March 6, 2012
Do we really understand forgiveness? Do we use it for its intended purpose? Is our use of forgiveness justified? We may have a misperception of forgiveness. It’s a word that may carry a lot of baggage for us. We have been asked to forgive all our lives and yet may not have understood what we were doing. Understanding what the Course means by forgiveness is a very important perception to correct in order to begin to perceive the world correctly and understand who we really are.
Forgiveness is not pardon for an attack we perceive as having really occurred. For if we perceive attack we are perceiving incorrectly in the first place. As a result we cannot forgive correctly. If I forgive another for attacking me, I believe that I can be attacked and I reinforce that idea as I “forgive” while I carry around the idea that another has wronged me, is guilty and has hurt me. I have misperceived who I and another are. I have made both of us something we are not in my mind and through my thoughts.
But we can change this. We can change our thoughts. We can allow Spirit to show us a better way to perceive ourselves and each other. The forgiveness the Course asks us to extend is the changing of our mind to see correctly what has happened. We can see who we really are. We can see who another really is. We can understand that what we thought was an attack is not real and cannot hurt us. We can see that it is nothing more than a call for love. We can see and understand that at that moment another is crying out for the love they have separated themselves form recognizing within them and all they come in contact with. Forgiveness is the recognition we are in a separated state of consciousness, not our natural state of being. And as we recognize we are dreaming, we can allow ourselves to awaken to the real world and the awareness of our natural state of being.
Forgiveness is joyful, for it brings our awareness back to our natural state as we recognize ourselves as who we really are and always have been. It frees another and ourselves of all the mistaken perceptions we have loaded each other down with. In forgiving we set each other free to soar to the heights of peace, love, and joy that are already within us. Forgiving is letting go. Set the world free. You will also set yourself free. And you will recognize the Divinity that has always been in and around you. Let it be.
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