. I value that more than I value being free of this mistaken thought. It feels awful to look at my friend and see a sinner. As I wrote that down, the Holy Spirit placed a name in my mind and I realize that another form this takes is when I see someone as sick. This is a way of seeing them as a sinner. God is not sick so when we are sick it is another way of saying we live outside God. It is another way of expressing and proving we are separate from God. And usurping God feels like a sin.
When I believe in their sickness I am joining them in this “betrayal” of the truth. When I am sick it is another way of declaring my independence from the perfection of God. You might think that this idea would produce unbearable guilt in me and at one time it might have, but now I feel very happy and relieved to have found this thought in my mind. I have been asking the Holy Spirit to give me clarity about sickness and death, and this is a piece of it.
For the last few weeks, I have been handing over thoughts of sickness and death and asking the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. My sister in law is healing from open heart surgery and is waiting for a lung transplant. My fellow Course student’s husband has cancer. Then a couple of days ago my customer told me that is his 10 year old son was diagnosed with several very serious diseases. I am, daily, being given the opportunity to examine my thoughts and beliefs on death and dying.
Yesterday things began to click in place. I had wanted to pray for my customer’s little boy and the ego clouded my mind with confused thoughts, but suddenly I realized that this child cannot be sick. He can only be as God created Him and I refuse to look at his body and see proof of something that cannot be true. I refuse to believe a lie.
Later that evening my friend’s husband came into my mind. I realized that I did not believe in his cancer. I was no longer refusing to believe in it, I was unable to believe in it. It is like being mesmerized by a magician’s trick. You begin to realize it is a trick but it is so clever you cannot help but believe in it a little. Then suddenly you catch the trick and you may be distracted by the smooth delivery of the trick, but you would never really believe in it again. To believe in it would be absurd.
The whole Course in Miracles is telling me that I am as God created me, and telling me that the only way home is to forgive all thoughts that I am not. It is telling me not to be fooled by ego magic. When I look at the appearance of illness and believe what I am seeing this is like being fooled by the magician’s trick.
The ego has thrown out some scary thoughts about sickness in my own body or my child’s and has taunted me with the idea that sickness and death would seem real enough then. Well, no. That’s not true. I know sickness is not real now, and I cannot un-know it. The truth may slip briefly away from me or become obscured by fear of loss if sickness appeared in my child, but I would still know the truth and eventually, my mind would return to it.
I know that illness in the body is a fine distraction from truth and impossible to ignore, but I can experience pain while knowing that it is not the truth. It is always going to be a choice of believing the ego version of the story because of its clever slight of hand, or placing my faith in the Holy Spirit because It is all that is true in this world.
Trust
Again, I find present help in a past posting. My son is sick and seeing him like this is scary. I asked for strength when I visited, and guidance when I spoke to him, and I received it and I am grateful. But I woke up in the night and I felt afraid again. I think about what I just read from before and I understand that this is an old story that I am watching. Nothing is happening right now and we are both safe in God. But that is not what I am seeing when I look at my precious boy. And what I see is upsetting me.
It helps that I know the picture I am manifesting is the result of asking the ego what this means. Experience has shown me that I can manifest a different picture if I cancel the desire to know what the ego has to offer and ask the Holy Spirit instead. It requires faith, though, because when I look through the body’s eyes the image I make is compelling, and feels so real that I cannot imagine how it could be different.
I am willing to see this differently, though. I put my son in God’s hands. I just love him and become willing to see something else even if I can’t imagine how that could be. I ask his angels to watch over him and I return to trust. I trust God, and I trust what Jesus tells us in the Course, and I trust my son. I trust that there is another way to see this even as the ego mind insists that this is really frightening and nothing is going to change that. I am grateful that all the Holy Spirit needs from me is my desire to see differently. He does the rest.
As I write this, I feel my mind returning to peace. The image I am manifesting is changing. I am glad because I don’t want to betray my son by seeing him as weak and helpless, and as a victim. The ego thinks this is love, but it’s not and it is not helpful and it is not true. I am going back to just loving him. I am giving my mind to the Holy Spirit for healing, and I am giving Him my body to direct and use for His purposes.