LESSON ONE HUNDRED-THIRTY-FOUR

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: The Course text is in bold face. The Guidance is in normal type In His Guidance, He has asked Me to capitalize the pronouns You and We as an acknowledgement of the Divinity of All of Us, an acknowledgement of Equality, an expression of His Love and respect for You. When You see the word ‘YOU’ capitalized in the Guidance, know that He is not just speaking to YOU, He is honoring YOU.

L e s s o n  134

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

What is forgiveness really, but the expression of a heart devoted to loving Your Brothers instead of hating them.  For to the ego mindset Others are enemy to number one.

Remember My dictum of 2000 years ago: Love God with all Your heart, mind, might, and soul, and Your Neighbour as Yourself.  It was ‘Greek’ to most of the Jews and ‘Greek’ to most of the Greeks.  (Yes, that was for Bill.)₁

Yet for those who understood and followed it (mostly women), the earth turned into Heaven.  Their Light shined brightly as They regularly healed the sick and raised the dead.

¹ Let us review the meaning of “forgive,” for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something which entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a whim.

For the ego understands not forgiveness.  Surely it is Greek to the ego.  Have You not heard those who feel themselves to be religious speak of ‘righteous anger’; an oxymoron if I ever heard one.  Forgiveness is most surely synonym to sacrifice.

To the ego sacrifice means give up something really wanted.  In this case, the pleasure and self-righteousness of grievance.

The Holy Spirit takes sacrifice quite literally, in its meaning of a sacred doing.  And so S/He sees forgiveness as a Holy Gift.  For what does True forgiveness give Your Brother, but His Innocence He thought that He’d lost forever.

Could there be a greater gift that Your Real Self that I am here giving back to You?

And to the ego, this is an outrageous price to have to pay for salvation.

² This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true.

I feel You laughing as You think that forgiving is easy compared to the “it never happened” on which True forgiveness rests, as You forgive a Brother for some thing He never did.

It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions.

Therefore, forgiveness is only needed for those things that never really happened!

Truth is God’s creation, and to pardon this is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. Does this need pardon? How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

What does this mean vis a vis Your erring Brother but that, God Be-ing Eternal Good, then so must be Your erring Brother.

³ The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind as you regard yourself.

Clinging to the ‘reality’ of ‘sin’, You have imprisoned both Yourself and Your erring Brother. What is true of one Son must be, and is, true of every Other.

⁴ Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong, the loathsome as the good.

Until You understand the Innocence of All the Universe, You cannot understand forgiveness.

⁵ Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed,denied, or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt can not be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned-first by themselves for what they think they did and once again by those who pardon them.

And worst of all, We’re still stuck in the dream.

⁶ It is sin’s unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions but collects them lightly with a little laugh and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.

How can You see it this way?  By realizing that this is but a dream!  And dreams are not Reality but sleeping fantasy of an overactive ego imagination.

⁷ Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.”

This is but a dream.  This is but a dream.

⁸ The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies, the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which had been blocked by dreams of guilt.

This is but a dream.

⁹ Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself. There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for this is self-deception. Ask instead, “Should I accuse myself of doing this?”

This question to Yourself is but another way to see the pain that is caused by unreality.  It is the basis of My ancient words: “Do unto Others …”

This is but a dream.

¹⁰ Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms which render choosing meaningful and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be and as it is in truth. It is but lies which would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth, between the world you see and that which lies beyond, between the hell of guilt and Heaven’s gate.

There is that Holy word:Innocence, a Gift to give to All Our Holy Brothers.

¹¹ Across this bridge, as powerful as Love Which laid Its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.

This is but a dream.  Safety is found so easily when You will to Awaken.

¹² He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead, a star is left behind to point the way to those who follow him.

Hear His happy voice a-singing “merrily” THIS IS BUT A DREAM.  Row, row, row Your boat, joyfully up stream!

¹³ Forgiveness must be practiced, for the world cannot perceive its meaning nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows nor the Thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.

Hear Us sing to You: This is but a dream!

¹⁴Today we practice true forgiveness that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lightening up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the reality we share with them.

¹⁵ That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:

¹⁶ Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Let this question rest with You as well.  Would You not freely give Love to a Brother?

What holds You back but insane grievances?  Oh yes, they are insane, for You are the Living Presence of God’s Love, here to bless.

¹⁷ Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his “sins,” as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his “offenses” but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself “Would I condemn myself for doing this?”

Okay!  So You say You would and do, and this is true.  Yet do You not want to be forgiven? …  S/He too.

I rest My case, and I’m glad You’re smiling!  Your question is blessing many Others.  Thank You for asking.  You ALL might as well, for I know Your thoughts.  Why let them fester?  Bring them up and out so they may be healed.

¹⁸ Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother which were laid upon yourself.

Wake up from the dream!  You’re only dreaming.

Forgive Yourself, and forgive Your Brother.

¹⁹ Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will be so many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:

²⁰ Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Should I accuse myself of doing this?
I will not lay this chain upon myself.

Nor on Another.

²¹ In everything you do, remember this:

²² No one is crucified alone, and yet
No one can enter Heaven by himself.

What does this mean besides that this is a dream?  For as You think You go about Your day with endless lists of things You have to do, You are but sleeping now in Heaven, dreaming on through endless millennia.  It’s time to Waken.

*~*~*~*~*

¹ Bill Thetford, who loves puns. (present tense because Bill is still present for Our Elder Brother.)

[Thank you Dear Brother]

*Sun~Rose is the scribe of the recently published book, “YOU ARE LOVED AND SAFE: PREP NOTES FOR EXPERIENCING GOD’S LOVE“, Jesus’ Guidance on the Miracle Principles

She is also author of, “RADIANT LIFE: RAW FOOD AND THE PRESENCE OF LOVE”

BOTH now available on amazon.com