ARCIM

Daily Lesson 121 ~
May 1

Forgiveness is the key to Peace and Happiness.

Here is the answer to your search for Peace and Happiness. Here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety amidst apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. Here are all questions answered. Here is the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.

The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers Love no room to be Itself, no place where It can spread Its Wings in Peace and soar above the turmoil of the world. The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite and release from pain. It suffers and abides in misery, peering about in darkness, seeing not, yet certain of the danger lurking there.

The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it looks upon, afraid and angry, weak and blustering. It is afraid to go ahead and afraid to stay, afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound yet more afraid of stillness. It is terrified of darkness yet more terrified at the approach of Light. What can the unforgiving mind perceive but its own judgments, since that is all it gave? What can it look upon except the proof that its mistakes are condemnable?

The unforgiving mind doesn’t perceive merely mistakes, but only condemnable ones. It perceives the world with sightless eyes, and looks with fear upon its own projections which it believes are rising to attack its miserable parody of life. It wants to live, yet sometimes wishes it had not been born. It wants forgiveness, yet it perceives no hope. It wants escape, yet can conceive of none because it perceives its judgments everywhere.

The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future that can offer anything but more despair. Yet it regards its judgments of the world as irreversible, and does not understand that it has condemned itself to this despair. It thinks it cannot change, for it believes that what it looks upon bears witness that its judgment of hopelessness is correct. It does not ask because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right.

Forgiveness is learned. It is not inherent in a mind that cannot err. As error was an idea the separated ones taught themselves, forgiveness must be learned as well, but from a Teacher other than yourself, who represents the true Self in you. Through It you learn how to see beyond the self you think you made, and let it disappear. Thus you return your mind to It Who is your holy Self, Who knows forever Its Innocence.

Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own mind how to forgive itself. Each one awaits release from the nightmare of hell through you, and imploringly turns to you for Heaven here and now. It believes it has no hope, but you become its hope. And as its hope do you become your own. The unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved from nightmares. And as you teach awakening, you will learn it. Yet all your teaching and your learning will be of the Teacher Who has been given you to show the Way to you.

Today we practice learning to forgive. If you are willing, you can learn today to receive the key to Peace and Happiness, and use It on your own behalf and on behalf of the world. We will devote ten minutes in the morning, and at night another ten, to learning how to give forgiveness, and receive forgiveness too.

The unforgiving mind does not comprehend that giving and receiving are the same. Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiveness toward one whom you think of as a foe and one whom you consider as a friend. And as you learn to see them both as One, we will extend the lesson to yourself, and see that their release from the nightmare of hell includes yours.

Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like, who seems to irritate you, or to cause regret in you if you should meet them, one you actively despise or merely try to overlook. It does not matter what the form your rejection of this person takes. You probably have chosen them already.

Now close your eyes and see this person in your mind, beholding them a while. Try to perceive some light in them somewhere, a little gleam that you had forgotten or never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture that you hold of them. Behold this picture until you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers the person, and makes the picture beautiful and good. Behold this changed picture for a while.

Now turn your mind to one you call a friend. Try to transfer to your friend the light you just practiced seeing around your former “foe.” See them now as more than friend to you, for in that light their holiness shows you your Liberator, awakened and awakening, healed and whole.

Then let your “foe” and friend unite in blessing you with what you offered them, letting them offer you the light you see in them. Now are you One with them, and they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself.

Remember throughout the day the role forgiveness plays in bringing Peace and Happiness to every unforgiving mind, with yours among them. Every hour remind yourself:

“Forgiveness is the key to Peace and Happiness.

I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible, and full of flaw,

and know I am the perfect Child of the Divine.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 9: The Plan of Atonement

 

5. The Final Evaluation is the Second Coming

Atonement is for everyone. It is the way to undo the belief that anything is for you alone. To forgive is to see beyond illusion. See, then, beyond error, and do not let your perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds. If you would know yourself, then accept as true only what your sisters and brothers are. If you perceive what they are not, then you cannot know what you are, because you will be perceiving them and yourself falsely. Remember always that your Identity is shared, and that Its Sharing is Its Reality.

You have an essential part to play in the Atonement, but the Plan of the Atonement Itself is beyond you. You do not yet know how to see beyond errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to think either that you do not make errors, or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. It follows, then, that if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The Plan of Atonement is not yet yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. And this limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo your errors is, therefore, not of you, but for you.

