A Course in Miracles Lesson 62

Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.

Forgiveness is a form of correction. It corrects faulty, or upside-down perception, and in doing so, reminds us of what we are in truth. This is why A Course in Miracles asserts that our salvation is grounded in our forgiveness (W-pI.62.1:5).

When we view ourselves as apart from the world – and apart from our brothers and sisters (broadly defined so as to include maple trees, goldfish and quasars) – we bring forth pain and anguish. We bring forth a world in which true healing is impossible, and is replaced by temporary respites that fail to address the underlying cause of our suffering.

Forgiveness is designed to reach the cause by overlooking entirely the symptoms. To utilize it is to give a gift to our own self.

Your goal is to find out what you are, having denied your Identity by attacking creation and its Creator. Now you are learning how to remember the truth (W-pI.62.2:3-4).

Forgiveness heals perception by shifting our focus away from the body’s senses and towards the Vision of Christ. Forgiveness is not interested in what we fear; it is interested in the fear itself. In this sense, there is no aspect of fear that cannot be raised into the light of inquiry and understanding.

Thus, to be the light of the world is not to focus on the form the world appears to take. Rather, we give attention to the presence of love or fear – allowing love to extend itself through the strength of Christ and fear to be undone because it represents an attack on us (and “us” includes our brothers and sisters)(W-pI.62.3:1).

Thus, we might notice that we are angry a lot at a certain political party and its leaders, and that anger is bleeding into our feelings towards neighbors and family members. So-and-so should read this article! Or think this way about war and peace!

Forgiveness notices the conflict, notices that the conflict arises in fear, and moves to heal the fear without concern for the form. It’s not about accepting the other political side, or reading their literature, or adopting their views as our own.

Rather, it is about seeing our own self in them, and realizing that our shared reality transcends the apparent conflict in the world of form. If our fear isn’t being projected onto them, it will be projected somewhere else. Why not heal it at its source, once and for all?

Early in the text of A Course in Miracles, Jesus (in his capacity as stand-in narrator for Helen Schucman) says that “It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive” (T-1.I.27:2). When we know ourselves as forgiven, then we naturally (i.e., without effort, as a condition of what we are) extend that forgiveness to our brothers and sisters.

In this way, forgiveness becomes a bridge that spans the seeming separation between the self and all the others and, in particular, between the self and its Creator. The result of forgiveness is our own happiness (W-pI.62.5:3).

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