The Real Purpose of Life

True forgiveness is the real purpose of life, but you’ve got to choose it in order to make it yours. Remember, practicing real forgiveness can’t help but lead you home.

Forgiveness has to do with what you think. This is not a revolution of the physical, it’s a reclaiming of the mind—ushering in a new way of thinking. Forgiveness is an attitude. Everything you learn becomes incorporated into that attitude until forgiveness happens automatically.

The thought system of the Holy Spirit is guided by love; the thought system of the ego is guided by fear and hatred and will always eventually result in some kind of destruction.

Forgiveness will never result in violence, but judgment will always result in some kind of negative effect on the level of form, even if the effect is just on your own health. Violence is the ultimate and illogical extension of fear, judgment and anger. The delusional thought system of the ego will always lead to some form of violence and murder eventually, because it requires that people see their enemy—or the perceived cause of their problem—as being outside of them. So do you, but you have found the way out. By reversing the ego’s thinking, your fear will be released, not projected.

The ego, or wrong mind, makes everything that appears to happen on the level of form. Spirit makes nothing happen on the level of form, which is why you shouldn’t spiritualize events or objects in the universe. The right mind gives the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the level of form, leading you—and by you we mean that observatory part of the mind that has identified with and thus bound itself to the ego—back home. Home is unchangeable spirit.

Even though the Holy Spirit doesn’t do anything in the world, His interpretation of the level of form can help you see more clearly what you should do here. That’s just a fringe benefit of choosing Him as your Teacher, not the main reason, which is salvation. These ideas are the way of salvation, and your ticket home—if you get to the point where you apply them regularly.

With salvation there is no one out there to blame for your one real problem, of which all the others are symbolic. The cause, which is the decision to believe in the separation from God, and the solution, which is the principle of the Atonement, are both in your mind—where you now have the power to choose the Holy Spirit’s Answer.

With that in mind, a component of practicing forgiveness when you’re confronted by an opportunity would be to remember that you’re dreaming. You authored the dream and made the figures in it act out for you, so you could see your unconscious guilt outside yourself. If you remember you’re dreaming, then there’s nothing out there but your own projection. Once you believe that—and belief only comes from practice and experience—then there’s no need for what you’re seeing and now forgiving to have any impact on you.

Once you’re the cause and not the effect, another component of forgiveness would be to forgive both your projected images and yourself for dreaming them.

Now it’s time to forgive yourself for dreaming this whole mess in the first place. If nothing’s happened—and if the Course teaches anything, it’s that nothing’s happened—then you’re innocent.

The Course tells you to forgive your brother for what he hasn’t done. That would be true forgiveness because you’re not making the error real.

Thus as you forgive your brothers and sisters, your mind realizes simultaneously that you are forgiven. As we go along, try to remember that. When you forgive others, it’s really you yourself who is being forgiven.

By forgiving your brothers and sisters in the manner just described, you are rejoining with what you really are. You’re telling the world and the bodily images you see that their behavior can’t have any effect on you, and if they can’t have any effect on you, then they don’t really exist separately from you. Thus, there is no separation of any kind in reality.

The metaphysics of the Course are built around the reality of God and the unreality of the separation, and are essential to know. But forgiveness is where the rubber meets the road. Without forgiveness, metaphysics are useless. That’s why we say the Course is practical. It’s not enough to say the world is an illusion. The point is that you have to learn how to forgive in order to get home.

The Holy Spirit knows you’re afraid of your unconscious. The purpose of the Course is peace, not to scare the hell out of you. True peace will come from true forgiveness. And violence—which is the acting out of one’s own self-hatred seen as being outside of oneself—will never come as a result of the thought system of the Holy Spirit, who teaches only love and forgiveness.

Trust the Holy Spirit and choose His strength. The peace of the Holy Spirit will be given to you if you do your job. He will heal the larger, unconscious mind that is hidden from you, and give you His peace at the same time. This peace may not always come right away, and sometimes it will. Sometimes it may surprise you in the form of something happening that would usually upset you—except this time it doesn’t.

For most people, especially during the first few years, forgiveness requires that you think about it. You become a master by having forgiving thought processes. These right-minded thoughts eventually dominate your mind instead of the ego.

All this will lead you to the Kingdom of Heaven, for along with the Holy Spirit, you are doing the work that leads to the condition of peace—which is the condition of the Kingdom. Forgiveness is actually preparing you to re-enter the Kingdom of Heaven!

If you woke up all at once I assure you it wouldn’t be pleasant. You have to be prepared for a different form of life. Even in this life, where people think they are bodies, change is not really welcome—even if people want to pretend it is.