 
Location: The Kingdom of Heaven | A COURSE IN MIRACLES
STUDY GROUP WITH RAJ . Good evening. And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet. A new section: PRACTICAL FORGIVENESS1 The practical application of the Holy Spirit’s purpose is extremely simple, . .
Well, what is the Holy Spirit’s purpose? And I actually want to bring up a point here: Whenever you are reading the Course and you read a sentence like this for the first time . . . . . . The practical application of the Holy Spirit’s purpose is extremely simple, . .
. . . you don’t have to imagine that you don’t have the capacity to understand what those words mean. In other words, much of the time you read a sentence and then you read further for explanation. And in that act you have done nothing to remind yourself of the fact that you are the holy Son or Daughter of God in whom He has embodied all that He Is. God is omniscient, meaning all-knowing and so are you . . . and you . . . and you . . . and you . . . and you . . . and you. Reading this book is not a means of putting knowledge into you so that you can become omniscient. It is a means of uncovering to you the innate already existing capacity to know all things so that you might, when you read words like this, hesitate—not reading further to find out what the explanation is—to stop there and say, “Father or Holy Spirit, what is the meaning of this? Remember, Helen Shucman is the one who listened and to whom I spoke. And she wrote down the words that were given and she, although she had made prior commitment to do this, was no more prepared for it than you are prepared to stop and enquire, “What is the truth here?” and hear the answer. This is the point. She didn’t have a grand gift or a grand assignment that you or any of you, if you were willing, couldn’t have done equally well. It doesn’t take talent, it takes genuine humble listening. It takes the humble practice of the two-step. So, what is the Holy Spirit’s purpose? Well, it’s simple. If the Holy Spirit is nothing more than your right Mind, which is being held in trust while you dally with the ego, then that which is the rest of You beyond the ego definitions you have created for yourself, then Its purpose is going to be naturally to re-incorporate (chuckles) this little “smart-ass” who has said, “I’m going to make decisions for myself, Father, and I’m no longer going to rely on You. I’m going to be a self-determined agent on my own.” It’s the purpose of the Holy Spirit to undo that decision. It’s the purpose of the sanity of your Being that you can’t actually get beyond or outside of to reduce you, to relax you, to cause you to be humble enough and quiet enough to let something other than your personal proud arrogance to register with you. It’s the purpose of the Holy Spirit to return you to your right Mind . . . to return you to your sanity. And as I’ve pointed out, the incredible beauty of this is, that it’s the very sanity of you, which is engaged in motivating you to accept your sanity, to return to your sanity. And so when you are asked to lean into Something, to rely completely and totally on Something in the process of your re-Awakening, you can do it with utter trust and total commitment, knowing that what you are leaning into is just You—your Self, your holy Self, your divine Being—which therefore is going to be in all respects, an experience of intelligent integration, something to be greatly desired and something that you can trust into in the process. So now . . . The practical application of the Holy Spirit's purpose is extremely simple, . .
. . . what is the practical application of the Holy Spirit’s purpose? Why, it’s the two-step. It’s the holy instant. That is the Holy Spirit’s purpose rendered practical. It is what we could call radical idealism translated into practical realism. Simple. Straight-forward. Now, what is the means by which the Holy Spirit’s purpose is accomplished? What is the means? It’s forgiveness . . . very simply. It’s forgiveness . . . it’s you leaning into the Father, leaning into the Holy Spirit desiring to know what the truth is. Why? So that in knowing the truth you can abandon the illusions, the lies, the misperceptions that you have created in an attempt to determine the world, life, creation and make something out of yourself. To want to know the truth is the basis of the two-step and the means of practicing the holy instant. So . . . The practical application of the Holy Spirit's purpose is extremely simple, but it IS unequivocal.
In other words, it’s not a multiple-choice. It’s unequivocal. You could say that it’s a matter of it being or not-being, that it is or it isn’t. But it’s more unequivocal than that. It’s . . . the truth Is. Reality Is. You Are. And what you Are is the direct expression of the Father. Now . . . The practical application of the Holy Spirit's purpose is extremely simple, but it IS unequivocal.
