The Real Deal about Quantum Forgiveness

• This post could as well have been titled Simple Innocence II, since I just wrote about that, but that would be boring. And the central theme of Jesus's teachings is that Innocence is lost through the identification with the false self, in the same sense as Shakespeare meant in As You Like It:
  
  

   All the world's a stage,
  And all the men and women merely players;
  They have their exits and their entrances,
  And one man in his time plays many parts,
  His acts being seven ages.
  
  (As You Like It Act 2, scene 7, 139–143)
  
  Note: the seven ages, are the subsequent "acting out" of the seven planetary stages of life, as symbolized by the succession of the seven classical planets of astrology, which he details in the subsequent lines. It is the universal symbolism of life in this sublunar world, which Shakespeare was fully conversant with, and he really saw through the whole charade, as an enlightened mind.
  

  The essence of it all is in learning not to identify with the character, and becoming observers of ourselves, as Logion 42 of the Thomas Gospel indeed recommends: Be passersby. The idea is not only to look but to send our judgment on furlough, for judgment is always of the ego, it is the tool of guilt, not innocence. Not for nothing does Jesus say in the Course:
  
  

  Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as separate from himself and done to him. Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time. (ACIM:T-27.VIII.6)

  
  

  So if we get with Shakespeare and with Jesus, and we "return the dream unto the dreamer," and suddenly we realize that "all the world's a stage," we are then in the process of waking up, and looking at it with Jesus, and being passersby of the life that a minute ago we thought was so real, we are re-joining with whom we really are in truth. Then we also can no longer take seriously all the slights that were done to us in the play, when we still thought that "the dream was separate from himself and done to him," and not taking it personally, we then forgive whoever was the seeming character on the stage we were so angry at not too long ago, as the realization dawns it was not real, but rather a projection -- invariably we accuse another of what we don't want to see in ourselves, and the anger serves only to make the ego self good and real, where as with Jesus's loving, gentle smile beside us, we realize the truth of "Together, we can laugh them both away..." So that indeed eternity never is and never was limited by time, for in fact his Kingdom is not of this world, and it is this shift in the mind which is the way out of conflict, for conflict is part and parcel of our dreamrole, since conflict is in the nature of the thought of individuality -- survival of the fittest, etc.
  
  So the quantum forgiveness process as Jesus teaches it in the Course, consists of questioning our judgment (becoming "passersby"), or as the Course also puts it, wondering "Would I accuse myself of this?" - which does imply stepping back from the dreamrole which you are acting out on the stage, and looking at it with Jesus. This step reverts us back to the mind where the judgment was formed, instead of blaming the character we are seeing on the stage, or any of our fellow actors. The second step then, now that we're back in our own mind, which we CAN change, instead of blaming someone else whom we cannot change, is to turn to Jesus (or the Holy Spirit) instead, realizing that we no longer want the guilt and that the ego, always coming from our individual interests, will only perpetuate the conflict. This is the central stage of the process, and in the Greek language of the New Testament literature it was referred to as metanoia, change of mind (and NOT "repentance" as it was translated and interpreted by later theologians). After that we can then turn it over to the Holy Spirit having now set the situation free for His interpretation, which will always have the best interests of all concerned at heart, and thus resolve conflict, and restore Inner Peace to us, which is our natural inheritance in the words of the Course.