10.04.06
Am I being asked to run before I can walk?
Posted in Questions and Answers at 7:53 pm by miracles 
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I am just starting the course and I am up to lesson 75. I think the course is fantastic and I am certain it is a way to a better state of being, although I have to be honest I am finding it extremely tough (although I’m sure I’m not alone). I find some lessons very enjoyable and some a real struggle. I actually enjoy lesson 75 but I am finding the concept of ‘ the light has come. I have forgiven the world’ difficult to cope with. I realise at the outset you are supposed to do the lessons even if at the time you find some of the lessons hard to believe or actively resist them but I believe in my current state i have not yet ‘forgiven the world’. I feel I am being asked to run before I can walk.
Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.
Thank you for your question. The difficulty you express is indeed a common one. You are definitely not alone!
A Course idea that can be hard to grasp is that Jesus is actually speaking to the Mind of God’s Son who has already accepted the Atonement for himself. In the text Jesus says when I overcame the world you were there with me (T-19.IV.B.6:5) He is obviously not speaking to who we take ourselves to be as separate human beings. The Light has come is a description of a fact, albeit one that as apparently separate beings we are not aware of.
Until we understand this we instinctively interpret Jesus’ teachings as a call to us to do and become. We think we are the ones that need to do the forgiving or that we need to achieve a different state of awareness in order to be the Light.
The very first page of the text tells us that the Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, but at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. The Course process is one of undoing. This constant theme is echoed in this lesson when it reminds us that the darkness of the past we hold onto is the shadow cast upon the light of the real world. That Light is always there. We do not make it. We are that very Light. Our reality is entirely God given. But our reality has nothing whatsoever to do with what we seem to be and the brains with which we seem to be figuring out the Course!
Fundamentally Jesus is calling us to remember who we are. That remembrance dawns in and of itself when we forgive ourselves for trying to be what we are not. As you continue to work with the Course you will start to realise that the very one that appears to be struggling with the Course is itself part of the illusion or obstacle.
So take heart. You as Mind or Spirit know exactly what Jesus means. Forgiveness calls on us to look honestly and gently on the one that appears to be the doer, developer and the understander. Trust and the willingness to proceed as you correctly point out is all that is required to do the Course. The part of any of us that appears separate is a lie whether it appears to run or crawl. We all however share the same Truth. Your question clearly shows that you have felt its call. In those instants when you do you are connecting with that part of you that inspires the highest of visions. Jesus is speaking to that part because in truth there is nothing else to speak to. But while we appear to be something other our only work here (whether we have just started the Course or whether we have been with it a long time) is to forgive the clouds of fear, doubt and self-limitation that seem to suggest we are something other than true Mind or Spirit.