Have you ever heard this phrase?
Forgiveness comes when you realise that there is nothing to forgive?
I have, 7 years ago, and it would have taken me 7 years to understand the depth of this phrase.
To prepare this article I was guided to do some research in articles on the psychology of forgiveness, to realise that we have a completely distorted conception of forgiveness that prevents us from achieving real forgiveness.
For in the stages defined by traditional psychology, forgiveness implies "Acknowledging the existence of the harm".
But if we go deeper into the deeper meaning of forgiveness. It is the recognition that what we see is an illusion occurring only in our mind.
We are the observer, and this quantum world reacts to the observer's point of view.
I am aware that starting this article from this point of view is risky, as we are attacking the ego directly, saying: no, your world and your creation are not real.
However, this notion, common to all non-dual spiritual teachings, is found in many traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism, which offer man the possibility of realising his true nature through the intimate understanding that he is one with everything.
In Hinduism, the Vedic texts speak of the "Maya", a world of magic and illusions. It is a world we want to believe is real, a world we want to return to again and again, a world we do not want to lose. Its power and principle mask the true nature of what we are, Brahman, which is the infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent, omnipotent, incorporeal, impersonal, transcendent and immanent reality that is the divine essence of all existence.
To go further, the reader must open himself to this possibility: what if? nothing I see is real? what if this world is nothing but an illusion? what if I have fallen asleep and am merely dreaming? what if I have fallen asleep and am merely dreaming? what if I have fallen asleep and am merely dreaming?
This sleeping mind is dreaming that it divided itself into billions of beings and thousands of lives.
This is what we call the ego: the individual personality.
The ego tries to convince us that it is real by maintaining the illusion of separation,
The view we have of the other determines our view of ourselves, for the other does not exist, the other is a reflection of my divided mind.
In Mayan Amerindian culture, a trace of this truth appears in the Mayan greeting In Lak'Esh, which means: I am another you.
The ego can no longer convince us that it is real if we turn away completely from any belief in separation.
Of good or evil, and if we fully recognise the other as ourselves.
The mechanics of forgiveness that the course proposes is such a simple act that at first it seems difficult to conceive.
But with practice, it becomes a natural and automatic act.
We can train our minds to think differently.
But this requires a strong will with ourselves, because the ego is cunning and does not like it very much when we go against its creation.
What if, in order to come out of the dream, we had to forgive ourselves for having believed in the illusion?
Definition of Forgiveness According to The Course in Miracles
"Forgiveness acknowledges that what you thought your brother did to you did not happen. It does not forgive sins in order to make them real. It acknowledges that there was no sin. And so all your sins are forgiven. What is sin but a false idea about the Son of God? Forgiveness simply sees its falsity and so abandons it. What is then free to take its place is now the Will of God.
An unforgiving thought is a thought that makes a judgment it will not question, even if it is not true. The mind closes and does not release. Thought protects the projection, tightening the chains, so that the distortions are more veiled and obscured, less accessible to doubt and more remote from reason. What can stand between a fixed projection and the chosen goal?
Forgiveness, on the other hand, is quiet, and quietly does nothing. It does not offend any aspect of reality, nor does it seek to convert it into pleasing appearances. It simply watches, waits and does not judge. Those who do not want to forgive must judge, because they must justify their unforgiveness. But those who wish to forgive must learn to accept the truth as it is."
I will leave this definition here, but we will come back to it a little later.
To begin with, I think it is important to tell you how, after 7 years, I finally understood what forgiveness was.
A Course in Miracles came into my life 4 years ago. Many of the concepts covered resonated with personal experiences, and allowed me to begin to see that there were still veils between me and love. Today I know that I can fully rephrase this phrase: "There were still veils between me and God".
Here I invite you to feel comfortable with the word God, and to replace it with any other term that allows you to read these lines with openness. Love, in my opinion, is perfectly adequate.
(However, I feel this is also an opportunity for us to observe how the ego acts to separate us around a word that holds the key to its demise).
After a year of studying the course, I can see that my ego got in the way, it wanted to manipulate the matter, there were things I wanted to manifest, so the answer the course gave did not satisfy my little "I" who was trying to get what I thought I was not getting in the dream.
Certain things regularly came looking for me, and I believe that when we open this blue book, we let go of something that never leaves us. As the course says, this course is compulsory, but we have the option to take it whenever we want.
After spending a few years putting this teaching aside, I finally returned to it this year.
I finally returned to it this year, due to a series of coincidences that would take too long to recount. But everything was calling me to return to the course.
One of the important concepts of the course is communication with the Holy Spirit. It is actually quite logical, if you simply take these words out of any religious dogma.
