Video Transcript

If you are to learn to control, manage and eliminate fear, you need to redefine what forgiveness is and why it is granted. Until you choose to redefine what you are and why you are here, you will misunderstand forgiveness’s true purpose and what it entails. If you perceive yourself to be a body, you will struggle with forgiveness in this physical dimension of time and space. You are a state of consciousness and this world is your own private world of individuated perception.   

A Course In Miracles defines common words in rather uncommon and unusual ways. This is true of ACIM's definition for the word forgiveness. Because forgiveness is such an important concept in your liberation from fear, forgiveness is the first major theme covered in Part 2 of the Course’s Workbook.

Below is an excerpt from my book, Understanding A Course In Miracles Workbook Lessons: How to End Blame, Shame, Guilt and Fear With Love & Forgiveness. This note that immediately follows the original workbook theme on forgiveness, expands and explains forgiveness from the big picture concepts of what you truly are. When properly understood, ACIM does not state that the events of this world should be ignored because they are not real. Instead, it reframes the purpose of these experiences into important learning lessons for your awakening.

Notes to Special Theme #1: What Is Forgiveness?

Central Theme for Lessons 221 to 230

In time, your function is forgiveness, your purpose is love and your destiny is the peace of God. Since forgiveness is your function, it is important to know what forgiveness really entails.

True forgiveness recognizes that what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sin and make sin real. Forgiveness sees that there is no sin.

Sin is the false idea about God’s Son. Sin assumes God’s Son could be different from what God created as your higher big “S” Self, your Christ nature. Forgiveness merely sees the falsity of the erroneous beliefs your ego has assigned to God’s Son and lets those beliefs dissipate. Forgiveness drops the ego’s belief that the body is your home and protector. What remains to take the place of these false ideas is the truth that reflects the Will of God.

The key distinction between what the world sees as forgiveness and how forgiveness is defined in this course revolves around the reality of the experience itself. ACIM’s viewpoint about forgiveness recognizes that what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred as you perceive it. The ego disagrees and assumes its interpretation of the event is correct and that someone has been wronged by another.

The idea in A Course in Miracles is that in forgiveness you are to recognize that what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. This is the source of confusion and triggers our egoic mind into justifying why its story and judgment about the event is correct. Anyone who perceives the events of this world to be real will have a difficult time accepting ACIM’s definition of forgiveness.

Perhaps an example would best illustrate the difference between the two definitions of forgiveness. Here are the events. You are walking down the street and a man approaches you with a gun and robs you taking your purse or wallet. Your money, credit cards and some personal items have been stolen.

Does this mean that the event never took place and the man did not take your money?

No. Both agree that in time, the events seem to have taken place. But the question surrounding forgiveness really becomes the interpretation that you assign to the event’s purpose, its cause and its effect.

In time, the event or experience did take place. Your story or recollection about the event may not depict exactly what took place but your story has some basis in the historical fact that you were physically robbed at some point in time and space. ACIM does not ask that you deny the occurrence of the physical robbery. Instead, it asks that you reframe your narrative about what the event’s purpose, cause and effects actually were.

In our fear-based world, the need for forgiveness rests upon the belief that there are actual victims and victimizers. It claims that the events in this world can change what your true nature actually is.

Our ego’s main purpose is to confirm its belief in separation. Our ego’s primary function revolves around subdividing the whole into imaginary autonomous entities and falsely assigning causative powers to those parts that can then change the reality of the whole. The role of the ego is to determine when these outside forces have changed another and to judge the impact of that influence as either good or bad.

Our egos are big judging machines designed to assign blame, shame and guilt based on its own internal view of justice. Our ego then argues for the correctness of its viewpoint and demands justice be served through a system of rewards and punishments administered to the supposed causative agent.

In the world of the ego, there are real victims and victimizers and the ego’s function is to determine between the two. Your ego is the sole judge, jury and prosecutor of its world. Your ego claims to be the ultimate arbitrator of truth. It judges events and circumstances as it sees fit and then insists that its interpretation is correct.

An unforgiving thought makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt although the judgment is not true. The mind is closed and will not re-examine its previous judgment. Instead, the unforgiving mind chooses to project its previous belief out into the world to provide new evidence that confirms its own current beliefs. Your senses are assigned the task of gathering additional incriminating evidence to reconfirm the ego’s previous beliefs. Your mind discards and ignores any evidence that does not support its past judgments and beliefs.

To your ego, the purpose of the world is to provide supporting evidence that bears false witness that your unforgiving thought is correct. Your egoic mind projects out its fixed beliefs into this pliable world for the sole purpose of reconfirming past judgments made by your ego. These fixed projections serve your egoic mind’s predetermined goals and provides stability for your pre-existing world view.

On the mass collective consciousness basis, our earth is a fixed projection of our joint beliefs in lack, limitation, separation, sin, guilt, shame and fear. In time, planet Earth is a warring planet whose egoic purpose is to provide physical evidence to support our belief that there are outside forces that can rob us of our happiness and peace.

