Forgiveness
A Course in Miracles (the Course) teaches that the only way to change your perceptions is through forgiveness. If you understood the explanation of projection from the previous blog, you already know that what you see outside that bothers you, is actually your own projection. Seeing it outside makes you angry. Therefore, when you forgive what you see in another, you are actually forgiving yourself for having that thought.
• The forgiveness the Course talks about is not the forgiveness we know where you see yourself as the saint and the other as the evil one. The Course says that the only thing that exists is love. That is our Reality. Everything that is not love is fear and fear is an illusion, it is not real.
• Continuing with the Course, to forgive is to realize that if your true essence is love and what is not love is not real, nothing really happened. That is, there is nothing to forgive.
• It is seeing God in the other, seeing the innocence that we all are.
• Realizing that when you or the other one are not acting from love, you are in fear and therefore the “wrong” act that you committed is nothing more than a crying out for love, to remind you who you really are.
• When someone does something that hurts you, instead of seeing them as guilty, you can choose to change your perception and see in that person someone who is hurt by circumstances from their past that have not yet healed. If you choose to change your perception, you will realize that you are seeing your wounds in the other and thus you will be able to forgive them more easily.
• You can always choose to think differently. Your reaction will depend on that.
Relationships that you have not completed are part of you, it does not matter if the person is with you or not. All the resentments and anger that come with a battered relationship are carried inside, like baggage, wherever you go. In most cases, we throw that baggage on those who least deserve it. That is why it is so important to complete all of our relationships.
One of the most powerful ways to complete a relationship is through a letter. This can be done even if the person has died. There is always communication on an energetic level.
The following exercise will help you to let go of the resentments that you may carry inside from past events:
• Start a letter to the person with whom you had an unfinished relationship. You are going to start the letter by saying “So and so, something I always wanted to tell you was … Here you are going to tell him everything you would have said if you had dared or had been allowed. For example,” Daddy, something I always wanted to tell you is that I needed you to spend more time with me. “
• Then you are going to say “The consequence of you being like that is … (Here you put the way in which your life was affected by that.) An example would be “The fact that you didn’t spend time with me brought as a consequence that I felt that I was not important. Therefore, I have always brought into my life people who have not valued me.
• In the next step you thank him for the lesson that this brought to your life, such as, “On the other hand I have to thank you because that feeling of not being worthy has made me work with my self-esteem and today my life and my relationships are better thanks to that”.
• You do those steps with everything you wanted to say and never said.
• This exercise will help you to say what you need to say, to realize how it affected you, and also to see that each experience brings learning.
• This letter does not need to be sent. Just writing it is enough.
You can write to as many people as you want. Forgiveness is an internal attitude that leads us to inner peace. You don’t need to tell anyone. Nor is it necessary to continue with the person we forgive, or to continue relating to that person. We merely see it in light and let it go.