FORGIVENESS IS PSYCHOTHERAPY’S MEANS OF OVERIDING THE EGO TO ATTAIN THE REAL SELF

Let me try to explain what the book means by forgiveness, for it did not use the term as we normally do in the English language and Christendom.

The book says that all sickness is in the mind, therefore, all healing is in the mind. A healed mind immediately heals the body that houses it.

All healing inheres in changing one’s mind. To be healed you must change your mind, from what it is in the world to what the book wants it to become.

Originally, and still so, in God there is oneself and one mind: the self and mind of God. In that oneself and one mind is God and his son; God and his son share oneself and one mind; there is no space and gap between the seeming two selves and two minds; they are one mind and oneself.

Hinduism calls this situation non-dualistic monism and that is what we are talking about here, the fusion of Brahman (God) and Atman (son of God) as oneself: the union of two selves as oneself.

Heaven is the union of two selves as oneself and two minds as one mind. In this union is perfect peace and joy, bliss.

As in our current minds on earth, thoughts do enter the unified mind of heaven. One thought that entered it is the idea that separation is possible. The son of God had the idea that he could become greater than his father but since they are oneself how is he going to accomplish such a feat? Obviously, he could not do it in heaven. (You are asking, if they share one mind, how can a thought enter the mind of God’s son and he pursues it and not enter his father’s mind?)

The son of God figured that if he made his self-sleep that he could have a dream in which he is separate and greater than his father. Find out, he thought. So, the son of God made his self-sleep and in his sleep dream (Hinduism calls it Maya) that he is greater and now separate from his father. (It might be useful if you read the writings of the eight century Hindu monistic Philosopher, Shankara; he grappled with the seeming contradiction of God and his son sharing one mind, and one did something that the other did not know and was equally responsible for?)

Psychotherapy means any effort to change the human mind. Psyche is mind; therapy is any effort to change the mind, to heal it.

What is healing, it is recognizing that despite our seeming separated minds that we really have one mind.

The psychotherapist is acting as the agent of the Holy Spirit (more on that) and enables his patient, you, me, to realize that we really have one mind and oneself.

In truth, there is no you in body, there is no separated self, there is nobody, there is no space and time, there is no physical universe. But Ozodi believes all those illusions as true hence is insane.

The function of a psychotherapist, the agent of the Holy Spirit is to gently persuade you to accept the truth that his real self is not a concept of self that he made for his self to make him seem separated from other selves but is the one unified spirit son of God.

To forgive, according to A course in miracles, is to see the evil other people did to you and forgive them; it is to overlook the entire universe, to know that the universe is a dream and what is done in a dream has not been done.

The people you see in your world that seem to have enslaved you, discriminated against you, attacked you are all dream figures produced by our one shared mind; what is done in dreams have not been done. The people and the things you see done to you on earth have not been done. Therefore, to become sane is to overlook what your physical eyes shows you and accept that no one has done any good or bad to you.

Forgiveness is to overlook the universe and the activities in it, for they are not real.

In practical terms, this means that when I see you deny me jobs, I know that you did so in a dream and in truth have not done so. I overlook what you did. In forgiving you, in overlooking what you did, I experience you and I as one shared self in a Holy Instant.

Forgiveness gives the forgiving person, first, a picture of the person he forgave in light form and then helps him to transcends seeing, in darkness (as on earth) or in the light (in the world of light forms) to knowing that we are one shared self-and one shared mind; we are all the one son of God.

In forgiveness, we experience oneself and then know that we are part of God and have not separated from God and cannot separate from him.

This manner of construing forgiveness sees the person who harmed your ego and body as helping to save you. If you see a person do what you construe as wrong to you, you have two options, to defend you from him or forgive him.

If he attacked you, you counterattack him, or in paranoid, litigious United States, you take him to court or do whatever defends your ego and body. If you do so you have defined yourself as an ego in body and defended that ego and body; you have therefore made sure that you stay in the world of illusions.

On the other hand, you see a person do what your ego construes as evil to you and you overlook it, forgive it; in doing so you have defined yourself differently, not as an ego and body that can be hurt or destroyed, not as separated from that person and God but as one with that person and God. In forgiving him you affirm your oneness with all existence and in it is reborn in the one shared self that God created you as; you are now saved, delivered, and redeemed from your hitherto attachment to a separated self, the ego.

Thus, the attacker has helped save you if you choose forgiveness.

But before you pat yourself and feel better than the person you forgive, who is he? He is you! One you, one son of God divided his self and made one you and the other the person who attacked you. You attacked you in your dream of separation, so you forgive only you.

You save only you, the one son of God now in seeming many selves. Forgiveness, which is the same as salvation, deliverance, redemption and healing is only for you, not for other persons, for there is only one person in the universe, you (who is all of us).

All this sounds somehow, does it not? Do you know what? It is exactly what Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Gnosticism teach. Now, do you see why some of us think that there may be truth in this seeming weird teaching of A course in miracles. The book reiterates the perennial philosophy found in most religions of humankind.