ACIM Yoga inspired by

“A Course in Miracles”

Awakening to the Light

   

A PATH OF FORGIVENESS AND AWAKENING

       

    Yoga literally means "union" and typically is understood as a path toward ultimate awakening to your own true spiritual nature in God. Obviously you cannot "force" yourself to wake up to God, but you can prepare a solid foundation for this ultimate awakening through practicing Miracle Yoga. Yoga, which also can be interpreted as "integration," involves paying careful attention to the body, mind, and spirit as a preparation for uncovering your divine oneness with God. Spiritual awakening includes diving deep within yourself to find the light, as is illustrated in the image above. Nevertheless, you cannot awaken all by yourself. This growth process includes not only awakening to your inner union with God, but also awakening to your union with all your brothers and sisters in Christ. Miracle Yoga teaches that forgiveness and joining with your brothers and sisters is an essential part of your awakening, as is symbolized in the circular Miracle Yoga logo shown at the top of this web page.

Seeing everything through “forgiving eyes”

 
WHAT IS TRUE FORGIVENESS?

    A Course in Miracles asks you to reconsider many commonly held beliefs. For instance, forgiveness is normally thought of as an undeserved gift given to a person while still perceiving him as being sinful and guilty. The Course calls this “false forgiveness” because it preserves false judgments and resentments. “True forgiveness” removes all judgments and resentments and allows you to perceive the divine presence of holiness in others. The following excerpt from An Overview of a “Course in Miracles” describes the nature of true forgiveness:

True forgiveness, which is based on right-mindedness, involves both “looking and overlooking.” The “overlooking” part of forgiveness looks past what is forgiven seeing that it is entirely an illusion that never happened in reality. Thus “overlooking” consists of “looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you.”1 Yet keeping error unreal in your eyes can be tricky in your practical application of overlooking. “The ego’s plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it.”2 Overlooking requires only that you recognize immediately at first glance that all fearful appearances of sin and guilt are illusory because they contradict the knowledge that every Son of God is just as holy now as when God created him in the eternal present moment. Therefore, it is necessary from the beginning to pay no attention to the details of what is forgiven as you practice overlooking.

The “looking” part of forgiveness sees only the divine holiness and true reality of the one who is forgiven, realizing he is always worthy of only love. Since he is worthy of love, you join with him. The ego is the idea of separation, which says there is a real gap of separation between you and your brother. However, when forgiveness occurs, you join with your brother, and you realize you are equals because he is just as holy as you are. “Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation.”3 Forgiveness then removes this illusory gap between you and your brother and proves to yourself that the ego, the whole idea of separation, is an illusion. What is this joining with your brother? Joining is the earthly version of love, which reflects the total joining that occurs in Heaven. You “can look with love or look with hate, depending only on the simple choice of whether you would join with what you see, or keep yourself apart and separate.”4 Forgiveness represents the choice to join. Thus forgiveness accomplishes your true goal of love, which is all that you really want.

    The wisdom of the world teaches that sin is an offense to God or, in other words, a violation of Reality. This belief means that the sinner should feel guilty and punishment is justified. The Course teaches that sins are not real. Sins are illusory parts of the dream of the world, and so they do not offend God or violate Reality. Sins are merely mistakes that can be corrected. Forgiveness allows you to set aside the belief that sins are real. Once you learn to remove all your judgments of your brothers and sisters, you will no longer see them as sinful or guilty. Instead, through true forgiveness, you will see the divine presence of holiness in everyone.

    According to the Course, you are asleep in Heaven right now, and you are dreaming of this world of fear, sin, and guilt. While you are dreaming that you are separate from God, His everlasting Love gently caresses you. Your loving Father has sent the Holy Spirit into your dream world to show you how to change your fearful nightmares into “happy dreams” and then to show you the way beyond all dreaming. The Holy Spirit calls you to awaken from your dreams of separation and encourages you to use true forgiveness as your means of awakening. With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, you can use “forgiving eyes” to transform your perception of the world. Forgiveness allows you to overlook the illusions of fear, sin, and guilt that you have projected onto the world. You can learn to see the divine presence of holiness that is normally hidden from your vision of the world. The following Course quotation affirms that true forgiveness transforms your vision of the world of dreams and ultimately leads to final awakening in Heaven, which is your true Home:  

    All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God’s perfection.

     From the forgiven world the Son of God is lifted easily into his home. And there he knows that he has always rested there in peace. Even salvation will become a dream, and vanish from his mind. For salvation is the end of dreams, and with the closing of the dream will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven, could dream that there could ever be need of salvation?5

1. T-9.IV.5:3, p. 169
2. T-9.IV.4:4-6, p. 169
3. T-3.V.9:1, p. 46
4. T-31.VII.12:6, p. 665
5. T-17.II.6:1-3, 7:1-5, p. 354