They mean nothing other than "having the Holy Spirit".
Am I sane or not?
Do I think with a Holy Spirit?
Do I think with Love or without Love?
Do I think with God or without God?
Do I think with a divided Spirit? or a unified one?
Like all spiritual concepts, I am aware that they have no value until they are experienced in themselves.
So so far I understood the theory.
But I still lacked the Living.
So I asked
I asked to see and understand what it meant to see with the Holy Spirit.
And I also asked to communicate with him.
Ask and receive.
Then I was presented with a situation, an opportunity for forgiveness. If I describe this situation to you from my ego, I will tell you that I have been cheated, robbed, cheated, someone has done something wrong to me.
But the study of A Course in Miracles had opened my conscience enough to keep calm in this situation.
And I asked for help to forgive.
Believe it or not...
What I saw exceeded my expectations, but I can see that it will be difficult to describe it in its entirety.
Because nothing happened...
From the depths of my being something happened, and reality seemed to dissolve.
The other could not have hurt me, because he is me ...
For we share the same spirit.
We experience egos, divided.
But this is not reality, this is a dream.
And I saw Love, there was nothing but a love that crossed between me and the other. The illusory situation was just a projection of my mind on the film I call my life to allow me to see the love in everything.
I saw the illusion of the body I was facing and only the spirit remained.
If you dreamed in your sleep that someone was hurting you,
would you call them the next day to apologise?
No, because nothing happened.
Only in your mind, in your divided, separate mind....
So what does it mean to see with the Holy Spirit?
It is to see with Love
And I saw, I saw myself
In the eyes of the avatars involved
I recognised them as being me
And I saw all their love
This Spirit that crosses into us, into all of us, brings us with Love the opportunities of Forgiveness we need, to begin the journey home.
Judging simply allows us to maintain the false identity of the ego.
Forgiveness allows us to undo it and return to unity.
It is not enough to understand that this world is a dream.
Only forgiveness can untie the knots and lead us to the exit.
It is so simple that we don't want to believe it,
If I understand that all this is a dream
If I understand that all this is happening in my mind
Then I can choose,
That's duality,
And that is Free Will.
We have come to learn to choose, to choose to see With Love or Without Love. To choose to see with God or without God.
After this experience I realised that I had been in a similar situation when I first started studying the course, but at the time I was not aware of what had happened.
It was even more confronting, in the film that is Alison's life, because I had experienced a situation of physical abuse, from a point of love and unity that had led me to doubt what was real or not.
I had experienced the gaze of the Holy Spirit and the illusion of the ego at the same time.
It was as if I was watching two different films projected on two different screens.
Nothing had happened there either, there was only love, and I had experienced both versions of "reality" at the same time.
The two coexist, and I can choose between love and fear.
Judgement: Something "bad has happened".
Forgiveness: recognising that it is all an illusion.
"Miracles are the natural result of our actions when we choose love".
A Course in Miracles
The teaching I received seemed like a miracle, here were two realities, like two different and very real parallel worlds (as real as this dream we call life is).
I did not have to choose.
In the process of Forgiveness I went through.
It became clear to me that the situation I was in was nothing more than a hologram to show me the impact of the original thought that created this world.
"The what if".
I will let you discover Gary Renard's book, "the disappearance of the universe".
Mainly the section "before the beginning" if you want to understand what it is about.
What I want to transmit here is just a little bit of personal experience. It may be of use to others on the way back to Love and oneness.
The hologram I experienced allowed me to see the guilt, the fear, the fear that "daddy" would be angry with me, the shame that I had done something stupid, and the part of me that wanted to hide, to run away.... Just like Maya tries to hide Brahman.
That's what our divided mind did, it ran away and started to punish itself...
Making choices that took it further and further away from God... From love...
You know what I find amazing about all this? I'm talking about the teaching of A Course in Miracles here, because that's how I was finally able to understand.
But I had already received this teaching.
And from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank Alberto Varela.
How many times did I hear him explain to us that everything is perfect, that the other was us, that we were the cause of everything and not the effect?
I don't know if he himself had received it all or if he too had followed this teaching.
What I do know today is that the moment this part of me that this man represented transcended, something happened inside me, and he continued to teach me.
And today I experience exactly what I saw in Alberto at that moment in mirror with a member of my team.
In fact, the distortion is exactly the same as the interpretation I made at the time when Alberto told us that "everything is perfect".
I saw it as an excuse to justify actions that did not seem right to me.
Today I know that it was just my way of seeing it.
Because Alberto didn't exist, he was the projection I saw in my mind.
A mind that at that time did not yet know how to choose love.
