Please do not believe me
if ever I should say that you’ve upset me.
Sometimes I forget the true source of my feelings.
You cannot make me sad,
impatient,
angry,
or otherwise dis-eased.
Only a hope or expectation of you on my part,
which you have not fulfilled,
can move me thus.
Yet I am too human
to be without hopes and expectations,
and I am also much too human
to live always in the knowing
that my hopes and expectations
have no claim upon your being.
So if I say that you’ve upset me,
please forgive me for attempting
to disinherit my own self’s creation of my pain.
And please do not ignore my deeper message:
I care enough about you
to include you in my hopes and expectations. ~Noel McInnis
ACIM Ch9-IV: [http://www.thecourseinmiracles.com/home/index.php]
Atonement is for all, because it is the way to undo the belief that anything is for you alone. To forgive is to overlook. Look, then, beyond error and do not let your perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds. Accept as true only what your brother is, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is not and you cannot know what you are, because you see him falsely. Remember always that your Identity is shared, and that Its sharing is Its reality.
& … The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one, though not of the right teacher. The ego’s plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. By following its plan you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego always leads you. 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. This is where the ego is forced to appeal to “mysteries,” insisting that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from God. They are as sensible now as they ever were, because they speak of ideas that are eternal.
Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear. Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it. Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent. By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, he teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it.