The lesson is, “Let me remember I am one with God,” (W-pI.124).
Right at the end of paragraph 4; the last sentence in paragraph 4, Lesson 124: (W-pI.124.4:6)
Today we see only the loving and the lovable.
(W-pI.124.5:1-4) We see it in appearances of pain, and pain gives way to peace.
We see it in the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid, who are
restored to the tranquility and peace of mind in which they were created.
And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life.
All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves.
“All this we see”—in other words, we see past the 2 + 2 = 4 world, the world of
pain and suffering and death, anger, cruelty; we look past all that to the 2 + 2 = 5 world
that sees every thought of the ego as the call for help.
You know, the Course says of judgment of the Holy Spirit, He sees only calls for love or
expressions of love. So when He’s your Teacher, when Jesus’ love is your comforting presence
and guide, you will not see pain and anger and cruelty and torture and death.
You’ll look beyond it to the call for help that says, “Please show me I’m wrong.
Please show me I made a mistake in choosing my ego.
Please show me there’s another choice I can make.
By your comforting, defenseless, loving presence you will show me there’s another thought
system I could choose.”
That’s—all this will you see because you first saw it within yourselves.
In this sense, this is the right-minded “making it about you.”
Not about your needs being met but about you choosing the right Teacher, and once you choose
the right Teacher it is impossible, impossible not to let that comforting presence of love
extend through you and embrace everyone; to reach out and you touch their fear with your
loving, comforting fingers.
You just go out and you touch it and the fear is gone, and you do that in whatever form
is helpful, and you don’t judge the form, but you don’t interfere with that loving
flow from within.
There’s a line early on in the text that says, “All thinking produces form [on] some
level,” (T-2.VI.9:14).
All right-minded thinking, all experiences of your forgiveness of yourself produces form
on some level.
It would automatically take whatever shape is the most helpful.
Your job is just to get your ego out of the way, which means to get your investment in
guilt out of the way, which means you must first recognize your investment in guilt.
That’s what the miracle does.
That’s why this is called A Course in Miracles and not a course in love, not a course in
truth, not a course in god; A Course in Miracles because the “miracle” is the Course’s
name for the process of going from your mindless body to your mind so you could choose again.
Remember the line, the miracle “looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what
it sees is false,” (W-pII.13.1:3).
You look on the devastation you’ve made of your relationships.
Look at the way you’ve attacked and you’ve judged and you accuse people of treating you unfairly.
Look at that and realize that was just a mistake.
What you’re seeing is false, and it came from your fear of love.
Fear is not to be punished.
Fear is to be loved and comforted and thereby undone.
That’s what “remorse” means.
I look at what I’ve done outside, I see it as a mirror of what I’ve done inside
(the devastation outside is a mirror of the devastation I’ve chosen inside), and I first
say and mean, “I’m sorry” to myself.
Only then can I truly say “I’m sorry” to other people, and then it won’t be difficult.
There won’t be any resistance.
It’ll just flow.
The words, the behaviors will just flow out of you because you have made it about them;
not about your needs.
You’ve made it about them.
You hear their call for love.
The “appearances of pain,” (W-pI.124.5:1), the “frantic,” the “sad,” the “distressed,”
the “lonely,” and the “afraid,” (W-pI.124.5:2), which also would include people who do vicious,
cruel things.
If you just think for a moment, no one in the presence of that love could ever hurt anyone.
You just couldn’t.
So if someone hurts someone and wants to hurt someone they can’t be in the presence of love.
So what do you want to do as a loving brother or sister?
You want to demonstrate that love to them because their anger, their viciousness, their
cruelty has come from their believing they attacked love, they abandoned love; they may
seek to project and say love abandoned them and that’s why they’re angry and they
justified their anger, but deep down they accuse themselves of having abandoned love,
and so you now want to be a manifestation of that love.
In the clarification of terms near the end of the section of, “The Holy Spirit,”
talking about Jesus, it says your brother asks you to become His manifestation (C-6.5:1-2).
Just as the Course says Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, (T-12.VII.6:1), now we
want to become that manifestation, and when we choose not to, that’s where our guilt
is lodged and that’s what needs forgiveness.
What I’d like to do as a close is read two poems.
They both deal with this theme of forgiving ourselves, and the point of these poems is
to really emphasize that to really be remorseful means we have to recognize our investment
in holding onto guilt and then blaming other people for it.
It all begins with us.
That’s, again, the right-minded sense of making it about us.
Okay, the first poem is not by Helen, and it’s called “My forgiveness.”
[“My Forgiveness,” Kenneth Wapnick, A Symphony of Love, page 121] Forgive me, Lord,
if when I felt afraid I failed to speak the words I know you gave to me to bring to those
whose fear I share.
Forgive my trembling tongue that would but halt the flow of love in you that ends all
doubt and heals all sickness, suffering and pain.
I ask forgiveness, Lord, though it is true you said that there is nothing to forgive.
Your loving words of comfort and of peace are proof to me that Christ in innocence remains
united in His Father’s love, the innocence that lives as Him in me.
You ask, my Lord, that I forgive myself, for it is in the veil of guilt your words are
trapped, and cannot be expressed as you would have them be.
You ask, my Lord, that I be but myself, that all God’s Sons can see your face in me,
and hear your voice in mine.
That poem should be everyone’s prayer, that we recognize when we’re angry, when we’re
critical, when we’re indulging our needs at someone else’s expense, that what we’re
really doing is failing to embrace Jesus’ love and letting that love extend through
us, and then embrace all people, and literally become his messenger and his manifestation
in the world.
That’s what we have to forgive ourselves for, because we can’t forgive anyone else
unless we first forgive ourselves.
The second poem is one of Helen’s poems, “He Asks But This,” and it basically makes
the same, the same plea, that we cannot be an ambassador of love unless we first choose
that love for ourselves, and we can’t choose it for ourselves unless we first choose against
the desire not to be with that love, and that’s the ultimate message of this poem.
“He Asks But This” [The Gifts of God, page 37] My tiny empire is no fitting gift
for God’s most holy Son.
His Father gives Him infinite dominion and estate unlimited, extending outward to embrace
the universe.
My world contracts to nothingness, where thoughtless images dance wearily an instant and are gone.
What can I offer Him Who came to save me from the world I made, except Himself?
For there remains within me still one gift that yet is worthy to be given Him.
Let me forgive myself.
For that is all He asks and needs.
And He will take this gift, and bring it to His Father from Himself.
Okay, we’re done. Thank you all for coming.