What is forgiveness? It is letting go of the untrue and placing attention with the true instead.
When you read A Course in Miracles, it is helpful to know that the thoughts its scribe suffered from were attack thoughts. Her mind fiercely attacked nearly every person she ever met. There were a few people who sparked compassion in her, but the majority of her experience was one of attack. Since this was her primary experience, the Course focuses on attack. After all, she was writing this Course for herself.
Each one of us must begin this journey of forgiveness from where we are now. There is no place else to start. That means one thing we can each do is become familiar with the types of thoughts that plague our mind the most, and begin by letting go of those thoughts first.
In my story of ‘The Code,’ I was focused on letting go of hate thoughts. That job was big enough for me at that time. There were other times on my journey when I was focused on letting go of expectations of others, of thoughts of foreboding or of self-judgment. Now I am letting go of simple busyness of mind, which I can finally see is nothing but fear-energy.
If you notice your thinking patterns, and then sit down and contemplate what you see with inner wisdom, what type of thinking is helpful for you to focus on first? What type of thinking causes you the most unhappiness now? If you pick one genre of thought that causes unhappiness in you and begin by focusing forgiveness on that type of thought, you can make progress fairly quickly (in weeks or months) with one type of thinking. From that, you will increase forgiveness skills and you will see genuine results. You will have the actual experience of more freedom. This encouragement will increase both your willingness and confidence.
As you contemplate today’s workbook lesson, why not ask within, “Where shall I begin the process of forgiveness?” See if some genuine insight comes. If it does, begin this journey by practicing forgiveness with those thoughts with vigilance.