It’s one thing to understand the true forgiveness process that A Course in Miracles teaches, but it’s quite another thing to put it into practice in your everyday life.  We are programmed to think with the ego, and it’s our unconscious response to most situations.  Forgiveness, on the other hand, is the domain of the Holy Spirit and the ego’s opposite in every way, so it should come as no surprise that when it comes to applying this forgiveness, it can often times feel like a very tall order.  It goes against our programming, and the resistance can be enormous.  This can be frustrating to earnest Course students who feel they are doing their best to forgive but just can’t seem to pull it off.  But all is not lost.  Let’s look at why it is that we have so much resistance to forgiving, and what tools and tricks we can deploy to help us overcome this. 

 

But first, let’s get one thing straight right from the outset.  If you are a student of the Course, you are going to have resistance to practicing true forgiveness.  Everyone does.  Everyone.  It is a part of the path and process, and it is completely normal.  So, it’s important to understand that you are not doing anything wrong.  If anything, it is actually sign that you are doing it right.  When you start working with the Course you will often find that your ego attacks and outbursts, rather than subsiding, actually get worse.  In part this can be because you are paying more attention to what your ego is up to.  Whereas before a lot of your ego’s antics may have been unconscious to you, when you start to look at it more closely, these ego patterns and behaviours now bubble to the surface of your awareness.  And this can look pretty ugly.

 

But there is another reason why your ego outbursts may escalate, and this is because the ego in you is fighting back.  It can sense you are beginning to question its thought system, and it’s not a happy camper!  When you start to think thoughts that are out of line with how the ego thinks – thoughts such as forgiveness – it immediately feels threatened, and this can send it into all out damage control.  The ego will attack your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you.  This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased (T-9.VII.4:6-7).  And boy can the ego get vicious!  True forgiveness is a very real threat to the ego’s whole thought system, so when you start to apply it, its natural response is to get nasty.  You are threatening the ego’s whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend (T-21.IV.3:2-3).  

 

If you find yourself coming up against the strong resistance of the ego, while you may feel like these ego flare ups are a sign that you are failing or doing the Course wrong, it can actually be an indication that your mind is beginning to shift its willingness from looking with the ego to looking with the Holy Spirit instead.  So how do we overcome such resistance?  There are many tools and tricks you can try, and everyone finds the ones that work best for them.  Here are a few that I have found helpful over the years.

 

Like the quote says at the top of the page, one of our biggest blocks to forgiving is that we still believe we are being asked to forgive something that is happening. We still believe it is real, and it is impossible to apply true forgiveness to anything we are making real.  This would make it the ego’s form of forgiveness, which is not what we want to be practicing.  Taking the seriousness out of any situation that you are trying to forgive can be very helpful.  Rather than perceiving the ego as an enemy that you are battling against, we can take a more lighthearted approach.  

 

When you catch yourself listening to the ego’s antics, try talking to the ego as if it’s just a sneaky child trying to fool you into giving in to its demands.  You could say something along the lines of, “I see what’s going on here.  Nice try ego, you almost got me!  I almost fell for it!  But I see what you’re up to and I’m not going to fall for your tricks this time!”  Have a bit of a laugh at the ego’s antics – and at yourself for falling for them – and then proceed to go through the steps of forgiveness from this more lighthearted approach.  The wording is not important.  You can use any words or thoughts that work best for you.  The key is to diffuse the seriousness of the situation you are trying to forgive, thus lowering one of the ego’s key defences – making it all very real.

 

Another helpful tool I have found which is also great for taking the wind out of the ego’s sails, is based upon a Course line which asks, “Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and pamper it, and make it live?” (T-23.II.18:8).  Ken Wapnick has often talked about this quote in his workshops in relation to seeing the characters in our lives as puppets.  He explains how the puppets themselves don’t do anything, rather it is the puppeteer that controls them.  Likewise, the people who we think are attacking or harming us are like puppets – they aren’t actually doing anything but are merely acting out the instructions of the puppeteer.  Sometimes they will be taking their instructions from the ego, and other times from the Holy Spirit depending on which one they are identifying with in their mind at any given time.

 

When I am having trouble applying true forgiveness in relation to another person, a trick I sometimes use is to visualise that person as a puppet.  I imagine strings coming from their body and these strings being pulled and distorted by the ego.  This helps me to remember that it is not their true Self I am seeing – that this puppet is not who they are.  I can then forgive the actions of the puppet, knowing that it is not real, and look past this illusory image to the truth of perfect Spirit within.   

 

Aside from taking the illusion too seriously, another major roadblock to forgiveness we all come up against is the temptation to beat ourselves up when we feel we aren’t doing it right.  When we do this all we are achieving is perpetuating the ego’s stranglehold while simultaneously making ourselves feel terrible in the process.  Lesson 95 in the workbook teaches that we can correct this by being willing to forgive ourselves for our lapses in diligence (w-p1.95.8:3).  In other words, we need to also learn how to extend this same forgiveness to ourselves.  We need to be gentle and meet ourselves where we are at.  Some things are going to feel harder to forgive than others, and we are not always going to get it right.  And that’s okay.  It doesn’t mean that you are ‘bad’ or ‘sinful’.  When you fail to comply with the requirements of this course, you have merely made a mistake. This calls for correction and nothing else(w-p1.95.9:1).  We forgive ourselves simply by practicing looking at our inability to forgive and not judging and criticising ourselves for it.    

 

Sometimes, despite everything you try, you will find that forgiveness just isn’t something you are going to be able to pull off on that particular day.  Take heart in the fact that forgiveness is not time dependent.  If you don’t forgive in the first instance or in the heat of the moment, then the opportunity is not lost.  You can as equally forgive something now as you can one week, ten months, or twenty years from now.  In the early stages of practicing no one forgives straight away.  It is not a natural response yet, and you have to work at it.  Since time is just an illusion it really makes no difference if you forgive now or later.  Although there is no denying we do experience time as real, so any delay you have in forgiving will also result in the experience of a longer period of pain and discomfort.  But it remains within your power to make the choice for forgiveness at any point and let all this go.  Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you (T-31.VIII.3:1).

 

It all depends on your readiness.  Don’t try and force it.  It’s important not to push yourself, and to go at your own pace.  And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready.  Do not fight yourself (T-30.I.1:6-7).  People come to the course thinking that if they do the workbook within a years’ time, they should be able to forgive perfectly.  It doesn’t work that way.  As it says at the end of the workbook – This course is a beginning, not an end (W-ep.1:1).  It takes a lifetime, if not many lifetimes, to gradually release your mind from the ego’s hold.  At the end of the day, we are only asked to do the very best that we can and keep practicing.  Experiment with your own tricks and tools to help combat any resistance you come up against and go with what works best for you.  And if stumble across some really great ones that you have found work for you, please do get in touch – I’d love to hear them.