Pure Innocence

            Last week, I briefly mentioned some of the wonderful experiences I’ve had lately. Since I often write about the difficulty I’ve had, I thought I would elaborate on some of the good stuff.

I also said in last week’s article that my awakening was not unfolding as I expected. The unexpected has not been all bad. I ended my memoir (A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens, available here) with a journal entry from this past May. In it, I described a wholly new experience. I was thinking about the darkness I passed through, and I felt a chuckle burble up from someplace within I had never felt before. The chuckle came with a joyful feeling of how silly—referring to the darkness. Those experiences were washed away as my feelings instantly lightened. This was true forgiveness!

I felt this experience heralded a “world shift”, by which I meant a shift in my experience of what is real. Since, I have had more experiences of what I call the Cosmic Chuckle. In fact, because of these experiences and other lightening and forgiveness experiences, as well as a dream, I have come to refer to Christ as the Cosmic Joker. Sometimes I have an image of a lime green/Kelly green harlequin doing cartwheels before these experiences, and it, as well as playing card jokers, have come to symbolize Christ for me.

The Cosmic Joker feels It comes from the direction of Revelation (Knowledge; direct experience of God). I do not have a Revelation when I feel the Joker, but I am reminded of It.

Sometimes, forgiveness comes suddenly when I am feeling heaviness, mildly or strongly, and I am instantly lightened. I do nothing to cause this. I do not even consciously invite it. I have had churning thoughts just stop suddenly.

I wish I could convey the purity of the forgiveness! Absolutely all guilt is wiped away. Decades ago, I stepped outside my home one day and as I made my way to my car, the world was washed in Pure Innocence. Nothing changed. It was the same street, streetlights, cars parked in front of the same homes, etc. And yet, it was a different world, a world of Innocence. This is when I understood I perceived varying degrees of guilt the rest of the time. It was as though I lived in shades of grey (guilt), thinking the lightest grey was white (Innocence), until this experience showed me what white truly is.

I did not have this experience again until the past few months. I have come to call these experiences the White World because it is so pure, and I understand it to be what A Course in Miracles calls the real world.

Nothing changes in these experiences but my perception. What they show me is that guilt is only an idea coloring my perception. Nothing in the world changes for me to see Pure Innocence. Only where I stand in my mind changes.

So often now I find that where I expected a thought or feeling or form to change or fall away through forgiveness, I find instead I simply stop seeing those things as wrong or guilty or fear inducing. Nothing at all is wrong or bad or guilty. Only thinking makes it so. As the Course says, the ego’s expectation of sacrifice makes it impossible for me to discern what really needs to change when I am in its thought system. Guilt takes so very many forms, from the obvious to the sublimely subtle. When I see Pure Innocence I understand that all that needed to change was the thought system I was in.

Oh, I wish I could convey this to you! I can only tell you Pure Innocence is here to see. And that, no matter the ego yatters otherwise, guilt is not real. You do not have to be concerned about what you think, feel, or do. You don’t have to change any of it. None of it makes you guilty. Only the ego thought system makes you feel guilty. And that is an illusion. 

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If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and I will answer it in this newsletter/blog.