Volume 4, Issue 7, page 8

ing. For self-forgiveness is the door to
attainment, spiritually. To attain, man
must "be still", he must be relaxed, so
that he can hear; and what he seeks to
hear is the voice of that God who said,
"Be still and know that I am God." But
how can man be still when the burden of
guilt within him keeps him in noisy turmoil, noisy within him, where only himself can hear? Let man stand off, then,
apart from himself, in effect, and study
himself, and all his guilt problems, and
say to himself :
"John (or Bill, or Fred, or whatever
the name may be) I wholly and freely forgive you!"
There is anxiety inman. There is fear
in man. Sometimes the anxiety cannot be
focused on anything tangible, audible, or
visible. It is just -- anxiety. And anxiety
is a doubting of the man-within-the-man.
The man knows that he has done this or
that, that he hasn't done this, that, or
something else. In short, he feels himself guilty of something, even when he
cannot himself decide just what it is. He
fears something; but when he fears something it is always something that lies
like a shadow of destruction, in whole or
in part, across his future. This shadow
is his own fear that he has done something wrong, that he has not done something right.

Nothing that man has done or is capable of doing is "new under the sun," a
simple fact that the Preacher of Ecclesiastes knew; he could well have known because he had done it all, yet what he
says finds imperishable place in the Bible. Man must realize that he invents
nothing, least of all sins; he merely rediscovers them. Man should know, if he
feels the need of comparing himself with
others, that every "saint" who has preceded him to the Banquet Table of the
Father has left footprints for man to
follow; that man follows almost exactly
in them, since his problems, temptations,
fears, anxieties, greeds have changed
little down thru the ages. Man should
know that the Great Ones who hold out
their hands to him when he reaches the
end of The Way have followed his path
before him.

Knowing this, can man not forgive himself? Does man doubt for a moment that
God forgives him, whatever he does? Jesus
showed an example, and Jesus, in essence,
was the Father, when He said to the thief
crucified at His right hand:
"Thy sins are forgiven thee! Today
thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
Quibblers have wondered since that day
what became of the thief, since Jesus apparently did not go that day into Paradise, but into the tomb, whence He rose
again on the third day. But quibblers
aside, Jesus met the thief that day in
Paradise, just as He promised, for His
spirit did not go into the tomb with the
8
body the soldiers had broken and abused.

When Jesus gave up the ghost, and the
graves were opened and gave up their dead,
when the veil of the temple was rent in
twain, in that instant, if man had stood
afar from earth, to see it as man sees
Mars, or Venus, or Mercury, man would
have seen that the earth was suddenly
brighter in the heavens than it ever had
been, because the Christ had combined Itself with the atmosphere of earth, filling it with shining glory. Christ is the
Son, the first-born, and the Father is
greater than the Son, as the Son Himself
so often said. The Son filled the atmosphere of earth with His spirit. The Father fills all else with His. Yet the Son
asks the Father to forgive, and so the
Father does. What is man, then, t h a t
where the Father forgives, man himself
does not, especially when he faces himself and knows himself, or believes himself, burdened beyond burdens with guilt?
How small are his burdens, all of them
compared to those which he might carry,
given time and opportunity.

As man prepares self-forgiveness, let
him "be still." Let him lie back, with
eyes closed as he shuts out the world.
Let him recall all that he has done which
only himself knows, or others know who
shared the sins with him -- and therefore
bear their share, but bear it, as he does,
in fearful, guilty silence -- and let him
say to himself of each "sin" that he thus
remembers because feelings of guilt will
not allow him to forget:
''l did that. You did it with me. I
have long since forgiven you. The Father
has long since forgiven both of us, all
of us. I now forgive myself, specifically,
for that one thing I did, or did not do."
Let man, if he would count his sins as
he is bidden to count his blessings, recall each one, reassess it, relive it if
he will, feel guilty about it briefly --
and for the last time -- and then say to
himself:
"I forgive you, as the Father has
One by one, man thus relieves himself
of intolerable burdens which he need not
bear anyway. They are burdens from the
past, which he has escaped into the present, enroute to the endless future,
where his greatest punishment cannot possibly be greater than that one thing by
which he has punished himself: his refusal to forgive himself. Cast it out of remembrance. It is wrong to hold it in mind ,
or in soul, because memory of it interferes with that business of the Father
which is also man's co-creative business.

Man, reading it here if he has not
hitherto known it, should proclaim a personal field day, or more than one, as
many as the burdens may dictate, and consider his "sins", one by one as Kipling
said they must be paid for, and forgive
himself for each one-=one by one. As he
(PLEASE TURN TO PAGE 13)
T 1, a CI 11 P ' t' NOVEMBER. 1957