Monday, March 9, 2015
Lesson 68: “Love holds no grievances.”
The Course wants us to understand how to love. We all have experienced a wide range of what we believe love is. We use the word in many ways and to describe many of our relationships. But one of the challenges we have in our ego mind is that we hold different kinds of anger and resentment about others. Sometimes we don’t even realize. We can harbor just a touch of hate about someone we may think we are truly loving toward.
Our ego argues for that little bit of separation- the arm’s distance of being not completely loving. The ego makes a certain pointing out that we are just slightly irritated. The ego says- this is just a little suffering and anger. When we brush it under the rug, we often find ourselves somewhere down the line actually coming into awareness of this thing. It was a minor upset initially but now has taken on a life of its own. What can happen is this area of hate has escalated because when it was smaller, we just didn’t connect with it. We pretended it had no bearing on our minds and hearts.
When we allow this separation with others instead of healing the energetic rift between us, this is not the way to heal the discontent between us. When we practice forgiving ourselves and we forgive the other person whom the ego feels angry at, we can truly meet this relationship without grievances. We have to pay attention all the way along in our days because the tiny irritation can explode after not receiving the love in the form of forgiveness.
What is amazing is how often this happens, without really getting to the bottom of how to not come with grievances in our love. This is why we need to make forgiveness a regular practice and regular application to all of our relationships. We have to keep at the process of learning how to use forgiveness most effectively and most lovingly. We have to forgive through trial and error and of course, through asking the Holy Spirit for guidance.
Then we start to learn our own means of forgiving and it won’t seem like a chore. Allow forgiveness to be the way we learn to love ourselves too. We can know that our own personal challenges in the world are filled with opportunities to forgive as well. We have to know that letting ourselves off the hook is the only way to true peace. It’s forgiving ourselves that is also part of the work of forgiving other people. They go hand in hand.