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GUIDANCE ~ "THE FORGIVING HEART"
ACIM ORIGINAL EDITION  

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The Course text is in bold face.  The Guidance is in normal type   

In His Guidance, He has asked Me to capitalize the pronouns You and We as an acknowledgement of the Divinity of All of Us, an acknowledgement of Equality, an expression of His Love and respect for You.  

When You see the word 'YOU'  capitalized in the Guidance, know that He is not just speaking to YOU, He is honoring YOU.   

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What more can I say to You about forgiveness that I have not already said to You before, both in the Course and in the daily Guidance?  You know all the words, so now must I give You the music and the lovely steps for this dance to freedom.

We will first happily review the words.

A Brother has hurt You, perhaps just one incident, or perhaps chronically.  The book says to forgive Your Brother for what He hasn’t done.  Hasn’t done?!  Look at Me!  I’m lying wounded.  I didn’t do this to Myself!

Oh, but You did.  I do not mean the specifics of an incident, but rather the context of it.  You are the One who chose the dream in place of Reality.  And the dream is so fecund with possibilities for pain.  If You had not stepped eagerly into the dream, ‘pain’ would be a stranger to You. 

You abandoned God; He did not abandon You.  Thus You have the Holy Spirit.  To God You are as lovely and as perfect as always.  And this is Truth for All of You, including the offending Dreamer of the moment.

Since God sees You only in Your beautiful perfection, then this You that God sees must be right here and right now always available to You.  The Substance of the You of God is Love.  Therefore, You do share His ability to always see with eyes of joyous Love.  I ask You now to be willing to let in this possibility of Be-ing.  We are now taking the words and setting them to music.

If You do not understand Yourself, how will You understand Your Brother?  In the dream the biggest game in town is being better than Your Brother.  The easiest way to accomplish this is to make Him wrong to make You right compared to Him.  It’s really very slick and done with such self-righteous ‘honesty’.  You know the line: ‘I’m just being honest.’  If You must be ‘honest’ then be it about Yourself and not about Your Brother!

When You are willing to accept Your own Perfection, then there’s no need to list Your Brother’s faults to show that You’re much better.  Perfection is the music of the spheres.  Every bird is singing of It, as are the oceans and the winds.  The trees are swaying to Its rhythm. Every ray of light does hum this Love song to the Son of God You are.  Won’t You sing It for Your Brother?

Two thousand years ago I said to Peter when He did ask how often He must forgive a Brother, was seven times enough; I told him seventy times the seven.  He was most astounded.  To You I say even more, so You may dance with happiness: never condemn a Brother, never condemn a Sister.  Be like the Jews who wrote the Talmud, always finding excuses for another’s bad behavior.  This is charity.

And then trust that Your loving Vision of Your Brother does bring the Light to Him, so He need no longer sin, for You have given Him His freedom.  Thus have You fulfilled the law: Do unto Others.  Now peace and happiness are Yours.

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