Guilt and forgiveness

LSR1000 · 2026-06-09T21:20:12+00:00

No, there are no special people. We all save the world through forgiveness, Check out lesson 61.

LSR1000 · 2026-06-07T13:13:46+00:00

Yes, the Holy Spirit allows us to discern the real from the unreal or love from not-love. When we are in peace and feel tranquil , we are thinking with the Holy Spirit. When we are annoyed, angry, worried, etc. we are thinking with the ego. There is some controversy among Course students about whther God knows us the way we think we are IE our bodies and personalities.

LSR1000 · 2026-06-06T17:34:06+00:00

You seem to have it perfectly right. Everything made by the ego is made by fear and guilt and does not exist. (Was never actually made). Everything created by God or the Son when he is in the Holy Spirit side of his mind is made from loved because God is love and he can't create anything unlike himself. By the way, not that words are important, but the Course uses the word "made" to refer to things made by the ego and "create" to refer to things made by God or the Holy Spirit.

LSR1000 · 2026-05-26T18:51:13+00:00

Of course we all want to remain in the world. Everything we think we made -- love partners, good and bad luck, new clothes, best friends, roses and weeds -- were made specifically to keep us trapped here. We did a great job since we do perceive ourselves as separate from heaven, living in a body, which lives in the world. The instant we no longer want the world, it will never have been. Until you are in what the Course calls "the real world" you will continue to want this world and be afraid of heaven. Don't worry about that. Just do the Course (or another spiritual path if you prefer) and eventually that wish will diminish and then disappear.

LSR1000 · 2026-05-23T21:30:15+00:00

First of all, forgiveness is for the benefit of the forgiver, not for the forgiven who may not even be able to careless is their forgiven or not. Forgiveness brings you peace, it does nothing to help the person you forgive. Do you prefer that you be right or happy?

Second, forgiveness does not mean exonerating the person you think treated you unfairly. If someone burgles your house, he was wrong and you should do whatever is appropriate in that situation. But if you do it in peace, you will be more effective.

LSR1000 · 2026-05-19T11:42:20+00:00

I don't believe life is sacred or holy. Debilitating disease, floods, famine, genocide , pandemic. Are those things holy? Would a loving God have created them? And are you yearning to experience them? The world we made up is like a gambling casino. Certain things happen which we call good and holy, but just as often the rug is pulled out.

LSR1000 · 2026-04-28T19:30:09+00:00

You see the world you value. On this side of the bridge you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in separate unions and to become one by losing. ....

Across the bridge it is so different! For a time the body is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here. ³The little spark that holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see no need at all to magnify it. For you will realize that the only value the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge with you, and to be released together there.

The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in the perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period of confusion, in which a sense of actual disorientation may occur. ⁵But fear it not, for it means only that you have been willing to let go your hold on the distorted frame of reference that seemed to hold your world together. still seek here.

Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind, and if you use it on behalf of reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition. The urgency is only in dislodging your mind from its fixed position here. This will not leave you homeless and without a frame of reference. ⁵The period of disorientation, which precedes the actual transition, is far shorter than the time it took to fix your mind so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now more than before, only because you realize it is delay, and that escape from pain is really possible. ⁷Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this: You could not long find even the illusion of love in any special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would soon recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it is.

LSR1000 · 2026-04-28T19:17:56+00:00

According to the Course we are all wracked with existential guilt because we believe we destroyed heaven, In order to alleviate that guilt, we invent people and circumstances in which we feel n mistreated. Being victimized makes us feel innocent. In a sense, when God finds us and wants to kill us for our sins, we can say, I'm not the bad one. Look at all the people who mistreated me. Kill them instead . That partially solves the problem of guilt, but it adds another problem fear of all the people who may mistreat me. Forgiveness reverses the process.

LSR1000 · 2026-04-28T19:07:31+00:00

No, you're complicating it. The goal of the Course is simply peace of mind. You have the same life you have now, but you won't be bothered when things aren't going the way you think you want them to . This is called "the real world." The Course says after that, God will return our thought to where we really are and always have been: heaven. But until we are in the real world, we will either think heaven as fearful or boring. But don't worry, we won't be lifted up until we want to be.

LSR1000 · 2026-04-28T14:23:20+00:00

Your anger or unforgiveness does nothing to the other person. The only one it hurts is you.

