HOW WILL THE WORLD END?
page 36, paragraph 1
HOW WILL THE WORLD END?
HOW WILL THE WORLD END?
1. Can what has no beginning really end? ²The world will end in an illusion, as it began. ³Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. ⁴The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. ⁵So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone. ⁶The father of illusions is the belief that they have a purpose; that they serve a need or gratify a want. ⁷Perceived as purposeless, they are no longer seen. ⁸Their uselessness is recognized, and they are gone. ⁹How but in this way are all illusions ended? ¹⁰They have been brought to truth, and truth saw them not. ¹¹It merely overlooked the meaningless.
Illusion of Guilt
Everything I see and experience in this world is a reflection of guilt. It is an illusion because guilt is not part of God and so cannot be real. So what I need is an illusion that will end the illusion of guilt. The answer given me is forgiveness. When that illusion, that is forgiveness, is accepted completely by all, and with no exceptions, the world of guilt will disappear.
Grievance
Why do we have illusions and why do we keep them? It is because they seem to have some purpose. We want them. As we question that purpose and that need, that is, as we bring the illusion to truth, we see that we were wrong. Our illusions have no purpose and we no longer want them. One day I brought the grievance I held against my brother and the situation he was part of to the Holy Spirit.
Innocence
I carefully explained why this man was guilty. I showed Him all the evidence against this man. No matter how high I stacked his sins, the Holy Spirit saw only his innocence. He gave me His Vision and I practiced the possibility that the Holy Spirit was right. All day when the man or any other guilty person or circumstance came to mind, I tried out the Holy Spirit’s Vision. I reminded myself that the Son of God in innocent.
Forgiveness
Each time I did this I felt peaceful and happy. When I chose to return to my illusion, I felt contracted and anxious. I thought I needed that man to be guilty and the situation to be wrong. I could look in my story for reasons that I felt that need, but that would not be particularly helpful as the story is only the effect of my belief in guilt and unworthiness. My fear of God, the desire to be separate, these are the cause of the story, the reason I made the story to begin with. Forgiving the story is only useful because it stands as a symbol of the true cause of my unhappiness; the belief that I am separate from God and guilty for this separation.
So, I let go of the analyzing and just accepted that I felt the need to make this man guilty for my own purposes. I forgive that and I now accept that this man and the situation are innocent. I am innocent. However this acceptance of innocence was limited. When shown a different person or a different situation, I believed that I had use of guilt again. This went on for a good while.
The reason was because I was not yet fully convinced that I was not guilty and had no reason to fear. But, if I could forgive the belief I needed that man and myself to be guilty that one day, and if nothing awful happened as result of seeing us innocent, Knew I had nothing to fear after all. I was not immediately convinced, but neither was I fully convicted in my belief in guilt and the necessity of projecting that guilt, either. Now I bring all guilt thoughts to truth
Post-Script
There has been a shift. I seldom see guilt, but when I do I know I don’t want it and I quickly let it go. I am forgiving guilt itself, coming to understand and accept that guilt is not real and is only part of the ego separation idea. Amazing that the idea of guilt still has any value to me at all, but it is quickly, very quickly now, losing its appeal. Actually, I don’t think I actually ever believe in guilt now. I am aware of guilty thoughts from time to time, but they tend to drift on by leaving almost no disturbance in their wake. And so the illusory world is ending in my mind and that is my part, to accept the Atonement for myself. Each of us has this very same part.
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