Your egoic world was designed to prove that there are real victims and victimizers and that your mind lacks the creative power to protect you from these outside forces. Both your happiness and suffering are the result of these outside forces that are the cause of your experiences. Thus, these outside forces are attributed with artificial powers to make you happy or sad. A grievance occurs whenever these outside forces fail to fulfill the role assigned to them by your ego to make you happy.

In egoic forgiveness, you first accept the erroneous belief that some outside force could make you happy. When they fail to do so, they have wronged you. A real crime or sin against your happiness has been committed by the offending party. Egoic forgiveness then suspends the victim’s right to future retribution from the offending party.

Egoic forgiveness always insists that the crime was real. Because of this belief in the reality of sin, an unforgiving mind never questions the validity of the ego’s major premise that there are outside forces that can harm you against your will. This false belief that you can be harmed disempowers you as God’s Son and is the source for fear.

In order for A Course in Miracles’ definition of forgiveness to make sense, you need to understand the world’s purpose as understood by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit takes the ego’s world that was made to support our belief in lack, limitation and separation and changes its purpose. To the Holy Spirit, the purpose of this world is to teach one lesson and thus, reawaken sleeping minds to the truth of who they really are.

The Holy Spirit uses this world to teach us this lesson.

You are not a body. You are free. You are still as God created you. In time, nothing sources your experience but yourself and nothing can affect you unless you choose to allow it.

ACIM’s definition of forgiveness aligns with the Holy Spirit’s purpose for this world. It acknowledges the fact that you are not the body and that nothing in the world of our imagination has any ability to change the truth that we remain as God created us.

ACIM’s definition of forgiveness recognizes that you are free. Freedom allows us the option to be what we really are or pretend we are something we are not. Freedom allows us to imagine anything we want in perfect safety. Although the illusions appear real to the dreaming mind, our fantasies have no ability to change our reality. The dream of sin has no lasting consequences. Awaken from the dream of separation and you remember your sinless nature and reconnect to the One Self.

The illusion of time and space provides the game board for our minds’ imagination. In time, we imagine an event that we desire and gain the experience and learning lessons that we wished the event to provide. Yet being a playschool, these events have no permanent consequences that could change the truth of what we really are. They only are designed to reawaken us to the truth.

This world of form provides a game board in which we can have specific examples which help us demonstrate what love would have us do in a world of seeming hate and fear. We get to hone our skills and learn about an attribute of love called forgiveness. In Heaven, you could not learn about or practice forgiveness since there is nothing that would require your forgiveness.

In Heaven, forgiveness serves no function and the term itself becomes meaningless. If you want to learn or practice the attribute of love called forgiveness, you need to find a practice field where hate and fear seem real. This fear-based world provides that playschool for forgiveness.

In time, we get to demonstrate that illusions cannot change the truth about God’s Son, our big “S” Self. Although our mind’s imagination can deny our divine birthright, it has no ability to change that fact that we remain as God created us. You are not a body but you are Mind or Spirit. Being a Child of God, you are endowed with the creative power of Mind.

ACIM’s definition of forgiveness reflects the truth that your mind is the creative source for your experiences. There are no outside forces that can steal your peace or make you unhappy. Your grievances are predicated upon your ego’s erroneous beliefs that you are limited and another could harm you or make you happy.

Everything you experience in time is sourced by your mind’s own fertile imagination. Nothing happens without your secret wish to experience that event. We seek problems because we need the pearls of wisdom that those experiences are designed to teach.

True forgiveness recognizes that there are no victims or victimizers. We are all willing participants on this game board of time and space. True forgiveness reestablishes the causative nature of your own mind and reestablishes the truth that you, as the dreamer, are 100% responsible for your own dreams.

You are the script writer, director and editor of your own plays. You should not blame another for being an actor in a play of your own creation. You wanted that particular scene in your play for the important lesson that it was designed to provide. True forgiveness recognizes this fact.

When asked, the Holy Spirit uses your experiences to reawaken you to this fundamental truth.

You are not a body. You are free. You are still as God created you. In time, nothing sources your experience but yourself and nothing can affect you unless you choose to allow it to.

When you forgive your world, you acknowledge the truth of the above statement and reaffirm the sinlessness of God’s Son.

Forgiveness does nothing. It does not judge. Instead, it lets the Holy Spirit guide you to what love would have you do. Since to give is to receive, when you drop your ego’s grievances against your brother, you empower your mind, acknowledge responsibility for your thoughts and reclaim your sinless nature as God’s beloved Son.

Additional action step to take: In order for you to better grasp what true forgiveness is, repeat the following affirmation at the beginning and end of each day and whenever needed throughout your day.

I am not a body. I am free. I am still as God created me. Nothing sources my experiences but me and nothing can affect me unless I choose to allow it.

This affirmation reflects the truth of what you have come here to learn and why forgiveness is your function in this world of form.

Question: How does the above truth change what forgiveness is all about?

Question: You can never escape fear within a thought system that defines forgiveness as a relationship between a victim and its victimizer. Why is this the case?

The above excerpt is from Understanding A Course In Miracles Workbook Lessons: How to End Blame, Shame, Guilt and Fear With Love & Forgiveness scribed by Thomas Wakechild.

Create a great day for yourself and your world.

Tom Wakechild