Let miracles replace all grievances.
A miracle is a change in perception which allows us to see reality with greater clarity, in turn moving us away from fear and towards love. Grievances obstruct miracles by doubling down on the body as vulnerable and subject to attack.
So long as the body – and not spirit – remains our touchstone, any joy or peace that we experience will be temporary and conditional. Lesson 78 teaches us to raise our so-called grievances into the light of healing where they can be undone, allowing miracle-minded thinking greater flow and effect.
We will reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stop before it sees. We will not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in silence to behold the Son of God (W-pI.78.2:2-3).
A grievance always involves our brothers and sisters. They have let us down, or infringed on our rights, or taken something away, or made it harder to get something else. Thus, when we release grievances, we simultaneously bless our brothers and sisters. We no longer see them as “bodies,” but as children of a loving Creator. And in seeing them this way, we remember our own self.
. . . every grievance is a block to sight, and as it lifts you see the Son of God where he has always been. He stands in light, you were in the dark. Each grievance made the darkness deeper, and you could not see (W-pI.78.3:2-4).
The lesson invites us to consider someone against whom we hold a grievance. And rather than focus on the grievance, we will focus instead on the light in them. The light will bless us both; the one we see apart from our grievances becomes our savior.
He who was enemy is more than friend when he is freed to take the holy role the Holy Spirit has assigned to him. Let him be savior unto you today. Such is his role in God’s plan (W-pI.78.5:4-6).
We carefully examine the grounds of our grievance in all its detail. We refuse no aspect of our judgment. And then, when we are clear about the degree to which this brother or sister has harmed us, we ask to be shown the light in them.
It is tempting here to approach this lesson intellectually. We say of the one against who we are aggrieved, yes, I know that he or she is innocent in truth. I know that we are all equal children of God.
But if healing were that simple then we would have thought our way into it long ago. We are not merely repeating ideas in this lesson; we are actively trying to encounter someone we hate and fear and know them in the light of love.
This succeeds because it is what we all want from one another. We want to be seen as we are in truth, liberated from the hellscape in which our bodies appear to make war on one another. You might imagine the one who – when encountering this lesson – thinks of you as the one they are most unwilling to forgive. What do you want from them, more than anything? What do you want for them?
What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free, and you make his freedom yours. The Holy Spirit leans from him to you, seeing no separation in God’s Son. And what you see through him will free you both (W-pI.78.8:1-5).
That is a beautiful and reassuring passage. And we are allowed to read it literally; we are allowed to know that our brothers and sisters can be forgiven, and that their forgiveness is our forgiveness, because only this level of mutuality and love satisfies our Creator.
God thanks you for these quiet times today in which you laid your images aside, and looked upon the miracle of love the Holy Spirit showed you in their place. The world and Heaven join in thanking you, for not one Thought of God but must rejoice as you are saved, and all the world with you (W-pI.78.9:1-2).
This is our only role in salvation: to forgive our brothers and sisters through the miracle, which teaches us how to perceive truly. The effects of healing radiate throughout Creation, excluding no one and no thing. Our joy and peace are both natural and inevitable.
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Your addition of “so-called” grievances I appreciated. The level of named that any discussion is presenting, is ever part of the difficulty for the bait and switch, smoke and mirrors, distracton and obfuscation, shell game that little “r” reality ‘is”. I’m enjoying this time around how ACIM has one way of unraveling the thread of “named”. So like “grievances” are JUST a looking away from light by light to not notice it is light (given the name “hiding”). So “so-called” had much import for me. It’s never not that, and so the invitaiton to look THROUGH the named, because they had been what appeared AS what was conjured by the idea/wish of “stopping seeing”. I guess the other direction of quiet meditating of course is also what even arrived at this seeing. But the interplay of reading/learning from “other” as a way of adding and respecting that “me” need not spend the same amount of time to come to these recognitions (eons and lives!), is another example of heeding (br)other. It’s not not that same introspection that arrives there though, in fact making some amount of time itself, to overcome the “outer” authority that is now presented, now that Trojan Horse of Light coming through very clearly, but through a vehicle, that itself has made another other. But like Buddha said, some will use it to connect to the underlying truth, and that interplay of not being different from “silence”, makes (re)naming a way to redeem the grievance that language – separative communication in general – can be made of/from.
In AA I never could understand for so long why making amends to others was separate from step 4. Generally, I though any harm done to other was because of the deserved sense that just acted out from the “justifed” resentment! So in the inventory of finding “my” part, that part WAS the “harm” done to other. But it finally dawned on me that the imagined construct of me/self can’t not maintain itself without wondering about how other “me”s are condemning “me” in the exact same grievance process. And interestingly, that inventory process can escape into being the me that is particulary deseriving of being condemed by others’ “justified” responses (not yet valuing the inventory process “there” as suffiently relieving for judgements held there – were they actually being held there!). But, the ability to see from each vantage point is what can be deconstructive of the me/self. So you’re suggestion of flipping roles similarly for this lesson, was very cool. And in this case not by using the named behaviors/faults necessarily, but that someone can be imagined that is considering “me” in exactly the same way. Can I imagine that “i”magination as being capable of seeing so-called grievances (seen as held by “them”) equally able to be seen through from that perspective, light on both sides?
In my sitting with this lesson, in offering to see past the grievance, I (more familiarly) noticed the not-difference with a “self” accusation. For one (of many, lol) my spouse’s complaining habit for example fell back onto, for one, how I wasn’t doing the lesson right. And “again”, still, no one-time grievance is worthy of the name! And my body fidgets (probably because of that falling onto “me”/self!). And I complain about that not being right. And that means it’s because I “still” think of myself as a body, not noticing at first the grievance held against “Mike” for inability to sit still, and now moving the shell to some self that sees the restlessness of body identifcation as metaphysically different and more special than how it shows up as simple body fidgeting. So, hmm, no wonder that goes the other direction and sees Gregg as not doing it “right” and not ignornantly broadcasting onto life as the source of complaining itself; and how seeing my complaining – even when it briefly notices it is exactly the same complaining – gets distracted from, just like “my” cascade when it fell into “introspection”.
Mike wouldn’t have liked not seeing a greater light. But there’s buddies like Sean that the light I Am remembers saying from over there, “what is it that knows that it is, what is it that any understanding is just the clarity of that light itself?”. Self can’t get out of self, and so other selves can’t be left out, lol, as “part” of an appreciation/acceptance of that!
Thank me in “you” Sean, and I’ll do the same over “here” as me being you, gratefully setting aside making so-called grievances into a perpetuating necessity. Loving this, loving you, loving self, loving how simple loving is – Yours, “me”
Yeah, this feels very important:
“. . . the ability to see from each vantage point is what can be deconstructive of the me/self.”
Even the willingness to see . . . Even the recognition that there ARE other vantage points that don’t need to justify themselves . . . sunflowers, neutrinos, whales, my father’s son, other fathers’ sons and their sons . . .
“Light coming from both sides” feels like the overarching effect of giving consent to self-deconstruction and the seeing that remains . . .
. . .
Spouse as teacher, man . . . Chrisoula and I talk about this sometimes, feel like she could write a book about what a pain-in-the-ass it is to live with somebody doing ACIM and nonduality in the wordy way I do it . . . she is the first object of projection in my life, and I am always stumbling around trying to figure out how to be a better student and servant . . .
. . .
And this: “Self can’t get out of self, and so other selves can’t be left out . . . ” Great pointer, Mike. Thank you!
Love,
Sean