Search in this category
SearchWhy do I feel a sense of loss when I forgive a brother, and why is the Course not working for me?
Question:
I appear to be in a situation that is calling for forgiveness, but despite everything I try, nothing seems to bring peace. I wanted a special relationship with a particular person, and that need has not been met. Consequently, I “punish” them by blatantly “ignoring” them. Intellectually, I can see that ultimately this other person has nothing to do with my problem, but the ego wants to make this person know that they have hurt me. The thing is, my need to ignore this person ALWAYS comes back because the cycle continues, even making me angry with my friends for befriending him.
I'm really becoming aware that deep down, I don't want to forgive this person, I want to hate them. I feel like I am in an impossible situation where I cannot see any outcome that will satisfy me COMPLETELY and that's the scariest thing of all, because I can see only despair. Yet despite my desire for the special relationship, I still want enlightenment. I want to understand completely, to see the truth.
Answer:
I am grateful that you could write out everything that is going on in your mind. And I know it is helpful to get in touch with the full extent of the ego's hatred before one can let it go. It is very necessary to allow these feelings to arise in awareness before you will be willing to let the hatred go forever. The hatred still seems specific and still has a target in the world, yet as the deepening continues it will seem more and more nonspecific. The ego's anger is actually at God for not granting reality to the time-space cosmos, but this hatred of God is kept out of awareness. The belief in competition with God mentioned in Lesson 13 is usually not allowed into awareness, for it is too threatening to keep in awareness. So the ego uses the unreturned "love" of the special relationship to attempt to justify the anger until the deeper hatred at God and fear of God is exposed. But in looking deeper, the "original error" is uncovered and the ineffectiveness of the special relationship becomes acute in awareness.
Give your mind the permission to let the seeming beast rear its head. You will go past these feelings and be free of them. Simply do not attempt to protect or project them, and they will dissolve. I am joined with you in going through the darkness to the Light within. We cannot fail.
Love,
David
Will the time period in which we hold on to guilt get shorter as we practice?
Question:
We are so used to carrying guilt and fear. Will that time period of carrying the load get shorter as we practice?
Answer:
Yes, let's address this carefully, the idea of holding on to guilt, clinging to it very closely. The mind that believes in the ego is attracted to guilt, because the ego is guilt. There are aspects of the mind that the ego does not want to come into awareness, or the game will be over. That is why I encourage so many questions. The ego does not want certain questions to even be raised, for the answer will be apparent as soon as the question is asked. Asking questions was my path to God. I did not have a lot of support for it in the world, but Jesus says to learn this Course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden, or it will obscure your learning. So let's look at an example of this. God is pure oneness. The ego is the belief in opposites. The ego believes that there is an opposite to love. That is why this is a world of duality and opposites. The world reflects the ego belief. The ego teaches the sleeping mind that there is a difference between pleasure and pain, and everyone who walks this world believes they can tell the difference between pleasure and pain.
Further, this mind believes that pleasure is to be pursued, and pain is to be avoided. It spends great efforts and energy at pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. All education of this world is in some way based on this premise. Now you see the convincing job that the Holy Spirit has, to convince your mind that pleasure and pain are the same. On the surface this seems crazy, but Jesus gives us the reason why they are the same: What serves a common purpose is the same. Pleasure and pain both reinforce the reality of the body and are a denial of the spirit. This is an example of an idea the ego never wants to reach awareness, because once you see it for what it is, you will see that all real pleasure, which I will call joy, comes from doing God's will. It is really very simple. As you experience more miracles, the joy of your heart bubbles up. It attracts you, it draws you to experience more miracles! The joy is coming from within your own heart. It is not coming from getting the job that you want. It is not coming from getting the soul-mate that you want. It is not coming from moving to the tropical islands, and many, many more illusions. The joy comes from your purpose. That is your direct connection with God. By listening to the Holy Spirit, you will experience joy. And the possibility of pain and pleasure fades away from your consciousness.
