I was chatting on the phone with my mother on Tuesday while she was watching the news. She said there was an Amber Alert issued for a four year old little girl. She had been playing in her front yard with her brother when a man came along and snatched her.
I started asking questions, "Where? When? What kind of vehicle?" My mother didn't know. The newscaster wasn't giving that information.
So, I got very annoyed, and I started saying how ridiculous it is that this information wasn't readily available. And with technology being what it is, surely they could, within minutes, get all known information out on the radio and television for say a fifty mile radius so that we could, ahh, save her. And, what the hell was wrong with everyone?
Then, I remembered that the very LAST thing I would want to do is project my unconscious guilt onto this situation.
So, I stopped, and I joined with J, and I forgave everyone involved, not for what they were or were not doing because that would only make the error real. Instead, I remembered that this is MY dream and everyone is perfectly innocent because I'm the one who is seeing what is not true! I trusted J and chose His strength!
Then the next day, I had the news on, and I heard them say the little girl had been found safe and sound and had already been reunited with her family. Her hair had been cut short, but she had not been abused in any way! I cried for the sheer joy of it!
I certainly don't always know exactly what effect true forgiveness is having behind the scenes at any seeming point in time. The Course says in Miracle Principle number 39:
The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears.
And in Miracle Principle 45:
A miracles is never lost. It may touch many people you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware.
And heck, one quote from The Disappearance of the Universe, page 192:
ARTEN: Forgiveness is the only thing that can really change the world, and that isn't even the purpose of forgiveness.
MAD COURSE STUDENT: The man they suspect did the snatching, shot himself when police showed up to question him. He died today. I believe that man made a mistake, and then he chose to listen to the Holy Spirit instead of the ego. I thank him for making that choice. I'm going to keep choosing the Holy Spirit right along with him. Thank God.
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ReplyDeleteGlad you remembered it was YOUR dream. That's why everyone is innocent - WHAT YOU ARE SEEING IS NOT TRUE. Just like where Pursah and Gary discuss the innocence of Hitler on page 112 in DU.
ReplyDeleteGreat quotes you chose MCS. : )
Here's a couple more related ones from the Course:
Preface xi:
The world we see merely reflects our own internal frame of reference – the dominant ideas, wishes, and emotions in our minds. ‘Projection makes perception.’ We look inside first, decide the kind of world we want to see, and then project that world outside, making it the truth as we see it. We make it true by our interpretations of what it is we are seeing. If we are using perception to justify our own mistakes – our anger, our impulses to attack, our lack of love in whatever form it may take – we will see a world of evil, destruction, malice, envy, and despair. All this we must learn to forgive, not because we are being ‘good’ and ‘charitable,’ but because what we are seeing is not true. We have distorted the world by our twisted defenses, and are therefore seeing what is not there. As we learn to recognize our perceptual errors, we also learn to look past them or ‘forgive.’ At the same time we are forgiving ourselves, looking past our distorted self-concepts to the Self That God created in us and as us.
Text p 373L
Call it not sin but madness, for such it was and so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And above all, be not afraid of it. When you seem to see some twisted form of the original error rising to frighten you, say only, “God is not fear, but Love,” and it will disappear.
I'm reading Wapnick now (as well as ACIM). Love the way he explains things. It seems to me like "I need do nothing" would apply very well in this instance (as in every other one, too!) Seth
ReplyDeleteOoh, right back at ya with the good quotes, Mikey! And, yeah Seth, I totally agree that any book by Dr. Wapnick is a gift! (or his wife Gloria for that matter!)
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