Letting Go of Error

Thus are his sins forgiven him… Unseen by One they merely disappear.   A Course in Miracles W-158.9:1-3.

I have spent much of my life – personally and professionally – focused on healing the residue from past experiences. Our wounding, both from what others have done to us and from what we have done to others, sits heavily within our hearts. It lies there in the shadows of our psyche, preventing us from knowing the freedom and joy we desire.

Our wounding results from ‘sin’, error, the lack of love. These mistaken expressions – the fear, anger, guilt that were projected onto us, and that we project onto ourselves and others – appear to us as totally real (as they are in time and space, but not in eternity – see previous article), and seem to scar us permanently.

The belief in ‘sin’ as something hard, solid and real gives it the weight to hold us down, the substance to make us and others faulty and bad. Those who have sinned deserve punishment. Hell awaits us all but for some divine intervention, as religion has taught, manipulated and traded upon.

However, what if sin - the lack of love, error of expression - really just creates a space, a void, an emptiness. What if our wounds are essentially just empty shells? How much easier would it be to face, feel and release our baggage if it was only a vacuum devoid of love?

The complexity comes from our attempts to fill these vacuums, to ease our suffering and distract ourselves. We attempt to fill the spaces, our sense of inadequacy and scarcity, with sugar, shopping, sex, substances. We generate compulsive, addictive behaviours in the hope they will displace the pain and soothe the emptiness. All without any lasting success.

But all cravings disappear when the emptiness is filled. Addiction will clear when we deal with the void that drives it. Choice returns if the underlying lack is resolved.

Psychotherapy shows us that something endarkened always shifts when we bring it into the light of our awareness. Whether the result of others’ attacks on us, or our own shame and hostility, healing always happens when we face the block with gentle, loving acceptance.

No matter how dark the energy, there is always a transmutation when we face it head on. No matter how deep the chasm within us, we find when we bring our ‘sins’ into the light of consciousness, they are not so solid after all. When we stand with Love before the emptiness that seemed so huge and unbearable, it simply evaporates before our eyes like a mist of nothingness and is gone forever.

Reference: A Course in Miracles: Complete & Annotated Edition (Sedona, AZ USA; The Circle of Atonement, 2017).