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Chapter 31: The New Beginning

6. The Justice of Forgiveness Truly Merited

Anger is never justified. Attack has no foundation. It is with these facts that release from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the Real World received in place of dreams of terror. For it is on this true foundation that forgiveness rests, and is only natural.

You are not asked to offer pardon where a forceful response is due and would be justified. For this would mean that you forgive a “sin” by overlooking what is really there. Such would not be true release. For it would assume that by responding in a way that is not justified, your pardon will become the answer to attack that has been made. And thus would pardon be inappropriate by being granted where justice is due.

True release from fear and guilt is always justified, and has a sure foundation. It does not forgive the unforgivable, or overlook a real attack that calls for justice and judgment. Awakening does not rest in being asked to make unnatural responses that are inappropriate to what is real. Instead, it merely asks that you respond appropriately to what is not real, by not perceiving what in reality has not occurred. If release were unjustified, then you would be asked to sacrifice your right for justice when you return forgiveness for attack. But you are merely asked to see forgiveness as the natural – Divine – response to distressful action that rests on error, and thus calls only for help. Forgiveness is the only sane response to this. It keeps your right for the Divine’s Justice from being lost to you, that is, lost to your awareness.

This understanding is the only change that lets the Real World rise to take the place of dreams of terror. Fear cannot arise unless forceful response or attack in reaction to error is believed justified. And if attack had a real foundation, release from fear and guilt could have none. The Real World is achieved when you perceive that the basis of forgiveness is quite real and fully justified. As long as you regard forgiveness as a gift unwarranted, so long must forgiveness uphold the guilt you would “pardon.” Unjustified forgiveness would be attack. And this is all the world can ever give. It sometimes pardons those who “transgress” its laws, but always with belief and awareness that they have transgressed. And so they do not merit the pardons that it gives.

This is the false forgiveness that the world employs to keep the belief in flaw and guilt alive. Recognizing that the Divine is truly just, it is impossible that Its Pardon could be just if flaw and guilt were real, that is, existed in Reality and therefore in Eternity. Thus is fear of the Divine the sure result of perceiving pardon as unmerited. No one who perceives themself as flawed and guilty can avoid the fear of the Divine. But they are saved from this dilemma if they can truly forgive. The mind must conceive of its Creator as it perceives itself. If you can see that your sisters and brothers truly merit release, then you have learned that forgiveness is your right as much as theirs. Nor will you believe that the Divine intends for you a fearful judgment that your sisters and brothers don’t merit. For in Truth you can merit neither more nor less than they.

Forgiveness recognized as truly merited will heal. It gives the miracle its Strength to see beyond illusions. This is how you learn that you must be forgiven as well. There can be no appearance that cannot be seen beyond. For if there were, it would be necessary first that there be some “sin” that stands beyond forgiveness, some illusion beyond Truth. There would have to be an error that is more than a mistake—a special form of error that remains unchangeable, eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be a kind of mistake that had the power to undo Creation, and to make a world that could replace It and destroy the Will of the Divine. Only if this were possible could there be some appearances that could be beyond the miracle, and not be healed by it.

There is no surer proof that suffering is desired than a belief that there are some forms of sickness and joylessness that forgiveness cannot heal. This merely means that you prefer to keep some idols, and are not yet prepared to let them all go. And thus you think that some illusions are real, and are therefore not illusions or appearances at all. Be not deceived about the meaning of a fixed belief that some illusions or appearances are harder to see beyond than others. It always means you think forgiveness must be limited, and thus have you set a goal of partial freedom, and a limited release from guilt for yourself, in the hope that retaining just a little guilt may still offer you something you desire. What could this be except a false forgiveness of yourself, and of everyone who seems apart from you?

It must be true that either the miracle can heal all forms of sickness or it cannot heal at all. Its Purpose cannot be to judge which illusions are real, and which forms and appearances are true. If one appearance must remain apart from healing, then one illusion must be part of Truth. And then you could not escape all guilt, but only some of it. Because of this, you must forgive the Divine’s Children entirely, or you will keep an image of yourself that is not whole, and will remain afraid to see within and find release from every idol there. Awakening rests on the faith that there cannot be some forms of error that you cannot forgive. And so there cannot be any illusions or appearances that have replaced the Truth about the Divine’s Children.

Observe your sisters and brothers with the willingness to see them as they are. And do not keep a part of them outside your willingness that they be healed. To heal is to make whole. And what is whole can have no missing parts that have been kept outside. Forgiveness rests on recognizing this and being glad that there cannot be some forms of sickness that the miracle must lack the power to heal. The Divine’s Children are perfect or they would not be the Divine’s Children. Nor will you know them if you think they do not truly merit complete release from guilt in all its forms and all its consequences. Therefore, if you would know the truth about yourself, think this way of your sisters and brothers:

I thank you, Creator, for your perfect Children, and in their Glory will I see my own.

This is the joyful acknowledgment that there are no forms of illusion that can overcome the Will of the Divine. This is the glad recognition that guilt has not succeeded, by anyone’s wish, to make illusions real. And what is this except a simple statement of the Truth? Perceive your sisters and brothers with this Hope in you, and you will understand that they could not make a mistake that could change the Truth in them.

It is not difficult to see beyond mistakes that have no effects in reality. But what you believe as having power to make an idol of anyone or anything you will not be able to truly release. For idols are graven images, and graven images are signs of death. Could this be your awakener to Life? Is your Creator wrong about Its Children? Or have you been mistaken about them who have been given you to heal, for your healing and awakening and for the world’s?