Here is a video conversation with author Susan Dugan about her new book Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness. It continues (as her equally excellent prior two books did) with the ‘recurring theme of resistance to taking Jesus’ hand’ and ‘recognizing that I have a choice that will lead me out of suffering but not always feeling able to choose.’ Here’s a link to Susan’s new book. Here’s a prior announcement about the book with a link to her blog.
I took a few notes from just the first few pages of this superb ACIM-studies book, pulling out just a small portion of what I’d underlined as key themes:
p.1: Trying to solve our problems by ourselves
p.2: Generalizing ACIM’s message to everything in our dream lives
p.3: fear of going home (resistance) …
Jesus never took TMI seriously … he ‘patiently guards the jewel of our uninterrupted completeness’
… ‘extending kindness and gentleness (and forgiving myself when I forget)’
p.7 … ‘dreaming up all these futile substitutes’
… ‘innocence for one and all prevails’
p.10 … ‘look at all the defenses I invented … see them for the nothingness they remain’
p. 11 … ‘willingness to forgive what never was’
… ‘offer my addiction to this me-ness’ (to Holy Spirit a.k.a. Jesus a.k.a. our Inner Kindness Teacher)
p.12 … ‘my fear is to learn to love instead of hate in all circumstances’
p.13 … ‘Jesus … refused to believe the preposterous idea that we could shatter eternal wholeness’
p.14 … ‘vulnerable embodied condition I still think I’m in.’
p. 15 (level confusion): ‘…completely unaware we are the dreamers (rather than heroes) of the dream.’
p. 16 … ‘time, itself, is an illusion of the ego I can learn to kindly use to heal my mind of all illusions.’
p.17 … ‘we must learn to make no distinctions between attacking the dream figure we believe we inhabit or any other dream figure’
p.18 … ‘there is no life in bodies; only in the one mind outside the ego’s apparent body of evidence…’
… HS’s response to ego’s horror flick (metaphor): ‘… immediately tossed on the cutting room floor with a knowing smile long, long ago’
p.19 … ‘… it’s always my (imaginary) bad. Punishing the self I think I am, or punishing you, serves the same purpose of keeping the guilt alive.’
… ‘looking at it with you (HS)’ … ‘all I need to focus on: choosing you’ (HS).
p.20 Don’t take ‘ego’s collective cover-up’ seriously: ‘… feeling misunderstood, manipulated, unfairly treated, and falsely accused in a special relationship…
p.21 ‘… the agreement, of course, is never among other dream figures, considering the startling fact that … there are no dream figures! The agreement is always and only about my sincere willingness to disagree with the one ego’s dire, hateful interpretation of events, thereby agreeing with the one right mind’s certainty that only truth remains. … (we) join in the only relationship truly available, our relationship with the memory of wholeness…’
