THE CONDITIONS OF FORGIVENESS¹

Well, one thing that’s very helpful in leading to the correct answer is to understand that the forgiveness we’re talking about is a forgiveness that you are going to extend to another.  It isn’t forgiveness coming to you.  So, we’re not going to be talking about how you can behave nicely, socially, acceptably, so that you seem to be worthy of forgiveness—of being forgiven.

No, that would be satisfying and that would be the thing most everyone would want to put into practice first.

But this Waking up process—this coming back into your right Mind—is always a Gift . . . the process is always a Gift.  The forgiveness is always given to someone else because until you’re willing to give something to someone else, love doesn’t come into the picture.  And love is the essential element.  It’s the nature of you.  It’s the substance of your Being.  Every single aspect of you is love in expression because every aspect of you is God presenting Himself—God presenting Herself.

So, if you want the dream of sin, sickness and death—of suffering—to end, you’re going to have to have someone else on your mind, someone other than yourself on your mind.

As I said last week, it’s the criteria.  It’s the way it works.  It’s not what you’re used to.  It’s called unselfishness.  And saints are unselfish.  Some like Albert Schweitzer were unselfish or they’re thought of as being unselfish.

But umm . . . you?  No, not to any consistent degree because you have things you want for yourself that take up space and time, that take time away from your Brother, who’s eyes you are to look into and remember God.  And all the while you’re attending to your wants and your needs and leaving no space for your Brother you are affectively barring yourself from Waking up—from returning to your natural divine state of mind in which your divinity embraces the divinity of everything else because the divinity of everything else is more important to you than you.

And the Gift you make to your Brother in the holy instant that contributes to his Awakening is part and parcel of the integrity of your Being functioning in a grounded way right here, right now in what could be called the “human condition,” “the material world and universe.”  And because it operates there and functions there, it brings about the transformation of Vision that allows you to see the Kingdom of Heaven where you had been seeing your definitions of It and you were calling it a material world and universe.  It’s that simple.

Now:

THE CONDITIONS OF FORGIVENESS.

The conditions of forgiving your Brother . . . not the conditions of being forgiven.

The holy instant is nothing more than a special case, or an extreme example, of what every situation is MEANT to be.

The holy instant is that place in which you abandon your independence and join with the Holy Spirit or the Father, desiring to Know what the truth is separate and apart from all of your best thinking and logic.  It’s the aggressive, self-assertive thinker that you have been abandoning its state of being—relaxing out of it, becoming still, non-assertive, non-thinking and inquisitive instead with a true desire to Know the truth.

The holy instant is nothing more than a special case, or an extreme example, of what every situation is MEANT to be.

Whether it’s a situation involving a Brother, a situation involving a circumstance, a situation involving a garden, a river, a piece of property, the a building of a house.  You see?

. . . every situation is MEANT to be . . .

. . . an experience of what Reality actually is right where you are.

The meaning which the Holy Spirit's purpose has given it is also given to every situation.

[Repeats] The meaning which the Holy Spirit’s purpose has given . . .

. . . the holy instant . . .

. . . is also given to every situation.

The purpose given to the holy instant never just hangs there, it’s always connected to something.  It’s always relevant to something.  And so the holy instant allowed and embraced, embraces real relationships with real individuals and real relationships with pets, real relationships with everything—animate or inanimate.

It calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, . .

. . . now what again is the practice of faithlessness?  The practice of faithlessness is taking charge of things yourself by means of your own authority and your own intelligence and your capacity to reason and your ability to manipulate situations and people to your ends.  That’s the practice of faithlessness because it involves no quiet attention to God—no quiet attention to what Reality is according to God’s definition of It.  And faithlessness is your preoccupation with your definitions of It.  You see?

So, the Holy Spirit’s purpose . . .

. . . calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, that faith might answer to the call of truth.

Now listen again:

It calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, . .

. . . see, you can’t just suspend faithlessness.  It must be withheld and left unused, else your withholding of it with an ace up your sleeve is a barter—it is a means of being able to take control again if it becomes necessary according to you.
 
So . . .

It calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness withheld and left unused, . .

. . . left unused, left never to be used again.  You see?  That’s unused.  But if you leave it, if you withhold it but save it for further use, you haven’t left it unused.  This is very important!

The holy Spirit’s purpose . . .

. . . calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, that faith might answer to the call of truth.

That the joining, the silence that you allow yourself to be in with a truly purely enquiring mind . . .

. . . might answer to the call of truth.  The holy instant is the shining example, . .

. . . it’s the shining example because it’s so simple and it’s the only thing that works.  There’s nothing complicated about it.  Now that’s love.  When you have gone and done something that goes against the experience of Reality, isn’t it amazing that the correction of that is so simple.

The holy instant is the shining example, the clear and unequivocal demonstration of the meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen as a WHOLE.

Does that make sense?  When you’re acting as an independent agent, you are holding yourself apart from the whole, you’re seeing yourself separate from it and you’re seeing all of it separate from you.  And most of the time it’s us against them, me against them or them against me.

But when you move into the holy instant and you abandon and leave alone—never to use again—your independent authority, then all the separation, the me and them vanishes and it becomes us.  It becomes an experience of wholeness.  And it’s only here in that wholeness that, as we’ve said, God’s laws prevail.  But it’s also only in this wholeness where the experience of invulnerability, of utter unalterable safety, comes to view as a permanent experience because it is an unalterable part of and nature of Creation Itself. 

It only seemed to become different when you chose to look at it through independent eyes.  And then you saw what was whole as though it were not.  And then you behaved as though what was whole was not.  And when you behave in Reality as though Reality is not what it is, but what you determine it to be, why you’re going to bump into Reality and Reality is going to seem to be harsh and unkind to you.  And you’ll say, “That’s the nature of life.” And it’s not.  But it is, if you insist on walking through Reality with blindfolds on, with an intent not to see everything as it is.  When you do that, you’re going to bump into Reality.  Reality is going to be not what you’re expecting . . . pain, injury, damage . . . growing lack of confidence in your perceptions and on and on.

Faith . . .

. . . the quiet joining with the Father, . .

. . . has accepted every aspect of the situation, . . 

. . . because it’s an experience of infinite singularity.

Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, and faithlessness has not forced any exclusion on it.

When you abandon the last vestige of excluding some part of Reality and calling it different from you, it’s like letting out an infinite sigh of relief.  That alone should be reason for engaging in the holy instant.

It is a situation of perfect peace simply because you have let it be what it IS.

This simple courtesy is all the Holy Spirit asks of you.

So, the conditions of forgiveness include this simple courtesy.  And again, what is this simple courtesy?  It is that . . .

Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, and faithlessness has not forced any exclusion on it.

That’s a beautiful definition of courtesy, isn’t it. 

Do not intrude upon it, do not attack it, do not interrupt its coming.

What?  Truth. 

Let truth be what it is. 

Let it register with you.  Let the registering of it be the most important thing to you.  Because it’s the most intelligent thing to do, it’s intelligent to want to Know the truth.  And it’s unintelligent to want to be confused by misperceptions, by lies—by that which isn’t true.

So . . .

Let truth be what it is. Do not intrude upon it, do not attack it, do not interrupt its coming. Let it encompass every situation, and bring you peace.  Not even faith is asked of you, for truth asks nothing.

Now this means here, faith—like confidence.  You don’t have to have confidence in truth.

Not even faith is asked of you, for truth asks nothing.

Listen:

Let it enter, and it will call forth and SECURE for you the faith you need for peace.

So truth is not some intellectual precept or statement that’s un-contradictable.  Truth is an active Presence.

Let it enter, and it will call forth and SECURE for you the faith you need for peace.

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” ²  Ye shall let the truth in so that it registers with you and it will make you free.  It will clarify as an act of love what is true so that you become unconfused and sanity returns.

Now, it takes faith in the sense of your practicing the two-step—the holy instant.  It takes the faith that constitutes silencing your will and joining with the Father to gather information about Reality from Him so that the true perspective may replace your misunderstandings or your misconstructions, your  misidentifying what Reality is.