Perception is selective. Just as you can choose to listen to someone at a party, or listen to a favorite song being played by the band, or focus on how humid the room is, you can choose to aim your mind to the Holy Spirit. This is where the joy comes. There is no sacrifice!
The pleasures of this world are fleeting, transitory. If you look at this honestly, you will see that this is so. The pleasure of a delicious food, a pleasant scene, the pleasure of sexual orgasm, all have time limits. They start and they stop. They do not offer lasting joy. They are not really gifts, because they are offerings of the ego, and the ego wants you dead, which means remaining in amnesia about your Christ Self. So this relates to your question about why we hold onto things. The judgments of the world make some images attractive and the mind believes that they are valuable and does not want to let them go. It is still convinced that they are real, and therefore values outcomes that will bring about the things it still wants. They are like "fool's gold". They look very beautiful, but when you touch them or embrace them, they dissolve away, because they do not last.
Love,
David
I get angry at people for no reason. Please help.
Question:
This morning I woke up and it seemed all Light was gone. I was not awake and in the Light. A half hour ago I flipped out on my husband for no good reason. I seem to have lost myself. Most of the time now, I am free, but I still go through times where I lose it all again to the ego. Can you tell me how to hold on to the Light?
Answer:
You are in my thoughts and prayers. You have done nothing wrong, and the darkness is arising in consciousness that it may be released forever. The Light is pushing everything unlike ItSelf up into awareness. It will seem more and more as if there is no specific referent or external cause for the anger, for it is all self-hatred. This is the way it works. The full extent of self-hatred must be looked upon and exposed before it can be released entirely. Be glad that what had been submerged and repressed is given permission to resurface for release. You are doing nothing to cause the darkness—it is just time for it to come up because of your willingness not to protect or hide the darkness any longer. The temptation to project can seem intense at times, yet remember that nothing is ever held against your Perfect Innocence and the form just seems to look the way it seems to look. Call me if you want to talk and know that I am always joined with you in seeing beyond the darkness.
Love & Blessings,
David
What is the difference between the Course and traditional psychology?
Question:
How do you see the difference between "A Course in Miracles" and traditional psychology?
Answer:
Traditional psychology offers a study of the mind. It also has many hypotheses and theories about human behavior and defense mechanisms of the mind.
"A Course in Miracles" is written from an awakened mind. It is like a road map out of the guilt of this world. It uses the terminology of Christianity, psychology and education, but has very different meanings for many of the words. For example, ”salvation" is more than a belief in Jesus and his death on the cross. It involves accepting the correction in the mind to the belief in separation from God. This requires a careful questioning of the ego and loosening the mind from all ego beliefs.
Psychology could be described as the study of the problem. "A Course in Miracles" provides the way to the correction. It is truly a teaching in forgiveness. The Course teaches that forgiveness is for your own misperception. It releases the grievance in your heart and allows you to see that nothing was done to you apart from your own wish and that you are willing now to release that wish.
Question:
Aren't we all conditioned to see things in a certain way because of the culture we grow up in?
Answer:
Yes, I found that to be true. In college I studied many different cultures and saw that there are many different cultural scripts - conditioning - and so I began to wonder what my own script was. It is kind of like a fish swimming in a fishbowl, coming up to the edge of the glass and peering out, wondering what is outside this glass. This is how I saw my own mind. So for maybe six years in college I began to question everything that I believed. I began to open my mind and not assume that I knew what was happening. For me this was a difficult time period because many people around me in my own culture were telling me, “David, you are wasting your time. Pick your part and play your part like everyone else! You will grow old and you will die like everyone else.” That was not good enough for me. I felt there had to be more than that.
Love,
David
To get to this state of Happiness, did you experience much resistance?
Question:
To get to such a happy, peaceful state of mind, did you experience resistance along the way?
