[acimlessons_list] Review IV, Lesson 141 - May 21

[Sue Roth]

Review IV, Lesson 141  - May 21


"My mind holds only what I think with God."

"Forgiveness is the key to happiness."

"Forgiveness offers everything I want."


PRACTICE SUMMARY

See Practice Instructions for Review IV

COMMENTARY

Forgiveness really does offer us everything we want, and without true
forgiveness, happiness just isn't possible. We may not consciously and
completely believe this as yet, but our right mind believes it, and always
has. Forgiveness operates not just on what I think the world did to me (in
reality it did nothing to me), but also on what it <did not> do that I
wanted it to. The older one gets, the more disillusioned one becomes about
the world. We speak of people becoming "world-weary" and cynical as they
age, because despite the high hopes we had when younger, despite the
brilliant promises the world seemed to make to us, it disappointed us. It
did not make us happy. We discover that the world isn't fair, that good
people don't always succeed, that we don't always get what we want. And even
when we do, it isn't as good as we had hoped.

Forgiveness involves recognizing that we are the ones who laid these
expectations on the world, and we are the ones who made it to disappoint us.
We asked the impossible; nothing in this world will ever satisfy us or make
us happy. Happiness is to be found in our native state and there alone, that
is, in union with God and with the Sonship. To forgive the world means to
stop begrudging its imperfections. We cannot blame the world for our pain,
nor can we blame it for its failure to make us happy. We cannot blame it at
all. When at last our teeth unclench, our fists relax, and our breath eases
as we release these deep-seated grievances, what we discover is our own
inherent happiness, there all along, but masked by our unforgiveness.