L e s s o n  352

Judgment and love are opposites. From one
Come all the sorrows of the world. But from
The other comes the peace of God Himself.    

The way that we find God's peace and return home is through forgiveness. Forgiveness is as close as we will ever get to love in this world. It is a reflection of the love of God. "Forgiveness looks on sinlessness alone, and judges not" (1.1) It is the way home to ourselves as we were created.

The opposite of forgiveness is judgment. It is when we choose to see our brother guilty. And from this choice comes all of our pain and sorrow. If we truly believed that this was the case, we would not choose to see our brother as guilty. We would see that with our judgment comes all of our distress. As long as we are seeing sin in the world, it is a projection of the guilt within our own minds. We need to ask for help to bring this guilt to light because our own fear will keep us bound to the guilt. The fear is of remembering who we are because we are so invested in the image that we have made of ourselves. We don't want to lose what we still regard as valuable, which is our body and the world. We still cherish this separate self. Yet when we can see that this only brings us unhappiness, we will elect to follow more and more in His way. The memory of who we are is still with us. It is calling to us as loudly as we choose to hear.  "Father, I would hear Your Voice and find Your peace today.   For I would love my own Identity, and find in It the memory of You".(1.8-9)

We all make being loving as a goal that we try to achieve. But it is not achievable if we hold any judgments about anyone being unworthy of our love. So when we are not approving of someone, it is a judgment we are making which keeps us from experiencing the love that we are. So we need to be as honest as we can in bringing awareness to our judgments. We do so by being vigilant in watching our thoughts and in taking our projections back to the mind, and giving them over for healing. Thus love is given an opening to come bursting forth. It is already there but hidden by our judgments. It shines forth when we give up these judgments.

 Don and I had a beautiful lesson in this recently when we were having a seemingly significant disagreement. We parted in anger after choosing to keep our judgments rather than offer forgiveness. In the quiet of our own minds, we both resolved to release the judgments. We no longer felt the need to resolve the problem in form because it no longer had any substance. As Don said in a moment of sanity, our relationship was more important to him than any problem. And that is the shift that allows us to stop figuring things or trying to resolve the conflict  and instead simply change our minds and let peace be restored for us. Without the course, disagreements like this build and build until there is a desire to part. Yet with this teaching we can truly see these issues as bringing us opportunities for healing our minds. And thus we can ultimately be grateful for this classroom where what we need to learn shows up in relationships and events in our lives.

  Jesus tells us in this lesson that through forgiveness, which means the relinquishment of judgment with the help of the Holy Spirit, he comes to us! He is the symbol and example for us of someone who did not stay away from people who might bring him down. In fact, he went to be with these people and brought his light to them. When we release our judgments, we are redeemed and "elect to follow in this way".

 Rather than how other people impact us, the focus here is how we impact others. Jesus speaks to us in Text 7.VII about this: When a brother behaves insanely, what is our normal response? (anger, outrage, retaliation, trying to change and fix them) Actually, yet we could see them as offering us something positive-namely, an opportunity to bless them. This then becomes  a gift to ourselves. The Course says this same thing in many ways. One way is the idea that a brother's insane behavior is really a call for help. Here are a couple of other ways:

When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him only by perceiving the sanity in him. (T-9.III.5:1) A shadow figure who attacks [this is how we see our brother now-as someone from our past who is yet again attacking us] becomes a brother giving you a chance to help. (T-29.IV.5:6)Then comes a powerful line: "His need is yours." What is his need? It is to be seen as innocent and blessed. We need the same thing too, and the only way we can have it is by giving it to him. This is the "law of God" and later in the Text and Workbook it is called the "law of love": "Today I learn the law of love, that what I give my brother is my gift to me" (Lesson 344).   In truth, we already have that blessing; God gave us that in our creation. But by denying blessing to our brother, we blind ourselves to the fact that we ourselves have been eternally blessed.

So, essentially we have taught ourselves who we are by our judgments of others. Yet we learned to think of ourselves as deprived, unloving and vulnerable and we have come to believe that influential people in our formative years (our caregivers) taught us to see ourselves as in that way.  In Chapter 7.VII Jesus is saying something quite different. He is saying that we taught ourselves not by how others see us but how we have judged them as deprived, unloving, and vulnerable. That is quite a statement when you think about it. It reflects what Jesus tells us is  that we are responsible for everything that seems to happen to us and choose the feelings that we experience. "I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked."     So how can we know that we have made a judgment? The answer is really quite easy. We are not at peace!! So the way back to peace is to open our minds to the presence of the Holy Spirit Who is available to us in every moment. If we are not aware of His Loving Presence, it is because we are blocking His Love with our own judgments.

We believe that we need to judge as self protection. It is the way we survive in the world. It keeps us on the defense against potential attacks, even from those that we believe we love. It keeps up our armor. It keeps us separate. We think we are protecting ourselves from being hurt. The ego does not want us to see that instead, we are actually hurting ourselves by keeping ourselves in a state of fear. Where fear abides, there can be no love. Yet the love, which is behind the fear, calls to us and it is this call that we have responded to when we took up this path.

 So today, we remind ourselves once again that we need not listen to the ego programming any longer. We have the memory of God in our minds. The  Holy Spirit  is in our minds and is waiting to lead us back to the memory of who we are. He will help us to rediscover the truth of who we are as we give up our judgments.

We are reading the "What am I?" section daily now with each lesson. And we are reminded now that "our use for words is almost over now." We are increasingly recognizing the truth of who we are. We are reminded that "I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides". Wow! To really get this thought that God is not outside of my Self. God is not, as Bette Midler says in her song, at a distance watching me. He is in my Mind. How can we know this? Well as today's lesson tells us, by giving up our judgments (our fear). We can't keep the judgments and know that we are Love.

So, in essence if we are to love ourselves we must bring our judgments to the Holy Spirit. To the extent that we judge we will judge ourselves and feel that we deserve punishment. To judge is to feel bad about yourself. And so we will draw  punishment that we think we deserve unto ourselves. The only way to get in touch with our own divinity, innocence and holiness is through forgiveness. This is how we remember God. This is how we connect with our true Identity.

 Love and blessings, Sarah

^{A Course in Miracles}     

^{MANUAL FOR TEACHERS}

13. What Is the Real Meaning of Sacrifice?