Answer:
Yes, much resistance, many tears. Much darkness had to come up. It took many miracles to convince me that it was okay to trust God. The journey into the mind has very intense emotions, and at times it can feel like your world is falling apart. It's just that, being invested into this world, the mind is upside down, and now the Spirit is turning the mind right side up, toward the Light. The only way to have a peaceful world is to be peaceful for yourself. It is totally an inside job.
Love,
David
If it's all my dream, can I then control it?
Question:
What I want to know is this: if everything I think I perceive is really in my mind, can I then control what I see or control what I want or don't want in this so-called life? Wouldn't I prefer to be a millionaire and have beautiful things around me? Couldn't I just think it so? I know this may sound silly, but I have "made" things happen, by thinking it so. And then I wonder if this is what Jesus in ACIM refers to as "magic." All that matters is to awaken. But in the meantime, I feel like I would like some of the so-called good things in life, while I am waking up, don't ya know the feeling?
Also, what about idols? My two daughters and loved ones, say, are they just idols? Are they not real? Or are their bodies not real and they have a spirit that is real, and we are all one mind or one spirit? I will say I am a miracle, because the Holy Spirit through ACIM saved me from a life of hell. I was a so-called "agoraphobic," and now I am unlimited in what I can do. I so want the Truth, I really do. Thanks.
Answer:
Thanks for taking the opportunity to write. The script is written and the perceived world is the past, so it is impossible to change what is already gone. The dreamer of the dream (in complete forgiveness) is an Observer or Witness, looking calmly on the past from a Point of Clarity. In Awakening there is the realization that one can control the direction of one's thinking (aligning with Spirit instead of ego) and that the "lens" with which the world is viewed and the way one feels is a direct result of this choice. In short, the mind always chooses its state of mind and its perception and there are no exceptions. As you sow so shall you reap means that giving and receiving are the same, and the mind always gets what it wants. Prayers are always answered and there are no exceptions to how the mind operates. Prayer is also continuous. Inevitably it becomes apparent that only a single desire or a single, unified prayer for peace will offer a peaceful perception of the world. When desire seems splintered the mind has chosen to be unaware of the peace that is ever present.
I will address your questions one by one. You wrote: "...if everything I think I perceive is really in my mind, can I then control what I see or control what I want or don't want in this life. Wouldn't I prefer to be a millionaire? And have beautiful things around me?" Since you still believe in the ego, Awakening seems to you to be a process. In this context one has the seeming choice or control to perceive with the Holy Spirit or with the ego. Therefore what you see is determined by which lens you have chosen to look through, just as your state of mind is also determined by which lens you have chosen to look through. Here is the key point: truly everything you seem to believe, think, feel, and perceive is determined by what you want or desire. What you desire or want or value is on the altar or at the core of everything you ponder and every question you ask. Each moment you decide if you would forgive and accept your Self as the Christ, or ask for something else to prefer instead, to find salvation in a world of form. It is really this simple, though the ego would attempt to hide this simple choice for Atonement with layers and layers of seeming complexity. To value Awakening is to desire that Thine Eye be Single (the Holy Spirit's Perspective of the world) and to release the desires that "thine eye be splintered" (the ego's distorted perspective of the world).
In knowing our Self as the Christ, a million dollars is the same as a penny and everything we perceive carries the beauty of the Holy Spirit's Perspective. There is a Point beyond the judgments of beautiful or ugly, like or dislike, pleasure or pain, comfort and discomfort. There is a Perspective that sees all illusions as one illusion: the insane wish for death. As the healed Perspective dawns in awareness, the ego's attraction for guilt, pain, and death are exposed as meaningless pursuits after nothing of true value. What can money buy for a Still Mind and Tranquil Heart? And what are beautiful things if an opposite to beauty can soon arise again in awareness to take their place? Peace and non-judgment go together. What are preferences but judgments by the ego as to what reality must be? Reality is in the Mind of God and rests in a Stillness forever beyond the possibility of duality or judgment.
