This is the 15th A Course in Miracles talk,
And it's entitled The Three Stages of Forgiveness.
Now this is part one of two talks.
The Song of Prayer supplement states,
It is impossible to forgive another,
For it is only your sins you see in him.
You want to see them there,
And not in you.
That is why forgiveness of another is an illusion.
We can only begin the process of forgiveness when we start to realise how much alike we are to the person we wish to forgive.
When we cannot forgive someone,
It is because we cannot forgive ourselves for the same problem,
Albeit in another form.
For example,
A woman may dislike her husband's aggressive outbursts of anger,
While she may never exhibit such outbursts herself.
However,
Her anger will be just as strong as his,
But will be found in a different form.
For instance,
When she feels angry,
She may withdraw herself and cut off from people emotionally,
Successfully suppressing her anger.
Or her anger may be expressed aggressively when she is alone.
A common example for many people is when they are driving a car and someone changes lanes or stops suddenly.
Anger can well up in us,
And in the safety and privacy of the car,
We may yell or swear angrily at the other driver.
The woman dislikes her husband's anger because it mirrors her own,
Which she has not forgiven in herself.
Forgiveness recognises that what we thought was done to us,
We truly did to ourselves.
But only we can deprive ourselves of the peace of God.
As the Course teaches,
We forgive others for what they have not done to us,
Not for what they did.
And true forgiveness recognises an attack as a call for love.
Forgiveness is thus a shift in perception.
Our only problem is the belief in separation from God.
And our only healing is by joining with each other through forgiveness.
The Three Stages of Forgiveness Dr Kenneth Wapnick has identified in the Course three stages or steps on the path of forgiveness,
Which I find helpful in understanding the nature of true forgiveness.
I have used these steps as the basis for the following discussion of forgiveness.
Firstly,
We must take back the projections which we have made onto the world and take responsibility for our own pain.
We must stop pointing a finger at people and situations and accusing them of hurting us and see that they are mirroring to us the areas we have not healed and forgiven in ourselves.
In fact,
These people and situations merit our thanks for showing us what is in our unconscious mind.
Without them,
We would not see the forces that drive us.
The text states,
The secret of salvation is but this,
That you are doing this unto yourself.
No matter what the form of the attack,
This still is true.
Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker,
Still is this the truth.
Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel,
This is still true.
For you would not react at all to figures in a dream when you knew that you were dreaming.
Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may.
It can have no effect on you unless you fail to recognize it is your dream.
Our attacks are not limited to people who are behaving inappropriately and obviously acting from their ego.
We are also capable of attacking people who have done nothing to us.
I recently watched a television documentary about the life of Mao Zedong.
During the period of his cultural revolution,
He encouraged the working classes to seek out and prosecute authority figures.
In one particular village,
The people experienced a problem carrying out Mao's command,
As they had already killed the landlords several years earlier.
The program mentioned that over a million landlords had been killed by the peasants at the beginning of Mao's rule in China.
They remembered,
However,
That the landlord had a son.
Although he did not hold any office of power or authority in the village and lived as one of them,
They sought him out and tortured him to death.
This story clearly illustrates the need of our ego to find fault outside ourself.
We want to find sin in the world,
So we have something onto which we can hook our projections.
If we looked fully at the insanity of the ego's thought system,
We would no longer follow it.
The ego is well aware that its continuity depends on us not looking deeply into our mind,
And it tells us to look in the world for the cause of our distress.
The Course reminds us that,
To the ego,
The guiltless are guilty.
To usurp God's power,
Break up heaven and create an alternative to God's creation is a sin,
And we should feel guilty.
If,
Like Jesus,
We don't feel guilty,
We are invalidating the ego and telling it that its creation is an illusion.
This is the greatest sin we can commit against the ego,
And warrants death in its eyes.
That is why Jesus was killed,
Although he had harmed no one.
The ego encourages us to attack everyone,
Whether they have attacked us or not.
We need to see sin in the world,
So we don't have to confront the ego's thought system in our own mind.
This is why our newspapers and television news programs are largely filled with disturbing news.
We want to read it,
And see it so we can say,
They are the wicked ones,
Not me.
They deserve God's punishment,
Not me.
They are the cause of the pain in the world,
Not me.
As we actively seek for enemies outside ourself,
We simultaneously strengthen the guilt within our mind,
And so the ego's vicious circle of guilt and attack is complete.
This trap is so hard to break free from,
That without the Holy Spirit's help,
We can never do it.
Before the Holy Spirit can heal our mind,
We must first discover what it is that needs healing.
If we believe the problem lies in the world instead of in our mind,
The Holy Spirit can do nothing to help us.
When we realise that there is no one or nothing to blame out there,
And that the problem lies within us,
We usually fall into the trap of feeling guilty.
This is because we make a decision to listen to the counsel of our ego,
Which has a very low opinion of us.
The ego tells us we should feel guilty for our sins,
For in this way we will take the world of separation seriously.
It is very easy to fall into the ego's trap of judgement.
Guilt always demands punishment,
And this prevents us from releasing our pain.
Our ego does not care if we blame the world or ourself for our unhappiness.
Either way,
We are reinforcing our belief in the ego's thought system,
And its survival is all that it cares about.
During this second stage of forgiveness,
See talk 16,
We begin to realise how deeply attached we are to our guilt.
It appears to be a sacrifice not to feel justified in being a victim,
And the desire to hold onto our anger,
Jealousy or greed.