The Atonement is a Lesson in Sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do It. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what your natural ability is. By reinterpreting the unnatural ability to attack, which you made, into the natural ability to share, Spirit translates what you have made into what the Divine created. But if you would accomplish this through Spirit, you cannot perceive your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in the ego’s judgment. All their helpfulness is in the Evaluation of the Holy Spirit.

Because you have asked for a plan of forgiveness, but not of the right teacher, the ego has one. The ego’s plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. By following it you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego in your mind always leads you. Its plan is to have you distinctly look upon error first, and then attempt to overlook what you have looked upon. But how can you overlook what you have already made real? By distinctly looking upon error, you make it real for yourself, and will therefore be unable afterward to overlook it by yourself. This is where the ego is forced into appealing to what it claims are the hidden dynamics of forgiveness, and insists that you accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from the Divine. They are as sensible now as they ever were, because they speak of eternal Ideas. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear. Nor does it make real the unreal, and then attempt to get rid of it.

Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit rests simply in seeing beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping what is never real unreal for you. Do not let any belief in the reality of error enter your mind at all, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made, in order to be forgiven. What has no effect in Reality does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are totally nonexistent, just as error itself is. By steadily and consistently canceling out all effects of error, everywhere and in all respects, Spirit proves and teaches not only that error is unreal, but also that the ego does not exist.

Follow Spirit’s Teaching in forgiveness, then, because teaching forgiveness is Its Function, and It knows how to fulfill It perfectly. That is what is meant by the miracle principle that states that miracles reflect Reality and are therefore genuinely natural, that when they occur attunement with the Divine is experienced, and that when they do not occur then attunement is needed, and called for.

Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Divine’s Plan of Awakening, in recognition and acknowledgment of the fact that you do not know how this Plan is accomplished. Its accomplishment is not your function, and unless you accept this, you cannot learn what your function is and how to accomplish it.

The confusion of functions is so typical of the ego that you should be quite familiar with it by now. The ego believes that all functions belong to it, even though it has no idea what they are. This is more than mere confusion. It is a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity and confusion, which makes it likely that the ego will attack anyone and anything for no reason at all. And this is exactly what the ego does. It is totally unpredictable in its reactions, because it has no idea of the real meaning of anything it perceives. If one has no idea what is happening, how appropriately can they be expected to respond? Regardless of how such responses can be accounted for, ask yourself whether they place the ego in a very sound position as a guide for your responses.

It seems absurd to have to emphasize repeatedly that the ego’s qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of awakening. Yet this question about the guide you choose, ridiculous as it seems, is really the crucial issue in the entire separation fantasy. Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane themself, at least in that moment. It is true that you know choosing the ego as your guide is insane. You know it because I know it, and you have evaluated it by the same Standard I have.

Because of Spirit’s Evaluation the ego in your mind literally lives on borrowed time, its days being numbered. Do not fear this Final Evaluation of all your creative activity, but welcome It and do not wait to implement It, for the ego’s time is your time in apparent exile from Eternity. This Final Evaluation with Spirit of all your creative activity, including the ego you have made, is the Second Coming, which was brought into being for you, as the First Coming – the Creation – was created for All.

The Second Coming – the Atonement – is merely the return of Sanity, or Divine Meaning. Can this possibly be fearful? What can be fearful except feeling stuck in an insane world? No one turns to delusion or fantasy unless they despair of finding satisfaction in Reality. But it is certain that Satisfaction can never be found in fantasy or delusion, so that your only hope of release from these is to change your mind about Reality. Only if the decision that Reality is fearful is wrong can the Divine be right. And I assure you that the Divine is right.

Be glad, then, that you have been wrong. But understand that this was only because you forgot who you were. Had you remembered, you could no more have been wrong than the Divine can. The impossible can seem to happen only in the delusions of fantasy. When you search for Reality in fantasies, you will not find It. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find many. But do not seek for Meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven.

Fairy tales in all of their myriad forms can be amusing or fearful, pretty or ugly, but not true in Reality. They may be believed, and so, for a while, they are true for those who believe in them. But when Reality dawns, fairy tales are gone. Reality has not gone in the meantime.

The Second Coming is the dawning of the Awareness of Reality, not Its return, because It never left. Behold, my sisters and brothers, Reality is here. It belongs to you and me and the Divine and Its perfect Creation, and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only this Awareness heals, because it is the Awareness of Truth.