Salvation is my only function here (Lesson 99).
My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation (Lesson 100).
In A Course in Miracles, forgiveness is not the recognition of errors followed by a magnanimous willingness to forget them. You stepped on my toe and it really hurts but I’m a good guy and I like you so no worries.
In A Course in Miracles, forgiveness is closer to clear seeing: it means seeing that errors aren’t actually possible. They are illusions; they never happened. Therefore, there is nothing to overlook. Judgment – I’m a good guy, I like you, fair is fair, you’re kind of a jerk – does not enter into it.
Forgiveness means recognizing our own perfection, which is salvation because in the face of our own perfection, the world itself disappears.
How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there. Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. Now you are holy and perceive it so (C-3.8:1-3).
Thus, salvation becomes the recognition of what we are in truth. The world – and our brothers and sisters with whom we share the world – are the mirror in which all that impedes this recognition is obvious. We are in relationship with it in order to forgive it, on terms consistent with A Course in Miracles.
In practice, this looks like a normal life. It looks like being as gentle and patient as possible. It means holding onto the metaphysical premise of the course – I am not a body and there is no world – without pretending to be more spiritually sophisticated then we actually are.
I am annoyed with the student who keeps showing up late to class. Or I am frustrated with my kids who never clean up. Or I am disappointed with myself for stress eating again. To a body in the world, these are real problems. To a student of A Course in Miracles, given to forgiveness and the salvation forgiveness entails, they are opportunities to choose again to see my brothers and sisters as sinless and, in doing so, to remember my own as well.
And now the mind returns to its Creator; the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all. God is not seen but only understood. His Son is not attacked but recognized (C-3.8:4-6).
Our review then is an opportunity to remember what our practice is and why it merits our devoted attention. God Wills only peace and happiness for us, and the world provides very specific lessons adapted to our special learning needs and abilities (e.g., C-3.3:5). Let us give close attention to our lives today, seeking only the Face of Christ in all people, places and things.
Our seeking will become a mirror in which our own perfection leads us away from error (C-3.1:4) and towards the happy fiction of those who have seen past the illusion of separation.
