Lesson 249 – “Forgiveness ends all suffering and loss.” – Suffering is the underlying, fundamental human experience which we could define as the loss, or sacrifice of, the knowledge of being and its indivisible oneness with its Source and every aspect of that living oneness. This state of ignorance has replaced the state of oneness in awareness and the mind has fallen into a dream in which it does not know itself on the most basic level. This ignorance is the underlying cause of all human suffering no matter what form it takes. To be born into a body as a human being is itself the delusional action of a mind that has sacrificed itself, it’s own unchangeable identity, to worship illusions of reality instead. The most hidden illusion of course, being the idol of the self-concept for no-one can ‘see around’ it, it is their ‘reality’ and we look out on a world through that. It is everywhere, the world reflecting exactly that strange and contrived idea we had engendered about our selves.
Forgiveness therefore must be understood as a means to restore awareness of what can never sacrifice and what can never not know the nature of Its own original and intrinsic Self. The great ‘singularity’ of this Self-awareness is described in many ways in different spiritual traditions, such as ‘the supreme perfection’ in the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Dzogchen. It is the sole aim of every authentic spiritual programme, in recognition that without exception, the totality of existential problems are each a direct consequence of ignorance of our true nature. And conversely, awareness of this unchanging Self, that has not been ‘self-created’, is the singular solution to the problem of separation which has given rise to an objective world of spacetime.
“By its ability to overlook what is not there, it [forgiveness] opens up the way to truth, which has been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.
Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth; between the world you see and that which lies beyond; between the hell of guilt and Heaven’s gate.
Across this bridge, as powerful as love which laid its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth…
He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there.
Forgiveness must be practiced, for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world that leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought that it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.
Today we practice true forgiveness, that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our reality in freedom and in peace.
Let us ask this of the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it: Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.”
Taken from Lesson 134