It’s always and only about forgiveness. It’s always and only about knowing only the truth. In fact, in order to be simple it MUST be unequivocal. The simple is merely what is easily understood, and for this it is apparent that it must be clear.
Okay. What is it that you’re going to be understanding? You’re going to be understanding the truth. And how are you going to find out what the truth is so that it can be clear to you? Well, you’ve got to stop thinking. You’ve got to stop figuring things out for yourself. You’ve got to hesitate and turn beyond or aside from your preoccupation with your best thinking and ask of Something outside what you call yourself, “What is the truth here?” Now . . . The setting of the Holy Spirit's goal is general.
By that, we would say it’s forgiveness. Forgiveness is a very general term. Forgiveness of what? Now we become specific. But in order to Wake up, in order to allow the Holy Spirit to accomplish its purpose of returning you to your right Mind, you must operate on an entirely new basis. You must operate on a basis outside, as I’ve said, your best thinking, reasoning, logic, etcetera. The specifics of forgiveness must come from your practice of listening—of turning to Guidance. Until you’ve done that, you don’t know what to do. And you don’t know what the specific means of forgiveness will look like. So . . . The setting of the Holy Spirit's goal is general.
And again, what is the goal? The goal is to know the truth, because knowing the truth will constitute you abandoning your false definitions and your manipulative controlling actions, which you bring into play when you think you’re on your own. So . . . The setting of the Holy Spirit's goal is general. Now He will work with you to make it specific.
You see? Oh-h, you know, I know that many read the Course and they understand that forgiveness is the goal . . . and you can go on an internal-witch-hunt finding all the unlovely, unkind unloving things you’ve done or thought about somebody and correct them. But you know what? You’re still employing the same mechanical action that you used in order to create a negative determination or definition about your Brother or about your world. One minute you’re creating negativity about your world and Brother and the next moment you are creating positivity, forgiving thoughts, kind thoughts, loving thoughts . . . and aren’t you wonderful in the process? And it misses the point because you’re doing it all by yourself. You’re not forgiving because you’ve said, “Father or Holy Spirit, what is the truth here about my Brother?—not the truth about his faults, not the truth of why he behaves in the odd peculiar behavior he behaves—but what is the God’s honest truth about him? How does the Father see him . . . what is the actual truth of him aside from his poor definitions of himself and aside from my poor definitions of him?” You see? That’s wanting to know the truth—that’s wanting to know the truth that will be transformational. It’s that simple. It’s also that black and white. It’s that unequivocal. He will work with you . . .
. . . this Holy Spirit . . . will work with you to make it specific.
His general goal. There are certain very specific guidelines He provides for any situation, but remember that you do not yet realize their universal application. Therefore, it is essential, at this point, to use them in each situation separately, until you can more safely look BEYOND each situation, in an understanding far broader than you now possess.
You’re breaking old habits. And let’s put it this way, you’re breaking well-established, long-established habits when you abandon your self-governing, self-controlling mindset. You don’t know yet what’s normal, what’s natural to a holy Son or Daughter of God. And you can’t take in the whole picture and so you must let the Holy Spirit guide you directly in each specific case. Now, I’ll tell you something: This helps accomplish the establishment of an active relationship between you and the Father or between you and the Holy Spirit—your right Mind—because in each instance you will need to ask, “What’s the truth here? What do I need to know? How do I need to approach this? You see? You must ask for the truth in every case. And let yourself be guided in order to first of all establish a real ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit—your right Mind—or the Father or your Guide. You see?
