Month: December 2021

That’s what I thought when someone told me to forgive someone who had hurt me. If you believe someone has hurt you maliciously, it’s impossible to forgive.

This is where the concept of forgiveness from A Course in Miracles comes in. As I have mentioned in other blogs, the Course teaches that everything you see outside is a projection of a thought that you have inside.

I always remember what one of my teachers said: “There is nothing out there; you are always talking to yourself.” And you will say, what do you mean? I see people and situations outside of me and react to them.

That is the concept you have to let go of to learn to forgive. I have already mentioned in other blogs that everything is energy. Energy is electromagnetic and draws energy of a similar vibration to itself. Those thoughts that you have in the unconscious are energy. If you think you are not worth enough, you will attract people and circumstances into your life that reflect that thought.

When you project what you think and feel and throw it to another person, it is an excellent opportunity that life gives you to see what you have hidden inside. It is much easier to see the straw in someone else’s eye than your own.

If you manage to change the way you see things and get out of the victim role, you begin to see any situation or person outside of yourself as your teacher, teaching you your inner thoughts. In that case, you will realize that by forgiving the other, you are forgiving yourself.

Forgiveness, then, can be summarized in 3 steps:

1. Recognize that the problem is not outside of you. With this step, you realize that you don’t have to wait for the other to change for you to be happy or at peace. The one who has to change in their thoughts is you.
2. Then comes the most challenging part, which is dealing with the feeling of guilt that comes from thinking that we have voluntarily separated from God. That guilt comes from the fear we feel when we think about the punishment that God will give us if he finds us. That is why we hide in the ego. But God is Love, and he only wants Love for us. That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in, that part of our mind that knows that separation never existed, except in our wrong mind.

In this second step, you say to the Holy Spirit in you, I no longer want to feel guilty.

3. Here you surrender your feelings of fear and guilt to the Holy Spirit and say, help me to see things differently, and I assure you that It will.

Forgiveness is looking past an attack and seeing it as a request for help. There can’t be any exceptions. Neither the other person is guilty, nor are you. That is the vision of Christ.

The above is a process. It’s not pressing a button, and that’s it. The important thing is that you make it part of yourself so that you don’t miss opportunities for healing and forgiveness.

A Course in Miracles gives us a way to leave behind our dramas, which arise from being immersed in the ego’s thought system. I explained this system in a previous blog.

The way the Course gives us to stop suffering is the thought system of the Holy Spirit. I have already mentioned on many previous occasions that for the Course, there are only two emotions: love and fear and that when we are in fear, which is reflected in guilt, we are in the ego. On the contrary, when we are in love, we are with the Holy Spirit.

I will explain this with examples.

Imagine you’ve been trying to lose weight and haven’t lost a pound. You are walking down the street, and you meet a friend who tells you how fat you are. You can react in two ways, both of which arise from the ego’s thought system, or guilt which is one of the expressions of fear:

• You get upset and tell her how ugly her clothes fit her. You answer like this because in your mind, you think you are fat. When you project it outside, and someone reflects it to you by telling you, you blame them for how you feel, and you attack back. This behavior is going to keep you in the ego feeling bad. Or,
• You start to cry, feeling like a victim, and tell her she hurt you, that she is very cruel. Here you make her feel guilty, which is nothing more than a projection of the guilt you have inside for being cruel at another time. This behavior also keeps you in the ego feeling bad.

 

The Course says that there is another way to react, which is with the Holy Spirit. There are only two emotions, either you are in love or the ego. One excludes the other. You cannot be in both at the same time.

No one full of love attacks another person, for all they can see and feel is love. The Course teaches that a person is either giving love or asking for love. If you see someone acting from the ego and you immediately think that that person is not happy and that is the way he has to ask for love, you will feel compassion instead of anger. If you feel compassion, you will treat them with love. I always tell my granddaughter that the more unbearable or cruel a person is, the more they are suffering inside.

This way of looking at things is the thought system of the Holy Spirit.

Now I’m going to change the above scene:

• You are walking, and when they call you fat, you immediately think, that person must feel terrible, and that is why they are unloving. Let me give them love.
• You immediately ask the Holy Spirit what you must do to give them love. And when you feel the answer, that’s what you are going to do.
• You will feel very happy and the other person too because they receive the love they need and don’t even know they needed.

That moment, where you manage to change the way you see things from ego to love, is the holy instant of the Course and results in forgiveness.

Although the process seems simple, it takes a long time to complete. We have so much guilt in the unconscious that to remove it all at the moment would be terrifying. That is why life presents us with many opportunities to do it little by little. So have a lot of patience and give love whenever the opportunity presents itself. You will be a lot happier.

In the previous blog, I explained what a special relationship is. A special relationship becomes a holy relationship in what the Course calls the holy instant.

As Kenneth Wapnick explains in his Glossary-Index to A Course in Miracles, the holy instant is the interval of time in which we choose forgiveness instead of guilt..; it is an expression of our little willingness to live in the present…

As I mentioned in the blog of the special relationship, in this type of relationship, which is what we are used to living, as long as the other acts as we expect, we are happy. When it changes, we are unhappy and begin to blame them for our unhappiness.

When you learn to see things differently and understand the difference between being in the ego or the Holy Spirit, fear or love, you begin to see the relationship with other eyes and another purpose.

My thermometer to know whether or not I am in the ego is my inner peace. I learned to be very attentive to my feelings. As soon as I realize that I am not at peace, I stop. I admit that some thought of mine is taking peace away from me (I do not blame anyone). The next step I take is to hand over everything to the Holy Spirit, which is that part of me that knows it is connected to God.

When you are in a relationship, and you already know that in essence, we are all One, the other person is in your life to help you heal and raise your consciousness. Any situation that takes away your peace shows you the unconscious areas you have to heal.  In other words, each one is the mirror of the other’s unconscious.

In the holy relationship, you stop seeing the other person as someone who should fill your voids and insecurities. Both begin to see themselves as allies in their mutual paths of awakening.

Although situations will arise where one will draw out the other’s anger and unconscious fears, both recognize that this is the primary purpose of being together. They breathe deeply to return to peace, they hand it over to the Holy Spirit to help them see the situation from love and not from fear, and without a doubt, it will. Once forgiveness is given, which is ultimately to ourselves, since everything arises from our thoughts seen outside, they live another holy instant.

The holy relationship is the most glorious way to live.