You wrote: "Couldn't I just think it so? I know this may sound silly, but I have "made" things happen, by thinking it so. And then I wonder if this is what Jesus in the CIM refers to as 'magic.'" Consciousness is the domain or field of the ego. Consciousness (split mind) seemed to come into existence with the belief in separation from God, from Oneness. Arranging the contents of consciousness is indeed magic, for what could it truly mean to arrange or rearrange illusions? The sleeping mind may believe that it can or cannot make things happen with the power of thinking, yet all these thoughts of past and future and form are the same: unreal. God knows not form. God creates the eternal, and Christ is an eternal Idea in the Mind of God. Christ creates the eternal as well. Creation is eternal extension. Thought-forms arranged and sequenced in a linear way are not our real thoughts, which are the thoughts aligned with God. The ego is the belief in separation from Creation, from Oneness. The ego makes and projects as an apparent substitution for creation and extension. Yet since the ego is nothing, its projected thought forms are nothing. This is why "A Course in Miracles" can be summed up so simply in the saying: "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."
You wrote: "All that matters is to awaken. But in the meantime, I feel like I would like some of the so called good things in life, while I am waking up, don't ya know the feeling?" I have never felt so happy as I feel in this moment. Through miracles the Holy Spirit reveals the Perspective of inner Glee and Joy that goes on and on and on and on! The past was the pursuit of the so-called "good things in life,” yet this past pursuit never yielded a lasting happiness. Everything that seemed to be acquired or possessed or even experienced in a sensual way was temporary and fleeting. Thought forms seemed to come and go, arrange and rearrange, alter and change, and persist as separate things until I became aware of their unreality. In seeing the unreality of the make-believe ego identity, I realize everything I am and have comes from God. I experience the peaceful present moment—easy, joyful, natural, and ever new. Being everything, I have everything. Wanting nothing, there is literally "no thing" to want. This might be called a State of desirelessness or a State of single desire. In fulfillment there is no lack, and what is Enlightenment but completion in God?
You wrote: "Also what about idols? My two daughters and loved ones, are they just idols? Are they not real? Or are their bodies not real and they have a spirit that is real and we are all one mind or one spirit?" It is the Spirit or One Divine Mind beyond the veil of time-space which is everlasting. And what is an idol but anything that could be "lost?" Love is forever. The things of time and space will pass away in the Eternal Present. Before time was or seemed to be, I Am. Whole perception is the Perspective of the Holy Spirit, Which includes the whole tapestry of the cosmos. Nothing is excluded or taken away in the Perspective the Holy Spirit offers. Nothing is ever lost. When you see loved ones and everyone and everything as IN mind and nothing apart FROM mind, you are the dreamer of the dream. The dreamer is never at the mercy of what is being dreamed, therefore, because the lucid or waking dream is nonjudgmental dreaming. Dream softly of a sinless world, for without judgment the world is a reflection of Divine Innocence. Everything and everyone is welcomed in our Gaze, for our Gaze shares the Purpose of the Holy Spirit and Jesus.
You are indeed a Living Miracle because of our Source. God creates only Perfection, and You are That. You have always BEEN Perfect. It is impossible to improve upon Perfection. Happiness is God's Will for Christ. Christ could never be content with idols, little things which seem to offer more of something but offer nothing real and true. The belief in lack seeks idols to ease the pain of littleness, yet wholeness recognizes that completion rests in God Alone, in God All-One. The ego uses the false goal of "more" as bait to spin the illusory wheel of time. Salvation is immediate and God Wills Present Happiness. It will never take time to recognize and remember Who I already Am. The past is gone. The future but imagined. These concerns are ego defenses against the Eternal Present. The gap of time believed to exist between now and the future is to be forgiven or released, for it is not true. What time but now can Truth be known? God asks no sacrifice, yet to believe that Enlightenment is in the future is the attempt to deny the Power and Glory of Now. The "future" IS the belief in sacrifice, for sacrifice would attempt to teach that you are not yet what You already are. Yet the ego and time are literally lessons that can never be learned, for illusions are not true. Why attempt to learn something that can never BE learned? It is much easier to unlearn the false and forgive than it is to attempt the impossible. The Holy Spirit offers forgiveness freely, and accepting Atonement (or Correction) is the easiest experience that relates to this world. Nothing else matters, for there literally IS nothing else.
