Jesus in this lesson tells us the form of happiness and forgiveness are different, “but their content is completely one.” What does this mean? If you think about content when we talk about, for instance, a book’s content, we understand that this is referring to what the book contains. What is the message the book contains? The book presents its content through the written word, but a play or television or any number of other forms could present the same content, the same message as the book.

This is true of happiness and our function of forgiveness. Happiness is our natural state, quite literally. This is difficult for many people to believe since the ego is constantly chattering that we need one thing or another in order to be happy. However, the only thing that blocks our natural state is belief in the ego’s ideas. Therefore forgiveness, which is removing attention from ego, is the means of realizing happiness.

Happiness may be experienced as peace, contentment and joy. Forgiveness is experienced as not believing in the things that take away our experience of peace, contentment and joy. Forgiveness comes in the form of not believing in the things that take our peace away. Forgiveness is not believing the things that cause us discontent. Forgiveness is not believing the things that seem to cause our sorrow.

Both happiness and forgiveness bring us to the identical experience because their content is completely one. True happinesss, contentment and joy come from abiding as Self. Releasing all beliefs brings us to the same experience. Releasing everything as we seemingly experience it in form will bring us to the recognition of happiness. This includes releasing feelings and thoughts experienced in the illusory world of form. Every belief, emotion, thought, everything we are aware of needs to be released.

Because happiness is my natural state, it cannot come from the ego. Therefore, I cannot trust this world or this mind to tell me what my function is. Anything in my awareness should not be believed unless I’m experiencing the happiness, peace, contentment and joy that comes from fulfilling my forgiveness function—removing my believing attention from ego and placing it firmly on my true nature. By fulfilling my forgiveness function I am abundantly happy