A Course In Miracles Lesson 68

A Course In Miracles  Lesson 68 states: Love holds no grievances

A grievance is another word for complaint.  A complaint is a form of discontent and unhappiness.  Today’s lesson is another obvious statement that explains how love, being what it is, can not hold a quality of unhappiness.  Love is not unhappy in the same way fire can not be cold.  If unhappiness enters the experience of love, we can then know that what we were feeling was not actually love, but rather, a fixation and a hope on the part of our ego.  The ego is the split mind, the illusion experience we have the ability to self-conjure because illusions are how Reality facilitates letting even the impossible occur.  The impossible can not ever actually occur in Reality, but the impossible can occur in our imaginations.  We can think something is true even while it is not possible.  That is the nature of having a split mind.  

It is impossible to separate from All That Is.  It is impossible to be excluded from the Unified Field of Everything.  It is impossible to ever come to an end.  But we can believe otherwise and when we do, we suffer.  Our bodies are not eternal.  Our life situations are not permanent.  When we hold a grievance towards someone we are not feeling love towards them.  The idea that you can love someone while feeling angry or resentful towards them is only an indication that there is a misunderstanding in your mind about what love really is.  There is a belief that fire can somehow be cold or that water can somehow be snow.  There is a mistaken belief that something impossible could be possible.  Love holds no grievances.  If a grievance has arisen, what we were feeling towards the person or situation is not what love is.  It is a misguided perspective.

Learning how to love is about learning how to recognize our misguided understanding of a situation.  Reality is not what we think it is in this physical world and we should not always believe what we think.  Our thoughts lead us down deeply misguided perceptions about people and situations.  Love is a state of non-judgment.  The experience of what love is can best be observed when we interact with an animal companion.  The delight in the animals’ simple existence fills us with the experience of the joy of being.  That is how Love feels all the time and it is how we can feel towards our partners and children and co-workers when we begin the process of self-realization.  Self-realization shows us that we are living with a split mind rather than a whole one.  Unifying our mind into the Unified Field of Creation is the only truly meaningful activity to partake in in this world.  We can pursue this aim in any activity we engage.  Releasing anger, sorrow, and misperceptions and returning to the eternal well-being that is more real than this reality is why we are alive.

We believe that people should behave a certain way. When they don’t we get angry and sad.  It hurts.  The people who behave in hurtful and violent ways towards us are doing so because they believe others should be behaving differently towards them.  Motivations of violence come from misguided beliefs about what the world should be (but isn’t).  We do not really experience Love because we are carrying complaints about the world.  When we put down grievance thoughts we start to learn the real nature of what love is which feels strange to our split and conditioned mind.  Love does not involve pain.  Love can not be painful and be love.

Since our previous lesson clarified that love created us loving, to hold discontent towards someone or some situation is to forget what we are.  We are, in reality, an eternal state of love, peace, and joy.  We are enthralled adventurers expanding Creation through our unique discoveries.  When we hold a grievance against someone for having hurt us we are actually saying that we can be hurt.  What we really are can not be hurt because we are, in reality, an eternal state of well-being.  What can be hurt is our body and our life situation.  When we identify ourselves with temporary conditions, we suffer because the temporary can not be ever-lasting.  A constant painful experience of temporary conditions does not prove the ‘reality’ of those conditions.  It only indicates our willingness to place our attention on illusion and believe illusions to be the truth.

Our physical bodies will always be in danger and we can never completely secure its safety.  Impulses to protect your body are, of course, sound and right as you navigate this dimension.  But connecting to an understanding of your greater non-physical nature will be the best form of protection you could ever hope to achieve.  Releasing the grip of identifying yourself with impermanent forms and releasing your desire for the impermanent to hold fast and endure will enable you to enjoy the fleeting while connected to a truly reliable Source of reality.

We are more than form.  We are bigger than our bodies. Our life energy extends out in an exquisite and fully complete way.  Registering the Love dimension as an eternal state that is real is necessary for any effective process of self-realization.  The concept of heaven, nirvana, bliss, perfection can not be questioned, and still have those qualities occur in our minds.  To debate and doubt is to destroy.

