Welcome to Active Meditation.
A Course in Miracles,
Lesson 134.
Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Let us review the meaning of forgive,
For it is apt to be distorted,
To be perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath,
A gift unjustified and undeserved,
And a complete denial of the truth.
In such a view,
Forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly,
And this course must be seen to appear to rest salvation on a whim.
This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true.
Pardon must be limited to what is false.
Pardon is irrelevant to everything except illusions.
Truth is God's creation,
And to forgive truth is meaningless.
All truth belongs to God.
All truth reflects God's laws.
All truth radiates God's love.
Does this need pardon?
How can you forgive the sinless?
How can you forgive the eternally benign?
The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth and not illusions.
You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there,
To overlook the truth in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true.
This twisted viewpoint reflects the whole that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind as you regard yourself.
Because you think your sins are real,
You look upon pardon as deception,
For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie.
Therefore,
Is forgiveness really but a sin like all the rest?
And says the truth is false and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass,
As white as snow.
Thus,
Forgiveness becomes delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish.
Forgiveness would see as right the plainly wrong.
Forgiveness would see the loathsome as the good.
Pardon is no escape in such a view.
It is merely a further sign that sin is unforgivable at best to be concealed,
Denied,
Or called another name.
For pardon is a treachery to truth.
Guilt cannot be forgiven.
If you sin,
Your guilt is everlasting.
Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned.
First by themselves for what they think they did,
And once again by those who pardon them.
It is sin's unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane,
A deep relief to those who offer it,
A quiet blessing where it is received.
Forgiveness does not countenance illusions but collects them lightly with a little laugh and gently lays them at the feet of truth.
And there,
Illusions disappear entirely.
Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth.
In the illusions of the world,
Forgiveness sees their nothingness and looks straight through the thousand forms in which illusions may appear.
Forgiveness looks on lies but is not deceived.
Forgiveness does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt.
Forgiveness looks on them with quiet eyes and merely says to them,
My friend,
What you think is not the truth.
The strength of pardon is its honesty which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions not as truth.
It is because of this that forgiveness becomes the un-deceiver in the face of lies.
Forgiveness becomes the great restorer of the simple truth.
By its ability to overlook what is not there,
Forgiveness opens up the way to truth which has been blocked by dreams of guilt.
Now,
Are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you?
For if one brother,
If one sister has received this gift of you,
The door is open to yourself.
There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness and perceive it open wide in welcome.
When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form,
Do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think they did,
For that is self-deception.
Ask instead,
Would I accuse myself of doing this?
Thus,
Will you see alternatives for choice in terms that render choosing meaningful and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God intended it to be and as it is in truth.
It is but lies that would condemn.
In truth is innocence,
The only thing there is.
Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth.
Forgiveness stands between the world you see and that which lies beyond.
Forgiveness stands between the hell of guilt and Heaven's gate.
Across this bridge,
As powerful as love which laid its blessing on it,
Are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack.
Brought silently to truth,
These dreams of evil are not kept to swell and bluster and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them.
The dreamer has been gently wakened from the dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there.
Now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied.
He does not have to fight to save himself.
He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him,
Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe.
He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery.
His step is light and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead,
A star is left behind to point the way to those who follow him.
Forgiveness must be practiced,
For the world cannot perceive its meaning.
The world cannot provide a guide to teach you its beneficence.
There is no thought in all the world that leads to any understanding of the laws forgiveness follows,
Nor the thought that forgiveness reflects.
Forgiveness is as alien to the world as is your own reality,
And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.
Today we practice true forgiveness,
Let the time of joining be no more delayed,
For we would meet with our reality in freedom and in peace.
Our practicing becomes the footsteps lighting up the way for all our brothers and sisters who will follow us to the reality we share with them.
That this may be accomplished,
Let us give a quarter of an hour twice today,
And spend it with the guide who understands the meaning of forgiveness,
And was sent to us to teach it.
Let us ask,
Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Then choose one person as your guide will direct,
And catalog their sins as one by one they cross your mind.
Let's practice this now.
Say to yourself,
Repeat after me,
Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Now take a few moments to identify a person in whom it is possible to list their sins.
As this person comes to mind,
Begin to list and detail their sins.
Be certain not to dwell on any one of them,
But realize that you are using their offenses to save the world from all ideas of sin.
Now briefly consider all the evil things you thought of them,
And each time you think of one,
Ask yourself,
Would I condemn myself for doing this?
Let them be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in them.
Free them now.
Let them go.
Now you are prepared for freedom.
If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty,
You will begin to sense a lifting up,
A lightening of the weight across your chest,
A deep and certain feeling of relief.
The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your person,
But were laid upon yourself.
Ponder on this now.
Forgiveness should be practiced through the day,
For there will still be many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself.
When this occurs,
Allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself,
Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Would I accuse myself of doing this?
I will not lay this chain on myself.
In everything you do,
Remember this,
No one is crucified alone,
And yet no one can enter heaven by themselves.
Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Would I accuse myself of doing this?
I will not lay this chain upon myself.
Nothing real can be threatened,
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
