Forgiveness offers everything I want.
What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?
All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more.
Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind. What would you want forgiveness cannot give? What gifts but these are worthy to be sought? What fancied value, trivial effect or transient promise, never to be kept, can hold more hope than what forgiveness brings?
Why would you seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything? Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, halfhearted willingness to hear, and less than halfway diligence and partial trust. Here is the answer! Seek for it no more. You will not find another one instead.
God's plan for your salvation cannot change, nor can it fail. Be thankful it remains exactly as He planned it. Changelessly it stands before you like an open door, with warmth and welcome calling from beyond the doorway, bidding you to enter in and make yourself at home, where you belong.
Here is the answer! Would you stand outside while all of Heaven waits for you within? Forgive and be forgiven. As you give you will receive. There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God. Let us today rejoice that this is so, for here we have an answer, clear and plain, beyond deceit in its simplicity. All the complexities the world has spun of fragile cobwebs disappear before the power and the majesty of this extremely simple statement of the truth.
Here is the answer! Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. Accept salvation now. It is the gift of God, and not the world. The world can give no gifts of any value to a mind that has received what God has given as its own. God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you.
Open your eyes today and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace. Forgiveness is the means by which it comes to take the place of hell. In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes, and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. What you will remember then can never be described. Yet your forgiveness offers it to you.
Remembering the gifts forgiveness gives, we undertake our practicing today with hope and faith that this will be the day salvation will be ours. Earnestly and gladly will we seek for it today, aware we hold the key within our hands, accepting Heaven's answer to the hell we made, but where we would remain no more.
Morning and evening do we gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed. Begin in hopefulness, for we have reached the turning point at which the road becomes far easier. And now the way is short that yet we travel. We are close indeed to the appointed ending of the dream.
Sink into happiness as you begin these practice periods, for they hold out the sure rewards of questions answered and what your acceptance of the answer brings. Today it will be given you to feel the peace forgiveness offers, and the joy the lifting of the veil holds out to you.
Before the light you will receive today the world will fade until it disappears, and you will see another world arise you have no words to picture. Now we walk directly into light, and we receive the gifts that have been held in store for us since time began, kept waiting for today.
Forgiveness offers everything you want. Today all things you want are given you. Let not your gifts recede throughout the day, as you return again to meet a world of shifting change and bleak appearances. Retain your gifts in clear awareness as you see the changeless in the heart of change; the light of truth behind appearances.
Be tempted not to let your gifts slip by and drift into forgetfulness, but hold them firmly in your mind by your attempts to think of them at least a minute as each quarter of an hour passes by. Remind yourself how precious are these gifts with this reminder, which has power to hold your gifts in your awareness through the day:
Forgiveness offers everything I want.
Today I have accepted this as true.
Today I have received the gifts of God.
The Following is Forwarded from Pathwaysoflight.org
-Lesson 122
“Forgiveness offers everything I want.”
In yesterday’s lesson we practiced looking beyond bodies and focusing on the Light in our brothers and ourselves. Today we are told that God holds the door open to a warm and safe place and He invites us to come in. We are told when we enter, we enter into Light and form disappears. The imagery of formless, boundless Light is helping us shift our attention away from forms and what forms seem to do. It brings us to the awareness that illusionary forms do not matter in truth.
Light always unites with Light. Light never resists Light. Light does not place limits on itself. It does not stop Itself. It always expands and enters wherever It is welcome. To be in darkness, barriers must be erected to keep the Light out. The moment the barriers are removed, Light rushes in to fill the space where darkness was. Darkness has no power over Light. We experience darkness only when we do not welcome Light and build barriers against It. Forgiveness brings down the barriers. As we learn to practice looking beyond form, letting the veil of form be lifted, we see the Light that has always been there. We see the changeless in the midst of change.
Holy Spirit, help me today to keep my attention of the changeless and the real, to not value the changeable and temporary. Help me to see the Light beyond all form. I am willing to receive God’s gifts today. I am willing to forgive.
Forgiveness means allowing the veil to be lifted. Forgiveness means accepting Heaven’s answer to the hell we made. Forgiveness means accepting God’s gifts. Forgiveness means opening to the Light of God and letting it heal all our false perceptions of separation. Forgiveness offers joy and peace and happiness. Forgiveness offers everything I want.
In this lesson, Jesus is really focusing on the benefits of forgiveness. He is showing us that holding grievances only brings us hell and we don’t have to continue living in hell. It just takes a little willingness to accept Heaven’s answer. It takes a willingness to open to God’s plan for salvation. Heaven is always there waiting for us to open the door and let It in. The face of Christ is always there to see in our brother. That is how we see it in ourselves.
Today I am willing to practice opening to Heaven’s healing Light. Today I am willing to practice lifting the veil to see the face of Christ in my brother. Love is changeless. Heaven is changeless. Today I am willing to look beyond the constantly changing forms and circumstances to the eternally changeless Light of God That is always there waiting for my acceptance. Today I am willing to be happy. “Forgiveness offers everything I want.”
As I read this beautiful lesson my first thought was, "Yeah, maybe if I do this lesson every day for a hundred years." I seem to be so attached to my grievances. But I reminded myself that I am not alone in this. The Course promises us much support.
I am really tired of carrying around these grievances, and I can see how they are making me so unhappy. It is a mystery to me why they are so hard to give up.
As I was reading this lesson, I'm answering, "Yes I want happiness, yes I want quietness", etc. etc. And then the lesson goes into all the wonderful things forgiveness offers like joy and happiness. It seems to me that I can only dream of those things. And then comes the answer to achieve all these things, which is the part I apparently have such a hard time with, the part that keeps me from experiencing these things.
Until the Course came around I didn't realize there was another way of living. I think I always knew in my heart there had to be something better, but I never knew what it was or how to achieve it. I think Jesus knows that we're extremely attached to what we made, so He is gently trying to remind us with His lovely poetry. It's almost like He's saying "you had this before, remember?"
So many times I get frustrated because I can't seem to do what it takes to have peace, but the continuous practice of these lessons along with the power of the Holy Spirit helps me have hope and stay focused. The thoughts of this Course give me the only true life I've experienced in my time here on earth.
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