A Course in Miracles Lesson 46

God is the Love in which I forgive.

This is the first lesson of the workbook where forgiveness appears in an active way. We cannot meaningfully study A Course in Miracles without encountering forgiveness – it is the backbone of the healing the course both teaches and brings forth. Forgiveness is the means by which we make the Atonement a reality in our day-to-day lives, in order to see those lives through a lens of holiness and thus remember truth.

In today’s lesson, we are given a chance to explore the critical idea of forgiveness in depth. We are invited to bring into application this healing gesture.

One of the clearest and most potent references to ACIM forgiveness can be found in Beyond Perception from Chapter 3.

Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of your brother is necessary, because minds have chosen to see themselves as separate (T-3.V.9:1-2).

It is in seeing our brothers and sisters as they are in truth that restores our mind to its natural function.

Fear condemns and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to awareness of God (W-pI.46.2:2-3).

That is a powerful revision of traditional notions of forgiveness. We are not identifying wrongs and patiently agreeing to look past them – i.e., to forgive others for doing us wrong. Rather, we are engaging in an entirely new way of seeing. We are practicing correct perception. This new mode of seeing does not acknowledge the wrongdoing – the sin, the error – at all. It sees only the perfectly healed and perfectly whole brother or sister.

This matters! It can take years to appreciate how A Course in Miracles reframes forgiveness. And even then, we can easily lapse into merely preaching it – talking the walk, so to speak. The question is: can we practice forgiveness? Can we – to paraphrase this lesson – accept our being in God’s creation and – from that space of quiet perfection – see our brothers and sisters as having their being in God’s creation?

To see our brothers and sisters as both sinless and incapable of sin . . . That is something very different than understanding. There is an active component to it, a willingness that surpasses the narrow capacity of  the brain. How do we reach beyond intellect to right mind?

Lesson 46 is instructive on its face: God is the Love in which (and by which) we are able to bring forgiveness – the radical forgiveness proposed by A Course in Miracles – to bear in our lives. It is the means by which we remember what living is in truth.

His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God (W-pI.46.2:1-3).

All of the recent lessons have been emphasizing – gently, patiently – that the ground of our being is God. God is the light in which we see, the mind with which we think. God is our Source and our Strength. All of these ideas testify to a simple truth – that the separation never happened and that we remain perfect extensions of God and God’s Love. Forgiveness, as we adapt to the ACIM perspective, strengthens our faith in this Truth.

Forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear (W-pI.46.2:4-5).

To “forgive” error is to refuse to make error real. It is not to see the error at all. To assert that Love is our Source is to commit to seeing and experiencing reality as God created it – and that means, we do not see sin at all. Not even a hint of it.

So on one level, this lesson is very simple: we list all those people who have wronged us to one degree or another and we forgive them. Then – having cleared the way a little – we forgive ourselves.

But on another level, this lesson is powerful beyond measure. We are actively undoing illusions – specifically, the illusion that we can be harmed or assaulted in any way. A Child of God is not a body and not the narrative structure – the egoic thought system – in which that body is entangled. As we forgive, little by little, we crack the door so the Light of Love and Truth can enter. And that Light will demonstrate that we are not what we think we are. We are not bodies lost in a cruel and hostile world.

Together, as one, we are Love Itself. There are no mistakes. And so there is, in the end, nothing to forgive.

←Lesson 45
Lesson 47→

A Course in Miracles Lesson 45

God is the Mind with which I think.

Two things about this lesson of A Course in Miracles jump out. First are a couple of lines set about halfway through the lesson suggesting our egoic thoughts are actively working against God’s Will.

We will not let the beliefs of the world tell us that what God would have us do is impossible. Instead, we will try to recognize that only what God would have us do is possible (W-pI.45.4:5-6).

This is related to the first principle of miracles, which teaches us that to the miracle no problem is harder or bigger than another. It is ego that decides this burden is too heavy or that challenge too hard.

