UNIT 3
Finding Equality
You are constantly overestimating your brother’s importance in your life. On the one hand, you would like to blame him for all of your problems and crucify him, as you did me. And on the other hand, you would like to raise him onto a pedestal and worship him, as you worship me.
You have a very hard time, however, treating your brother as an equal. When I asked you to love your neighbor as yourself, I gave you a very simple rule to go by in your affairs. Unfortunately, if you do not love yourself, you won’t have much luck loving your neighbor.
Learning to love yourself and learning to love your brother or sister go hand in hand. You can’t love your brother and hate yourself, nor can you love yourself and hate your brother. Your feelings about your brother or sister simply mirror your feelings about yourself.
As such, your interactions with your brother help you to see what you must forgive in yourself. Forgiving your brother for his trespass on you only helps him if it enables him to forgive himself. Likewise, receiving your brother’s forgiveness for your trespass on him only helps you if it enables you to forgive yourself.
Asking others for forgiveness demonstrates that you are ready to change your own mind, take back your projection and correct your mistake. That is an important first step in the process. However, do not make the mistake of thinking that your brother’s forgiveness is required for your healing. This places power of healing outside of yourself, where it can never be. Ask for his forgiveness but, if he withholds it, do not assume that forgiveness will never be yours. Indeed, it is always yours. Those who withhold forgiveness only withhold it from themselves.
If you find yourself condemning your brother, you can be sure that it is not him you condemn. It is some shamed part of yourself you have not acknowledged. Perceiving inadequacy in your brother cannot make you feel better, for it merely aggravates your own sense of unworthiness.
Neither justice nor salvation are to be gained by attacking your brother. Please see this for what it is. Every nail you pound into your brother’s hand holds you to the cross. I am the proof of that.
In your interactions with your brother, you have a simple choice: to find him innocent or to find him guilty. This choice occurs over and over again, every day, every hour, every moment. Thought by thought, you imprison your brother or release him. And as you choose to treat him, so do you deliver the same judgment upon yourself.
You cannot get to heaven by holding your brother down, nor will you get there if you try to carry him. Each of you has been given the means to discover your own innocence. Simply acknowledge your brother and bless him upon his journey. If he asks for your help, give it gladly. But do not try to do for your brother what he must do for himself.
Answering The Call for Love
Proper boundaries are necessary if you are to move beyond them. Don’t make your peace and happiness your brother’s responsibility, or make his peace and happiness yours. He is not here to save you, nor are you here to save him.
On the other hand, release your brother from every grievance you have against him. Do not withhold love from him in any way. For to try to hold him back from his happiness is but to attack him and imprison yourself in the grip of fear and guilt.
Do not avoid your brother’s call for love, even though it may seem offensive. He does not know how to ask for love directly. So he attacks you to let you know that he is in pain.
Let him work by your side as long as he will. And when he is ready to leave, wish him well. Give him food and water for the journey. Don’t make him beholden to you or force him to stay against his will.
Your brother’s freedom is but a symbol for your own. Therefore, let him come and go gracefully. Welcome him when he comes and bid him farewell when he goes. More than that you cannot do. Yet this much is enough. Care for each stranger in this way and I will show you a world where trust has returned and charity rules.
Journaling Questions
What brother or sister have you judged, condemned, or attacked? Did attacking him or her make your feel better or did it just create bitterness in your heart and separate you from the source of love?
What brother or sister have you forgiven? Did forgiveness restore peace in your heart and equality in your relationship?
In what ways have you forgiven yourself? In what ways have you not forgiven yourself?
UNIT 4
The Power of Your Beliefs
You interpret what happens in your life according to your core beliefs and the emotional states that arise from them.
When your expectations are not met, you are merely receiving a correction. You are being told that you do not see the whole truth of a situation. You are being asked to expand your perceptions. Correction is not attack. It is not punishment.
The perception that you are being attacked or punished when things do not go your way is entirely guilt-driven. Without that guilt, the correction would be received with gratitude, and perception would be expanded to include the new information.
All experience happens for one purpose only: to expand your awareness. Any other meaning you see in your life experience is a meaning that you made up.
Your primary freedom lies in learning from the experiences that come your way. Of course, you can refuse to learn, but this choice leads to suffering. If you don’t know this yet, it won’t be long before you do.
Life is either resistance or surrender. These are the only choices. Resistance leads to suffering. Surrender leads to bliss. Resistance is the decision to act alone. Surrender is the decision to act with God.
You cannot experience joy in life by opposing the ideas or actions of other people. You can experience joy only by remaining faithful to the truth within your own heart. And this truth never rejects others, but invites them in.
Truth is a Doorway
Truth is a door that remains open. You cannot close this door. You can choose not to enter. You can walk in the opposite direction. But you can never say: “I tried to enter, but the door was closed.” The door is never closed to you or anyone else.
If you feel that the door has been shut in your face, you have interpreted your experience in a fearful way. And your belief that the door is shut may very well convince you that this is the case.
You are all masters at taking truth and inverting it. You have the creative ability to make anything mean what you want it to mean. You can take yes and make it no, wrong and make it right. That is how strong your beliefs are.
But just because you have inverted truth does not mean the truth ceases to be true. It means only that you have succeeded in hiding the truth from yourself.
Journaling Questions
When your expectations are frustrated, will you accept the correction or will you insist that you are being unfairly treated?
Are you the victim of what happens to you, or the one who uses it for learning?
Are you receiving your experience as a blessing or as a punishment?
Never Despair
Every experience is an opportunity to embrace truth and reject illusion. One experience is not better or worse than another in this respect. All experiences are equally potent. They exist only as a birthing ground for your divinity.
That is why you must never despair. You will always have another chance to change your mind. Don’t listen to those who would tell you otherwise. There is no final judgment, except for the judgment you will make about yourself when you see yourself through my eyes.
Miracles
Do not underestimate the degree to which your world is created out of fear. Look around you. Look at your own thoughts. Is there any place where fear does not have a foothold?
Miracles are demonstrations of the divine Mind in action within your mind and experience. Miracles are needed as teaching devices, just as they were two thousand years ago.
Every Miracle is a demonstration of the fact that love is stronger than fear.
The following factors must be present for you to experience a miracle, or a shift in consciousness from fear to love.
1. You must know that you need it.
2. You must ask for it sincerely.
3. You must be willing to receive it.
Unfortunately, even if a Miracle has manifested in your life, you may not know this. Why? Because you have a preconception of what the Miracle is supposed to look like.
Please understand that God’s answer to your prayer might not look like you thought it would. Be open to its presence in your life and allow it to reveal itself to you.
Journaling Question
When have you felt that the door to love was closed to you? Did you walk away or did you find a way to change your perception?
When have you experienced a miracle, a shift from fear to love, or an answer to your prayer?