I Love You forever and ever!
David
What does ACIM mean by the term "dissociating"?
Question:
I had an appointment with my psychiatrist today. Halfway through our visit he said, ”I want you to know that your improvement is remarkable. You are much more peaceful and at ease, much more confident and seem to be very much happier. So I just want you to know that whatever interaction you had with the visiting Teacher (you, David) is very obvious, very noticeable, and very beneficial."
Quick question:
The Text keeps using the word "dissociating"—what does that word mean, particularly in the Text's usage?
Answer:
Thanks for this shining witness to the Power of Love. As for your question, dissociation is the attempt to forget love. It is an attempt to keep love and fear apart, for if they are brought together only love remains. This world was the attempt to believe in BOTH love and fear by dissociating them and keeping them both. Healing is bringing darkness to Light or fear to Love, for they only seem to co-exist when they have been dissociated or kept apart.
Here's some quotes from ACIM that clarify this:
"Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget. What has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation is an attack on truth. You are fearful you have forgotten. And you have replaced your knowledge by an awareness of dreams because you are afraid of your dissociation, not of what you have dissociated. When what you have dissociated is accepted, it ceases to be fearful.
Yet to give up the dissociation of reality brings more than merely lack of fear. In this decision lie joy and peace and the glory of creation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your willingness to remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of yourself for you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly everything that would stand in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory. His Voice will tell you that you are part of Him when you are willing to remember Him and know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay your remembering of Him, for in this remembering is the knowledge of yourself.
To remember is merely to restore to your mind what is already there." (T-10.II.1-2)
"Our emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to what you do. You will realize that salvation must come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation is. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible. But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their separation seems to keep them both alive and equal in their reality. Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of them. You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go, because the other is seen in the same place." (T-14.VII.4)
Love & Blessings,
David
Should I share my Joy and all that's unfolding for me spiritually with my old friends who may not understand?
Question:
I am writing to share an experience I had. I told a few people about my idea for my trip to see you, including my best friend from childhood. She thought I had lost my mind. I thought back to our phone conversation and remembered that when you do some things that are based in Spirit, of course it seems illogical to the physical world. Her response didn't send me off into fear; I felt very sure and confident in what I said to her. I also expressed to her that the purpose of the trip wasn't the destination but the process by which I get there. I guess that when you fully committed to your path, people thought you were mad too! I shared my enthusiasm with my friends because I think this is a wonderful moment in my life and I feel so happy and blissful about my spiritual freedom. Now I wonder if I should have kept it under wraps. Thanks for listening. Any advice you can give me would be gratefully appreciated.
Answer:
As for your best friend from childhood and those that have been close friends, many will not understand the direction the Spirit is leading you in. Remember my metaphor of the deck of cards I shared over the phone. As you let the Spirit "deal," the witnesses that show up in your experience will reflect your new Purpose. You will seem to be a wayshower to those who cling to the thinking of the world.
Your mind is loosening from what it believed about time, including the past and thus everything of the world. In ACIM Lesson 76, Christ teaches "I am under no laws but God's," and friendship is listed as one of the ego's make-believe laws. This undoing of the ego can seem a bit disorienting when it comes to friendships and associations. The mind loosens from loving in a special way, and opens to Loving as God Loves, in a Universal Way.
