Lesson 121. Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
(1) Here is the answer to your search for peace. Here is the key to meaning in a
world that seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers
that appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your
hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. Here are all questions answered; here
the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.
(2) The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love no room to be itself;
no place where it can spread its wings in peace and soar above the turmoil of
the world. The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite and release
from pain. It suffers and abides in misery, peering about in darkness, seeing
not, yet certain of the danger lurking there.
(3) The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it
sees; afraid and angry, weak and blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay,
afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of
stillness; terrified of darkness, yet more terrified at the approach of light.
What can the unforgiving mind perceive but its damnation? What can it behold
except the proof that all its sins are real?
(4) The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins. It looks upon the
world with sightless eyes, and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising
to attack its miserable parody of life. It wants to live, yet wishes it were
dead. It wants forgiveness, yet it sees no hope. It wants escape, yet can
conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere.
(5) The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future which
can offer anything but more despair. Yet it regards its judgment of the world as
irreversible, and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair. It
thinks it cannot change, for what it sees bears witness that its judgment is
correct. It does not ask, because it thinks it knows. It does not question,
certain it is right.
(6) Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in the mind, which cannot sin.
As sin is an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness must be learned by you as
well, but from a Teacher other than yourself, Who represents the other Self in
you. Through Him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made, and let
it disappear. Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self, and Who
can never sin.
(7) Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how
to forgive itself. Each one awaits release from hell through you, and turns to
you imploringly for Heaven here and now. It has no hope, but you become its
hope. And as its hope, do you become your own. The unforgiving mind must learn
through your forgiveness that it has been saved from hell. And as you teach
salvation, you will learn. Yet all your teaching and your learning will be not
of you, but of the Teacher Who was given you to show the way to you.
(8) Today we practice learning to forgive. If you are willing, you can learn
today to take the key to happiness, and use it on your own behalf. We will
devote ten minutes in the morning, and at night another ten, to learning how to
give forgiveness and receive forgiveness, too.
(9) The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the
same. Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing
forgiveness toward one whom you think of as an enemy, and one whom you consider
as a friend. And as you learn to see them both as one, we will extend the lesson
to yourself, and see that their escape included yours.
(10) Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like,
who seems to irritate you, or to cause regret in you if you should meet him; one
you actively despise, or merely try to overlook. It does not matter what the
form your anger takes. You probably have chosen him already. He will do.
(11) Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. Try
to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never
noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly
picture that you hold of him. Look at this picture till you see a light
somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him,
and makes the picture beautiful and good.
(12) Look at this changed perception for a while, and turn your mind to one you
call a friend. Try to transfer the light you learned to see around your former
"enemy" to him. Perceive him now as more than friend to you, for in that light
his holiness shows you your savior, saved and saving, healed and whole.
(13) Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your "enemy" and
friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them, and
they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself. Do not forget, throughout
the day, the role forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving
mind, with yours among them. Every hour tell yourself:
Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin,
and know I am the perfect Son of God.
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The commentary on this lesson is an excerpt from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
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Lesson 121. "Forgiveness is the key to happiness."
*In this very important lesson we find the contrast between forgiveness and the
unforgiveness the ego would have us practice. The symbol of the <key> is
important in considering what the ego does with our minds. When the decision
maker was convinced by the ego to choose individuality over oneness, persuaded
in the ontological instant to choose the ego's interpretation of the tiny, mad
idea rather that the Holy Spirit's, and thus believe in its lie of
individuality, it was as if the Holy Spirit became locked away in the right mind
in which He dwells. The guilt in the wrong mind the replaced the Holy Spirit's
right-minded love and Atonement in our awareness. At that point the ego had us
view guilt as so intolerable that we had to leave the mind entirely and make up
a world, encasing ourselves in a body. Consequently, not only did the right mind
become closed off from awareness, but the wrong mind as well. The entire split
mind, in a sense, became a locked box or vault, with key cleverly concealed
within a body.
Forgiveness, then, is the key that opens our minds. It is the name A Course in
Miracles gives to the process of realizing that what upsets us is not what is
going on within our own or another's body. Our guilt upsets me. This realization
unlocks the first part of our minds. Going to the wrong mind and looking with
Jesus at its guilt, we realize it, too, was made up. Our recognition causes it
to disappear, which unlocks the right mind, where the Atonement principle has
waited for us.
Forgiveness thus opens up the mind the ego had closed. It told us happiness is
found in the world by meeting our body's needs. The Holy Spirit, on the other
hand, teaches that real happiness comes when we unlock the presence of love that
had been buried -- seemingly forever -- in our minds. This wonderful lesson
takes us still further along our journey through anger and guilt, to the
guiltlessness that is our home.*
