How to save the world
Hint: Stop being an asshole
Listen to this article:
I used to be an asshole. No, really, I was a jerk with a short temper who may not deliberately pick a fight but would finish one if you started it.
Not surprisingly, I was angry most of the time. The littlest things could set me off. If I tripped over an uneven spot in the sidewalk, it would send me into a tirade of swearing – never mind how quickly I flew into a rage if you cut me off in traffic. One evening, a guy vying for the same lane my then-partner and I were occupying swiped the front passenger-side bumper of our car as he rushed ahead of us. We stopped to inspect the damage and he and I went toe-to-toe in the middle of the road calling each other everything but a child of God.
We filed police reports for the insurance, which the other driver received – complete with our home address. The next morning, we awoke to two slashed tires on our car. This was not the first time I had suffered adverse effects from my anger, and it wouldn't be the last, but this was a major wake-up call for me. I had been on a nascent spirit-deepening search at that time, and this incident sent me deeper, looking for ways to cool the flames of my rage.
My first step was to skip the hearing for the ticket the other guy received, knowing he'd probably face no fine or other reprimand if I wasn't there to contest it. I really just had to let it go.
Letting it go would be the theme of my life from that moment forward. Forgiveness became a deep spiritual practice – one I had embarked on just a year or so before this incident. I know the source of my rage (thanks therapy). My dad packed his bags when I was nine and left. This confused me since he was a Southern Baptist preacher who had railed against infidelity and divorce from the pulpit – only to pursue both himself.
When you're nine, you don't understand such adult things so you blame the only thing you can – yourself. Daddy left me. That hurt my feelings, but it hurt my soul that he had betrayed God's commandments. I took my children's edition of The Living Bible and underlined every single passage about adultery and divorce, reinforcing for me just how much of a filthy sinner my father was.
I was in my 30s when I finally decided to forgive my father. He had died when I was 17, so I went to his grave and to reconcile with him. As someone pointed out many years later, it's easy to forgive a headstone. It may have been more difficult if he had still been breathing, but it was still a cleansing act.
To get there, I had to go through all the conventional ideas of what forgiveness is about. The old slogan: "forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace," was a big one for me. It was true. I deserved some peace. I had been in a battle with the whole world since the age of nine, believing that my anger would somehow keep me safe from pain. In reality, it brought so much more pain in the form of broken relationships and slashed tires.
Some people see forgiveness as weakness, thinking there are some sins so heinous there's not enough forgiveness in the world. That's really the problem, though: there's not enough forgiveness in the world. We need more forgiveness, not less. The kind of forgiveness we need though isn't the kind where we make the offense real and then forgive it. Real forgiveness understands that the offense – no matter how horrible we think it to be – never really hurt us at all. Oh, our feelings got hurt. Maybe our bodies even got hurt. But who we are, at our core identity, was never harmed because it cannot be. It doesn't have feelings or bodies to be hurt, since we are all truly infinite spirits who have never left our home in the Holy.
I hear your eyes rolling. "Ah, here comes the woo-woo bullshit. I'm out."
Don't close the tab just yet. Hear me out.
If it were up to me – that egoic part that I call "myself" and identify with – I would never forgive. To do so feels like excusing something that is truly harmful to me or others – either to our mind, spirit, or body. This is where most of us live. This is, honestly, where we stop and build religions, complete with egoic gods who smite enemies and condemn "evil doers" to an eternal hell.
This egoic me sees the world as a real, tangible place – a terrible reality where people hurt each other with impunity. Through this suspicious at best, and vicious at worst collective ego, we have created the world we think we see. It's a treacherous world with treacherous people and nowhere seems to be safe. We create religions and systems that we hope will "save" us. We create power structures that pit us (the good, sane people) against them (the evil, stupid and dimwitted) who would harm us or those we love.
The ego reinforces this world for us all the time, showing us proof that this is reality. Watch the news for five minutes or doom scroll some social media sites and you'll see the ego's world is real, and really dangerous. Wars, illnesses, hunger, greed, hatred, theft, murder, torture, rape, child abuse and molestation – it's all there. All the horrible things bodies can do to bodies is on full daily display.
