Introduction
Forgiveness offers wings to prayer, to make its rising easy and its progress swift.²Without its strong support it would be vain to try to rise above prayer’s bottom step, or even to attempt to climb at all.³Forgiveness is prayer’s ally; sister in the plan for your salvation.⁴Both must come to hold you up and keep your feet secure; your purpose steadfast and unchangeable.⁵Behold the greatest help that God ordained to be with you until you reach to Him.⁶Illusion’s end will come with this.⁷Unlike the timeless nature of its sister, prayer, forgiveness has an end.⁸For it becomes unneeded when the rising up is done.⁹Yet now it has a purpose beyond which you cannot go, nor have you need to go.¹⁰Accomplish this and you have been redeemed.¹¹Accomplish this and you have been transformed.¹²Accomplish this and you will save the world.
Forgiveness of yourself
1. No gift of Heaven has been more misunderstood than has forgiveness. ²It has, in fact, become a scourge; a curse where it was meant to bless, a cruel mockery of grace, a parody upon the holy peace of God. ³Yet those who have not yet chosen to begin the steps of prayer cannot but use it thus. ⁴Forgiveness’ kindness is obscure at first, because salvation is not understood, nor truly sought for. ⁵What was meant to heal is used to hurt because forgiveness is not wanted. ⁶Guilt becomes salvation, and the remedy appears to be a terrible alternative to life.
2. Forgiveness-to-destroy will therefore suit the purpose of the world far better than its true objective, and the honest means by which this goal is reached. ²Forgiveness-to-destroy will overlook no sin, no crime, no guilt that it can seek and find and “love.” ³Dear to its heart is error, and mistakes loom large and grow and swell within its sight. ⁴It carefully picks out all evil things, and overlooks the loving as a plague; a hateful thing of danger and of death. ⁵Forgiveness-to-destroy is death, and this it sees in all it looks upon and hates. ⁶God’s mercy has become a twisted knife that would destroy the holy Son He loves.
3. Would you forgive yourself for doing this? ²Then learn that God has given you the means by which you can return to Him in peace. ³Do not see error. ⁴Do not make it real. ⁵Select the loving and forgive the sin by choosing in its place the face of Christ. ⁶How otherwise can prayer return to God? ⁷He loves His Son. ⁸Can you remember Him and hate what He created? ⁹You will hate his Father if you hate the Son He loves. ¹⁰For as you see the Son you see yourself, and as you see yourself is God to you.
4. As prayer is always for yourself, so is forgiveness always given you. ²It is impossible to forgive another, for it is only your sins you see in him. ³You want to see them there, and not in you. ⁴That is why forgiveness of another is an illusion. ⁵Yet it is the only happy dream in all the world; the only one that does not lead to death. ⁶Only in someone else can you forgive yourself, for you have called him guilty of your sins, and in him must your innocence now be found. ⁷Who but the sinful need to be forgiven? ⁸And do not ever think you can see sin in anyone except yourself.
5. This is the great deception of the world, and you the great deceiver of yourself. ²It always seems to be another who is evil, and in his sin you are the injured one. ³How could freedom be possible if this were so? ⁴You would be slave to everyone, for what he does entails your fate, your feelings, your despair or hope, your misery or joy. ⁵You have no freedom unless he gives it to you. ⁶And being evil, he can only give of what he is. ⁷You cannot see his sins and not your own. ⁸But you can free him and yourself as well.
6. Forgiveness, truly given, is the way in which your only hope of freedom lies. ²Others will make mistakes and so will you, as long as this illusion of a world appears to be your home. ³Yet God Himself has given all His Sons a remedy for all illusions that they think they see. ⁴Christ’s vision does not use your eyes, but you can look through His and learn to see like Him. ⁵Mistakes are tiny shadows, quickly gone, that for an instant only seem to hide the face of Christ, which still remains unchanged behind them all. ⁶His constancy remains in tranquil silence and in perfect peace. ⁷He does not know of shadows. ⁸His the eyes that look past error to the Christ in you.
7. Ask, then, His help, and ask Him how to learn forgiveness as His vision lets it be. ²You are in need of what He gives, and your salvation rests on learning this of Him. ³Prayer cannot be released to Heaven while forgiveness-to-destroy remains with you. ⁴God’s mercy would remove this withering and poisoned thinking from your holy mind. ⁵Christ has forgiven you, and in His sight the world becomes as holy as Himself. ⁶Who sees no evil in it sees like Him. ⁷For what He has forgiven has not sinned, and guilt can be no more. ⁸Salvation’s plan is made complete, and sanity has come.
8. Forgiveness is the call to sanity, for who but the insane would look on sin when he could see the face of Christ instead? ²This is the choice you make; the simplest one, and yet the only one that you can make. ³God calls on you to save His Son from death by offering Christ’s Love to him. ⁴This is your need, and God holds out this gift to you. ⁵As He would give, so must you give as well. ⁶And thus is prayer restored to formlessness, beyond all limits into timelessness, with nothing of the past to hold it back from reuniting with the ceaseless song that all creation sings unto its God.
9. But to achieve this end you first must learn, before you reach where learning cannot go. ²Forgiveness is the key, but who can use a key when he has lost the door for which the key was made, and where alone it fits? ³Therefore we make distinctions, so that prayer can be released from darkness into light. ⁴Forgiveness’ role must be reversed, and cleansed from evil usages and hateful goals. ⁵Forgiveness-to-destroy must be unveiled in all its treachery, and then let go forever and forever. ⁶There can be no trace of it remaining, if the plan that God established for returning be achieved at last, and learning be complete.
10. This is the world of opposites. ²And you must choose between them every instant while this world retains reality for you. ³Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom. ⁴Let it then be clear to you exactly what forgiveness means to you, and learn what it should be to set you free. ⁵The level of your prayer depends on this, for here it waits its freedom to ascend above the world of chaos into peace.
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