Removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence" --A Course in Miracles (Intro 1: 6,7)
This is the goal A Course in Miracles defines for us in its introduction. It is one of the very first statements in a book of over 1300 pages. What does it mean? What are these blocks to love?
Blocks are created through our unforgiveness. They are the things we judge, what we are unable to accept.
"Your work is not to seek and find love. It is merely to turn within to discover every obstacle that you have created to its presence, and to offer that obstacle to the great dissolver of dreams, the grace of the Holy Spirit."--Way of Mastery p. 72
So much of what we have filled our minds with is not love. Our memories, our subconscious mind and our current thinking is filled with hurt, pain, anger, judgment, upset, guilt and every form of negative thinking.
Until we remove this negative thinking, these blockages, these obstacles, we are unable to allow ourselves to accept the love that God is always offering to us, in every moment, in every place. We do not allow ourselves to see the truth of God's love...
We actually believe in sin and punishment. Even though we know that God created us in his own image and that therefore we are perfect. We actually believe in our own lack of worth. Even though we know that God loves us infinitely. We actually believe in anger, victimhood, revenge and hate. Even though we know that God created every single one of us in love and that we are all one with him and with each other. Our job is to clean up our minds. We have to sort out all this wrong, emotional, fear based thinking. We have to search out the blockages, the obstacles, and turn them over to Spirit.
How do we do this? With forgiveness, of course. It's a process and it doesn't happen overnight We have to deliberately seek out every part of our mind where we are blocking love. And that means digging around in our pasts, in our subconscious and really and truly examining the way we think in the present.
It's important not to get overwhelmed by the task ahead and to keep our eyes on the prize. And the prize for doing this work is huge. Actually, it's everything. It's everything you have always wanted and not known how to get. It's why you're here. It's what you seek.
Once we have done this work of removing blockages, we will be able to receive love.
"That is a fact and represents the truth of What you are and What your Father is. It is this thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as a co-creator with Himself. It is this thought that fully guarantees salvation to the Son. For in his mind no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares. Lack of forgiveness blocks this thought from his awareness. Yet it is forever true."--A Course in Miracles Workbook Review IV p. 273
Lack of forgiveness blocks this thought from our awareness.
This is one of the reasons why forgiveness is the key to happiness. Our minds can never be fully restored to their true state, where we think and create with God, if we are holding grievances and judging others.
Simply put, we can never be happy when we are in a state of unforgiveness, because it blocks our connection to God. And when our connection to God is blocked, we are not ourselves. We are separated from our truth. We are not the love we were created to be. And we are unable to give and receive love fully in this state.
When we hold grievances and judge others, we are refusing to recognize the truth that not only were we created by the father as a co-creator, but that everyone else was, too!!
It is in the recognizing of this very fact, that we are all equal and the same...that we are all one...that we are all, simply, love...that we come to receive our own happiness.
Yes, other people forget their truth and do stupid, ignorant and selfish things here. But it is our responsibility as a true Son of God, to take the higher ground, to know their truth for them by holding a place of love in our minds for them. And in so doing, we offer them (on a mental plane) a place to grow into their own knowing of their own truth, that they too, are simply, love. We offer them the chance to heal when we forgive them through our recognition of who they really are, co-creators of God.
Because after all, this is all about the mind. It's about what we do in our thinking. All minds are connected. So when we forgive and offer love instead of fear, we are healing our own minds and we are offering healing to our trespassers as well. And that is their chance to heal along with us.
I spent today leading a forgiveness workshop and afterward one of the participants asked if I might spend a few minutes helping her understand something about an event from her past.
While doing one of the forgiveness meditations, she became aware that there were various elements associated with a particular event and wanted to know why that was. I let her know that, yes, our bigger forgiveness lessons often have many aspects associated with them. Big painful events are often complicated and the emotion we feel about them tends to make then seem even more complicated in our minds.
When she began to speak about what happened, her face took on a confused clouded expression and she had a difficult time grasping what we were discussing, even though it was all easily clear and obvious to me. As we were making a list of the aspects of this event that she needed to forgive, she kept asking me to repeat each one over and over so she could write it down. She would write down a word or two of my sentence and get completely lost and ask me to repeat it again. Now, this is a very smart woman, but her painful memories were creating emotional blocks that were keeping her from thinking in her normal clear head.
Here are the simple facts about the event that transpired in her past. She was a young girl and she was given her first bicycle. She was so excited that she could ride it that she wanted to share her joy and rode down the block to show her best friend. She felt elated that she could ride, proud of her new bike and excited to share with her friend. When she rode back home, her father greeted her standing on the corner with a willow switch in his hand which he then beat her with it.
Today in the workshop she was able to see for the first time that his response came from his own fear. After all, she had ridden off without telling him where she was. She asked me if her understanding of this now was forgiveness. My answer is that yes, it is, but only partially.
