When Forgiveness Is Easy

Q: My other question also has to do with Ken's "teachings." In a number of places (can't recall where), I've seen him say something like "If you find it easy to forgive (etc.), you're doing this wrong." I think it may have been in the 50 Miracle Principles of ACIM. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but I find this a tad worrisome.

But the weird thing is that DU (The Disappearance of the Universe) was like the last piece of the puzzle. Once it dropped in, I just started "doing" the Course and haven't stopped. The worrisome part is that I DON'T find it difficult. I'm not saying I don't find things to forgive (even things I think are "good"), but I think I'd already reached a point in my life where I was already living a lot of the Course precepts.

A: Sounds good. If that's your experience then that speaks for itself, and you wouldn't want to over-think it too much, which is, of course, a trap in itself. We all find this Course difficult, unless we've already done the work of forgiveness via another course or path, which you indicate.

The problem comes when we find the Course easy because we're not really doing what it asks. Denial is a cornerstone ego strategy, and it's difficult to tell when we are in denial because that is its very purpose. And because we are veritable masters at it.

What a lot of people experience as they work with the Course is they become aware of the "ego noise" in their mind, which is a big step forward in undoing denial. This is obviously quite uncomfortable, and part of what I think Ken means when he says what you mentioned above. It's not that the Course itself is hard, rather it is our response to what it is truly saying that makes our experience of it difficult for most.

However much guilt we are aware of consciously, there is still, for most of us, a lot more buried and hidden in our unconscious. Since this is what the Course helps us with, it's not meant for healed minds, but unhealed minds.

Forgiveness isn't easy because we've been so long identified with the ego thought system, invested in the world, enamored of our specialness, and afraid of where forgiveness leads us - back to a God who we think will destroy us.

Ultimately, forgiveness is not beneficial for the one who thinks they're doing it in the beginning - the ego. We're asked to give up more than our grievances, we're asked to give up everything we believe in, including - and most threateningly - the idea of an individual self. Resistance is understandable.

Part of us - our right-mind - is over-joyed with each step forward, but another part of us - the part of us that likes being an us - would have to feel like hell. If we're not in touch with the part of us that feels like hell, well then there'd be a reason for that - either we're extremely spiritual advanced, or we're in denial.

This is not to say that when we feel good we should be looking for where we feel bad. That would be a great way to punish ourselves at every turn. But as we go through our day-to-day life, we can become more and more aware of when we're not perfectly joyful, and see these moments as opportunities to continue on with the practice of forgiveness. Since most of us do not exist in a state of perfect joyfulness, we come to realize we still have some "work" to do. (Forgiveness being the work of ultimately recognizing no work needs to be done.)

Since our state of mind has nothing to do with what is going on in our lives, it is also important to distinguish between peacefulness and "everything-is-going-pretty-good-for-me-right-now". The goal of forgiveness isn't to make our lives and physical circumstances better, but to heal the pain of guilt in our minds. One form this guilt can take is worrying about whether we're doing the Course porperly, if we're understanding it perfectly, practicing it the right way, listening to the right teacher. The real world isn't a state of mind where we still have questions like, "Am I doing the Course properly?", or "Is this truly peace, or could it be something else?" Those questions are only asked by a mind that is unsure, and the right-mind is anything but unsure. When we're perfectly joyful, and perfectly peaceful, we'll know it.

In the meantime we do the best we can with a sense of humility and patience in the recognition that denial is a common part of the process, and that it is not easy to disidentify with an ego thought system we have long held near.