Lesson 140: “Only salvation can be said to cure.”

This lesson says, “Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure.  It takes away the guilt that makes sickness possible.” 

Our guilt is the most fundamental problem.  Guilt is so rampant, we feel it on some level virtually constantly.

A part of us feels flawed and therefore, guilt generally occurs automatically. 

The Course says that the reason we feel guilt is because we think we separated from God. 

This explains a base level of guilt we always feel.  When we deem ourselves not good enough or we make a mistake we feel guilty.

Guilt is such a pervasive problem we hardly know what to do with it.

The Course gives us the clear and gentle information that we never need to feel guilty because we never separated from God. 

That was an error on our parts.  Therefore, we need to hold our guilt in perspective.

The bottom line is that there is nothing going on the the world and in our lives that we need to feel guilty about because God says the only thing we need to concern ourselves with is whether we are joined with God. 

And, this is solidly in the black, and therefore, we can set it down from the list of our guilt items.  

The Course reminds us how important it is that we hold our guilt in some kind of appropriate perspective.  We need to realize that God loves us as we are and has no feeling that we went wrong, and therefore, we can just let the guilt go.

And it may take some time because we just keep making mistakes it seems. 

But just give it a gentle push out of our minds. 

We have God to hold our hands, to give us the thrust of whatever we need to launch that guilt into a different orbit, away from our being and energy. 

God is always able to give us whatever help we need to get down off that ledge we keep hanging out on in case we decide to leap over because we feel burdened by guilt.  

Just know that guilt always has something to teach us.

We can listen and ask the guilt for a clear message about what its purpose is. 

This is the best way not to deny the guilt, which ultimately makes it bigger down the line. 

We are asked to simply have a conversation with it and invite it to share freely about whatever may occur to us we might want to do differently.

Then when we can, just get up and try to go deeper into changing whatever we are currently doing that is making us feel guilty. 

When we listen with a neutral heart, and then collect information with a grateful heart, then our hearts remain full even despite being faced with guilt. 

Let’s do what we can to deal with the guilt as best we can and make the God-inspired changes that we need to do to arrive at a new place of releasing accumulated guilt.