A critical theme of A Course in Miracles is the degree to which the ego does not mean us well. We’re apt to forget this. But from time to time – either explicitly or in powerful image-based language – the course reminds us that the ego is our enemy and that it wants us dead and would kill us in a second if it could figure out a way to survive without us.

However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind, never forget that the ego is not sane. It represents a delusional system, and speaks for it. Listening to the ego’s voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God, and that a part of Him has been torn away by you (T-5.V.3:8-10).

In other words, ego is most definitely not our friend. And since it’s the ego whose direction we follow, we live in – and follow rules for decision – that have but one goal: chaos, misery and death.

Most people – including long-time course students – resist this. Me too, sometimes. Life is good! I’m feeling happy vibes! Whatever. But all the time, the ego is working hard to keep us away from true joy and true peace. It doesn’t object to the fleeting instant of happiness, so long as we never challenge its foundation of guilt and hate.

The other aspect of this lesson is the idea that below the clutter of worldly thoughts is the foundation in which we think with God. And that foundation is changeless. It doesn’t come and go. It can’t be affected by apparent shifts in external conditions.

This is what the course says about the thoughts that we think with God.

They are in your mind now, completely unchanged. They will always be in your mind exactly as they always were. Everything you have thought since then will change, but the Foundation on which it rests is wholly changeless (W-pI.45.7:2-4).

The ego has lots of ideas about what enlightenment is or what awakening will be like. They’re not good yardsticks. We don’t really know what that’s going to be like because the ego has no language nor experience with which to describe it. And what it suggests isn’t trustworthy anyway. In the lines I just quoted, we get some interesting suggestions (from a trustworthy source) about what that experience is going to be like. The course is full of such intimations.

This world of light, this circle of brightness is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here the world outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it . . . Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed with the waters of forgiveness . . . (T-18.IX.9:1-2, 4).

We’re used to thoughts that shift and change. Ideas and concepts that float around, change shape, get judged, get corrected, get admired. But the thoughts we think with God are a foundation – which means that they don’t move. They don’t change. What is a thought that never changes? What is a thought that is so strong and still that it can serve literally as a foundation for love?

These are good questions to ask! And the answers are worth waiting on. Lesson 45 is our assurance that we do not have to wait long on those answers because they are already given.

←Lesson 44
Lesson 46→

Reading A Course in Miracles: The Decision for God

In earlier, less-edited versions of the text, this section was referred to as “The Eternal Fixation,” and included a fairly lengthy riff on Freud and his ideas about fixation. While I think the revised text is a bit jumpy, I very much like the new title. Fixation was meant to imply that our minds were “set” on God. Yet as true as this is, it doesn’t quite capture the need to “choose” God again. We are indeed called – as people bent on salvation in general, and as students of A Course in Miracles in particular – to decide for God.

There is an idea in this section – to which glancing reference has been made in previous sections – that I want to focus on, because it neatly identifies a particular problem of mine when it comes to the Course.

Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego’s last-ditch defense of its own existence. It reflects both the ego’s need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that you do not want to be healed (T-5.VII.3:4-6).

I have gotten much better at forgiving others. I don’t hold grudges the way I once did. I see people generally as either loving or calling for love. This is a good thing and there is no doubt that it moves me far along the path to salvation.

Yet I cannot extend that same vision – that same forgiveness – to myself. I “exclude” myself from it. I know better from an intellectual point of view. I can point to those parts of the text that make perfectly clear that my salvation and yours are interdependent.

And yet.

To decide even a little for the ego is to decide wholly against God. There is no other, no better way to say it. This is what Jesus is talking about when he refers in this section to healers who couldn’t heal themselves.

They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not whole. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals himself, he cannot believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles (T-5.VII.2:2-4).

This is important. It is the first principle of miracles that we read. Nothing is beyond God and nothing is beyond us because we are, in a very literal way, one with God. A headache or cancer are the same. Forgiving someone for murder or for dropping ice cream on us are the same. Who knows this? I don’t. Do you? If we don’t, it’s because we are not healed.