Truth changes you by making clear what isn’t true and rendering it valueless so that it holds no interest for you any longer.  Truth does that when you practice faith—not in it—but in silencing your human will and asking the Father, what is the truth.  That you must do.  That practice of faith you must engage in.  When the Father or the Holy Spirit responds, it in-fills you with understanding: with Knowing that is unquestionable, clear, satisfying and pacifying.  It’s that simple.

Let truth . . .

. . . enter, and it will call forth and SECURE for you the faith you need for peace. But rise you not against it, for against your opposition it CANNOT come.

You can’t change it.  You can’t alter it.  You can’t make it disappear.  But you can withdraw your attention from it totally.  It still doesn’t stop governing you.  But its governance often is experienced as uncomfortable because it moves you in the direction of your sanity when you are intent upon enjoying the fascination and excitement of being insane for awhile.

Would you not WANT to make a holy instant of every situation? For such is the gift of faith, freely given wherever . . .

. . . once again . . .

. . . faithlessness is laid aside, . .

. . . what? . .

. . . unused.

No backup plan.  No ace up your sleeve.  Abandoned.

And then the power of the Holy Spirit's purpose is free to use instead.

When the Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind—reveals to you what is true, you can’t help but avail yourself of it, you can’t help but stand with it, you can’t help but hold it unswervingly because it doesn’t make sense to do anything else any longer.

This power INSTANTLY transforms all situations into one sure and continuous means for establishing His purpose, and demonstrating its reality.

Yeah, everything gets done for you.  Truth comes in and reveals Itself and changes you.  The Holy Spirit’s Purpose comes in and transforms all situations into one sure and continuous means for establishing His Purpose and demonstrating its Reality.

What has been demonstrated has called for faith, and has been GIVEN it.

If you’ve done the two-step.  If you’ve listened genuinely.

Now it becomes a fact, from which faith can no longer BE withheld.

The strain of refusing faith to truth is enormous, and far greater than you realize. But to answer truth with faith entails no strain at all.

No, it doesn’t.  But the strain is invigorating.  You’re used to it.  You love challenges.  You think you’re here to overcome challenges.  So what would it mean to be here with no strain at all?

Well, it must mean something . . . the equivalent of dying.  You know, I mean no purpose left to life, just . . . you know, literally wouldn’t the idea of sitting on a pink cloud forever be as horrible as lying in a casket forever?—different environment, same meaninglessness.  And that’s not what it’s about.

To you who have acknowledged the call of your Redeemer, the strain of not responding to His call seems to be greater than before.

Now, this is a very important point:  Who is your Redeemer?  You might read this and think that it is referring to the Christ—to me.  “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”³  But that’s not what this is referring to.

Who is your Redeemer?  Your Brother, the one sitting next to you, the one sitting across from you, the one you had the fight with, the one you made love to.

To you who have acknowledged the call of your Redeemer, . .

. . . the one whose eyes you’re going to look into, and as a result of looking into it with true care, recognizing the Father.  And in recognizing the Father, Waking up yourself.  Your Brother is your Redeemer as a result of your loving Him enough to look at Him with innocent eyes instead of your preconceptions.  And in the innocence of your vision, being able to see the Father radiant in your Brother or Sister—your Redeemer.  So let’s listen:

To you who have acknowledged the call of your Redeemer, the strain of not responding to His call seems to be greater than before.

Why?  Well, because before you didn’t know your Brother was your Redeemer, He was just the bastard you had to deal with every day in order to get on with life . . . right?  But when you know that He’s your Redeemer, when you understand what I’ve been sharing with you, it becomes impossible to look at Him and engage in mean-spirited, independent projection and not feel guilty and not know that you’re missing the mark because you’re not engaging in your function.  So now it becomes more difficult to hate your Brother or to think the worst of Him or to jump to false conclusions about Him, with justification.

To you who have acknowledged the call of your Redeemer, . .

. . . the strain of not responding to His call seems to be greater than before. This is not so. Before, the strain was there but you attributed it to something else, believing that the "something else" produced it.

