Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.
Our function as the light of the world is related to truthfulness. Light reveals what is true – light shines on reality. It undoes what obscures – what darkens – reality. When we accept that our function is “lighting up the world” (W-pI.81.1:2) we are really declaring our intention to let only truth be true (T-14.II.2:1).
Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. Like God, He knows it to be true. He brings the light of truth into the darkness, and lets it shine on you. And as it shines your brothers and sisters see it, and realizing that this light is not what you have made, they see in you more than you see (T-14.II.4:1-4).
This is the understanding that turns us into “happy learners” (e.g. T-14.II.7:1). Nor is our learning for us alone.
Behold your brothers and sisters in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave you here asleep (T-14.II.7:1-2).
This insistence on truth is related to our insistence that we will no longer be what we are not. We are going to live from the light of holiness and love, rather than fear.
This obligates us to practice forgiveness – which is not the perception of wrongs and a decision to overlook them (which is simply the ego’s transactional version of charity) but rather not seeing wrongdoing at all, which is the vision of Christ.
Christ’s eyes are open, and he will look upon whatever you see with love if you accept His vision as yours . . . The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the real world, and by this he will learn to re-invest in himself (T-12.VI.4:4, 9).
This is not a question of doing but of accepting (e.g., W-pI.81.3:4). It is a question of trust (e.g., W-pI.81.3:5), specifically, trust and accepting that what we are in truth cannot now nor ever be excluded from the accomplishment of God’s perfect kingdom.
It is through accepting my function that I will see the light in me. And in this light will my function stand clear and perfectly unambiguous before my sight (W-pI.81.3:2-3).
Thus, Lesson 81 reinforces our fundamental commitment to an ACIM practice grounded on remembering what we are in truth, and knowing that our identity is not actually in doubt. Only our own light can teach us this.
Let me recognize that my problems have been solved.
Lesson 80 of A Course in Miracles is so entangled with Lesson 79 it feels wrong somehow to take them separately. Yet without the clarity of the prior lesson, this one would lose some of its power. In practice, they merge together in a way that few other ACIM lessons do.
Lesson 79 teaches us that we must recognize the problem as it is in order for it to be solved. Lesson 80 gently extends the teaching: our problems are already solved. This is because we do not have multiple problems but rather a single problem – separation – and that problem has been solved. It was solved before it began.
Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other. Therefore, you must be at peace. Salvation thus depends on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that i has been solved (W-pI.80.1:2-4).
We are saved if we can accept as fact that we are not separate from God and therefore each and every problem that we appear to have is an illusion that requires no effort, intention or application from us.
Can we do this?
You are entitled to peace today. A problem that has been resolved cannot trouble you. Only be certain you do not forget that all problems are the same (W-pI.80.3:1-3).
This, then, is essential: our willingness to see all the problems the world presents to us as symptoms of the only problem we have. War, famine, flat tires, head colds, arguments at work, knotted shoe laces, undercooked fish . . .
Ego suggests that these are separate problems requiring separate solutions. It seems so rational! The solution to undercooked fish – cooking it longer – won’t help our tangled shoelaces. And at least we know how to untangle our shoelaces – we can’t say the same for ending war and famine.
Spirit gently insists that these are merely appearances, each reflecting the only problem we actually have. Mind believes it is fractured into parts, briefly at home in bodies, and constantly under siege. In fact, we remain as God created us: perfectly abstract, perfectly living, and forever free from sacrifice, suffering and death.
To give attention to Spirit is the lesson’s mandate. We need to open our minds to the truth of its teaching.
You have laid deception aside, and seen the light of truth. You have accepted salvation for yourself by bringing the problem to the answer. And you can recognize the answer because the problem has been identified (W-pI.80.2:4-6).
To see that all our problems arise out of the fundamental problem of separation, is to understand which problem needs to be solved. If we can hold the problem clearly in mind, then at the level of mind, we will be given the answer: we remain where – and as – God created us.
Salvation is a gentle shift in thought and nothing more. We take responsibility for how we think, and so our thoughts align with Spirit, who steers them gently back to love, patience, forgiveness, gentleness, wisdom and comfort. We think we are separate, and we suffer accordingly. We are not separated; love is our inheritance; joy and peace are our due, and we gain them by giving them unconditionally to all our brothers and sisters.
Few sentences in A Course in Miracles as neatly sum up the problem the course is given to solve as these from the first paragraph of Lesson 79:
The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved. Yet the solution is not recognized because the problem is not recognized (W-pI.79.1:4-5).
