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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.