For some time now I have been using Brother’s suggestions about consciously choosing to have a happy – peaceful – loving day as I awaken in the mornings. My lesson is to find that as I choose for these I can trust my God Self to show me how to have them by guiding / correcting the choices I might make that would conflict with having them. It is a practice of learning to trust that I can turn my day over to guidance and achieve my real goals.
About a week ago I read in ACIM a simple statement that had great implications for me and I have been pondering. It was from chapter 30, section VI, paragraph 5: “Forgiveness recognized as merited will heal.” Letting in the broader meaning of that statement has been my focus ever since. I could feel the significance of this having to do with my resistance to accepting what is “real.” There has always seemed to be another “corner” I needed to turn; another piece to add to what was missing.
This morning I awakened about 2 AM from a silly dream; not a “bad” one, just nonsensical. I thought then how much more I would prefer to have a happy dream and consciously chose to “be with” Brother, remembering our times together. I awakened again about dawn filled with a nearly euphoric sense of peace and happiness. The thought that filled my mind was: Everything you have been looking for, you already have.
As I lay there, only a little awake, the thought expanded. There is nothing more to do. You know the truth. Simply accept it. In that moment I did know the truth. There was nothing missing in me. I was already healed and whole! And I was ecstatically happy. I also saw the real role that forgiveness plays for us. Forgiveness is the way I choose to be a witness to what is real. It is the way I practice “seeing differently;” the way I learn to recognize what is real as I let the experience of using it re-create my world.
I have heard all these words before, but they now I felt their truth and they filled my mind with utter joy. Everything you have ever looked for you already have. In that moment I was free of all ideas of sin and guilt and I could recognized that I was loved by everyone and there was no one I did not love completely. And in this feeling they were a part of me. It is this awareness of freely loving and being loved without any seeming “reason” or justification that connects us because it is universal. Everyone feels exactly as I do.
This is the meaning of “oneness.” It is being joined with a force that is completely compelling simply because nobody wants anything else.
It is true. Nothing is wrong or bad, painful or lacking aside from the story we are telling. It is a movie made up about characters that exists only in the ego’s perception. I can now feel another part of me that stands aside from the story, unchanged, unaffected in any way by whatever happens in it. I am free the moment I choose to let go of my story of being unloved.
The words keep coming back. You are already healed. There is nothing broken or needing to be fixed. You cannot be unloved. I can see now that forgiveness of all those things and people I had thought of as “broken” is the way I would learn to acknowledge that nothing real has happened – nothing has changed the essential me that has seemed lost in the story. Forgiveness truly will remove the blocks to the awareness of Loves Presence.
What we must do is so very simple. We must just let go of what is not true. There is nothing broken that we need to fix. There is no world we need to save. There is just a thought that there is something wrong with us that we must acknowledge is not true and let it go. The story we tell seems so real because it is our story. And it has the strength of our telling it a thousand times a day. It will seem to have a life of its own until we claim it by choosing to tell the forgiveness story.
Forgiveness seen as justified will heal. When I see something as healed and whole I will recognize what is true and truth will replace illusion in my world. Jesus does not ask that we tell someone how to become the Christ. He says simply, “See the Christ in your brother.” Bring your recognition of his truth to our consciousness so that we all can share the awareness that we are now healed because nothing has ever happened that can affect our reality. This is the, “journey without distance from the place we have never left.” Not judging what is not real will release us from all the effects of guilt. This is how we will bring the forgiven, real world into our consciousness.