This morning we're going to talk about one way of looking at what forgiveness means in practice.
Some time ago I did a workshop called, "Healing: Hearing the Melody," in which I spoke about
the importance of hearing the melody in the other person.
I used the Greek word, "melos," which actually was first used by Richard Wagner in this context,
that he spoke of in any great work like a great symphony there was an underlying melos,
which was the kind of theme of the whole symphony ("melos" is a Greek word, meaning "melody"),
that was not the actual notes but it was like what the notes represented.
And I used that idea in this workshop to talk about really hearing what other people are
saying and how important that is, to hear the melos in people, and when you really hear,
then what you hear is everyone's expression of pain, everyone's call for help otherwise
we wouldn't be here.
As I always say in my classes, loving, kind people don't come here.
It's the unloving, unkind, guilt-ridden, fearful people who leave home, feel guilty over their
sense of having abandoned Heaven, and then project out and feel that God has abandoned them.
So everybody who walks this earth, as Jesus tells us in many places in the Course, walk in
uncertainty and in constant fear, feeling terribly alone.
The beginning of workbook Lesson 182 makes that same point, that we all walk around here
feeling like an alien and never truly knowing why we feel this way, and we attribute the
causes of this alienation to all kinds of things: our heredity, our upbringing, our
current life situation, the economy, the weather; all kinds of things.
But the fact of the matter is that we all feel that way because we are in an ongoing
way always choosing to have the ego be our teacher instead of Jesus or the Holy Spirit.
So we're all screaming out for help, and if we're in a situation, if we're in a relationship
and we are coming to that without any needs and without any kind of specialness demands
that insist that other people or circumstances be a certain way so that we feel better, if
we do not have that and we could really come, as the Course says, "with wholly empty hands,"
(W-pI.189.7:5), then we could—then we're free to hear the pain in other people.
And then the love that is present in our right minds and everyone's right minds would then
extend through us and just kind of touch the person in their pain.
I'm not talking physically, of course, but that would feel their pain and then seek only
to want to comfort them, and to give a message that says, "You can make a different choice."
No matter how awful external circumstances are, no matter how much in pain your body
is, your mind can still be at peace.
And all that's required is a little willingness to look at your situation and say, "I am wrong."
Remembering the line in the Course, "Do you prefer that you be right or happy?"
(T-29.VII.1:9), we're always insisting that we're right, that our perceptions of ourselves
and of the universe are correct; our perceptions of God are correct, and the fact of the matter
is that, "God thinks otherwise," (T-23.I.2:7).
We are always wrong.
When I tell our classes that two and two is five and not four even though the world screams
it's four, but I'm saying is that this world lies and that two and two is not four.
The world's laws and the world's logic that governs our lives here, both individually
and collectively, all of this is a lie.
When the Course tells us, "Nothing so blinding as perception of form," (T-22.III.6:7), that
when we believe in the reality (or the seeming reality) of the external world and the seeming
reality of our individual self, that's form and that's a lie, and we are blinded to the
truth; the truth being, on one level, that we are a mind, that we're a decision-making
mind that has chosen wrongly, and that because of that we could then choose differently and,
of course, that then becomes a reflection of the true truth (if one could say that),
which is that our unity as Christ in Christ and as part of God's perfect Oneness.
But this is the message we want to give people, that there is a truth beyond the world's truth,
that two and two is not four; that we are never upset for the reason we think as Lesson 5 says.
So that what you want to do when you're with people is to hear the melody, hear that plaintive
cry that says, "Please show me I'm wrong.
I don't know what the matter is but I know something is wrong, and my life is too painful,
and nothing I've tried, none of my specialness tricks has worked, and I want something different
but I don't know how to get it."
And so what Jesus is basically training us all to do, as his students, is to become like him,
to become this teacher of God who, as the manual says, stands "for the Alternative" (M-5.III.2:6).
So you want to be the same gentle, kind, comforting presence that Jesus is for us in our right minds.
And so when you hear that call for help, when you hear that call for love that nobody believes
he or she deserves, then all your could do coming from that loving, quiet center in your
mind, is let that love extend through you and embrace that person, and that comforting
embrace that says, "My brother, you are wrong.
Thank God you are wrong.
Thank God we are all wrong and that God was right."