What is true has no need for debate.  What is true knows what It is and only dwells peacefully, available to be recognized at any time.  The truth is not angry when it is not recognized.  The truth is inherently at peace because It knows Itself completely.  God is not worried about you.  God knows you are well and God knows you will eventually remember this.  Reality is never altered or harmed by a mistaken belief on your part.  Reality stays intact and can be returned to by you at any time no matter how profound your confusion may have seemed.  You can let all that go now and just let wellness in without having to figure anything out.  Let the whole jumbled mess be unresolved and know that it is not possible to resolve the unresolvable.  It is not possible for the impossible to be possible.  We can walk away from conflict without figuring it out or understanding it.  We can recognize that conflict can not be understood, only released.

I release this conflict I am holding in my mind and return to an experience of love now.  When I hold a complaint I hold a cloud between me and what is true.  When I hold a complaint in my mind I do not fully understand the harm to myself I am causing and the damage that occurs to me alone.  

This world is under no obligation to behave in any particular way.  Nothing is required.  Anyone can choose to be honest or dishonest at any time.  This freedom to choose how we conduct ourselves is why it is not possible to ever really understand this world.  People’s choices are not required to be understandable.  Letting go of the expectation that people should behave in understandable ways will facilitate greater ease and peace for us.  No one is obligated to perform as you think they ought to.  You conducting your own behavior as feels right to you is all you ever have power of in this world.  Your conduct is your life experience.  

When given a less-than-ideal situation, how can we see the situation differently?  How can we shift our expectations of what we were hoping it would be to locating the ability to simply enjoy it for what it is?  Because love holds no grievances and love is the most enjoyable experience there is.  If we could see clearly the destructive harm caused to our lives when we hold resentments we would drop them at once. But how?  Perhaps you have tried and tried to stop feeling angry but it seems as if anger is clinging to you like an assault from a violent outside world.  How do we release anger?

A Course In Miracles Lesson 68 explains that letting go of anger is a matter of motivation, a matter of wanting to let go of the anger rather than wanting to hold onto it.  When you arrive at the deep desire to release pain and shift towards peace, that tiny movement is relief.  Letting yourself register that small, quiet relief is again, a willingness to shift focus towards what feels good, away from the strange mental seduction of fixating on what feels bad.  A desire to feel good must become a radiating conviction, a light burning in darkness.  A passion. A commitment that says- above all else I want peace.  Above all else, I want joy instead of pain.

There is no getting to the bottom of resentment.  There is only a decision to turn away from the unresolvable and move towards better feelings.  We are not going to be able to figure this particular agony out.  Let’s not let it ruin the rest of our time alive.  Let’s return at once to an experience of well-being without tracking how we get there.  Let’s make a tiny jump.  Let’s let ourselves feel better.  

Today’s lesson explores how it feels to let go of a grievance with someone you’ve been holding in frustration in your mind for a while.  The longer sitting session begins by having you search your mind for people who you feel wronged by.  You will likely think of people rather quickly.  Think for a moment about what each person did that is hard for you to get over.  Then, to each of these contemplations say to that event and that person, 

“Holding this grievance towards you is burning me just like holding a fire flame in my hand.  I do not want to burn with this grievance.  It is hurting me to believe that I was harmed by you.  I have not really been harmed.  I am okay.  I am well.  I can recognize that the harm I thought you caused me is over. I am here… I am changed but I am here.  How I am is acceptable.  The changes that have occurred are acceptable. I let go of believing I have been permanently harmed by your actions or inactions.  I release you from my thoughts and give you to the Field of Well-being that resolves all pain.  I release you because doing so will lead to feeling better.  I allow myself to be guided into a more peaceful perception of you.  I do not have to force myself to like you or love you or feel any particular way about you.  I allow myself to be guided out of grievance by the Movement that is Peace.”

When we sit in the longer meditation session today we will soon see that we hold grievances towards virtually everyone!  Throughout the day let any anger and sadness that arises be a pathway towards rediscovering what love is and remember that love holds no grievances.