I know . . . when you do, it makes you feel stupid because you’re asking about every little thing. But you want to know the truth . . . you want to know the truth because that sets you free from your delusions. And when you’re set free from your delusions, your right Mind appears to you—appears as the place in which you’re experiencing everything—and you become sane. Now what isn’t clear to you is, that as you take these tiny steps, we’ll say, where you’re asking . . . what is the truth here? what is the truth here? what do I need to know here? for every little thing . . . when you do that, initially you think that you are attending to some specific circumstances in your daily life—very localized—you have no sense that your understanding the truth about the situation, might actually have universal aspects to it. You see, God is not only omniscience, meaning that you are not only omniscience, but God is also omnipresent, which means that you are omnipresent. But as you go through your day, you feel very tiny and have no sense of your omnipresence and you have no sense of connection on a grand or large scale. Now at the present time in the world, you’re finding out that everyone is linked together. You’re finding that you do not live on a globe occupied by independent entities that have nothing to do with each other. You are becoming utterly aware of the inter-connection, the unity, I’m going to even say, of everyone. You’re becoming uncomfortably aware of it. But it is a blessing, because if you are truly losing your capacity to think that you or your country are independent and separate from everything else, if you are losing your ability to believe that, then you are coming into a rather clear experience of what I’m going to call “unity consciousness.” But it bothers you because being independent and being sovereign, whether it’s as a country, or as a state, or as a city, or a municipality, or as an ego yourself, it is something that in the process of Awakening, you’re going to have to let go of. And as you’re finding out, you’re having to yield to and acknowledge something you didn’t believe, but something that has been the case and known by those who are running the world for a long time, even though you just lived in your country, or your city, or your state and you did your thing and everyone else did their thing and nobody ever felt the connection, felt the unalterable connection, felt the connection that means that what happens in one place is happening to everyone. This is a marvelous Awakening. Now if, as you are finding, other people’s problems are yours as well, and if you are finding that the way people handle themselves on the other side of the globe can cause ripple-out effects that absolutely affect you negatively, then you’ve learned a principle—a practical, wonderful principle. And that is: That since everything is inter-connected, then somebody . . . and it might be you, might be you, it might be any of you . . . is capable of and actually to some degree has the responsibility to have an answer that ripples-out and blesses everyone. You see? You are experiencing, at a gut level, at an experiential level, the fact that everything is One and what happens to one happens to everyone and what one does is done to everyone. And you would be wise not to get upset and arrogant and pissed-off at how badly everyone is behaving and causing you such problems because you have a task. You have a wonderful task and that is to say, “Father, what is the truth here?” It is to do the two-step, so that you might be infilled with answers that annihilate or undo or dissolve the problems that cause correction in the mindsets that are creating the problems. You see? If you can be as directly affected by negativity and unintelligence as you are, then everyone else—and you as well—can be affected constructively by the practice of those who are doing the two-step. What is this called? Practical Forgiveness. Practical forgiveness relates today. If, as I said, you can read a sentence in the Course that you’ve never read before, and you don’t have to read further to understand it because you have the capacity to ask—which is doing the two-step—“Father, what does this mean? Holy Spirit, what does this mean?” and you can get the answer . . . if you can do it here, you can do it relative to the things that are going on in the world today and the financial pressures and dilemmas and so on. It’s time to engage in Practical Forgiveness. What is forgiveness again? It’s not saying, “Oh-h, I love you. You’re just wonderful. It doesn’t matter what you did. I accept you . . . blah, blah, blah.” No. Because that may or may not call forth correction—enlightenment, that which uncovers in the one you’re dealing with, the realization of why he doesn’t need to behave the way he’s behaving because he isn’t the poor piss-ant mortal that he thought he was—and engaging with you while you were listening and asking, “What is the truth here? . . so that you could reflect it and give it, has made him able to make a sudden shift of perception. Which is what? As defined in the Course: A miracle. In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?" The clarification of the goal belongs at the BEGINNING, for it is this which will determine the outcome.
