26.02.06
0901 – -The only solution or the key to true forgiveness:
that which is seen to be inside is really outside.
Posted in the Branch at 7:57 pm by Linda 
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From April 2005
Answer the question: what is within and what is without and you indeed have answered the apparent riddle of the universe. The key to perfect peace and happiness lies here.
A number of years ago I was impressed with this thought: cease to look for yourself either ” inside” or ” outside” because you are not there.
Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is within. He also says the word within is unnecessary because the Kingdom of God is you. What is without and what is within does not appear to be altogether obvious and is indeed an area in which false self-concepts are harboured, partly because they seem to be within. What is within is inextricably bound to identity. After all what is within me is me is it not? And I will defend and protect whatever appears to be such an intimate part of me that for all intents and purposes it is me.
For all the apparent complexity, Jesus teaches there is only one confusion. What is truly outside (not by projection) has been taken to be inside. And because it appears to be inside I think it is me and it is therefore my responsibility.
“It must be this part that is really outside yourself, not by your own projection, but in truth. And it is this part that you have taken in that is not you.”
(T 16.111.4)
Therein lies all the confusion about what I am and the source of all guilt because I feel personally responsible for the content of what I take to be my mind. I must also feel guilty and responsible for taking it in, or for choosing to be deceived. Jesus teaches this is in fact what we really feel guilty about (choosing the symbols of separation), even though it appears to be the content of mind that distresses us.
Once there is a my mind there is also a your mind, housed in what appear to be separate bodies. The world of duality is well and truly established in our experience.
Yet we have been told:
” My mind holds only what I think with God.”
(W.R. IV.2: 2)
The passage quoted from previously continues, saying the same thing in a different way: “What you accept into your mind does not really change it. Illusions are but beliefs in what is not there.”
The key is to realise that whatever is perceptual, whether it be the feeling in the small toe, the idea it is my toe, some deep dark memory harboured from childhood or from a past life, the idea there is an ” I” who could have a past, the tree or what the 6.00 o’ clock news reports, is ALL outside. NO exception. NONE. There is no perception that can be pointed to (quite beside the question of who is doing the pointing) that is not outside. The very impulse to point and ask” Oh, but what about?” is perceptual and by definition outside. If it can be perceived, looked at, described, named, pointed to, verbalised: it is outside.
Pursuing this line of inquiry leads to one experience: the stillness of the implicit recognition that no thought, sensation or experience has ever or will ever touch being. What I am cannot be pointed to or encapsulated. It can only be Known. It is the awareness that lies behind the thought:
” I am as God created me.”
(T. 31. VIII.5: 2)
This instant of recognition is the Atonement.
It is not even that there are no thoughts or images to apparently distract from stillness and integrity of being. If that were the case then being would in some sense be ” affect able.” or ” distract able” . The whole point is that it is not. We are the ones who believe in sometimes quiet and sometimes not and the on, off, stop, start nature of sequential, linear experience. The truth is that perfect peace, stillness and complete freedom is perfectly and entirely coincident with whatever appears to be the case in any realm high or low, at anytime anywhere. That is the true power of the Atonement. It is also the power and presence of what I am in any and every instant I align with it. I simply accept the Atonement and allow it to teach me what I am.
This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what you are, but have not let what you are teach you.
To no longer be fooled by that which appears to be me and see that it is a passing mirage, including the sensation that there is a ” me” living ” in” a fleshy construct which, it maybe noticed, is sometimes taken to be ” my” body. I knew a teacher who frequently said: If you did not think about it you would not even know you had a body.
And if by chance, you notice ” you” have been ” fooled” and lost your awareness in the fleeting images of time (as if there were somewhere or sometime a ” you” could get lost in). What then? Easy. Come back to the eternal presence of YOUR mind and let go. It has not gone anywhere. You have not gone anywhere. Turning to the truth of Light naturally quietens our mind as we accept Its Atonement rather than using the guilt ridden, perceptually laden, and time bound versions of the ego’ s atonement.
The Holy Instant is the instant of our homecoming and the time is NOW.
Back to the first question. What is within? You, the whole you and nothing but you! The great and joyous truth is, that the same is true for me. It is true for us simultaneously. There is nothing but You or Me, whichever way the finger seems to be pointing. The Self is One.
Anything that appears to witness to something other is ” outside.” However, in the instant of recognition of Self and the Within, the ” mirage ness” of the without is implicitly seen. In other words there is nothing outside. It truly is the case that nothing unreal exists and we forgive ourselves and our brothers for what has not been done. It is easy to recognise. Just don’ t think. In the instant of non-judgement, of not knowing, of no thought there is peace, there is joy, there is immutability. There is unboundness. It simply waits for our acceptance. In the end it is simple as that.
Linda