“Mind Mint”: “Imagine Forgiveness”

Meditations borrowed from "A Course in Miracles"

PRACTICING FORGIVENESS

ANGER & ATTACK

PAIN

PRACTICING FORGIVENESS

Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive.

Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real. In this one sentence is healing explained.

What could you want, forgiveness cannot give?

Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it.
Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world?

Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you.

You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. In complete forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, you are absolved completely.

The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old.

Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone.
Lift up your eyes and look on one another in innocence born of complete forgiveness of each other's illusions.

Those you do not forgive you fear. And no one reaches love with fear beside him.

Forgiveness always rests upon the one who offers it.

Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be joined with him, and not apart.

Forgiveness is the answer to attack of any kind. So is attack deprived of its effects, and hate is answered in the name of love.

Whom you forgive is given power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto you.
As you give you will receive.

Giving and receiving are the same. Illusions about yourself and the world are one. That is why all forgiveness is a gift to yourself.

Forgiveness is the great need of this world, but that is because it is a world of illusions. Those who forgive are thus releasing themselves from illusions, while those who withhold forgiveness are binding themselves to them.

He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.

Forgiveness is the key to happiness. Here is the answer to your search for peace.

Here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace.

Here are all questions answered; here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.


ANGER & ATTACK

Every loving thought is true.
Everything else is an appeal for healing and help,
regardless of the form it takes.

Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a brother's plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for.

To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless,
to that extent you will perceive attack cannot be justified.

All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty.

Those who attack do not know they are blessed.
They attack because they believe they are deprived.
Give, therefore, of your abundance, and teach your brothers theirs. Do not share their illusions of scarcity, or you will perceive yourself as lacking.

If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself.
You cannot know your brother when you attack him.

You will fear what you attack.
Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack.

Because your attack thoughts will be projected, you will fear attack. And if you fear attack, you must believe that you are not invulnerable. Attack thoughts therefore make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the attack thoughts are.

Anger is never justified. Attack has no foundation.
It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete.

Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this, forgiveness rests, and is but natural.


PAIN

Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth.

Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright.

Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the power to do so. Pain is but the sign you have misunderstood yourself. Do you not see that all your misery comes from the strange belief that you are powerless?

Seek not outside yourself...
For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found.
Look about the world, and see the suffering there.

Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest?
They must await your own release. They stay in chains till you are free. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free.

It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain.
Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression.

No one but yourself affects you.

There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are.

I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.