While most students will agree that it’s important to read and study A Course in Miracles so we can comprehend and understand it at an intellectual level, it is ultimately only the practical application of the Course’s teachings in our everyday lives that will bring us to the actual experiences that we are being led towards.  So why is it that it can feel quite easy to apply the lessons some days and to some situations, and other times it can be just so damn hard?

 

I found myself recently in the company of friends whom I have harboured grievances against on and off for the past couple of years.  They aren’t particularly big grievances as the world would judge them, but little, gnawing annoyances that, if I’m being truthful, I have to admit I am having a hard time applying Course principles to.  There is just something about these particular ‘special relationships’ that is proving to be more challenging for me than other relationships I have faced in recent years.  

 

I know exactly what I’m doing when I take these relationships so seriously and refuse to let go of my judgements.  I know how to apply the true forgiveness process, and I know that harbouring such grievances only prolongs my own suffering and hurts me, and yet in this situation I have still found it so very hard to give up my ego perspectives.  So, what is it exactly that prevents us from just letting these things go?

 

Resistance is a big theme in the Course, and it is one that every single student, without exception, comes up against.  Forgiveness, the way the Course teaches it, goes against everything we have been conditioned to believe is real in this world.  We have been taught to believe we are a body, in a world full of billions of other bodies that are all separate from us.  We have been taught to believe that these individual identities are us, and that this world and everything outside of us is very real.  And for most of us this is the only thought system we have known.  It was all we thought existed.  It’s automatic, like a habit, and just like any other habit there is strong resistance to giving it up.  After all, who would we be if not this person we always thought we were?  

 

There will often be a lot of going back and forth, which has been my experience with these particular relationships.  I have had moments of being in my right mind and looking at the situation with the Holy Spirit.  When I do this, I understand that it’s my own mind that is projecting guilt onto these individuals in an attempt to get rid of the guilt I believe is in me.  I unconsciously believe that if they are the guilty ones then I am not, being the innocent victim of these forces outside of me over which I have no control.  But as the Course cautions us, ‘”Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated” (T-26.X.4:1).

 

I can also see how in areas of my life I, too, act out the same patterns that I am accusing my friends of.  In seeing this I can truly recognise that we are indeed the same – we all share the same right mind and the same wrong mind, and we all have the same power to choose between the two. We all are doing the best we can, fumbling through as we wander the world “uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear” (T-31.VIII.7:1).

 

From this place of right-mindedness or spiritual sight, I then begin to feel truly grateful towards my friends for the wonderful opportunity they are presenting me with.  I remember that it is lessons such as this that remind me to look at the ego thought system so I can become aware that I do indeed have a choice.  When I remember and am willing to apply the Holy Spirit’s thought system, in that moment I forgive my friends for what they haven’t done and experience a peace and love for both myself and them that is not of this world, or as the Course calls it, the holy instant.  

 

So, how is it that the next time a similar situation comes up with the same friends that my right-minded thinking can just as suddenly fly out the window, and I am right back bogged down in the ego’s judgements again?  Just when I thought I had finally forgiven this particular lesson once and for all, the ego rears its ugly head, and I jump straight back on its band wagon.

 

I am starting to learn that it is at this crucial point when we find ourselves struggling to put our forgiveness into practice, that it is so important to try and remember to be gentle with ourselves.  We must realise that this is a path and a process, a journey with many steps, and in the illusion of time it does take time, sometimes quite a bit of it.   Some days we will be more willing to forgive, and others, not so much.  But the simple act of looking at our choice not to forgive and realising what we are doing without judging ourselves is in itself a big stride forward.  What is it that judges but the ego?  If we are looking at our inability to choose forgiveness without laying judgment upon ourselves for doing so, then it must mean we are looking with the Holy Spirit.

 

As Course students, at least we know what it is we are doing when we choose with the ego, and even if we’re not ready to choose against it just yet, there is a part of us that will be ready at some stage.  Now you must learn only infinite patience produces immediate effects (T-5.VI.12:1).  What is the hurry really?  We will all get there in the end.