I think a lot of the progress we make is because we are still measuring externally. Every Course student with a blog has talked about how they aren’t angry at crappy drivers anymore. There is nothing inherently bad or wrong in this – it’s good to be less angry. It’s good to be less fearful, less guilty. Yet that is not precisely what A Course in Miracles is after.

The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance (In:6-7).

If we cannot bring forgiveness to ourselves – if we cannot include ourselves in the Atonement – then we are not practicing the Course. We are still playing games with it. We are still making half-hearted choices. We are nodding in the direction of God while choosing the ego. The proof is that our experience of joy and peace is so tenuous, so fleeting. Yes, we can get it easier than we did but that is still not the point.

This is very difficult – very hard to write it and very hard to accept it. Partially because we want to be able to pat ourselves on the back – I’m doing better than I was five years ago, and better than I was five weeks ago, and maybe even better than I was five minutes ago. I do it all the time! Yet the Course wants something much more dramatic and profound. Over and over Jesus tells us that he is here for us in a literal way. Over and over he assures us that the Course will lead us to God. Even the early lessons make clear that it can happen in an instant. What stands in our way? Why won’t we let ourselves be blessed?

Here’s the thing: that question is the wrong question. Once we know we aren’t fully at peace and fully in joy, then we simply have to recognize the fact and ask for help. This section – this whole chapter – ends so beautifully with a powerful prayer that reaffirms our ability to “decide for God.” It is evocative of the Rules for Decision which, farther into the text, are a much more complex and deeper exploration of how to undo our resistance.

I must have decided wrongly because I am not at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.

I don’t feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.

I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me (T-5.VII. 6:7-11).

But we don’t have to wait! That’s the thing – we can do it now because the separation never happened. We aren’t apart from God. God is in us and when we forget that the voice for God is in us and when we forget that at least we can realize that we aren’t feeling “love’s presence.” The solution is right in the problem: We turn our cares and worries and fears and angers and guilt feelings over to the Holy Spirit. If you can’t do that, ask Jesus to help you. Do this literally! Just ask. Those feelings will be taken from us to the precise degree that we are ready and willing to release them. And when they’re gone what remains is what we are in Truth: God. God and Love.

I know this sounds a new age bumper sticker – and I apologize for that – but it’s true: we deserve to be loved. We deserve to recall our Oneness with God. We deserve to be happy and peaceful. If we can extend that to others, then we must extend it to ourselves. The Atonement is not for anybody if it is not also for us. Can we accept that? Can we accept the solution?

A Course in Miracles Lesson 44

God is the light in which I see.

Last night I was walking my dog. We live right on the edge of the village – if I turn east, within a hundred yards or so it’s as if I have left civilization all together. Yet there are houses there – some well-lit – and some of them have dogs. At one, the family had let their dog out off-leash and she was very aggressive. I was scared and my dog was scared. And I got angry – at the other dog, the careless neighbors, the town without adequate canine bylaws, the world in which it is so hard to just go for a simple walk . . .

By the time I had gone half a mile, my anger – and my resistance to any kind of attempt to be less angry – owned all of me. The quiet woods, the crystalline stars, the bracing cold – all of it was lost in a tangle of rage, disappointment and guilt.

Yet cresting a hill a mile or so into the walk, sadness crept in. A small still voice said “you’ve handled this before – and worse. It doesn’t have to be this way.” The dog and I stopped. I studied the sky through bare trees, turned my face to the wind. Some wall inside me crumbled, peace flowed in over the ruins and I accepted it – haltingly, shyly, awkwardly. And in a few moments, the craziness was gone. I reminded myself that when it tried to come back – which it surely would – I would ask the Holy Spirit for help. The rest of walk was peaceful and happy. It was graceful in a clear and simple way.

That moment atop the hill – that sadness at how crazy I was and the voice of sanity saying “this need not be” – was true seeing. It was vision. It was the light in which God clarified for me what I really am and how powerful I am. Outside was total blackness save for the stars. Inside was a wreck. But deeper – and wider – than all of that was the Light in which I know I am Love and that I am not alone. It is not as hard as it once was to reach that light and be lifted or illuminated – enlightened – by it.

