Guiding Thought

My Purpose is to awaken to the Truth within me and share it. The Truth within me–My Inner Divine Mind–flows constantly and purely. As I go deeper in my awareness, the current of this broadens, strengthens, and brightens. It fills me and pours forth. This is my Source, the Source of all my good, all my happiness, and all my abundance. I awaken to my Inner Divine Mind and invite It to express itself as every person and event that will increase my awareness of It.

Sharing

• Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification must happen first. (A Course in Miracles, Principle of Miracles, #7)
• Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles, man accepts God’s forgiveness by extending it to others. (A Course in Miracles, Principle of Miracles, #21)
• It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. (A Course in Miracles, Principle of Miracles, #27)

Sometimes when you invite Inner Divine Mind to express itself as every person and event that will increase your awareness of It what you get is purification.

Purification does not always feel happy, light, and blissful. Sometimes it feels like trials, tribulations, tests, or challenges. Sometimes it feels like you’re failing and falling apart, at least that’s how I feel sometimes.

I’ve had a lot of forgiveness purification lately.

First, the other day a Ricky Gervais show was playing in the background while I was doing some housework. He’s a comedian, but the particular story that began his joke started this way (paraphrased), “I got this Tweet from someone showing the horrendous way the Chinese treat dogs. They eat the dogs, and they think that torturing the animals makes the meat more tender; the Tweet was this video of two Chinese men in a public square beating, blow-torching, and skinning this dog alive…”

In general, I avoid all shows/articles/podcasts that talk about the horrors of how humans mistreat animals and the earth. I am not one of those people who needs to be “informed” by these things, and I am way too sensitive to the images and descriptions–I cry and cry, and the images haunt me for a long time.

But there it was, the mental image of a dog being tortured in China. Just thinking about it now I’m starting to cry.

The other day, I mentioned that I felt like I was grieving for humanity. This does not mean that I feel grief for humanity; it’s more that I feel the grief of all of the creatures of all the earth, and the earth herself that humanity has treated so disrespectfully, has hurt again and again and again. What we do to all, we do to ourselves, and this is our current legacy.

Thinking about that dog opened the grief floodgates. I started feeling the pain of the dog,  the pain of the whales and dolphins, of the wolves, the birds, every little being, the isolation of the earth and her creatures, the devastation that humans have wrought everywhere with our destructive, greedy, selfish ways of living.

Through tears and tears all I could think was, “please forgive me, please forgive us; I love you so much, you are so beautiful, we have done so wrong, please forgive us.” I was talking to the dog, the sea, the life in the sea, the forests, the earth, everything.

There was no relief. I did not feel comforted; I did not feel like things are going to change anytime soon; I did not feel like people are going to wake up and suddenly realize, “oh, we need to treat all of life better!” This is what I meant above, when I said sometimes it’s not always happy, light, and blissful.

Second, I was driving home the other day and a school bus stopped in front of me, and let off some kids. I observed one little African American boy, and I thought, “what a beautiful child…peace, peace, peace…take care of the little children…”

From out of nowhere, a voice responded, “Why should I take care of the little children? No one has ever taken care of me.” And the image was of that same child, now an adult, hardened by life and racism, of isolation and dis-empowerment, left to figuring out life for himself, without support, without care–being cared for.

This image was a symbol for how people feel in general. Uncared for. Isolated. Lost. Hardened. Unfeeling.

This all happened very fast, and was not like I did it, it just started playing out in my head: the next minute, my mental image was back to the child, and I was on my knees in front of him saying, “forgive me. please, forgive me.  I am so sorry that I was not there for you, that I did not protect you, that I did not care for you. I am so sorry… I did the best I could. I did not listen to you, I am sorry. Even when I did listen, I didn’t hear you. I am sorry. Please forgive me.” And I was crying, both in the mental image, and through the body that was driving home.

I knew that this body, this personality that I am, had nothing to do with that boy, or asking for his forgiveness. Again, it was symbolic. I was asking for forgiveness from every child, and everyone who has ever been a child. It felt so important to receive forgiveness, even for things I, personally, had never done to that particular boy. I wanted to go around to everyone and ask forgiveness in this way, for anything and everything, “please, forgive me–I know I didn’t do it, but you have to start somewhere, you have to begin to forgive those who really did hurt you, so just forgive me, practice with me, forgive me, please”.

Finally, both of those scenarios were about me asking for forgiveness on behalf of others (humanity, parents…). The third thing that happened was about me doing the forgiving.

There is someone in my life who is mean and destructive and petty and vengeful. Whether true or not, I have felt targeted with all of this.

Here’s what happened: I was driving (I do a lot of this work while driving, in case you hadn’t noticed), and I was thinking about forgiveness (since I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately), and out of nowhere a voice said, “You need to forgive >this person<“.

I did not want to. I could feel myself clench and resist. But I knew I had to. So I started, “I forgive you for hurting me. I forgive you for being mean. I forgive you for not knowing what you are doing. I forgive you for your pettiness”. And I repeated those things several times.

I would like to say that I found relief. I would like to say that I felt release. But I can’t.

Purification does not always feel happy, light, and blissful. Sometimes it feels like trials, tribulations, tests, or challenges. Sometimes it feels like you’re failing and falling apart.

Right now, I’m exhausted.