After this deep connection with Forgiveness, I thought again about the person in my team who had apologised to me for a situation for which I felt I had nothing to apologise for, because after all I can reproach him for as many things as I want. And here it is nothing more than two egos maintaining an illusion through an escalation of arguments.
From the state of understanding I have entered into, I have decided to simply place myself in this space of Forgiveness, and ask for forgiveness.
Not because I had something to be forgiven for.
But to forgive, because if I see this situation it is because my spirit is not holy.
And that I still do not fully see this situation with love.
What I have been able to observe is that even when we place ourselves in forgiveness, we have to separate ourselves from the outcome, because if we confront a part of the ego, it is possible that the ego will try to take back this teaching.
To Maintain Separation
"Yes, thank you for acknowledging that you were guilty".
The ego seeks to maintain a culprit
Because this is the only way it can keep us believing in itself.
If I admit that the other does not exist, that all I see is me acting with myself.
Then that means the death of the ego, the death of the personality. It is very easy to see that the ego will deny this with all its might, using every ploy, every thought, every argument not to admit this reality.
For the whole point of the ego is to make us believe that we are guilty.
Guilty of wanting to create without God
Without love
And of having separated ourselves from him
It is obvious to me that this situation is a new opportunity for forgiveness, but I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to observe what is happening, without judgement, simply with the awareness that I am in the process of learning and releasing something important.
If I refuse to believe in the body, in separation, and learn to forgive the illusion, then I begin the journey back to love and awakening from the dream.
By the way, when New Age spirituality talks about awakening, there is a misunderstanding: our ego will make us believe that we have awakened. But if I am still in a separate body, it is because I am still asleep in the dream.
The Dream is neither good nor bad, and we can benefit from sleep by learning to forgive our misperceptions.
The goal is not to manipulate the film, the story of the life we lead, but to be able to watch the film unfold with a sense of deep peace and joy. To recognise that we have never been separated from love, that we are always bathed by God at all times.
When we begin to realise that the dream will disappear when we wake up, it brings with it fear, because we feel that it means sacrificing something.
This is because we still have no idea what eternal reality is like outside the dream.
We cannot imagine what it would mean to have everything, because we are everything.
Every time I decide to see someone with love, with the Holy Spirit, I take a step closer to going home.
The teachings and messages I receive are of uncommon clarity, something that vibrates deep within me and begs to be shared.
Much of the work is internal, intimate even, because some things may not need to be expressed. Like some forgiveness that simply has to be done within us.
Another message I received was about teaching, and I see that to teach there is nothing more than to practice, to practice forgiveness.
There is nothing more to explain, all the cognitive material is already available to us in this world.
We teach through the presence of the vibrant love within us.
And I understand that it is important to detach ourselves from the outcome.
It will be impossible to make someone understand who is not willing to let go of their ego. what true forgiveness is.
We can only offer forgiveness to ourselves. Because once again, it is only a part of me.
It is a commitment to oneself.
So I will continue to free myself
Freeing every part of me from guilt
Forgiving again and again
This is my dream
And in my dream I decide what voice I want to hear.
To come back a little bit to the true definition of forgiveness
"Forgiveness recognises that what you thought your brother did to you didn't happen".
This world is a dream
"It doesn't forgive sins to make them real."
Forgiveness admits no guilt because nothing happened.
"An unforgiving thought is a judging thought."
If I don't forgive it is because I keep judging something as good or bad, so I keep believing that this dream is real".
We can reprogram our minds to think with Love.
Instead of thinking with ego, think with fear.
If I listen to the right voice
Then there will be only peace and joy in me.
The rest belongs to the illusion of ego
I recognise myself as one with Love
This world is neither good nor bad, it is only a dream.
To conclude, I would like to share with you a text that has been with me for 7 years. But it only makes sense now.
The Fool - Osho
The Fool is he who continues to trust;
The Fool is he who continues to trust against all his experience. You deceive him and he trusts you; you deceive him again and he trusts you; you deceive him again and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a Fool, that he does not learn. His trust is immense; his trust is so pure that no one can corrupt it. Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don't try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Let all experience come to you, then let it go, get rid of it. Continuously clear your mind; keep dying to the past, so that you remain in the present, here and now, as if you were just born, as if you were being born at this very moment, like a baby. It will be very difficult at first. The world will take advantage of you..... Let them. Even if they cheat you, even if they disappoint you, even if they steal from you... let it be, because what is truly yours cannot be stolen from you; what is truly yours cannot be taken from you, and every time you don't let situations corrupt you, that opportunity will become an inner integration. Your soul will benefit.
12/05/2024
Alison Sarah
Commentaires