If you do not recognize the problem, then you cannot solve it. Even if it is already solved, you won’t know this. We have to see clearly what the problem is: there is no substitute in healing for this simple fact.
How does this show up in our lives? It shows up largely in the belief that we have many problems, each requiring their own individual solution. And so we hunker down with each apparent problem, diligently “solving” it, only to have a whole other batch of problems arise to take its place.
We consent to this hopeless situation because its underlying function is to keep us unhappy. Tending to many problems means we never look at the one problem – separation – which is the only problem we actually have.
The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate and failure is inevitable (W-pI.79.4:1-3).
Thus, we never experience the peace and happiness that go with being entirely problem-free (W-pI.79.3:5).
The endless tangle and complexity of the world’s problems are a distraction. They can’t be solved. They are designed to keep our attention on the world and away from the mind where the power to create and heal is actually exercised. It doesn’t matter whether they are ignored or embraced, denied or studied, fixed or left undone.
So long as they keep our attention away from separation, they have served the ego’s purpose.
If you could recognize that your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems that seem to confront you, you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means because you recognize the problem (W-pI.79.6:2-4).
A Course in Miracles teaches us that all the world’s problems – the big ones, the little ones, the easy ones and the impossible ones – are all the same. And their sameness is what allows our mind to shift from the specificity of form to the generalizability of love. We can’t find salvation in the world; we have to look where salvation is. And when we do, we will recognize both it because we recognize its function.
The key to success with this lesson is humility. We have to be radically open-minded. It’s easy to say that our only problem is separation. We want to go past the level of words. We want to go past the level of form altogether, and reach the abstraction of what we are in truth.
We want to see separation as we believe it exists – where it exists, how it exists, in all its rotten glory – and, on the basis of that clear seeing, understand the solution as well and allow them to merge.
All that is necessary is to entertain some doubt about the reality of your version of what your problems are. You are trying to recognize that you have been given the answer by recognizing the problem, so that the problem and the answer can be brought together and you can be at peace (W-pI.79.8:3-4).
This is equivalent to bringing light to darkness. Light is the answer to the problem of darkness. Correction can only be accomplished where correction is possible – and this can only be at the level of the error. “Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work” (T-2.VI.3:7).
Problems appear to be many; they appear to be complex; they appear to be real. Our work now is to question these appearances, and open our minds to the possibility that we have but one problem: separation, and seeing it as and where it is will allow the solution to present itself as well.
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.
Many years ago I read a brief article about a woman practicing Lesson 77 of A Course in Miracles in conjunction with EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, a tapping-based healing modality). She would work through the ritual of tapping, while repeating “I am entitled to miracles.” Within days, she had a new job and a few other blessings as well. The point of her story was that EFT works. But it reflected a fundamental confusion about ACIM: that miracles are real to the degree we can measure their external effects.
A friend who studied off and on with Tara Singh once told me a story. He was complaining to Singh about certain material circumstances – his apartment was too small to add dark room and he couldn’t afford anything larger. It was hard to practice the course and be happy in such challenging conditions. Singh told him that peace was not connected to external circumstances. Real peace was being just as happy winning a million dollars as losing it.
Miracles are not about achieving some ideal outcome in terms of personal circumstances.
In A Course in Miracles, a “miracle” heals perception by teaching us how to only perceive truly in order to go beyond perception. In order to do this, the miracle “perceives everything as it is” (T-3.II.3:4).
To receive a miracle and to give a miracle are the same movement: both are effects of right seeing, which is to say, seeing everything exactly as it is in reality. When we remember our self, we remember our Creatorand we remember that we are bound to create accordingly.
Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself. It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself, nor on any of the rituals you have devised. It is inherent in the truth of what you are (W-pI.77.2:1-4).
To be created – to have being – is to be capable of right seeing. The miracle merely recognizes what we are and restores our natural abilities to their natural use. And what is true of us, is true of our brothers and sisters.
. . . miracles are never taken from one and given to another . . . in asking for your rights, you are upholding the rights of everyone. Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God (W-pI.77.4:3-5).
Miracles do not actually do anything. We don’t get anything. They are more in the nature of flipping a light switch; we simply see in a clearer and more helpful light than before. The clarity means that we have fewer doubts and fewer questions.
There is no room for doubt and uncertainty today. We are asking a real question at last. The answer is a simple statement of a simple fact (W-pI.77.6:5-7).
We are entitled to miracles. This is a declaration of freedom and also a statement of gratitude and trust. Miracles free us from the tyranny of perception and ego’s inconsistent judgment. We are grateful for our liberation and we trust the One who is in charge of it.