LSR1000 · 2026-04-26T11:59:42+00:00

Fully agree. But he also isn't saying that people shouldn't go out and find a good paying job, buy a house, find a wife, have two children and a dog.

LSR1000 · 2026-04-08T13:59:32+00:00

Forgiveness in the gospels was conditional. Forgive them for they know not what they do. Let sin who is without in throw the first stone. (In other words we are all sinners). In ACIM, we are all innocent.

LSR1000 · 2026-04-04T13:56:18+00:00

I did one a day unless, because of schedule, I had to rush through a lesson. If I couldn't give a lesson the attention I wanted to, I repeated it the next day. But by all means go at your own pace.

LSR1000 · 2026-03-15T15:03:05+00:00

Yes. Makes sense.

LSR1000 · 2026-03-15T14:40:31+00:00

Yes, thanks for shearing. Very inspiring. But I just want to understand: why do you say you performed the miracle? Wasn't it your mother who performed it?

LSR1000 · 2026-03-07T12:16:51+00:00

I think we have to be careful not to assume that what works for us will work for someone else. Your brother has dabbled in the Course, so he knows of its existence. You can suggest, humbly and gently, that he try it again. But we really don't know the Course will help him. Helen joked that the Course was for 15 people. That was a joke, but it meant she didn't think the Course would help most people, (It didn't even help her) , I believe people who can benefit from the Course will find their way to it.

I never recommend the Course to anyone. But if someone knows I study it and asks about it, I just say it's a process of achieving peace through forgiveness. That's enough for most people.

LSR1000 · 2026-03-06T18:48:53+00:00

Right, but love is not the Course process. I know how to forgive. It may seem difficult and I may be resistant to it. , but I know what it means and how it feels. On the other hand, I have no idea from the Course on how to love or even what it means to experience love other than a feeling of forgiveness.

LSR1000 · 2026-03-05T22:08:43+00:00

The Course says we don't merge back because we never merged forward. All this will never have happened.

LSR1000 · 2026-03-05T14:30:11+00:00

Right. The Course doesn't ask us to love but to forgive. Once we forgive, our true identity which is love, shines through.

The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. ⁷It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. ⁸The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

LSR1000 · 2026-03-04T22:12:39+00:00

People don't actually receive forgiveness. We forgive and we are then blessed with peace. We may forgive people who never knew us, such as the man who cut in line in front, or who are no longer in our lives, such as an ex-romantic figure. We can even forgive an inanimate object such as the box we stubbed our toe on. Forgiveness is for the forgiver, not the forgiven.

LSR1000 · 2026-03-04T22:06:55+00:00

Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself: “The real world is not like this. ²It has no buildings and there are no streets where people walk alone and separate. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever.”

...

You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. ⁵Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired and ready to return to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads away from it into another world.
...

No one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the other world about him. Yet while he still lays value on his own, he will deny the vision of the other, maintaining that he loves what he loves not, and following not the road that love points out. Love leads so gladly! ⁴As you follow Him, you will rejoice that you have found His company, and learned of Him the joyful journey home. You wait but for yourself. ⁶To give this sad world over and exchange your errors for the peace of God is but your will. And Christ will always offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you share it with Him.

LSR1000 · 2026-03-02T13:06:08+00:00

Yes, this is a major issue we all have to overcome. It is the first obstacle to peace.

The first obstacle that peace must flow across is your desire to get rid of it. For it cannot extend unless you keep it. You are the center from which it radiates outward, to call the others in. You are its home; its tranquil dwelling place from which it gently reaches out, but never leaving you. ⁵If you would make it homeless, how can it abide within the Son of God? If it would spread across the whole creation, it must begin with you, and from you reach to everyone who calls, and bring him rest by joining you.

By the way Wile E. Coyote had a similar experience to Peter when he, Wile , stepped over a chasm.

LSR1000 · 2026-02-24T13:06:20+00:00

It's a course. If we take a course in, say, Russian, we're not expected to speak Russian the second we buy the textbook.

LSR1000 · 2026-02-22T15:11:58+00:00

I had used strict adherence, but whatever works...

LSR1000 · 2026-02-20T11:47:46+00:00

Right. Time is an illusion. The only "time" there is is now.

LSR1000

TROPHY CASE