Day 7
What Is the Way Out?
Our state of fear and unhappiness as described yesterday may have sounded grim. But the whole purpose of A Course in Miracles is to show us the way out. The Course teaches that the solution to our suffering comes to us in a few key ways:
The Holy Spirit
In this world, we are essentially sleepwalking. Left to our own devices, we would merely go in endless circles. We need a Voice of wisdom from above Who can guide us out of our predicament. This is the Holy Spirit, created by God as His Voice in the dream, through Which He leads us “from sleep to gentle waking" (W-140.3:4).
Transformation of perception
The Holy Spirit’s main job is to guide us through a transformation of perception. We have no idea how subjective our perception is, how much it is generated by our own minds and distorted by our own egos. We look out upon an unsafe world that always seems poised to attack us. We take this as fact, not realizing how thoroughly we have made the world we see. Through the Holy Spirit’s teaching, we learn that perception is the result of thought, not of external causes, and this gives us the ability to choose a new perception.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is the main way in which our perception is transformed, which is why it is the Course’s central teaching. Yet the Course teaches a very different kind of forgiveness. Typically, when we attempt to forgive, we focus on the errors of others, which we consider to be real and destructive, making these individuals seem truly deserving of anger. Then, having granted those errors full reality, we try to let them go, which can understandably feel impossible.
Course-based forgiveness is a far loftier affair. Here, we understand the errors of others were unreal, so why focus on them? We realize their bodies are unreal as well, so we look past them. Instead, we fix our gaze on the lovely light of who these individuals really are as Sons of God. As the Course says, “He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the face of Christ shining in front of him" (M-22.4:5).
This is a radical kind of forgiveness, which may strike us as unrealistic, impractical, and even as a form of denial. Yet it is a radical form of love, and pure love carries great power in a loveless world. The Course says that truly seeing others as radiant Sons of God, untarnished by any of their errors, has the power to unchain them from their past. It can even heal their bodies. Further, it sets us free. One of the Course’s central teachings is that “giving and receiving are the same.” By giving others the realization that they are the eternally sinless Son of God, we receive that same realization about ourselves.
Vision
Forgiveness has the power to open up a new kind of perception in us, through which we see a new world. In the Course, this new perception is called vision. It sees through spiritual eyes in us and looks on the holy light in all things, just as plainly as our body’s eyes look on physical forms. It sees a world that consists purely of this light, along with the loving thoughts of everyone here. When we see with vision, our eyes look on the exact same world, but our mind sees a new world, one in which “Everyone and everything I see will lean toward me to bless me" (W-60.3.4-5). When we fully reach this world, our journey is over. From here, God Himself will lift us out of time and space and back into His arms forever.
Tomorrow we will talk about the flip side of what the Course says: what it doesn’t say.
See you then,
Robert Perry
Founder
Circle of Atonement
Reminder:
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