ARCIM

Daily Lesson 198 ~
July 17

Only my condemnation seems to injure me. Only my own forgiveness sets me free.

Injury of what is true is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn then you can seem to be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, until you lay it down as valueless, unwanted, and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and those it seemed to have will all be undone. Then are you free, for Freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.

Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that Knowledge understands, for Freedom is a Part of Knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in Truth. What seem to be condemnation’s influence and effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had.

Illusion makes illusion, except for one. Forgiveness is the illusion that is answer to the rest. Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions except this one must multiply a thousand-fold. But forgiveness is where illusions end. Forgiveness is the end of dreams because it is a dream of awakening. It is not itself the Truth. Yet does it point to where the Truth must be, and gives Direction with the Certainty of the Divine Itself.

Forgiveness is a dream in which the Children of the Divine awaken to their holy Self and to their Creator, knowing They are One. Forgiveness is the only Path that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death. How could there be another way, when this one is the Plan of the Divine Itself? And why would you oppose this Plan, quarrel with It, or seek to find a thousand ways in which It must be wrong; a thousand other possibilities?

Is it not wiser to be glad you hold the Answer to your problems in your hand? Is it not wiser to thank the One Who gives awakening, and accept Its Gift with gratitude? And is it not a kindness to yourself to hear Its Voice and learn the simple Lessons It would teach, instead of trying to dismiss Its Words and substitute your own in place of Its?

Spirit’s Words will work. Its Words will awaken. Its Words contain all Hope, all Blessing, and all Joy that ever can be found upon this Earth. Its Words are born in the Divine, and come to you with Heaven’s Love upon them. Those who hear Spirit’s Words have heard the Song of Heaven, for these are the Words in which all words with meaning will merge as One at last. And as this One will fade away with all things of time, the Word of the Divine will come to take Its place, for It will be remembered then and loved.

This world has many seeming separate haunts where Mercy has no meaning, and attack appears as justified. Yet all are the same: a place where death is offered to the Divine’s Children and to their Creator. You may think that these Children have accepted death, but if you can see the place where you thought you looked upon their blood, you will behold a miracle instead. How foolish to believe that they could die! How foolish to believe you can attack! How mad to think that you could condemn or be condemned, and that the eternal Children of the Divine can perish!

The Stillness of your holy Self remains unmoved, untouched by thoughts like these, and unaware of any condemnation that could need forgiveness. Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the Truth. And what but Truth could have a Thought that builds a Bridge to Itself that brings illusions to the other side to disappear forever?

Today we practice letting Freedom come to make Its Home with you. The Truth bestows these words upon your mind, that you may find the Key to Light and let the darkness end:

 

“Only my condemnation seems to injure me. Only my own forgiveness sets me free.”

 

Remember today that every form of suffering hides an unforgiving thought. Nor can there be any form of pain forgiveness cannot heal.

Accept the one illusion that proclaims there is no condemnation in the Divine’s Children, and Heaven is remembered and the world forgotten and all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face or Presence of Divine Essence appears unveiled at last in this one dream of forgiveness. This is the Gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from the Divine, your Creator. Let today be celebrated both on Earth and in your eternal holy Home as well. Be kind to both, as you forgive the trespasses you thought yourself and your sisters and brothers guilty of, and see your Innocence shining upon you from the Face of Divine Essence.

Now is there Silence all around the world. Now is there Stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense. Now is there tranquil Light across the face of Earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep. And now the Divine’s Word of Truth and Love alone remains upon it. Only That can be perceived an Instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind that the Divine forever knows to be Its only Child.

There is no condemnation in this Child. It is perfect in Its Holiness. It needs no thoughts of mercy. Who could give It gifts when Everything belongs to It forever? And who could dream of offering forgiveness to the Child of Innocence Itself, so like to It Whose Child It is that to behold the Child is to perceive no more, and only know the Creator?

In this Vision of the Child of the Divine, so brief that not an instant stands between this single Sight and Timelessness Itself, you see the Vision of your holy Self, and then you disappear forever into the Divine.

Today we come still nearer to the end of that which yet stands between our perception and this Vision. And we are glad that we have come this far, and recognize that Spirit, Who brought us here, will be faithful to us now and forever. For It would give to us the Gift that the Divine has given us through It today. Now is the time of your awakening. The time has come. The time has come today.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 18: The Reality of the Holy Relationship

 

6. Spirit’s Guidelines for Every Situation

The practical application of the Holy Spirit’s Purpose is extremely simple and unambiguous, leaving no room for doubt. In fact, in order to be simple it must be unequivocal. That which is simple is merely what is easily understood, and for this it is apparent that it must be clear.

The setting or context of the Holy Spirit’s Goal is general. Now Spirit will work with you to make the application of this Goal specific, for application is specific. There are certain very specific Guidelines Spirit provides for any situation in order to realize Its Goal, keeping in mind that the universal application of these Guidelines has not yet been realized in, or become reality for, you. Therefore it is essential at this point to use these Guidelines in each situation separately, until you can more safely see beyond each situation in an understanding far broader than you now possess.

