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Word Gems What is a man but the sum of his
thoughts?
Forgiveness
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We
do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we
hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate
ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive
ourselves.
Eric Hoffer

Personal
Statement #19: The Story of A Good
Little Boy: A Case of Mistaken Identity: How We Refuse To Become Who
We Really Are
Personal Statement #23: Part
1: Forgiveness, The Final Battle: What I Learned From Father John
Kuhn
Personal Statement
#30: Anger, the Soul's Blinding, the Ego's Cry of
Resistance: How We Fail to Recognize the Loves of Our Lives: My
Friendship with Carolyn Kuhn Sperle
Personal Statement
#31: Finding Healing From Religious Abuse: The Nature
of Authentic Spiritual Authority: What I Learned From Father John
Kuhn
Personal Statement
#35: The Pathological Need To Be Right: My Heated
Argument With 90 Year-Old Della: Facing the Epicenter of Evil, in
One's Own Heart
Personal Statement
#36: The Death of The Great False Self: Nothing Left To
Lose After Losing You: Developing Your Psychic Abilities,
Understanding Mysteries, Becoming Love Itself
Personal Statement
#67: The Hidden Meaning, the Many Faces, the Subtle Nature, of Evil! Would you recognize
it if you met it, on the street, or in the mirror?
R. N. Flew: The Forgiveness of
Sins
Leslie Weatherhead: The Meaning of the
Cross
John Ruskan, Emotional
Clearing: "As you go through life, you will have various
encounters that bring up your [repressed negative] subconscious
energies into conscious awareness. These energies surface when
conditions are appropriate for them to be released. If you can learn
to integrate these energies as they come up, you will be meeting
life most creatively."

Lord Dowding,
Many
Mansions: Air Chief Marshal Hugh Caswell Tremenheere Dowding,
1st Baron (1882 - 1970), was a British officer in the Royal
Air Force. He was the commander of RAF Fighter Command during the
Battle of Britain. Later, Dowding investigated the Afterlife. He
reports on a psychic transmission from the Other Side, from a
Norwegian killed during WWII: "I was shot by the
Germans in Trondheim. I was a little shopkeeper; they shoot. I do
not love the Germans. I never shall, but I am held here by my
hatred. I find that I cannot throw it off. I still feel so angry for
their acts of unprovoked cruelty, and I am consumed by my passionate
anger, and I cannot get free. I beg of you to help me... He tells me
that we must forgive the Nazis, that they do not know what they do,
that they are like sleep-walkers, and until I forgive them I cannot
get free, to pass from this plane so near the Earth on to other
planes... It is awful, this anger that we cannot shake it off. Give
me some serenity and let me sleep... I see why Christ quickly
forgave everyone before He left the Earth Body. I see the reason and
the need, and with the help of your Father and this contact that you
have given me, I shall escape." Says Dowding: "[Frederic]
Myers teaches that The Third Sphere (or Summerland as it is often
called in spiritualist circles) is in fact a sphere of Illusion
inhabited for long or short periods by souls whose mentalities are
still dominated by Earth-conditions. The scenery and the flora and
fauna are all similar to those of the earth, but more sublimated,
and with the difference that the struggle for existence is no longer
operative and souls can gratify every harmless wish... In this effortless and purposeless existence, no real
progress is made... But the soul who is more spiritually inclined
passes upward into the Fourth Sphere and thenceforward progresses
continuously without any further individual
reincarnation."
Gary Renard, The Disappearance of The
Universe: "To forgive means to give ahead
of time. In other words, your attitude is that you're ready
to forgive, no matter what comes up."
Unknown: "Forgiveness is giving up
the possibility of a better past."
Mahatma Gandhi: "The weak can never forgive.
Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a
permanent attitude."
Eric Hoffer: "The remarkable thing is that we really
love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto
ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate
ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive
ourselves."
Hannah Arendt: "Forgiveness is the key to action and
freedom."
George MacDonald: "Forgiveness is the giving, and so
the receiving, of life."
Reinhold Niebuhr: "Nothing worth doing is completed in
our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or
beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of
history; therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however
virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by
love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from
the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we
are saved by the final form of love which is
forgiveness."
A Course in Miracles, Lesson 121: "The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love
no room to be itself; no place where it can spread its wings in
peace and soar above the turmoil of the world. The unforgiving mind
is sad, without the hope of respite and release from pain. It
suffers and abides in misery, peering about in darkness, seeing not,
yet certain of the danger lurking there. The unforgiving mind is
torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it sees; afraid and
angry, weak and blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay,
afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound, yet more
afraid of stillness; terrified of darkness, yet more terrified at
the approach of light. What can the unforgiving mind perceive but
its damnation? What can it behold except the proof that all its sins
are real? The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins. It
looks upon the world with sightless eyes, and shrieks as it beholds
its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life.
It wants to live, yet wishes it were dead. It
wants forgiveness, yet it sees no hope. It wants escape, yet can
conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere. The
unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future
which can offer anything but more despair. Yet it regards its
judgment of the world as irreversible, and does not see it has
condemned itself to this despair. It thinks it cannot change, for
what it sees bears witness that its judgment is correct. It does not
ask, because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is
right. Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in the mind,
which cannot sin. As sin is an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness
must be learned by you as well, but from a Teacher other than
yourself, Who represents the other Self in you. Through Him you
learn how to forgive the self you think you made, and let it
disappear. Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self,
and Who can never sin."
A Course in Miracles, Lesson 134: "Let us review the
meaning of forgive, for it is apt to be distorted and to be
perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous
wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of
the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere
eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a
whim... The major difficulty that you find in
genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must
forgive the truth, and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a
vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in
an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true.
This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin
retains as yet upon your mind, as you regard yourself.
Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as
deception... There is a very simple way to find the door to true
forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel
that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not
allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for that is
self-deception. Ask instead, Would I accuse myself of doing
this?"
A Course In Miracles, Lesson 192: “We are lost in mists
of shifting dreams and fearful thoughts… Who can
be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or
thinks of or imagines? Who could be set free while he imprisons
anyone? A jailer is not free, for he is bound together with his
prisoner. He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he
spends his time in keeping watch on him... Therefore hold no-one
prisoner.”
A Course In Miracles, Lessson 193: “All things are lessons God would have me learn.
Forgive, and you will see this differently. Certain it is
that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness. Yet that
is the content underneath the form… Does pain seem real in the
perception? If it does, be sure the lesson is not learned. And there
remains an unforgiveness hiding in the mind that sees the pain
through eyes the mind directs… God would not have you suffer thus.
He would help you forgive yourself… This is the
lesson God would have you learn: There is a way to look on
everything that lets it be to you another step to Him... To
all that speaks of terror, answer thus: I will forgive, and this
will disappear. To every apprehension, every care and every form of
suffering, repeat these selfsame words.”
Daniel Defoe, 1661-1731: "I hear much of people's
calling out to punish the guilty, but few are
concerned to clear the innocent."
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