The simplest way I can put it is: You looked at your Brother and you saw Him for what you thought He was, and you believed your belief, and you blamed Him for your problem instead of blaming your faithlessness.

In both meanings relative to your Brother:  One meaning is, you lacked faith in Him—you expected the worst.  The other meaning, that you’re engaging in thinking as though you were responsible for your safety and your well-being that held your Brother in a hostage position as an enemy, which He could do nothing about until you changed your mind.  Those are the two kinds of faithlessness.

Before, the strain was there but you attributed it to something else, believing that the "something else" produced it. This was NEVER true. For what the "something else" produced was sorrow and depression, sickness and pain, . .

. . . well, what is it that produces this?  Independent thinking—independence itself.  Because the minute you claimed independence from your Father you brought guilt and fear inexorably into the picture, to remain there until you abandoned the divorce.

For what the "something else" produced was sorrow and depression, sickness and pain, darkness and dim imaginings of terror, cold fantasies of fear and fiery dreams of hell. And it was nothing but the intolerable strain of . . .

. . . what? . .

. . . refusing to give faith to truth, and see its evident reality.

Your failure . . . your refusing to give faith to truth is your insistence upon practicing faithlessness, which causes you not to see the evident Reality of truth. 

Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God.

Again, you could think that this was referring to me, to the Christ.  But no, it’s to your Brother.

Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God. His faithlessness did this to him.

Your brother’s faithlessness put him in the position of being a suffering, miserable entity, whose behavior toward you arose out of that mindset—out of that experience.

Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God. His faithlessness did this to him. Think carefully before you let yourself use faithlessness against him.

It’s the blind leading the blind and both falling into a ditch.  It can’t be avoided.  There’s no good to come from it.  It’s an absolutely total waste of time, ineffective in any constructive way. 

Think carefully  before  you  let yourself use faithlessness against . . .

. . . your Brother, whose faithlessness has caused him to be in misery and behave in a way that is a call for Love.  Simple.

Think carefully before you let yourself use faithlessness against him. For he is risen, and you have accepted the cause of his awakening as yours.

If you do not practice faithlessness here, relative to your Brother, but you practice faith and you join your Brother with the vision that is provided to you by the Holy Spirit as the revealing of truth—as revelation—then your Brother will be seen as whole, as risen, as the Christ, as that one whose utter divinity is so clear to you that it reveals your divinity to you spontaneously as well.

For he is risen, and you have accepted the cause of his awakening  as  yours.

What you give you get to keep.  And what you get to keep is a realization—a revelation—that comes as a result of being a Brother, actively, so that in your experience of Him you see God.

You have assumed your part  in  his redemption, and you are now . . .

. . . uh-oh . . .

. . . fully responsible to him.

Here’s that involvement thing again.  Why wouldn’t you be fully responsible to Him?  Why wouldn’t you let yourself be fully responsible to your Brother?  Do not let any part of what He is be excluded from Him in your mind, and not to let Him in anyway be excluded from you.  Why would you not want to constantly be fully responsible for being the presence of Love that introduces no dissonance or in-harmony and is uplifting and fulfilling to your Brother or any situation.  You see?

Fail him not now, . .

. . . it’s a bad time [chuckles] . . .

Fail him not now, for it has been given you to realize what your lack of faith in him must mean to YOU.

Now you might say, “Wow, then if I’m going to love my Brother because of what not loving him is going to do to me, then really, I’m not going to do it for my Brother, I’m doing it for myself because I don’t want to suffer.”  Yeah, that would be a good way of “mind-f’ing” yourself into delay, delay in embracing your Brother.

You’ve got to realize that you’re not going to Wake up until your Brother is important enough to you to dare to look in His eyes and see something that you haven’t believed was there—the Father, God.  Not doing that is going to have an effect on you.  But you know what?  It’s your nature to love him.  And it’s your nature to see him as he truly Is.  So when you’re asking for the Father’s Perspective, you’re asking to be returned to your nature, your natural Perspective . . . your sanity.  That’s just the way it is.

His salvation IS your only purpose. See only this in every situation, and it will be a means for BRINGING only this.

