So, if you re stepping on my toe and I forgive you, you mean it won t hurt?
Many experiences that I had, growing up in New York City, riding the subways, which very often would be very
crowded, and it d be impossible not to be jostled or have your feet stepped on or smashed,
and New York is somewhat deservedly have the reputation of not really caring (it's not
always the case), but if you if somebody steps on your foot and they quickly turn to you
and say, I m very, very sorry, I guarantee you it would hurt less than if they had not
only stepped on your foot but pushed you down to rush out of the exit door.
I mean it sincerely because in that moment that I'm forgiving you I'm experiencing something differently
than I would have had I been angry and upset and judging and, you know, suppressed it or
whatever I did with it, and so, but in that moment I'd have to have a holy instant in
order to forgive because I couldn't really do it of myself. The holy instant would, in
that moment, would be you're asking Jesus or the Holy Spirit to help you not take this
personally. I mean, that's really what we are talking about. You don't take what appears
to be an attack personally even though it may be meant as an attack by the other person.
Okay, thank you. Let me just elaborate a little on that, on the idea of not taking it personally.
That's that basically is what it means to forgive, is that you don't make the connection
that the ego would have you make between the other person's attack, whether it's a verbal
attack or physical attack, and yourself. Helen had a number of experiences. I recorded them
in my book, but one, which is a very, very classic one in terms of this is that she and
this might have occurred before the Course started actually even, but she lived in an
apartment building in New York City and there was a bedroom on the floor above her, and
there was a woman who had the very annoying habit (from Helen s point of view) about midnight
would start walking around her bedroom on the wood floor (no carpet) in her high heels.
And Helen would have to get to bed at a reasonable hour because she had to wake up early to get
to the medical center, and she would she'd be storming in her mind, and stewing, and
really furious at this woman for being so insensitive, and she was thinking of all kinds
of things she would do. And at some point in the midst of her raging (internal raging)
she said, Well, the problem really is that I think there s a cord that connects her high
heels with my head so that I think she's stomping on my head and, if that's the case, all I
have to do is cut the cord. So being a very visual person as well as an auditory person,
she took out a scissors in her mind and cut the cord, and went right to sleep. Now, the
stories are not always so simple, clear cut, or have as happy an ending happy an ending
as that did but the principle is very clear. The problem was the interpretation she made,
and what was really galling her was not so much the sound of the heels on the floor but
the idea that this woman would be so insensitive and unthinking and uncaring, and that's what
did it. It s the same thing in the example I just gave about the crowded subway, somebody
steps on your foot but apologizes quickly, it doesn't hurt as much as if the person was
very callous about it and blamed you for it. Why'd you stick your foot under my foot? etcetera,
and in a sense that s what forgiveness is all about. You restore the appropriate causal
connection. The reason I'm upset, the reason I'm tossing and turning in my bed is not because
of what the woman is doing or this person did or what the person said or anything else.
It's because I m making a connection...a false connection, a false causal connection between
that person and me, and that's an interpretation; that's not a fact. The Course emphasizes that
perception is an interpretation, not a fact, and so the interpretation is, She's doing
this to me. If I change my perception and I no longer see the cause of my distress as
being her high heels or something outside of me but being my own interpretation of what
she's doing, and I change that interpretation, then it won't be a problem. In a sense, that's
I think is a good paradigm for what the process is like. You don't deny what the other
person does. If a doctor says, You know, I'm very sorry but that lump is cancer, you
don't make-believe and say, Well, it s all an illusion and that breast was over long
ago. I mean, that's stupid, but you have but you could look at it differently. You don't
have to take it as a personal attack either by the doctor, by your own body, or by God,
or whatever. In a sense it's just another event in the world, and the choice is do I
look at it through the eyes of my ego, which is the eyes of blame and hate or do I and
fear, or I look at it through the eyes of Holy Spirit that says this is another opportunity
for me to learn that I'm not my body. Don't try to force spirituality on yourself.
Don't try and force a metaphysical truth on yourself when you're so angered here in the world and
in the body. I mean, that's silly and it's not spiritual, and it ends up making you an
absolutely dreadful person to yourself and everybody who has the unfortunate experience
of being around you. And that's why I always make fun of Course in Miracles students because
they're awful in this regard. They don't understand level confusion and they don't understand
the difference between a metaphysical truth, which is true or a metaphysical truth that
they don t believe in, and they certainly don't live as if they believe it. They may
understand it intellectually. That's why the whole image of a ladder, I think, is very,
very helpful, that he gives us in "The Song of Prayer," and the idea that prayer is a ladder,
forgiveness is a ladder; it s a process, and it's only right at the top of the ladder,
just before the real world that you begin to understand that this whole thing is made
up, and you begin to not only, again, intellectually know but you experientially know that you
are not here, that your self is outside of the dream and, again, it's not a mere intellectual
concept; it s an experience (S-1.V.4). That's what allows you to go through your day,
and your days and days and months and years without being affected by the world, yet still
involved with the world because you know that you're not here. That's what being in the
real world is, but that happens right at the top of the ladder. Until you get there, you're
still bound here. You still wake up every morning, stagger into your bathroom, look
in the mirror and you see something that you mistakenly think is yourself. Some days you
may like what you see. Most of the time, as you get older especially, you don't like what
you see. But, whatever it is, you think what you see is you, so don't pretend that you're
not a body. Now, on the level of the body the world certainly does do things to us.
Jesus is not suggesting that we lapse into denial where we make-believe the world has
no effect on our bodies; absolutely does. He tells us in Chapter 2 that to deny our
physical experience in this world is a particularly unworthy form of denial, (T-2.IV.3:11). He's
not saying deny the world. He's simply saying deny your interpretation of the world,
and in a sense, that s how you walk through life is that you don't try and change the external
world. You change your mind about the external world, as the beginning of Chapter 21 also
says, that you don't seek not to change the world; choose to change your mind about [it],
(T-21.in.1:7). And the idea, again, is that you don't take what other people do or say
personally. The ego would always have you take it personally, getting back to the purpose
of the dream. The purpose of the world's dream is that, Somebody else did it to me, and so
therefore my immediate reaction would be, Why did you do this to me? How unkind, how
unthinking, how unloving, how uncaring; how mean, how vicious, how cruel, how murderous,
and realize that that's the ego s reaction because that's why the world was made, so
we could always blame someone and something else. Remember again, that's a very important
line, perception is an interpretation, not a fact (M-17.4:1-2). My physical eyes see
perceptual facts or objective facts in the world, but my brain interprets those seeming
facts, and the brain's interpretation is a direct reflection of the mind's decision.
If I want to find people to blame, I'll find them without any problem, but I could just
as easily see the attack, as the Course says, the attack is an expression of fear and fear
is a call for the love that has been denied (T-2.VI.7:5-8), and I don't feel I deserve
or that person doesn't feel he or she deserves. I have no power most of the time over the
world or other people in the world, but what I do have power...the only thing I have power
over is my own mind, and I could either interpret the world through my ego's eyes, which would
always be in terms of winners and losers, victims and victimizers, or I will interpret
it through Jesus eyes, which will see us all as sharing the same interests,
the same needs, the same goal.