Question:
I understand… I feel that is true. My love has grown in a way I couldn't have imagined and I know it will continue to deepen and expand. As far as friendships I see the truth in what you are saying. I don't try to hold on to the idea that everyone is going to accept or understand the path that I am on. It is solely for the purpose of my internal awakening, and I know that, looking from the outside, people are not going to understand because it is not their personal experience. That is fine. The reactions of the world won't influence my decision because I know I am led by the Spirit within and I have made an eternal commitment.
Answer:
Yes, and it all comes back to the clearing and purification of one's own perception. People act out the wishes of the mind, as if they are external to the mind. Those who act out doubt thoughts should be offered love and gratitude for bringing into awareness what is still believed unconsciously. As they come up, all doubt thoughts can be released forever.
Question:
Yes. I am grateful for all the experiences I have, and even when people doubt, I know that is just more for me to turn over in my own consciousness to the Holy Spirit within. When you say "people" act out the wishes of the mind as if they are external to the mind, what exactly does that mean?
Answer:
The realization of Enlightenment comes first with the realization that there is only one mind instead of private separate "minds" with "private” thoughts. Persons are symbols of what is believed, and that is why to forgive one person completely brings release to the one mind, and thus all are healed as one. ACIM puts it this way: "When I am healed I am not healed alone." One mind is whole and complete, and the doubt—or ego thought—about wholeness and oneness is what made the dualistic world of separation. The belief in separation makes it seem as if there is something outside or external to our one mind.
Question:
Everyday I see more and more how the world is a trap for the mind and spirit. I am grateful for the freedom I have awakened to. It is so profound it is beyond words. I really appreciate your love and attention during this time. I know we are all part of the One mind but I still like to say thank you.
Answer:
I am with you All the way, for we share the same Self, the same Identity in Christ. It is our Joy to rejoice together.
Love & Blessings,
David
How Can I Tell if I'm Intellectualizing? (video)
Description of video:
Intellectualizing? Empty the mind and drop all concepts. The Holy Spirit is like a vacuum cleaner, sweeping out the mind of all its concepts. Education of the world is useless here. Soften into what the Buddha called, emptiness. Are you being defensive? Then you are identifying with illusion. A woman took my book and tossed it in the garbage can; she thought I'd be very upset. I was unmoved. When you are not intellectualizing, you will feel mentally passive, no longer identified with the "do-er"; the doing mind. This is not good or bad; There's just a heaviness that way. Being "done through", there is, instead, a sense of peace. . .
Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW5Izcv9WME
After having had a light experience, I have no motivation for doing anything for this world. How do I find peace?
Question:
In 1976 I had an experience that lasted over several months wherein nothing seemed real, and I was asking, "What is real?". Around that time, a voice within me seemed to tell me several things, and my life has never been the same.
The first message I heard was, “If you are busy pretending you are something you are not, you will never know who you really are.” I kept asking what was real, looking around and saying, “Is this real, is this real?” And the voice within me would say, “No, that was an illusion, here today, gone tomorrow, now you see it now you don't.” Up to this point I had no spiritual knowledge except through Protestant churches, Presbyterian, Baptist and Christian.
One day after work I was sitting on my bed. (I had come to look forward to rushing home from work, getting situated on my bed and getting quiet, as it was there it seemed, I found a presence of peace, as if a light would be around me and my questions would be answered. At that time, I thought the presence was in my bedroom.) On this particular occasion, after being told that this, then that, was not real, I asked vehemently, "Then what is real?" The room seemed to fill with light. The light seemed to be coming from the inside of me. The moment was full of peace and a sense of absoluteness, and it said, "I am He and there is no other." Well, somewhere on the inside of me, that resonated. I called the entity Spirit.
For the next couple of months it seemed to be the only thing that seemed real to me, and I couldn't seem to keep from telling everyone, "We are One. There is no other," as it resounded on the inside of me, even though I couldn't seem to explain it beyond that. That particular occasion set me on a spiritual journey searching through all religions, trying to find that surety that I had experienced. The "spirit" continued talking to me throughout this journey. It was not until I began studying ACIM that I started getting the same message as that initial message, and it hearkened me back to that occurrence, which I had pretty much chalked up to my being loony and desperate to feel special, so I had concocted it myself.
