Day 46

Today's Lesson:

God is the Love in which I forgive.

Today's lesson is the first mention of the concept of forgiveness the way the Course defines it, which is quite different from our conventional definition.

According to the Glossary of Terms from A Course in Miracles, forgiveness in the conventional sense is:

Giving up your resentment towards another and your right to punish him, even though you keep the perception that he sinned against you and that you are justified in resenting and punishing him. According to the Course, this forgiveness cannot forgive, for it affirms that the other sinned and thus is worthy of condemnation (yours and his own). It also affirms that you are holier than he, because he sinned and you forgave.

According to ACIM:

Giving up your false perception that another sinned against you and that you are justified in resenting and punishing him. Releasing this perception automatically releases your resentment and desire to punish. Releasing another not from what he did, but from "what he did not do," from your misinterpretation of what he did. This can forgive, for it frees your mind of resentment and releases the other from the accusation of sin and guilt. The rationale behind forgiveness is that sin is now real. It is a wrong perception of attack. Attack has no power to do real harm, because what is real cannot be harmed or changed in any way.... Forgiveness is salvation.

Today's idea says that there must be condemnation before forgiveness is necessary. Those who forgive release themselves from illusions, while those who withhold forgiveness are binding themselves to illusions. As we condemn only ourselves, we forgive only ourselves. Fear condemns and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God.

Again today we are to think about today's lesson for three five-minute periods. If we are doing the exercises well we should have no difficulty in finding a number of people we have not forgiven. The lesson says that it is a safe rule that anyone we do not like is a suitable subject. Mention each one by name and say:

God is the Love in which I forgive you, [name].

The purpose of these practice periods is to put us in a position to forgive ourselves. After we have applied the idea to all those who have come into our minds, we are to tell ourselves:

God is the Love in which I forgive myself.

Miracles I'm noticing:

This lesson and the entire concept of forgiveness have been really difficult for me to grasp throughout my three-year study because I'm so conditioned to think of forgiveness in the conventional sense, where I forgive you because I'm somehow better than you or I'm right and you're wrong, or something like that. But I do understand that by not forgiving someone else - especially when I think about what the Course says about forgiving them for what they did not do (because it's all in my mind anyway) - I can see how by holding on to resentments, I keep them with me and I'm the one who is hurt by my own resentment. It should stand to reason, then, that I would be freed from those resentments by forgiving - both the other person and myself.

I'm thinking about what I heard Michael Beckwith say on the Oprah show Thursday during the segment about The Secret. He said forgiving is simply thinking that you are grateful to God "for giving" you this experience because there is a lesson in every experience. I like that.

I'm also thinking about the Amish school shooting that happened in October of 2006. Here is a link to an article about the forgiveness the Amish community immediately showed. A quote from the article says it all: "The hurt is very great, but they don't balance the hurt with hate."

That story is another great example of the good that can come from every tragedy. If we believe that everything happens for a reason, perhaps the reason in this tragedy is to show us the amazing power of forgiveness. When we can thank God "for giving" us even tragedies, we release all the anger and hostility we might otherwise hold on to.

Think about what happens when we hold on to resentments. Jack Canfield said on the Oprah show on Thursday that if a woman holds on to resentment about a "failed" marriage, for example, she will never be able to be in another relationship because a potential partner will recognize that she is still in that old relationship by keeping her attention focused on her resentment and hostility.

Today I will practice forgiving my resentments so that I can make room to forgive myself.