So when you say, when you consider very simply, What do I want to come of this? that means you’re asking, “What is the truth here? I want the truth here. What is the truth here? I don’t want my imaginations. I don’t want what all the pundits are saying and what I’m hearing or reading. I want to know what is the truth here and I want to know it of one Who Knows. I want to know it of the Holy Spirit. And it’s more important to me to listen for that than it is to listen to all of the opinions that are being shared. I may have listened to them, but now I am listening to the Holy Spirit within, not so I can have some smart-ass rebuttal to everyone’s stupidity, but so that I might find myself privy to the God-likeness of my Brother or my Sister or of the situation, and what the truth is here so that I can give my attention to bringing that forth rather than my fears or judgments or egotistical opinions.” You see? The clarification of the goal belongs at the BEGINNING, for it is this which will determine the outcome.
And again, the goal is what? Forgiveness. But specifically, to know the truth—Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free2—what you want to know. Your goal is to know the truth because in knowing the truth you will abandon your mean-spirited, small-minded judgments against your Brother or Sister, which you use as a means of controlling them because you’re scared shitless because you don’t know who you Are and you feel vulnerable because you don’t know who your Father Is. And that’s why you behave badly. Now on the other hand: In the ego's procedure, this is reversed. The SITUATION . . .
. . . without asking, “What’s the purpose here? What’s the goal . . ?” The SITUATION itself becomes the determiner of the outcome, which can be anything.
“Well, I guess I’m just going to have to ride this one out. And after it’s over, we’ll see what the hell happened. I’m going to ride this one out though.” The SITUATION [itself] becomes the determiner of the outcome, which can be anything. The reason for this disorganized approach is evident. The ego does not know what it WANTS to come of it.
See? The ego doesn’t have a goal of what it wants to come of it. It is aware of what it does NOT want, but only that. It has no positive goal at all.
And what is it aware of that it does not want? It does not want you to remember who you Are. It does not want you to go down any path that will lead you to a sudden discovery of your holiness. Because the moment that happens the ego will lose your faith in it and it will lose its control over you. That’s the only thing it knows. It knows what it does not want. And as I’ve said recently, this is the definition of evil: That which has as its intent to keep you ignorant of your divinity, of your holiness, of your Birthright of who you Are. It also does not want you to recognize the holiness of your Brother and that’s why you hold your Brother, I’m going to say, in contempt or in negative judgment. The simple fact is, in your realization of your Brother’s divinity, there is an inseparable and simultaneous realization of Yours. Now, this gives you a bit bigger idea of the universal nature of the Holy Spirit’s goal for you. Because it’s not just you remembering who you Are but it’s you remembering who your Brother Is truly and in that acknowledgement, healing your Brother and healing your relationship. So something you thought might just be about you . . . it necessarily ends up being about you and someone else together. Now, I’m going to leave it there for tonight, because we’ve laid a groundwork here for what’s to come. It can seem complicated even though it’s very simple. And I want you to abide with it during this coming week. Again, it is going to lay the groundwork for more solid commitment from you relative to your Awakening and relative to the way you’re going to respond to events in the world as they come up during this coming week and beyond. Because it’s a new way . . . it’s a requirement to do it in a new way. And you are feeling it in terms of discomfort. But the discomfort, as I said, provides you with proof that you and everyone else have the means to set into motion exactly the opposite of the problems that seem to be happening—the very same practice that is creating the problems, reversed, resolves them. Insight is what will make the difference. Because insight is something that others can recognize as well. And the insight become contagious, if you will, and spreads and learning, globally, can happen very rapidly. So enjoy doing something different this week than you may have been doing in past weeks, as we bring the practice of the holy instants and practical forgiveness into the picture more and more clearly. I love you all. And I look forward to being with you next time. . A Course In Miracles (reference pages)
Chapter 17 – Section: PRACTICAL FORGIVENESS
1 Sparkly Book – p.415 / JCIM – p.174 / CIMS – p. 350
Chapter 17 – Section: SETTING THE GOAL
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A Course in Miracles Study Group with Raj, August 20th 2011
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Edited by Trish 2011-08-21 9:12 PM
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Transcript of ACIM Study Group with Raj 8/20/11
General Discussion -> Transcripts & Audio 2011-2012
