Applying true forgiveness in our everyday life – this is what A Course in Miracles is all about.  Not the world’s type of forgiveness, which sees guilt outside of us and chooses whether or not to pardon it, but the kind that overlooks the illusion of guilt entirely, seeing through its falsity to the truth beyond.  To students of the Course this is what the world is for; a classroom in which we learn to apply this true forgiveness.  Ultimately, the aim is to practice so consistently that this kind of forgiveness becomes our natural response to any and all situations.  Just as the ego’s unforgiveness is a habit now, so too can the Holy Spirit’s true forgiveness become a new habit.  So just how is it that we apply this forgiveness?

 

Let’s look at a common scenario to help put it all into perspective – a disagreement with your partner.  Maybe they have said or done something you have taken offense to, and this has triggered an automatic response, sending your mind into overdrive with thoughts about how insensitive and uncaring they are.  As one thought piles onto another you find yourself getting angrier and angrier.  Your body gets tense as you go into fight mode, and your behaviour follows suite by lashing out or giving them the cold shoulder.  Your partner reacts in kind, putting up their own defenses and the battle is on. 

 

It is so easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment in a situation such as this.  It’s when we are in the midst of such a conflict that the first step of forgiveness comes in – to stop and realise you are thinking with the ego.  The ego is usually our default response in such situations.  It’s like the programming running in the background of our mind, and when we come up against challenges and conflicts it automatically kicks in.  But the ego is not who you are.  Its programming is a faulty one and you need to uninstall it, so to speak, so it can be replaced with a program that reflects the truth of who you really are.  While you blindly listen to the ego’s dictates you are literally mindless – on autopilot, not really thinking at all but merely playing out its script.  But if you can catch yourself and become aware that you are thinking with the ego, then your attention is automatically returned back to the mind.  This removes your focus from what is going on outside of you and centres it back within. 

 

We think what is happening in the world is the cause of our upset, but this is not true.  The world is merely the effect.  It is the mind that is the cause.  An often-quoted line in the Course is ideas leave not their source (T-26.VII.4:7).  While it appears that we are forgiving something or someone outside of us, because these things are really not outside of us at all but are merely images playing out on the screen of our mind, it is in the mind that we need to correct our misperceptions.  Ideas are of the mind. What is projected out, and seems to be external to the mind, is not outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has not left its source (T-26.VII.4:8-9).  This first step of catching ourselves when we are thinking with the ego brings our attention back to the mind, because it is in the mind that forgiveness is applied, not in the world.  Forgiveness is a choice (W-335.1:1).  It is a choice we make in our mind.  

 

Once you realise you are thinking with the ego and your attention is back on the mind, you can now apply the second step of forgiveness, which is to change your mind.  Rather than looking at the situation with the ego, we now want to switch to looking at it with the Holy Spirit.  The ego makes the situation real, believing that it is real.  The Holy Spirit knows that you are making all this up, and therefore he simply overlooks it entirely.  Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you (T-9.IV.5:3).

 

So how do we overlook something when all our bodily senses and experiences tell us it is very real and solid?  We simply look on it without judgement – without the ego’s narrative running in the background.  The ego always judges, so if we are withholding judgement that means we must be looking with the Holy Spirit.  It’s similar to the meditation practice where you watch your thoughts go by without judging or clinging to them. So, too, can we watch the procession of images that parade in front of us, and view them with the same non-judgement and unattachment.  In this way we don’t take the images we are seeing so seriously and thus their unreality gradually dawns on us.  Forgiveness is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not (W-pII.1.4:1).

 

When we look on life’s grievances and dramas this way, we are what the Course calls ‘above the battleground’.  It is as if you have been watching a movie and have been so engrossed in what is happening that your attention has been completely absorbed by it.  You have completely identified with the characters, our current example being yourself and your partner.  You feel the feelings they feel and get agitated and upset by the experiences they are having.  You think that character is you, and it feels as if you are a part of the movie yourself.  But when you withdraw your attention from the images on the screen and disidentify with them you remember they are just projections, and you don’t take them so seriously anymore.  You are still watching the movie, but your mind doesn’t get so invested in what appears to be happening.  You observe it from a place of non-judgement.  This is what it means to be above the battleground, and it is the second step of true forgiveness.

 

 

Now you have completed the first step – realising you are thinking with the ego and returning your awareness to the mind.  You have also completed the second step – changing your mind and looking upon the world and your images with the nonjudgement of the Holy Spirit.  Now comes the third and final step of the true forgiveness process – you need to replace the illusions of the ego with the truth of the Holy Spirit in your mind.  It is not enough to just to look upon the ego’s thought system and judge it as unreal.  You have to have a thought system to replace it with – the Holy Spirit’s.  This means you must think and see as he thinks and sees.

 

So, how do we do this?  By seeing through the false images to the truth beyond, which is pure and perfect Spirit.  Whereas before you were seeing your partner as a guilty individual who was doing something hurtful to you, you now see them as just the same as you.  Like you, they have an ego mind and a Holy Spirit mind, and they have the same power within them to choose.  Sometimes they choose wrongly, and sometimes rightly, just like you do.  When they are caught up in the ego mind it is because they do not remember who they are and are calling out for love.  Likewise, when you too are caught up in the ego mind it is because you have forgotten who you are and are also calling out for love.  To think with the Holy Spirit is to recognise that we all have this same insanity within us, but we also have the same truth, and it is only this truth we want to see.  And so, you look beyond the bodily identity you thought your partner was, to the light of Christ within them.  

 

This light is not something we see through the body’s eyes, but rather through the mind’s vision.  It is also referred to as ‘spiritual sight’, or what the Course calls the ‘great rays’.  As the ego would limit your perception of your brothers to the body, so would the Holy Spirit release your vision and let you see the Great Rays shining from them, so unlimited that they reach to God (T-15.IX.1:1).  When you choose to see only this light within your partner, replacing all illusory thoughts of them being a guilty body, this is the completion of the true forgiveness process.  It is also what the Course calls the holy instant or the miracle.  You have replaced the false in your mind with the truth.

 

This process of true forgiveness can be applied to any person or situation which you believe to be the cause of your loss of peace, no matter how big or small the upset may be.  In fact, you must learn to apply it to all situations without exception, no matter how major or minor they appear, if you are to learn that they are all equally illusory.  The more you practice the easier it becomes.  As you get into the habit of applying true forgiveness more consistently, it becomes an attitude.  You won’t even need to go through the steps anymore, because it will be natural for you to see everyone through spiritual sight.  The Holy spirit’s vision has become your new default setting.  Until we get to this point however, working through the steps can help us on our way.  Sometimes we may find that we don’t get through them all.  Maybe we can only get to the second or even just the first step before the resistance becomes too much.  This is okay.  Any step up the forgiveness ladder is a step in the right direction.

 

You may be wondering if you need to take any action or do anything physically in the world when you forgive?  The Course is only ever concerned with the level of the mind, as is forgiveness.  It doesn’t require you to do anything to remedy the situation in the world, although you may find yourself inspired or guided to take some sort of action.  Any such action you may be guided to take is always symbolic of your right-minded choice to choose with the Holy Spirit.  

 

As you practice true forgiveness you will find that the benefits will always be for yourself.   Your dreams will shift from ones of conflict and division to the happy dreams of unity and peace.  As you start to see everyone through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, the barriers you had built around your mind will fall away, allowing the love that is what you are in truth to shine through into your awareness.  Your images of hate will be transformed into images of love, and it is only this love you will see in everything and everyone.