Responding to a Call for Help
With forgiveness or with magic?
Posted by aplecompte on November 22nd, 2009
What is the most helpful thing I can give to or do for my brother? I've got to choose between forgiveness and magic.
Forgiveness
To forgive is to see the things, people and events in the world as false. Whenever I feel irritated I need to stop and forgive myself for thinking that something I imagined was reality. When I understand that the perception is false, my mind lets it go. With the Holy Spirit I can then see the situation differently. This is how I change my mind about the world.
Magic
Magic is when I attempt to rely on myself, and I am relying on myself when I try to change something in the world; I am attempting to substitute my will for God’s, which confirms my belief in the separation. My ego mind believes that changing things in the world works. But all my attempts to change the world are “pathetic” and do nothing. Magic is a sorry substitute for true assistance. There is no substitute for the Will of God. M-16.8-10
The wish to help
My wish to help a brother can reinforce error. This is because in order to perceive that my brother needs my help in the world, I have to see him as a body that is sick or lacking, which is actually just to see images of my projected guilt. T-28.III.2, M-4.X.1 So my attempt to give him help in form reinforces the error of separation and guilt for both of us. And it also reinforces the error of my magic wish to be the provider of help. “It is this double wish that makes the help of little value, and must lead to undesired outcomes.” M-17.2:4
When I first read this in the Manual I was confused. Jesus was steering me away from the way I usually showed that I loved somebody. How, then, can I be truly helpful and extend love to a brother?
Forgiveness is the only gift I give
The Course reminds me that the discomfort I experience perceiving lack in my brother is because of my interpretation, which I can change. My brother and I are not bodies, but spirit, the Holy Son of God. There is no lack in the Son of God, so that illusion is false and I can overlook or forgive it.
Forgiveness is the only gift I give, because it is the only gift I want. And everything I give I give myself. This is salvation's simple formula. And I, who would be saved, would make it mine, to be the way I live within a world that needs salvation, and that will be saved as I accept Atonement for myself. W-297
So I respond to my brother’s call for help with the gift forgiveness. I ask the Holy Spirit to help me see the situation differently. When the single aim in the mind of the teacher is to forgive the illusion, “it shines into his brother’s mind, making it one with his.” M-17.3 And so my brother and I are both healed.
Tags: Ego, Forgiveness, Giving
