During a channelling session recently I asked Spirit to speak about forgiveness and about why it seems to take such a long time to complete all our forgiveness lessons, so that we can awaken from the dream of Separation? I received the following:

“Forgiveness seems to take a long time but, in actual fact, you could complete all your forgiveness lessons in an instant. Individuals try to forgive every little, single thing, such as something someone said. So they say, “Oh, I must forgive.” They catch themselves judging people, something someone did or didn’t do, and then instantly, if they are advanced enough, they practice forgiveness. But you should be able to reach a state in which you forgive once and for all. And then you don’t judge anymore. And you don’t even notice any apparent transgressions, such as people upsetting you. You don’t even notice it anymore.

So you haven’t got to stop, mind-watch and forgive. It is just all gone, all done. And then whatever happens, whatever anyone says, you just know that you are the dreamer of the dream and not a figure in the dream. You are dreaming this dream and you have concocted all these people and situations that seem to require forgiveness, but if you know it is all coming out of your mind, you just forgive once and for all and then, after that, when there are situations which perhaps would have upset you, you don’t notice them anymore. It is just like water off a duck’s back. It just rolls off you. You just don’t notice it. And that is what thinking with your right mind or thinking with the Holy Spirit really involves. The Holy Spirit doesn’t even overlook error. He doesn’t see it in the first place.

You don’t see error by not focusing on it. If you kept your mind always in a high place, you wouldn’t notice the small, little, silly things that are happening in this world anywhere near as much. It would be inconsequential. It’s like if you are sitting in the garden and there is a sudden breeze. You don’t really have to comment on it or notice it. It just is a little breeze and it passes by. And that’s how you should be when somebody comes along and maybe says something upsetting. You just let it pass by like a breeze. You could visualise it going up into a cloud and going up into the sky, if you can’t help but notice it. Then visualise this little upset, or whatever is causing it, as being taken up in a cloud and going out, out, out of sight in the sky. And then you move on. But to really overcome the need to forgive, you need to forgive once and for all and then not notice anything.

Of course, if you switch your television on and you watch the news, you will find hundreds of things that require forgiveness. In this situation the best thing is not to watch the news, not to focus on all the things that are wrong with the world. It is not a matter of being an ostrich with your head in the sand. It is a matter of trying to keep your vibration high and your energy high by focusing on beautiful things not on the problems of the world or your own problems for that matter. And even if you did watch television and you saw some catastrophe of some sort or some crime. If you remember that it is a dream that you are watching, and that the people involved, (however harsh this may sound) are not figures in the dream but they are dreaming all that is going on, well then surely it must be quite easy to overlook all that. The problem is you get sucked in. Human beings get sucked into the drama and the melodrama of the world and then they find it very difficult to extricate themselves, and that’s why all the guidance you are receiving from the spiritual dimensions is to not focus on the world and to not watch the news and to not read the newspapers.

Of course, A Course in Miracles is the ultimate tool to help you complete your forgiveness lessons. From A to Z it deals with forgiveness. So, if you go through that and you focus on the Text and the Workbook (not just the Workbook) that will help you speed up your forgiveness process. If you want to pick just one forgiveness Workbook lesson to keep your mind focused on forgiving everything, then it could be: “Forgiveness ends the dream of conflict here.”  That particular lesson highlights the fact that this is just a dream, and it reiterates or emphasises that there is conflict in this world, as you can see all around you…switch on the news and you see conflict, pick up the newspapers and you see conflict…Then this lesson tells you forgiveness is the way out of all that conflict and the way out of the dream of the conflict, highlighting that it is a dream of conflict. The conflict is not real. It is coming out of conflicted minds. Forgiveness ends the dream of conflict here. Read that lesson.” [Lesson 333]