Memory VS. Present Interpretation

Speaker: If you can just clearly understand the metaphysics of what I’m talking about, that you never, in truth, could attack or be attacked, then you would be absolved of all guilt. The Course says, “God does not forgive because He has never condemned.” That’s quite a high idea because most of us have thought of God as watching over us, and we have thought, Oh boy, have I screwed up. I’ve messed up a lot of my life, and I’ve done a lot wrong, and I’ve committed a lot of sins or mistakes. The Course is saying that guilt comes from a present decision. Memories are just memories, but it’s the meaning that you read into the memories that gives them the charge.

Participant1: That makes them seem real.

Speaker: And having that memory come to awareness in the present, if you can withdraw all the meaning from it, then you’ll be absolved of the anger, the hurt, the guilt, the fear, or whatever seems to come up. You can make a present decision to watch that memory with the Holy Spirit up here, from above the battlefield, secure in the fact that it’s just a projection. It’s at the level of form, and you are a mind. You are being held there with the Holy Spirit watching it, which is a lot different from a many psychotherapies that kind of say to go on a witch-hunt back in the mind. Even with past life regressions, for instance. One woman said that she had an irrational fear of birds in this life, and that she finally got in touch with it because so many lifetimes ago in her memory, she had been raped and thrown out of a cart to lay in the side of a ditch, and these birds had come and pecked away at her body. Therefore, she was trying to make the equation that this incident which happened so many lifetimes ago in the past was responsible for how she was feeling about birds in this life. Well, that seems like a pretty good metaphysical belief, but the Course comes along and says that it’s your interpretation of that memory. It’s your body identification. It runs a lot deeper. It’s the interpretation that you’re making right now, this instant, that’s bringing the fear of whatever, something out there on the screen, and it’s not the past memory that causes it.

Some people may seem to be abused by a parent or molested or to have their parents die when they are young and put in a home, and so on. A lot of people have all these things that they carry around, and they actually do believe, the mind believes, that the source of its misery is in the past.

Participant: That something back there in the past caused how I am now.

Speaker: Denying that it’s my decision right now. So, if we really trace this back, we can see that the ego’s belief is, You’ve been deprived of something in the past. Use your relationships to get what you’ve always been missing. We’re getting into the metaphysics of where does this give-to-get come in. You’re deprived, and you’re going to feel guilty with good reason, and what the Course is saying is that right here in this instant, you can make a choice to see the script differently, literally, to remove all the meaning from the script, see it differently, and be completely absolved this very instant. And Jesus is saying, It’s only your own deception, your own belief in time even, that’s still holding you apart. It’s still your own delusion about time. You’re afraid to just accept this one solution in the present.

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