Forgiveness is the means by which it [the happy world of safety and of peace]comes to take the place of hell. In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes, and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. What you will remember then can never be described. Yet your forgiveness offers it to you.
ACIM-W-122:8:2-5
You sick of this "forgiveness crap" yet? :)
I know, I know I have been going on and on about it. It is pretty important stuff and necessary if we want to understand the ultimate messages in ACIM, and in most spiritual doctrines and religions, for that matter. It really isn't crap...in fact...it could be life transforming for all of us.
I opened up to these lessons at the same time I "perceived" I was dealing with the effects of another's unconsciousness on my body and mind. Forgiveness was what I was, in a sense, being called to understand and take part in. In order to learn I had to teach. In order to teach, I had to learn...thus my going on and on here.
Why Not Try to Understand and Practice?
So if you knew that this thing called "forgiveness" would take you to the ultimate understanding of Life....( help you to remember what you already know at the deepest and truest part of yourself) and this would transform the way you see the world ...would you not take the time to understand it and possibly practice it? Would you not rather look out at a happy, safe and peaceful world than the one you are possibly looking out at now? Especially when you are being told forgiveness really doesn't require a lot from us but a letting go of some of those old ego patterns we have been holding onto?
Surrender: Another Way of looking At Forgiveness
Maybe you would but this word itself is tripping you up...dragging you back to the confessional you spent way too much time in as a kid? Well if that is the case we can use another word...a word Michael Singer uses...and that is Surrender. Hmmm! How does that sound? Sit with you any better?
The point is, it doesn't matter what word you use, what religion or spiritual practice you use to get closer to this understanding or how you attempt to articulate what you experience when you do learn to forgive. It is all the same thing and it really cannot be described only lived. Letting go of ego's hold on us, of our need to listen and follow the mixed up directions of the noise in our heads will help us to open up to Life. It is everything we want.
What holds us back?
What holds us back from experiencing this deep tranquility of ancient truths, what may also be referred to as Spirit, Shakti or Chi is our need to listen to the judgments ego has made.
When ego tells us to judge things as right or wrong, good or bad, worthy of clinging to or necessary to push away we will find ourselves selectively determining what should be in our life and what shouldn't be. We will focus on the outer world and see it as both the source of our so called problems and the solution. We will resist it when it gives us things that we have judged as something to push away. We will seek and strive; control and manipulate for those things it tells us we need in order to make us happy.
Anything or anyone that prevents us from being or staying happy, in some sense, becomes sinful, doesn't it? We collect grievances and complaints and we seek to make guilty. This obviously leads us to see a dark, dangerous, guilty world rather than a happy, peaceful and safe one.
Letting Go of Judgement
This mind pattern is conditioned in us and it is that, according to Michael Singer , that we need to let go of so that we can surrender to what is. When we are lost in mental judgement...when we are so busy making guilty...we will close up to the beauty of what is ... we will close up to the peace that is inherently in us and we will suffer...unnecessarily. We will harm ourselves much more than we will harm the other we had made guilty. When we forgive another by letting go of all our "judgments "we will be letting go of that belief that we can be harmed, that others can harm, that they have sinned, they are wrong, that they are evil and must pay. More importantly, we will open up to true Self and be free.
Hitting Your Stuff
Most things that people do to us that we see as "wrong doing" involves them hitting our soft spots, impressions we have stored within based on these judgments we have made...our stuff. We react and either defend or attack. But if we knew that all they are hitting is "stuff" and that which is truly important can never be harmed would we react the same way?
You start by watching life and noticing the constant flow of people and situations that hit your stuff everyday. How often do you find yourself trying to defend and attack that weak part of you? You feel like the world wants to get right at it. every place you go there's someone or something trying to disturb you, trying to get your goat. Why not let them have it? ...the reward for not protecting your psyche is liberation. (Singer, pg 62)
We need to take a good hard look at our minds, especially our soft spots...those areas we and others need to heal from by letting go of. Notice and pay attention to what seems to trigger us into defense and attack mode. Be aware and work on letting those areas go..."Let them have it!"
Of course, this doesn't mean we allow ourselves to be abused by others. We do need to protect our bodies and minds to some extent from the unconscious behaviours of others...but we recognize that it is unconsciousness and not sin that motivates these behaviours ...We also realize that the behaviours are not what is really bothering us...our judgements, and our need to make wrong is.
We then step away physically and mentally from the situation and we are not" bothered" by it.
We replace the "unforgiving mind" (see March 2's entry) with the forgiving one.
We Let Go! Forgive! Surrender!
All is well.
ACIM
Michael A. Singer (2007) the untethered soul. New Harbinger/Noetic books
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