Thus, today, we create a space in which we might taste anew the joy and peace of Heaven, which are in us because we are “one with God” (W-pI.77.1:3). Salvation is a gift that we give the world as it was given to us, and doing so is the simplest thing imaginable. It consists simply in being what we are in truth.
Lesson 76 of A Course in Miracles brooks no middle ground. It is like Bob Dylan’s song Precious Angel: “You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.” Yet the absence of wiggle room is a gift, for it forces us to confront the lesson in helpful terms: what are the laws of God? And what am I that should be subject to any other law?
This lesson is easy to understand when you also understand that the self to which the lesson refers is not a body. It is associated with a body (because it has dissociated from God), but this is an illusion, not a fact.
In this sense, A Course in Miracles is a course in identity correction.
How simple is salvation! It is merely a statement of your true Identity (W-pI.77.1:4-5).
Lesson 76 addresses a critical aspect of that this self-confusion. If we consider ourselves bodies in the world, then we are subject to its laws. The lesson invites us to notice the way we subject ourselves to these apparent laws, and to consider an alternative.
There are no laws but God’s. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth to you. You will be listening to the One Who says there will be no loss under the laws of God. Payment is neither given nor received. Exchange cannot be made; there are no substitutes, and nothing is replaced by something else. God’s laws forever give and never take (W-pI.76.9:1-6).
Of course, these laws are the opposite of those which appear to govern the world in which we live, and the bodies with which we are associated.
In that world, if we are not careful what we eat, then we will get sick and die. If we don’t pay our mortgage or rent, then we will lose our shelter. We can seek satisfaction in one partner, then trade them for another. When someone we love dies, we never see them again. Et cetera.
To the body, those laws will be forever real. This is important! From the body’s perspective, if you and I sit at a table with a single slice of pie, and I eat the pie, you do not get any pie. I love my children more than children I’ve never met in a country I’ve never visited, even though I know this is not coherent.
We don’t have to resist these appearances; we merely have to notice them. The fix, so to speak, arises as a condition of our noticing, and it not something we do.
Thus, Lesson 76 is not an invitation to run this world or its various bodies by new rules. Rather, it is an invitation to see that what we are is not of this world and so we cannot be its subject. Thus, we cannot seek salvation in terms of the world. Doing so is an exercise in futility; it can never work.
. . . how simple is salvation. Look for it where it waits for you, and there it will be found. Look nowhere else, for it is nowhere else (W-pI.76.2:3-5).
How shall we understand this in terms of application?
Don’t get hung up on the fact that the world and the body are subject to laws like nutrition, capitalism, gravity, evolution and so forth. To the body, those laws will always appear real. Their appearance is not the problem; the problem is our investment in those appearances as if they are real and causative.
In this sense, the lesson is an opportunity to open our mind a little, that it might perceive a new way of thinking, one that is aligned with laws not of our own making.
We do not need to prove God’s laws. We do not need to establish and maintain them. You need only be willing to notice them, even the tiniest bit. They are already our reality. So really, our willingness to perceive God’s laws is our willingness to perceive our own self, which is not a body, and for which sacrifice of any kind is impossible.
As this becomes increasingly clear, we begin to appreciate the course’s emphasis on seeing things in stark relief. What works works and what does not, does not. What’s helpful is helpful and so we ought to make use of it; but what is not helpful should be set aside as a distraction and not picked up again.
Again, A Course in Miracles emphasizes correction of our self-confusion.
I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself. Yet in this learning is salvation born (T-31.V.17:7-8).
So this lesson is a chance to go deep within and admit that we are lost. We can face the surrender of the entire world – everything we think we know, everything that we believe – and accept that we have no clue what comes next. We don’t know how to proceed. This is a good space because it is a space of learning. It is a space of receptivity to Bill Thetford’s “another way.”
The workbook lessons are always opportunities to shift our thinking, away from fear and towards love. That transition can seem to take time and it can seem difficult. That’s okay. Our thinking – especially with respect to what we are – is cloudy indeed.
Yet with every application of every lesson, the clouds thin and drift away. Magical thinking – the notion that salvation can be obtained in bodies in terms of the world – is undone.
Magic imprisons, but the laws of God make free. The light has come because there are no laws but His (W-pI.76.7:5-6).
We are not bodies, though we associate ourselves with bodies. We are love itself, and subject only to the laws of unconditional giving. This is our salvation; this is the foundation of our joy and inner peace.