In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first thing to consider, very simply, is, “What do I want to come of this? What is it for?” The clarification of the goal belongs at the beginning of each experience, for it is this that will determine the outcome. This order is reversed in the ego’s procedure. There the situation becomes the determiner of the outcome, which can be anything. The reason for this disorganized approach is evident. The ego does not know what it wants to come of any situation. It is aware of what it does not want, but only that. It has no positive goal at all.

Without a positive clarification, set at the outset, of how you intend to focus on and frame your experience of any situation, the situation just seems to happen, and makes no sense until it is already done. Then you merely look back at it and try to piece together what it must have meant.

But looking back at an experience means that it is in the past, and gone, so assigning present meaning to it must be inaccurate because it introduces dimension level confusion (mixing the past and the present—recall our previous discussion on level confusion) into your attempts at understanding. And now the only assessment left to make is whether or not the ego in hindsight likes its experience. Was the experience acceptable to the roles it assigned to everyone and everything involved, or does its disappointment call for anger and retaliation?

The ego’s judgment of a situation, like your backward assessment of it, is entirely stuck in the past because you didn’t establish a framework beforehand to know how to discover Meaning in the situation going into it, and what to focus on to perceive Meaning as the situation was being experienced. No goal was consciously set with Spirit with which to bring the means available in the situation in line with the purpose of the experience. The absence of knowing what to focus on, set in advance, makes understanding difficult and accurate assessment doubtful.

The value of proactively deciding with Spirit what you want to happen is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to facilitate it happening. You will therefore make every effort to see beyond what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective, and concentrate on everything that helps you meet it. It is quite noticeable that even your sporadic use of this approach up to now has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit’s Sorting Out of Truth and falsity. From this point of view, the “true” becomes what can be used to meet Spirit’s Goal for the Children of the Divine, and the “false” becomes what is the useless toward this. With this approach, each situation offers Meaning, but only because the Goal has made it meaningful.

The Goal of Truth has further practical advantages. If a situation is used for Truth and Sanity, its outcome must be Peace. And this will result quite apart from what the outcome seems to be outwardly. For if Peace is the Condition of Truth and Sanity, and cannot be present without Them, then where Peace is, They must be. Truth comes of Itself. If you experience Peace, it is because the Truth has come to you. And you will see the outcome truly regardless of outward appearances, for deception will not be able to prevail against you. And you will recognize the outcome because you are at peace.

Here, again, you see the opposite of the ego’s way of perceiving. For the ego believes the situation brings the experience. The Holy Spirit knows that the situation is as the goal determines it, and is experienced according to the goal. If there is no apparent goal, then the situation will be experienced accordingly.

The Goal of Truth requires faith. Faith is implicit in the acceptance of the Holy Spirit’s Purpose, and this faith is all inclusive. Where the Goal of Truth is set, there faith must be.

The Holy Spirit sees every situation as whole. Its Goal establishes the fact that everyone and everything involved in a situation will play their part in the accomplishment of Spirit’s Goal. This is inevitable. Everyone will succeed in every aspect of the situation because that is the Way Spirit holds the situation. This perception seems to ask for faith beyond you, and beyond what you can give. But this is so only from the viewpoint of the ego, for the ego believes in “solving” conflicts through fragmentation, and does not perceive any situation as whole. Therefore it seeks to split off segments of a situation and deal with them separately. For it has faith in separation, and not in Wholeness.

Confronted with any aspect of a situation that seems to be difficult, the ego will attempt to take this aspect elsewhere, and resolve it there. And it may seem to be successful. Except that this attempt conflicts with Unity, and must obscure the Goal of Truth. And Peace will not be experienced except in fantasy. Truth has not come into the situation because faith in Spirit has been denied, being withheld from where it rightfully belonged. Thus the understanding of the situation that the Goal of Truth would bring is lost. For fantasy solutions bring merely the illusion of success, and the illusion of peace is not the Condition in which the Truth can enter.

The substitutes for aspects of a situation that do not fit the ego’s judgment are the witnesses to lack of faith. They demonstrate the lack of faith that the problem and its Solution must be in the same place if the Solution is real. The problem is always this lack of faith. And it is this you demonstrate when you remove a problem from its context, and place it elsewhere. As a result, you will lose sight of the actual problem. To remove the problem elsewhere is to keep it. For you remove yourself from it, and make it unsolvable. If you have the faith that each problem can be solved by the Holy Spirit just where it arises, the problem will be gone. And the situation will be meaningful to you because the interference in your way of understanding will have been removed.

There is no problem in any situation that faith in Spirit will not solve. Yet any shift in any aspect of the problem toward separation will make solution seem impossible. For if you shift part of a problem elsewhere, the meaning of the problem must be lost, and the solution to the problem is inherent in its meaning.