Well, we could say this is another condition of forgiveness.

See only this in every situation, and it will be a means for BRINGING only this.

When you accepted truth as the goal for your relationship, . .

. . . if you did, and this experience was had, that we’ve been talking about . . .

. . . you became givers of peace . . .

When you accepted truth as the goal for your relationship, you became givers of peace as surely as your Father gave peace to you. For the goal of peace cannot be accepted apart from its conditions, . .

One of the conditions is the practice of faith that has accepted every aspect of the situation and faithlessness has not forced any exclusion on it.  That’s one of the conditions of peace.  It’s a courtesy.

Recognizing that your Brother or Sister is your Redeemer is another condition of forgiveness.  If you don’t see that, you will not be curious enough to look into your Brother’s eyes and see something different from what you believed was there.  And that will deprive you of being able to recognize yourself in a new way, because of the way you treated your Brother.  And that’s one of the conditions of forgiveness.

[For] the goal of peace cannot be accepted apart from its conditions, and you HAD faith in it, . .

. . . if you did what we’ve talked about and you had the insight and the revelation, . .

. . . you HAD faith in it, for no-one accepts what he does not believe is real.

Nobody even looks for what he does not believe is real.  Unfortunately you look for sin, disease and death.  You look for a life of a certain number of years and you die and that’s the way it is.  That’s what you believe.  That’s what you have faith in. 

It’s hard to accept that you’re the Christ.  It’s hard to accept that you’re the holy Son or Daughter of God.  It’s hard for you to believe that there can be instantaneous healing.  It’s hard for you to believe that lost limbs or lost organs can reappear.  It’s hard for you to believe that there’s really anything you can do other than practice positive thinking in order to have any sense of peace in this conflicted world.  It’s hard to believe these things, so you don’t bother.  You stick to what you believe is true, what you believe is real.

And everything I’m doing is encouraging you to believe what is Real, but what is different from your current definitions, so that you might free yourself from these current definitions that you have made up, that are binding you, but which do not represent truth and which no longer have to bind you because you are the holy Son of God, the holy Daughter of God and that Birthright cannot be taken away from you and therefore, hasn’t. 

Your purpose has not changed, and will not change, for you accepted what can NEVER change.

When you practiced the holy instant and your mind was changed by truth entering by its own volition because of what it is and because you didn’t object to it.  The key thing:  You didn’t object to it.

Your purpose has not changed, and will not change, for you accepted what can NEVER change. And nothing that it needs to be forever changeless can you now withhold from it.

That’s what you can anticipate.  When truth becomes clear, you simply cannot abandon it again.  Oh yeah, you probably could find someone, another Brother, who would be willing to join you in fantasy but with the experience you’ve had you won’t be willing to do it.  That’s a promise.

[And] nothing that it needs to be forever changeless can you now withhold from it. Your release is certain. Give as you have received. And demonstrate that you have risen far beyond ANY situation that could hold you back, and keep you separate from Him Whose call you answered.

Your Brother . . . your Brother is calling you all the time . . . calling to you all the time.  Your Brother, like you, is suffering, in that your days are not free of tension.  Your days are not free of concern.  Your days are not free of misunderstandings that have to be corrected and cause tension and stress.  Your days are not filled with an experience of a world that is at peace. 

So acknowledge this to be the truth, so that you might engage in the conditions for forgiveness and hasten your Awakening.

And again, as I mentioned last week, this means getting involved with your Brothers and Sisters—not with ideas and theories.  And in your very human connections with your Brothers and Sisters, bring the Father into the picture.  How?  Change the way you’re dealing with your Brother.  Because how you’re going to bring the Father into the picture is by looking into your Brother’s eyes and finding Him appearing there, causing you to be involved in a complete change of mind, a complete revamping of your perception of your Brother and the feelings you have about your Brother, together with what you’re going to find is the evaporating of arrogance in you on your part.  Because it’s only if that disappears that equality, oneness, wholeness without any exclusion occurs.  One of The Conditions Of Forgiveness.

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you and everyone who is listening or watching I love you.  And I look forward to being with you next time.