Anytime you flip the switch from fear thinking to love thinking you are forgiving. In this case, her willingness to put herself in her father's shoes is an offering of love to him. This is definitely the start of the forgiveness for her.
However, there's a lot more under the surface. I said to her, "Let's talk about the fact that here was this incredibly big moment in your life. Getting a bicycle is a giant step in the progression to becoming BIG, so important to us when we are children. This was one of the most important, happiest and proudest moments in your childhood. Here you are absolutely celebrating this big moment and then suddenly it all turned horrible...the rug got pulled out from underneath you."
When I said the words, "the rug got pulled out from underneath you", she looked stunned. "Oh, my God", she said. "That is the repeating theme in my life. Just when things seem to be going their very best, the rug gets pulled out from underneath me."
Of course they do! When we have an experience this big and emotional in our childhood, it creates subconscious beliefs that color our world throughout our lifetime. In Science of Mind studies, we call these false beliefs. My friend's belief is that whenever things are going really good, there is going to be a nasty and painful surprise. The rug will be pulled out from underneath her.
The only way for her to stop reliving this moment in her life is for her to forgive it. When she accomplishes the forgiveness, the horrible repeating pattern will stop and she will be able to accept happiness knowing that it will not be shockingly, abruptly and painfully taken from her.
Here are some other aspects of this experience which may have created additional false beliefs she can be working to forgive:
I get punished whenever I feel big and free and I fly.
People I love can harm me.
Love has strings attached. Other people love me conditionally.
I am a helpless victim.
I get in trouble even though I do nothing wrong.
I can't trust life.
This is not a safe world.
True forgiveness takes some deep thinking and self discovery. That's why I like to call it aforgiveness lifestyle. It sometimes takes months and even years to unravel the emotions, fears and blockages we have created in our minds because of the events in our past. However, if we ask Spirit to help us receive understanding about our pasts, it will be given to us. It often comes in fits and starts over a series of weeks and months, but maybe that's because we need the time to process what we are discovering.
Filmed at Lake Tahoe (where I live).
It's true that forgiveness is a commitment. However, the process can be fascinating (after all, what's more interesting than ourselves?) It's also easier than you may think. Now that my friend has begun to forgive this important event from her past, she'll be given more information and greater understanding about it. It will become easier and easier for her to forgive each aspect of it. Pretty soon, she will have released the whole thing. The emotion of it will leave her body and she will be at peace whenever she remembers it. This will allow her to open herself up to new possibilities in her life. Perhaps she will decide to trust the world a little more and open up to new experiences and relationships in a larger way than she has in the past.
When we don't forgive, we're only creating more suffering for ourselves. Leaving negative emotions unresolved eats away at us. It damages out bodies physically and it damages our minds. When we allow grievances to accumulate in our mind, they block any chance we have of accessing our natural inner peace.
Do the words natural inner peace surprise you? Yes, our natural state is inner peace. However, from our earliest years, we start to harbor psychic wounds. We allow the hurts to accumulate and clump together in our subconscious. We start to believe ideas like these:
I am a bad person.
I am not smart.
I am not worthy.
Nobody likes me.
I am not love-able.
Life is unfair.
The world is cruel.
Bad things happen.
When we allow these ideas to take over, we suffer.
And the more we think thoughts like these, the more we draw events toward us that re-enforce these very ideas. We work a theme. Perhaps it's a belief in abandonment. Maybe there was an incident as a very small child where we felt abandoned. We may find that throughout our lifetime we re-experience those same feelings. On a regular basis, events transpire in which we are "abandoned" yet one more time.
The only way to stop the cycle of hurt is to forgive and release the grievances. We can start by working on the most recent experience of abandonment. We can forgive the event and anyone involved in it. That will go along way toward resolving this issue. However, it is best to root it out fully. We do this by searching our memories for the earliest time when we felt this emotion. We sit with these feelings and experience them fully until they move through us. We remember, contemplate, feel the feelings and release.
This takes time and it takes a commitment to look deep, be open to epiphanies, to keep studying ourselves, week after week and month after month. Things will be revealed. Aha moments will happen. And as we understand more about what occurred in our past, as we forgive and release, we will begin the process of restoring that natural inner peace.
We all have a choice. We can continue to let fear run our daily lives, or we can do the work and forgive our world. It takes a lot of inner work to create a forgiveness lifestyle and it unfolds slowly over the course of several years, if one is fully committed. However, once we do this work, we live largely in peace. Happiness is once again our ordinary state.
Ask yourself, are you really truly happy? Or are you substituting a nice car, a good job, busy children and a comfortable house for true happiness. Are you just telling yourself that this is what happiness is? Because happiness is so much more than a busy comfortable life. True happiness comes from a deep inner peace that only forgiveness can bring.
Forgiveness is a lot easier than you may think. If you would like to forgive, but don't know how to start, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" outlines many easy processes to help you learn to forgive. Amazingly, forgiveness actually becomes pleasurable and something you will look forward to.
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