That’s what Lesson 44 of A Course in Miracles is about – not a blinding physical light, not little tiny faerie lights that dance around the edges of physical objects. Just the one necessary moment of clarity in the dense tides of anger, fear and guilt. In the craziness, a voice that is not crazy. And in that clarity, we hear the call to sanity and to love. We remember that love is not only possible, it is all there is. “Nothing real can be threatened” (In.2:2). “Nothing unreal exists” (In.2:3).

. . . light reflects life, and is therefore an aspect of creation. Creation and darkness cannot coexist, but light and life must go together, being but different aspects of creation (W-pI.44:1:3-4).

That light did not come because I asked for it. Please see that. There was no virtue involved. I did nothing but feel crazy. I didn’t fall to my knees, didn’t talk to Jesus, didn’t remember A Course in Miracles. Nothing. One moment I was hurting, the next moment I was blessed with remembering wholeness. When I remembered ot, I reached for it. And there it was. That’s how the course works. See the verbs in this lesson: sinking, letting go, slipping. Releasing. You need do nothing – it will all be done for you. How simple that is and yet how hard to accept, to bring into application!

As you sit for the day’s practice, remember those verbs. Remember how little is actually required of the “you” you think you are. Just getting to the practice is enough. Trust Jesus. Trust the Holy Spirit. You are not apart from God. You are not apart from Love.No matter how bad it feels, no matter how unbridgeable the distance – it’s nothing. You are already home. God is the Light in which you see this is true.

←Lesson 43
Lesson 45→

A Course in Miracles Lesson 43

God is my Source. I cannot see apart from Him.

This is the first lesson in which the Holy Spirit appears. Its role in our healing is as a mediator between God and the self which believes it is separate from its Creator. The Holy Spirit sees as God sees and purifies our seeing in order to realign it with holiness.

Perception has no meaning. Yet does the Holy Spirit give it a meaning very close to God’s. Healed perception becomes the means by which the Son of God forgives his brother, and thus forgives himself (W-pI.43.2:5-7).

“Perception” is the ACIM word for how the body gathers sense data and constructs both a self and a world in which that self is at home. Our senses take in information – light, sound, scent – and our brain configures it to create an image of a world. This image – and the one to whom it appears – become our “self.”

This mode of being – so familiar to us as to be almost beyond question is alien to God. His realm is that of “knowledge,” which is direct experience of reality without any mediation or interpretation at all. To the body this makes no sense. To God – in whom there is neither difference nor distinction – nothing else could possibly make sense.

In other words, the bridge between perception and knowledge would be too great to cross if we did not have a helper. Lesson 43 introduces that helper. We observe the world, and the Holy Spirit teaches us that our “seeing” cannot be apart from God’s because we are not apart from God.

It is critical to see that the action of the Holy Spirit is not directed by us. We do nothing other than be present and open-minded. Healing is accomplished in us but not by us.

It is also helpful to notice that the workbook deviates a bit here from its generally gentle and supportive tone. Lesson 43 is slightly more involved and includes a reminder that “mind-wandering” hinders our healing (W-pI.43.6:1-2). We are being called to a greater degree of attentiveness in our practice.

Finally, this lesson invites us to “see” with God all our brothers and sisters today. As we meet them – regardless of circumstance or context – we silently remind ourselves that we cannot see this person apart from God.

To see one another this way is to offer both our self and the other a blessing, a fact which is contained in the quiet admonition that there are no strangers in our living, only brothers and sisters.

←Lesson 42
Lesson 44→

A Course in Miracles: The Ego’s Use of Guilt

This section contains an early and clear outline of the origins of our guilt and fear. Ego argues that you deliberately and permanently separated yourself from God – effectively taking part of God away from God – and then set up spiritual shop on your own. We feel guilt for having done this and we both expect and fear retribution. What else is worthy of the guilty? We screwed God and God is angry and vengeful. What kind of life is possible for those who believe they are separated from their source? How do you live when you believe God wants to kill you? No wonder we are not happy. No wonder our moments of peace are too little, too late and too transitory.

