Nothing to Judge in the Unfolding
A couple of weeks ago I wrote how I (this mind) could not have
accepted that the self’s life in the world is an expression until I no longer
believed in guilt. Why, I wondered? I do speak to students who hear that the
self’s life is not a cause for a future effect, but an expression of an idea
long since over. And they feel immediately released from guilt and from the
pressure of having to make something happen. But before I stopped believing in
guilt I could not access that relief because I could not understand, much less
accept, the idea. Why did I need guilt removed first?
It was because the idea meant I was not in control. And if I
was not in control, I could do nothing to mitigate my guilt and that meant I
could be subject to horrific punishment for it. In other words, I could not
accept the forgiveness offered in the idea because guilt was too real to me.
This was all unconscious, of course. It showed up as my being unable to
understand the idea. It simply made no sense to me.
Now that guilt is gone, though, it’s like I knew it all
along! Certainly, I had learned along the way to trust my intuitive sense of
where things were going (or not going, as the case may be) in this self’s life.
I had learned to find the flow instead of to resist it. But I found this just
because it was easier to live in the flow.
I changed my behavior, but not my beliefs. I lived in a confused mangle
of “there is a flow to the universe I can find and live in” and a belief that
“I am autonomous and my choices are mine alone and they have real
consequences”. I felt one thing and believed another. I was conflicted until
the guilt dropped away.
Lately, I notice when I am under attack from the ego
(personal thought system) it always contains at least a nugget of the idea that
what I am doing has significance for the future. What I’m doing is a cause for
a future effect and I’d better get it right or my life in the world, and/or the
world itself, will go horribly wrong. I don’t have these thoughts. It’s just a feeling and I find those thoughts
when I examine the feeling. No wonder I used to be so controlling! What a
horrible burden.
Now I switch it around: This that I am doing is only an
expression of a past cause. It is not for a future purpose. It is part of a
larger unfolding I can just watch. And--foom!--the ego attack drops. There was
every reason to judge what I did when I thought it added to or mitigated guilt.
Of course, at minimum, I doubted that whatever I did was “good enough” to
mitigate guilt. So my choice was doubt or outright certainty that I did add to
my guilt. But when I recognize that what I’m doing is just what I’m doing, it’s
part of an unfolding, there is nothing to judge.
>>>>>
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Comments
In other words, I have not sat here at the computer and written this exact response before. I am not "re-viewing" that. But the whole story of time represents and idea that is already over because it was undone the instant it occurred.
i couldnt find the part i heard the other day and mentioned above, to see if i had misrepresented what he was saying in that particular talk, though i recall he also presented a few different scenarios which he said were not 100% accurate descriptions in themselves, but served when you put them together, to start to dissolve the rigid idea that time was real, linear, and that we are thus victims of it. again im quoting him from memory and possibly through my own filters of understanding!
i have also heard him saying that we interpret the ideas of ACIM, and all ideas, with a purpose of keeping the self real or opening to our reality as Mind. i can hear him say ' to review something it would actually have to have happened once, let alone twice!'
i do know that we can experience, in time, things that have not yet happened, i have dreamed of things before they have happened, specific and random enough to be beyond any explanation of random, unrelated to any thought processes or life experience before that point. so what this tells me is that the seeming linear aspect of time is as unreal, in time, as ACIM tells me time itself is! hmm.. so, while you are not reviewing sitting at the computer writing that response (well.. maybe you are now ;) ), in time that was always the response you were going to give? honestly, i dont see how it can be any other way *unless* time was real. if everything in the illusion of time is an expression of an idea long since over, then the whole illusion can only seem to have free will/choice from the point of view of selves.. ie in time.
i have had this same thought about Jesus' healing.
i seem to hear HS reminding me that all healing is of the mind and that He extended the miracle to those who were bodily healed in the same way that He instructs us in ACIM, and the same way that with His help i have internally experienced being raised above the battleground and offering Love to another quietly in my mind in momentary Holy encounters. which has always been for me an overlooking of all guilt and perceiving instead the other's Holy Innocence. in those moments i trust the other is in some way i do know receiving a healing also. and He also reminds me that those brief moments of joining in Love are used by Him to affect situations in the world i have no way of knowing about or even imagining....
more and more i am finding that any question i can think of results in the same answer ~ the extending of the miracle of Love to another. the miracle is the answer to everything for me these days.
thank you for allowing this sharing and the opportunity to learn more deeply. endless Love, n
Jesus would say after a healing, "Go and sin no more". Some hear this as an admonishment, but I always heard it as "Now that you know Truth you know sin is not real." That would be a lifting of guilt.
"Lately, I notice when I am under attack from the ego (personal thought system) it always contains at least a nugget of the idea that what I am doing has significance for the future. What I’m doing is a cause for a future effect and I’d better get it right or my life in the world, and/or the world itself, will go horribly wrong. I don’t have these thoughts. It’s just a feeling and I find those thoughts when I examine the feeling. No wonder I used to be so controlling! What a horrible burden."
so.. if there is any tenseness at all regarding any choice i am making, i am believing that there is a truth/god separate from me with an inherent view of good and evil built into the fibre of It?
did letting go of guilt coincide with letting go of belief in separation from truth and a god? oh! is letting go of guilt recognising that that god is nothing but the ego!!?? and this recognition is what enables you to view social-moral guilt with NO feeling of absolute moral guilt? (im thinking about what i discussed with you re my dad. while i took comfort from what you said about my response to him, i knew that my response contained a belief in absolute guilt still, which is why i felt id attacked him.
Yes, you were correct that your belief in absolute-morality is why you felt you'd attacked him. To some degree you see his flaw and mistakes not only as passing human fallibility, but also as a "sin".