Is it possible that all your problems have already been solved, outside of time, but that you have removed yourself from the Solution? Yet complete faith must be where something has been completed, and where you see it completed.

Each situation is a relationship, being the convergence of thoughts. If problems in a situation are perceived, it is because the thoughts converging are judged to be in conflict. But if the Goal of the situation is Truth, and Spirit aligns all aspects of the situation to this Goal, then conflict must dissolve as the situation unfolds toward Truth. If conflict is perceived, then, since true will is free of conflict, something other than the will for Truth must also be active in the situation. Minds joined are One, and One with will, and so cannot be in conflict. Therefore wishes, or the idea of bodies which are the ego’s symbol of separation, must have entered.

The thought of bodies except as a means of communication guided by Spirit is the sign of faithlessness, for bodies cannot solve anything. And it is their intrusion into the relationships in a situation – an error in your thoughts about the situation – that then becomes the justification for the lack of faith. You will make this error, but be not at all concerned with that. The error does not matter.

Faithlessness given over to faith will never interfere with Truth. But faithlessness used against Truth will always seem to undermine and overcome faith. If you lack faith in any situation, ask that it be restored where it was lost, and seek not to have it made up to you elsewhere, as if you had been unjustly deprived of it. Only what you have not given can be lacking in any situation.

Simply remember this: the Goal of Holiness was set for your relationship, and therefore for every situation in which you find yourself, but not by you. You did not set It because Holiness cannot be seen except through faith, and your relationship was not holy because your faith in one another was so limited and little. Your faith must grow to meet the Goal that has been set. The Goal’s reality will call forth this faith. For you will see that Peace and faith will come together.

What situation can you be in without faith and remain faithful to each other in the situation? Every situation in which you find yourself is merely a means to meet the Purpose set for your relationship. Perceive it as something else, and you will be lacking faith.

Do not use your lack of faith as a means for anything. When it enters a situation, perceive it calmly, but do not use it. Faithlessness is the servant of illusion, and entirely faithful to its master. Use it and it will carry you straight to illusions. Be tempted not by what it offers you. Its only interference in any situation can be not with the goal, but with the value of the goal to you. Accept not the illusion of peace it offers. Behold its offering, and recognize that it is illusion.

The goal of illusion is as closely tied to faithlessness as faith is to the Goal of Truth. If you lack faith in anyone to fulfill, and perfectly, their part in any situation dedicated in advance to Truth, your dedication will be divided. And so you will have been faithless to your sisters and brothers in the situation, and used your faithlessness against them.

Every relationship must be holy if its holiness goes with it everywhere. As Holiness and faith go hand in hand, so must faith in your relationship go everywhere with it. The Goal’s reality will call forth and accomplish every miracle needed for Its fulfillment. Everything, regardless of whether it appears too small or too enormous, too insignificant or too imposing, too weak or too compelling, will be gently turned to the Use and Purpose of Spirit’s Goal. The Universe will serve It gladly, as It serves the Universe. Your only requirement is not to let your judgment interfere, which would be faithlessness.

The Power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit’s Goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the Infinite that you have no idea how great the Strength is that goes with you. And you can use this Strength in perfect Safety. Yet for all this Strength’s Might, so great that It reaches past the stars and to the eternal Universe that is beyond them, your little faithlessness can make It useless, if you choose to use faithlessness instead.

Just think on this, and learn the cause of your faithlessness: You think you hold against your brother or sister what you believe they have done to you. But what you really blame them for is what you think you did to them. It is not their past but yours you hold against them. And you lack faith in them because of what you believe you were. Yet you are as innocent of what you believed you were as they are of what they believed they were. What never was is causeless, and is not there now to interfere with Truth in any situation.

There is no cause for faithlessness, but there is every cause for faith. That Cause enters any situation that shares Its Purpose. The Light of Truth shines from the center of the situation, and touches everyone and everything to whom the situation’s Purpose calls. It calls to all. Every situation involves your whole relationship, in every aspect, and complete in every part. You can leave nothing of yourself outside it and keep the situation holy. For it shares the Purpose of your whole relationship, and derives its Meaning from It.

Enter each situation with the faith that you would give each other, and you will be faithful to your own relationship. Your faith will call the others in the situation to share your Purpose, as this same Purpose called forth the faith in you. And you will see the means you once employed to lead you to illusions transformed to Means for Truth. Truth calls for faith, and faith makes room for Truth. When the Holy Spirit changed the purpose of your relationship by exchanging Its for yours, the Goal It placed there was extended to every situation you enter, or will ever enter. And every situation was thus made free of the past, for the past would have made it purposeless.

You call for faith because of Spirit, Who walks with you in every situation. You are no longer lacking sense and no longer believe yourself to be alone. For loneliness in the Divine must be a dream. You whose holy relationship shares the Holy Spirit’s Goal are set apart from loneliness, because the Truth has come. Its Call for faith is strong. Use not your faithlessness against It, for It calls you to awakening and to Peace.