We only see this fearful and terrifying world because we believe the ego's lie that fear is stronger than love. I saw an angry world because all I projected onto the world was my anger. I saw an unforgiving world because all I dwelled upon within my own heart and mind was unforgiveness.
When we send "fear's messengers" into the world, A Course in Miracles says in chapter 19, "no little shred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes." We see the guilty, the unforgivable, everywhere we look.
If, however, we clear our heart and mind of fear – by using the tool of forgiveness – we begin to send out messengers of love.
"If you send them forth," A Course says, "they will see only the blameless and the beautiful, the gentle and the kind. They will be as careful to let no little act of charity, no tiny expression of forgiveness, no little breath of love escape their notice. And they will return with all the happy things they found, to share them lovingly with you. Be not afraid of them. They offer you salvation. Theirs are the messages of safety, for they see the world as kind.” [CE T-19.IV.A.16:3-8]
Again, I hear the eye-rolling. "See the world as kind? Now, you're delusional."
No, now I am seeing Reality – that eternal kind, not the egoic kind. I know this for a fact, because the moment I stopped projecting my anger and instead projected Love, my reality utterly transformed.
As angry and unforgiving, I attracted a whole set of angry and unforgiving friends. We could come together and catalog the world's flaws and sins and grow more and more cynical and fearful of the world. When I began to transform my thoughts from fear to Love, though, those friends dropped away. New ones took their place – people who were generous and open-hearted. People who saw the world as … kind.
This is what A Course means when it talks about forgiveness. We forget the unloving things that were done to us – the thoughts that produced harmful actions – and remember only the loving thoughts and deeds, because those are the ones that are eternal. This is how we can get a glimpse of the Real World, which only consists of eternal love.
That being said, forgiving others doesn't mean you give them the keys to your house, your car, or your heart. We are, after all, still in the ego's world and most of us remain unconscious in our egoic mind, sending out fear's messengers that affirm for us the world is nothing but cruel and terrible. For those of us who are sending out Love's messengers, though, we hold that space of Love for our unconscious Holy Siblings until they can awaken and see how kind this world truly can be. Forgiveness, in this world, is an exercise in the mind. Sometime, bodies need to remain separated for their safety.
The key to this kind of miraculous forgiveness is to ditch our egoic ideas about how God operates. We believe that we are sinners and therefore need God's forgiveness first. Religions lay out all manner of rituals and processes for this, but the very best thing we can do is forget all of that and believe only this, from Lesson 46 from A Course: "God does not forgive, because God has never condemned."
Condemnation comes from fear, which is completely alien to God. It is, however, God's Love that fuels our ability to forgive. We cannot forgive with the ego's brand of limited, tainted love. Only the power of Real Love can forgive in this world, and when that happens, the world transforms. That transformation takes place in our personal world first, then, as we continue to send out Love's messengers, those around us begin to do the same, and eventually Love does create a kind world.
Even in the face of feeling abandoned by my father, I chose to send forgiveness and to remember only the loving thoughts of my father and others that my ego says I should hate, and Love transformed me from an asshole to a messenger of Love. You can roll your eyes … or you can get busy sending out Love's messengers yourself. It's truly the only way to save the world.
Music for the Journey:
“Message of Love” - The Pretenders
Now the reason we're here
Every man, every woman
Is to help each other
Stand by each other
When love walks in the room
Everybody stand up
Past Guest Speaking Gigs:
This is the sermon I delivered at the Unitarian Church in Charleston, S.C., on January 28, 2023. (Stick around at the end to hear my original song, “I Believe.”)
Looking for a guest speaker at your spiritual community? Contact me!
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution, or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well as Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass and the founder and senior editor emeritus of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for LGBTQ People of Faith. She is also a musician and avid animal lover.
Thanks Candice I really needed this this morning.
Oh Yeah!
libby cornett