Before that happened, I could not find my niche in this world, but since that happened, I have had absolutely no interest in anything except searching for what I called the "truth." Nothing else seemed or seems to have purpose, and it is so hard for me to get out of the vicious circle of thinking I should get busy with this or that, dreading it, feeling guilty for my feelings, etc. I could make myself do the things I had to do, such as raising my family, keeping my home orderly and clean, but I have such a difficult time in wanting to do anything.
I know that "shoulds" and "ought to's", have echoed in my head all my life, but I haven't seemed to be able to extricate myself from them. All truly does seem to be vanity, to serve no purpose. Everything I would do, just seems to serve this illusion, and I have wanted to escape it ever since that experience in 1976. Help! This is beyond explaining. What do I forgive to find release? How do I return to peace?
Answer:
Thanks for pouring out your stream of thoughts and for your willingness to forgive and Awaken. It is wonderful! You have heard the Voice for God reminding you of the illusory nature of the world. With "A Course In Miracles" you have a tool to train your mind to hear ONLY the Holy Spirit's Voice, and release the ego's voice of doubt forever. In using and practicing the lessons of ACIM you will be forgiving the belief in separation, the belief in time-space, the belief in a linear sequence of separate events. You will experience many miracles which will collapse time and leave your mind at peace. You will grasp and experience the Holy Spirit's Purpose, which is the replacement for the ego's "purpose" of death, guilt, fear, and separation.
You've glimpsed the new Purpose of forgiveness, of seeing the illusory nature of the cosmos, yet until the ego's "purpose" is completely unlearned or undone you will seem to wander. It can seem during this wandering that the world will have no purpose at all. This is the approach to the point in mind in which you see that the roadways of the world lead nowhere. As the mind approaches this point everything will seem pointless, yet beyond the point of utter meaninglessness is the Light of the Holy Spirit. As you join with this Light, the Light will shine through you and radiate to everything and everyone. The Holy Spirit shines through you, shining away every scrap of darkness, and this experience is one of effortless Ease. There is no struggle or conflict in being shone through. It is as though you are transparent, for there are no personal goals or agendas to intrude.
The Holy Spirit Guides surely. In every seeming situation the judgment of the Holy Spirit directs. This is judgment through you rather than by you, and under the Holy Spirit's judgment there is never any loss to anyone. In the Holy Spirit's Purpose there are never any commands or demands, only suggestions and instructions and reminders. You can seem to resist the Holy Spirit's Call, yet delay is always temporary and Atonement or Correction is inevitable. That is why this is a required course. Forgiveness is unavoidable, and though there seem to be many forms and pathways for coming to forgiveness, in content they are all the same. Forgiveness simply sees the false as false, and quietly rests in peace.
The voice of "shoulds" and "ought to's" is the ego. These guilt-ridden expectations arise from a false sense of self, a self-concept that God did not create. This concept was make-believe, for it sought to replace the Self God created in Eternal Perfection. All frustration arises in consciousness from pretending to be human, and all human roles are constructs that perpetuate this pretense of identity. In the Present, free from the distortions of the past, You are free in Spirit as God created You.
Forgiveness is giving up nothing to accept Everything. Mind is unified, and peace and wholeness go together. You have asked: "What do I forgive to find release? How do I return to peace?" To forgive the belief in time-space is to say to God: "Show me Eternity!" To forgive the belief in separation is to say to God: "Show me the Union of Eternity." The Holy Spirit will convince you that time is unreal and Eternity is real if you will let Him. Nothing is asked of you in truth, for You are already and forever Perfect, Whole, and Complete as God created You. Forgiveness opens the way to remember this Truth.
Love & Blessings,
David