Releasing Your Future from Your Past
It is now the beginning of a new year and for many of us we reflect upon what we encountered over the past year and hope for a better future. Reflecting upon my own experiences this past year led me to recall a quote from the Course which I share in my new book, Awakening Your Right Mind. The quote refers to how the ego uses time and is as follows: "Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father, for guilt is the attack upon His Son. The guilty always condemn, and having done so they will still condemn, linking the future to the past as is the ego's law." T.13.IX.1:1-2
It is the ego's law that you continue to feel guilty because it is your guilt which keeps you chained to the ego and therefore keeps the ego alive in your mind. As a reminder, the guilt I'm referring to stems from the mistaken belief that you walked away from your Source. This guilt is your number one issue which is the root of all the problems you seem to face in this physical realm.
Without correcting your guilt, you will replay ego scenarios (problems) and your future will look eerily similar to your past.
Through the ego's eyes, problems are used to keep you focused upon the illusion which is this world so you don't discover the Truth within you. Uncorrected guilt gets projected out onto others and into the world so it appears outside of you and you won't recognize it as your own guilt and therefore you won't seek to correct it. Hiding your guilt from you is fundamental to the ego's agenda.
When you use the ego mind, you will also perceive others through the lens of guilt and this is what is meant in the above quote where it states that the guilty condemn. Our guilt is unbearable to feel and so we deny it is ours and prefer to see others as guilty and ourselves as victims. This idea is also essential to the ego's plan. As you continue to perceive others as guilty and repeat ideas of conflict and separateness, you imprison your own mind and experience more of the same.
Freeing Your Future
The only way to free your future from the guilt and conflict you've experienced your whole life is to apply the Course's advanced version of forgiveness known as True Forgiveness. In the Course, we are taught that our function here is to forgive. Our forgiveness is what time is for.
Through Spirit's loving eyes, our lessons are opportunities to forgive and serve no other purpose than to help us undo the mistaken ego identity we believe we are.
In the Course it is written that a lesson repeats in our experience simply because we failed to forgive the previous occasions when the lesson popped up. To release your future from the ego past, you can adopt the attitude that your lessons are not meant to hold you back - they are meant to catch your attention so you can heal from them once and for all! A lesson popping up is simply saying, "Here I am! Ready for you to forgive!" When this happens, you can choose again and forgive, thus freeing yourself of having to repeat the lesson. This is how you free your future from the lessons of the past.
The late ACIM teacher, Kenneth Wapnick, spoke about time being laid out like a red carpet before us. The carpet in front of us holds opportunities for forgiveness and when a lesson is forgiven, time collapses and the carpet in front of you begins to shorten as you no longer require that future opportunity to forgive.
For fun, I like to call the process the 'Miracle Equation' which is something I mentioned in a newsletter a few years back. The 'Miracle Equation' is when, through forgiveness, you take the past away from your future revealing the eternal present moment.
As you move into the experience of a new year, you can truly practice freeing yourself from the past through True Forgiveness. As the ego is undone in your mind, you enjoy your experiences more as your mind is being relieved of the preoccupation with conflict. You deserve to heal!
Love,
Fiona xo