[acimlessons_list] Lesson 247 - September 4

[Sue Carrier Roth]

Lesson 247 * September 4

"WITHOUT FORGIVENESS I WILL STILL BE BLIND."

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS

See complete instructions in a separate document. A short summary:

* READ the commentary paragraph slowly and personally.

* PRAY the prayer, perhaps several times.

* MORNING AND EVENING: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open Mind
Meditation.

* HOURLY REMEMBRANCE: Repeat the idea and then spend a quiet moment in
meditation.

* FREQUENT REMINDERS: Repeat the idea often within each hour.

* RESPONSE TO TEMPTATION: Repeat the idea whenever upset, to restore peace.

* READ THE "WHAT IS" SECTION slowly and thoughtfully once during the day.

Practice suggestion: Choose someone in your life whom you have been judging
or failing to appreciate, and say to this person:

<Without forgiving you, [name], I will still be blind.

Brother, come and let me look on you with my now open eyes.

Your loveliness reflects my own.

Your sinlessness is mine.

You stand forgiven, and I stand with you>.

COMMENTARY

All unforgiveness is, in reality, of myself. Today I am seeing a more subtle
form of unforgiveness. Perhaps I am willing to admit that my unloving or
unjoyful feeling in the present is due to my own wanting and choosing <in
the past>. If I am truly looking at my ego without judgment, though, I will
be able to admit that I am feeling loveless or joyless now because I am
choosing those feelings <now>, in the present. If I cannot do that, I am
still listening to the voice of guilt.

For a brief instant, sin and Atonement must lie on the altar together. The
guilt must be brought to the present to be healed.

If I avoid seeing my identification with ego in the present, if I avoid
seeing my guilt in the present, then I am blinding myself. Avoiding seeing
the ego in the present means, very simply--due to the perfect power of my
mind--that I <never see it> in the present. I stumble through life blind to
my ego in the present moment. I am always caught off guard. Again and again
the ego trips me up, and I stumble and fall, saying stupidly, "Oh! That must
have been my ego!"

In order to say "yes" to God, I must recognize that I am, right now, saying
"no." "'Yes' must mean 'not no'" (T-21.VII.12:4). It isn't so much that I
need to say "yes" as I need to notice I'm saying "no." When I notice that
fact, I will stop. And when my "no" stops, the peace that was always there
becomes conscious. To say "no" to the "no," to deny the denial, is the way
we say "yes." But I can't say "no" to the "no" until I admit I'm saying "no"
in the first place!

One piece of unerring evidence that I have not owned my guilt is that I will
still be projecting it. I will still be making excuses for myself, talking
about my weakness, feeling that I'll "never make it." Or I'll be caught up
in wanting others to admit their own responsibility for the situation in the
relationship. If someone tries to get me to see my responsibility for
things, I'll feel attacked, even if it is done in true love. I will be
saying things like "I didn't realize what I was doing," or "I wasn't aware
of attacking you at the time." I will still feel that, while I may have
acted from my ego, so did you--and you'd damn well better admit it.

"I was not aware" or "I didn't realize what I was doing" is not an excuse!
If I was not aware, there is only one reason--I was choosing to be not
aware. I have formed a habit of refusing to see my guilt in the present, and
so, in each present moment, I live in unawareness of my ego thoughts.

The terror of looking at the ego now is so great that the instant I begin to
become aware I want to project my ego into the past, to push it away and
deny that I am now identified with it. But healing occurs only in the
present. The horror of the ego, the desire to separate myself and to murder
my brother must be seen <now> in order to be healed. When I can allow that,
the healing is instant. Brought into the present, guilt encounters the Holy
Spirit and Atonement, for that is the only place Atonement lives, and that
is all that lives in the present. The guilt is here and then gone, flashing
out of existence. Guilt cannot exist in the presence of Atonement, any more
than darkness can exist in the light.

If I am seeing anything but total innocence in my brothers, I am hiding
guilt in myself. There is no guilt but my own. And when I see that, there is
no guilt at all.

What Is the World?

PART 7: W-PII.3.4:1-2

Though our sight was made to lead away from truth, "it can be redirected"
(4:1). The ego's purpose for perception can be replaced with a new purpose,
that of the Holy Spirit. "Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has
another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees
another purpose in them" (W-pI.64.2:2). "The Holy Spirit teaches you to use
what the ego has made, to teach the opposite of what the ego has 'learned'"
(T-7.IV.3:3). So the Holy Spirit teaches us to use our eyes and ears not to
see separation and the absence of God, but to see oneness and His Presence
in everything.

Sounds become the call for God, and all perception can be given a new
purpose by the One Whom God appointed Savior to the world. (4:2)

The preceding discussion might make us think that, since our eyes were made
to see error, they are now useless. But the Holy Spirit will use everything
the ego has made. He uses our bodies as communication devices. He uses our
special relationships to teach us forgiveness and love and union. He uses
our learning ability (made to learn error) to teach us the truth. He uses
the whole world as a classroom of forgiveness and a mirror of Heaven. There
is nothing the ego has done that cannot be used by the Holy Spirit. So in
the end, there is no loss whatsoever, because all the ego's energies have
been "recycled" by the Holy Spirit for His own purposes.