“And now is guilt forgiven, overlooked completely in His sight and in God’s Word.
“Anger but screeches, ‘Guilt is real!’ Reality is blotted out as this insane belief is taken as replacement for God’s Word. (M-18.2 – M-18.3)”
Affirmation: “guilt forgiven”
Reflections:
1 – Varying Definitions of the Ego
Anger is empowered by the ego when it screeches at us, “Guilt is real!” This is a tenet of A Course in Miracles which differs from traditional Christianity. But then the ego was not known about, in the sense that we know about it now. Freud changed all that, though Freud’s definition of the ego is not the same as that of Jesus. Freud thought that we all needed a strong ego to mediate between the superego and the id. Jesus’s definition of the ego as a part of our belief about ourselves, but not a necessary thing to secure a central place in our psyche. Jesus would have the ego wither away (though he does not use the term “wither”).
2 – The Ego Becomes Strong in Strife
We cannot let the ego wither by trying to overcome it with drastic measures. We cannot launch a frontal assault. The ego becomes strong in strife (a Text tenet). That is why anger is so real when the ego is in the ascendancy.
3 – Jesus Corrects Errors that Are Beyond Us
But we have only made correctable mistakes. And Jesus stands at the end to correct all errors that we ourselves cannot correct (an ACIM tenet). This suggests that he is our friend, as traditional Christianity tells us. He is always there for us, taking our hand, if we wish to so imagine. He says that this is no “idle fantasy” (a quotation from ACIM).
4 – Mistakes / Not Sins
Because our mistakes are correctable, they are not “sins,” which would seem to be forever uncorrectable without a sacrifice made by Jesus on the cross. And Jesus in A Course in Miracles asks us to look beyond the cross to the resurrection. He says that we make a mistake when we “cling to the old rugged cross.”
5 – Theology May Delay Us
These ideas are definitely a step beyond the New Testament, and Christianity as taught in most of our churches. If we are not yet ready to entertain these concepts, do cling to the practical nature of A Course in Miracles. Theology will only delay us, and we do not need to be controversial.
6 – Guilt Recedes when Anger Recedes
See if the idea of guilt does not recede when anger recedes. That is really all that we need to test.
Prayer:
Dear Father/Mother,
I would let the ego wither; I would not accentuate the ego through anger, for the ego is strong in strife. I would feel no strike today. And that becomes easy when I am having a good day. Thank You for this good day today. And may the same occur tomorrow. We need Your help to be happy, for many of us have not always thought that happiness is a laudable goal. But it is one of our functions, along with salvation and forgiveness, and I believe that when we reach for salvation and forgiveness, we find ourselves, unaccountably, happy. We grow from the days spent in pain, but we do not have to learn through pain, as Jesus says in A Course in Miracles. We can learn through rewards, which give us a lasting learning experience.
Be with me as the day closes. And help me to remember to express gratitude to You tomorrow morning, first thing, for another day in which to enjoy this world. We are not meant to yearn only for a hereafter. We are meant to be happy with this world as well, and the Holy Spirit will see that we have happy dreams in this illusory world. Healing may occur for us, emotional and/or physical, and we would do well to remember that we are making the illusion that we live in.
Amen.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 