A Course in Miracles talk,
Number 27 The Ladder of Forgiveness,
Part 1 of 2 At the bottom of the ladder,
Even before the first step can be taken,
Lies the issue of forgiveness is unwarranted.
As long as the belief in an eye for an eye is retained,
Even the first rung up the ladder must wait.
On the first rung,
We are prepared to forgive our enemies.
This is real progress,
As the concept of forgiveness,
Albeit distorted,
Has now entered the mind.
When we are ready to realise that there are no enemies,
We will be ready to move further up the ladder.
Further misunderstandings about what forgiveness is must be resolved before we can ascend to the rung of true forgiveness,
Which I refer to as the AAA approach to forgiveness.
Please listen to my earlier talks,
19 and 20,
To describe the AAA approach.
On reaching the last rung of the ladder,
An inner world of peace and joy awaits,
A world that nothing outside of ourselves can take away from us.
A Course in Miracles workbook,
Lesson 134 states,
Let us review the meaning of forgive,
For it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath,
A gift unjustified and undeserved,
And a complete denial of the truth.
The first obstacle that must be overcome,
Before we can even start to climb the ladder of forgiveness,
Is the thought that forgiveness is unwarranted.
As long as this thought is held,
Forgiveness is seen as an undeserved act,
Which prevents a justified punishment being meted out to our aggressor.
Instead,
The Old Testament injunction to give an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is thought to be the appropriate response to others' transgressions.
Why is it so hard to forgive?
What is the attraction of holding on to our anger?
Observations of young children indicate that their anger lasts only a short time,
They fight with each other,
And then usually make up and become friends again.
True anger is comparatively short-lived.
If it continues over a long period,
It has been transformed into justified vengeance.
Now we cannot let go of our anger,
Otherwise we will let our enemy off the hook,
And the justified punishment we eventually hope to administer will no longer be forthcoming.
Withholding forgiveness provides us with an excuse not to take responsibility for our lives if we have suffered in our past.
Although painful,
The memory of the event is deliberately maintained throughout life,
Allowing us to say to the world,
Don't expect too much of me,
For I have suffered in the past,
And will carry the scars until I die.
There is a deeper and more fundamental reason why we prefer attack to forgiveness.
To forgive means to realise that we are similar to the person we accuse,
A theme we have explored in previous talks.
A lack of forgiveness protects us from looking within our own mind to the uncomfortable truths about ourselves.
If we cannot forgive,
We are forced to judge the other person,
To justify our own lack of forgiveness.
To prevent the discovery of such truths about ourselves,
We will do anything to pin the blame on the other person.
Truth will now mean nothing,
As the unforgiving mind tries desperately to maintain its projection onto its perceived enemy.
Our minds become closed to any other way of viewing the situation,
Otherwise the awful truth about ourselves will rise to consciousness.
The other person is the sinner,
And sin deserves punishment.
Hermann Hesser said,
If you hate a person,
You hate something in him that is part of yourself.
What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
It may further be thought that to forgive our enemies would be perceived as an act of weakness,
And would only encourage further attack.
To practice forgiveness does not mean we cannot defend ourselves.
What is important is the motivation behind our acts.
If our country was being attacked by a cruel,
Sadistic dictator,
It is very likely that after trying all other methods,
We may be forced to defend ourselves.
But here our aim will be to resolve the conflict as soon as possible,
With minimum loss of life.
Assuming we win the conflict,
A loving aim would be to restore the attacker's country to a state of harmony,
Leaving a legacy of goodwill towards us,
And not the seeds of a future conflict.
On some level we realise we are being dishonest.
We are only accusing another of what is in us.
This awareness now serves to further increase the guilt we feel.
If we turn to the ego for help,
It will tell us we can get rid of this guilt by getting even angrier with the other person,
In the desperate hope that increasing our projection onto the other will solve the problem.
A further outburst of anger might feel good temporarily,
But will always be followed by further depression as the guilt mounts inside us.
As we look and judge our enemies,
We deliberately filter out the good in them.
A world seen as black and white is much more easier to deal with than one with grey areas.
Believing the other is wrong and we are right is a thought we rather not challenge,
Lest it reveal what we prefer not to see in ourselves.
The media are well aware of our need for enemies.
A quick glance at the best-selling tabloids reveals an abundance of stories featuring the misdeeds of others.
Banner headlines frequently reveal the crimes or misdemeanours of the famous,
Offering us the opportunity to gloat over their evils and wish upon them the punishment we secretly feel we deserve.
Once again we are off the hook.
Another enemy has been found for projection of our guilt.
Following the advice of our egos,
We may feel a temporary relief from the burden of our guilt,
Courtesy of the latest scapegoat,
But such relief,
Based on a lie to ourselves,
Is short-lived.
Our guilt increases further from such a dishonest act.
Our guilt increases further from such a dishonest act and our ego counsels us again to get rid of it by finding more enemies to project onto.
Thus is perpetuated the ceaseless vicious circle of guilt and attack.
But what if sin could be seen as error instead?
If,
On looking within our mind,
We could view what we find so distasteful about ourselves and see it simply as error and not sin,
The road to forgiveness would open to us.
For more on this,
See Workbook Lesson 134.
If we can have compassion for our errors,
We will also have compassion for similar errors in another.
What we give to ourselves,
We also give to others.
What we withhold from ourselves,
We withhold from others.
One definition of sin I particularly like is found in the book The Initiate by Cyril Scott,
Published by Routledge.
The book describes an interaction between a disciple and his master.
The disciple cannot understand why some people pursue a path of violence in life to which the master replies,
Sin is simply looking for happiness in the wrong directions.
Even dictators are laboring under the illusion that grabbing what they want by force will eventually give them happiness.
If we could honestly look at ourselves without judgement,
We would see how alike we all are.
One attraction to anger is that it seems like a way in which we can control the behaviours of others.
Our hope is that by applying sufficient pressure,
They will become guilty and conform to our expectations.
If we believe attacking another will give us what we want,
We must also believe others will think it's a good idea.
That is why we live in fear of being attacked.
We believe people will try to do to us what we try to do to them.
However,
If we choose forgiveness as our path and drop our investment in anger,
We will lose our sense of vulnerability and find peace instead.
To withhold forgiveness from another automatically means we withhold forgiveness from ourselves.
As we give,
So shall we receive,
Be it love or hate.
We continue the ladder of forgiveness in the next audio.