If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely not of God. It is the symbol of attack on God  . . . this is the belief from which all guilt really stems (T-5.V.2:8-9, 12).

The egoic self is the product of the separation. It is the part of the mind that believes in the separation (T-5.V.3:1). Its existence is dependent on that belief and so it maintains that belief all costs. Although its logic appears sound and persuasive, it is in fact totally insane. We cannot really be separated from God. Yet we can believe it is possible, and on the basis of that belief all sorts of problems seem to arise, each worse than the last, all exacerbating the underlying confusion.

Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is your acceptance of it that makes it real. If you enthrone the ego in your mind, your allowing it to enter makes it your reality. This is because the mind is capable of creating reality or making illusions (T-5.V.4:1-4).

This can be a difficult idea to wrap one’s brain around. For example, for a long time I believed that I was the way I was because of – take your pick – the church in which I was raised, the family culture in which I was raised, what my parents did and did not do, being raised in the country and not a city, because I went to this college instead of that one, followed this guru instead of that one, did this kind of therapy instead of that kind, and employed this kind of self-abuse and then this kind of recovery and then followed this New Age trend and then that meditation practice . . . on and on and on.

The past was always a rich garden of causes for my the guilt and fear from which I was constantly running.

At some point, it became clear that these so-called “reasons” for my guilt and fear – the existence of which I could no longer deny – were symptoms of a deeper problem, rather than the cause. A Course in Miracles was really the first thought system that laid out, in terms that were logical and coherent, and relatively easy to bring into application, how my experience of guilt and fear came to be and why they persisted.

Slowly I began to remember in a consistent way that the separation is a thought rather than an action a body takes in the world. I was entertaining a dysfunctional idea but there were alternatives. Remember, the mind can either create reality or make illusions (e.g., T-5.V.4:4).

What happens when we make space in our living for the creative power of mind?

I resisted answering this question for a long time. My resistance tended to take the form of insisting that the course was simply leaning too heavily on a metaphor. There wasn’t actually a time long ago when I indulged in the crazy notion that I could break away from God. Mind is merely conceptual; it doesn’t have any kind of effective reality.

Yet as I have continued to study the text and apply the lessons, this idea has become increasingly palatable. In part, I no longer try to get a fix on it in egoic terms. Sean Reagan didn’t break with God. I did. And when I did, you did. That’s why you are so important to me. That’s why A Course in Miracles places so much emphasis on healing with and through service to our brothers and sisters. We aren’t separate beings finding our home individually, even though it can seem that we are. Rather, we are one. We contain each other’s wholeness; we are each other’s wholeness.

In early versions of the course this chapter was title “The Two Decisions.” I am basically agnostic on the subject of the editing of A Course in Miracles – it is not as important an issue as it seems and investing in it is mostly a delay tactic – but I do appreciate that earlier title. It neatly encapsulates what is going on here. We decide to believe in the ego but we can as easily decide to believe in the Holy Spirit who teaches us that we are not separate from God because the very concept of separation from God is insane. Those are the two choices that are available to us – whether we call them choices, or Heaven and Earth, or Jesus and Lucifer (that angel for whom we ought to have some empathy, projecting himself from Heaven, and then frantically maintaining the divide – rings a bell, does it not?).

A Course in Miracles is less complex than folks sometimes make it. It simply aims to clear away emotional and spiritual detritus so that we can see clearly the choice before us: salvation or separation. Both are in our mind. Both can be chosen. One brings us all the peace and love and harmony we desire and the other keeps us fragmented and unhappy. It shouldn’t be hard! And yet it is. So the course gently and patiently – but insistently, if we are attentive – undoes the blocks. One day follows another and we find ourselves choosing love with more ease and regularity. We recognize the ego for the sly destructive power that it is. We listen harder for the voice of the Holy Spirit. We turn to Jesus for help. And we perceive God more and more clearly as what we are right now, in this moment.

Our shared happiness and unity are predicated on these two decisions. We are making one or the other all the time. The sooner we see this – and exercise our power of choice – the better.