Lesson 122: Forgiveness offers everything I want.
Marketers are masters of convincing us that their latest product or service is provides us with everything we’ll ever need. But wait … there’s more! Whatever they’re hawking also provides us with everything we’ve ever wanted or desired as well!
Want to be taller, better looking, attract the perfect mate, attract all the money, power and parking spots you desire? This product or service delivers! Act now, and they’ll double the offer – just pay a separate shipping and handling fee!
We fall for it every time. I ordered a guitar course just last night because the freebie was so good. Now, I’m wondering when I’ll have time to eek out even the most basic benefit for my money. There is, however, a money-back guarantee … if I can locate that small print ever again …
So, you can excuse me if I’m a little skeptical of anything – even a spiritual book – offering me one thing that will fulfill all my needs, hopes, wants and desires. Especially when that one thing is this: forgiveness.
Oh, my ego’s sides hurt from laughing for the past 30 minutes at that one.
Forgiveness? Really? Not holding a grudge, forgetting all the horrible things others have done or said to me in the past? Letting all that shit go? Are you nuts?
Grievances, my ego tells me, gives my life meaning. It makes me who I am. I believed that for the longest time. I built my entire life around a grievance that I held with glee against my father after he divorced my mother. Reflect on that for a moment: I built my entire life, my entire identity, around being a bitter, angry, cynical child of divorce.
Only now, after years of therapy and doing the workbook from A Course in Miracles can I see the pure insanity of that. But, we do it all the time. We build our entire lives around slights, grievances, upsets, setbacks and general pissed-offed-ness all the time. All. The. Time.
We give it a fancy name like “worldview,” but look at the foundation of anyone’s view of the world and you’ll find grievances are their foundation. We don’t like this political party or that one because we judge how they act or work in the world. We don’t like this or that area of the world because of how their leaders run it, or don’t run it. We judge every little thing from the outfit of the person six feet in front of us in the grocery store to the president’s daily news conferences.
We are a judgey lot, we ego driven bodies. And, here’s the big thing: We secretly love it. Maybe some days, not so secretly.
So, when the Course suggests that forgiveness (!!!) will give you everything – that it is the only answer to every question you will ever have in this world, we are understandably hesitant to snatch it up and dance around with it.
Again, we have a definition of terms problem. We believe forgiveness is about being the better person – about overlooking what someone has done to us. “You’re mean and nasty, but I’m all spir-it-tul, so I will deign to forgive your sorry ass.” We use forgiveness as a tool to be special – to be superior.
This is not what the Course means by forgiveness. This kind of forgiveness comes after we’ve done yesterday’s exercise of looking for the light of Love, even within our direst enemies. Forgiveness, in the Course’s parlance, is simply seeing the light of Love in everyone. Those who have offended us in some way are acting from their ego – and we’re acting from ours when we make the offense real and start shunning or judging others.
Instead of taking everything so personally, this amazing forgiveness the Course offers, allows us to see beyond both our ego and the other person’s ego – to focus on their Light, not their ignorant egos that we know will always seek to attack and one-up someone just for the hell of it.
“Here is the answer!” today’s lesson says. “Forgive and be forgiven. As you give you will receive.”
We all yearn to forgive and be forgiven, but our egos are too proud to make the first move. You want peace, joy and love in your life? Forgive – because what you give you will receive.
Living in an unforgiving state, Hafiz says, makes us like lutes. He writes:
We are like lutes once held by God.
Being away from His warm body
fully explains our constant yearning.
Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash
I needed this song much today. Working through the same old hurts and yearnings, and I need to apply forgiveness as often as it takes.