This is taken from Ken Wapnick's tape series on the Lessons of the Workbook. Volume VI, tape (1.)?? 1. What Is Forgiveness? part 2.
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Paragraph 2
"An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released."
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Ken: When we hold a grievance against someone, we are absolutely, positively, certain sure that we are correct. And we will not doubt it. So that we could say, that what Jesus' whole point in this Course, is for us, to at least begin to doubt the accuracy, or the truth of the way we are perceiving, ourselves, each other, God, and himself as well.
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That important line which I quoted earlier, (at other times) from chapter 24, is: "To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold." He doesn' t say you have to dismiss every value that you hold. He simply says the little willingness of questioning every value is enough. We just have to doubt the fact that we are correct. And of course, once that occurs - as the paragraph continues, the mind is closed.
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The mind is closed because I am not even aware that I have a mind. Which means the thought of sin, guilt and fear of being separated from God, are seemingly forever barred from my awareness. And its the unforgiving thought towards someone outside of me, that allows that to happen. As we will see in the next sentence.
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"The thought" (the unforgiving thought that I am holding against you,) "protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?"
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Ken: I have spoken very often of the ego's two tiered strategy, or the double shield of oblivion. That second shield which consists of our experiences in the world and the body, which ulitamately end up with our special relationships. And the grievances we hold against others, has one specific goal. And that goal is to protect the thought system in the mind, so that we never get to examine it, and make another choice.
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So that is what he means - the unforgiving thought protects projection.
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The unforgiveness aimed at you, is a projection against the ultimate thought of unforgiveness of your self. To say it another way - my anger at you, protects the guilt that the anger is a projection of.
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The problem is the guilt that is in my mind which I don't want to look at. So what I do, is deny its reality in my mind. Project it out and now I see it in you. And I am so absolutely positive that my perceptions of you and my understanding of this situation is correct. And so that tightens the chains, so that my mind now is further imprisoned, so that I can never access it. And the distortions are more veiled and more obscured, and I become more and more convinced that the distorted way I am perceiving the world and everything in it, is correct.? And all that does, is, again, it drives me further and further from reason, which is the Holy Spirits Thought system.
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And so once that happens - there is no reason. Nothing that could come between me and my anger at you. And the underlining goal which is to perpetuate the thought system of the ego. That is what that fourth sentence means.
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"What can come between a fixed projection (which means, that I am so adament that I am right - the way that I am seeing you.) Nothing can come between that, and the real underlining source. The aim that is the ego's chosen goal. And then we will see in paragraph three, what that goal is.
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"An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path."
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Ken: As we will see when we look at paragraph four the contrast, is, that forgiveness does nothing. The unforgiveness (the thought system of the ego) is what does everything.
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And it is frantic because it always has to preserve its own individuality. So the image that your getting here, is of this kind of frantic, frenetic being or entity inside of us, (which is really ourselves) that is furiously trying to protect its own identity. And the way that it does that again, is to make the mind a fearful place. Which then leads us to project the content of the mind, which is guilt, on to the world and now we believe everything is happening all around us.
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And then we are frantically trying to preserve our identity. We are trying to survive physically which takes a tremenous amount of work and then we are trying to survive psychologically, which takes an equal amount of work. In fact, we have to be even more ingenious in terms of how we are going to survive psychologically. That is all of our special relationships.
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"Distortion is its purpose,"
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Ken: So this is the wanted goal, that Jesus talked about in paragraph two. And its the distortion of reality. The distortion of who we are as God's Son. And it certainly is a distortion of Who God Himself is.
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"Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well."
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Ken: So this is the ego. It first distorts reality. And then chooses the means by which this distortion will become protected. And the means, is to make up a world. Make up relationships that are seen outside of us. And then we spend the rest of our lives trying to deal with the problem of the body. The physical body and the psychological body.
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"It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality,"
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Ken: So that is another way of saying what the goal of the ego is. It distorts reality, and even better it smashes it. It seeks to obliterate the reality of God and His Son. And since "ideas leave not their source" the idea of a separated world, filled with bodies and special relationships, simply is a shadowy fragment of the original thought that is in our mind. I exist only at God's expense.
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If I am going to establish myself as reality, I have to destroy, annihilate and obliterate the reality of God. An unforgiving thought is what holds that whole insane thought system in place.
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"without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view."
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Ken: This is why - Jesus teaches us the ego's goal is murder, and the goal of all specialness is murder. In that wonderfully graphic passage in chapter 24, he describes the goal of specialness is to lead your brother to the precipice and throw him over. And of course we are not far behind.
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So anything that comes in the way of defending our thought system, we would seek to destroy. So, in sentence two, he says we would overthrow, what we see as interfering with our chosen path. Here we see that we have no concern with any one or anything. This is where all of our guilt then gets firmly lodged. Because deep down, we are all so guilty for how we use and manipulate everyone else. We don't see anybody who is there to remind us of how "one" we are, and how together we are. Rather, we see everyone as posing a real threat.
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If I don't deal with you in some way, my happiness will be jeopardized. Therefore - I have to deal with you. And - if I had my way, I could deal with you by outwardly attacking you, that is what special hate is. Or, if I have to be more undercover about it, then I manipulate you through special love. But that is what all this is about.
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It begins with the original special relationship. I need what God has. I have to kill Him so I get it. And since again, "ideas leave not their source" and that thought of killing God is the source, I then act that out over and over again in my projections here. Then I feel so guilty of what I am doing here, that I can't even look at what my body is doing here. And if I can't look at what my body is doing, how can I get back to what my mind is doing?
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That is why you must realize that guilt over your actions here, is also a defense. It is still another part of the ego's strategy to keep you from getting back to, what your behavior is a shadow of.
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So the purpose of the world, from Jesus point of view is to be a classroom that reflects back to us, what our ego's are doing in our mind and what we have chosen. If I feel guilty for what my body is doing, and my behavior is doing... and how I am manipulating, seducing and deceiving every one, there is no way that I could ask Jesus for help.
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As I have explained other times - guilt is blinding. Guilt makes it impossible to see. And all I want to do when I am feeling guilty is choose my ego as my teacher. To help me undo the guilt ... which means undo the source of the guilt. Asking Jesus for help means, I am asking for help to undo the source of the guilt. Which means, I must first look at what I believe I am guilty of - here in the world. And realize that is a shadow of what I am secretly guitly about in my mind.
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Only then, can I look at both - the outer and the inner, and realize that they are both part of the same illusion, and they will disappear. So as we go over paragraphs 4 and 5, we will see how this process works.
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(to be continued.).............
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