Ego Game-Changer: ACIM Lesson 68- “Love Holds No Grievances”

What is A Course in Miracles really saying in Workbook lesson 68, “Love holds no grievances”? And how can it help us?

I see this lesson as a game-changer in 3 ways.

The first of these is that it talks about the importance of knowing ourselves. We can’t know ourselves if we are holding grievances. As the Course teaches us,

“The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is ‘know Thyself.’ There is nothing else to seek.”
T-8.III.1:1-2

Why is knowing ourselves life-changing? Because ALL of our problems arise from not knowing – or really, not remembering – who we are.

Who are you?

Dude, you’re the Son of God.

But we don’t think of ourselves like that. We think that’s reserved only for Jesus – kind of like our idea of miracles. Like super-sizing fish sammies, waking dead people up, and the whole morphing water into wine thing.

I can’t do that, we think. I could never do that. I am so much less than that.

We think we don’t deserve to be the Son of God and have miracles worked through us because the ego mind has us convinced that we are guilty of separating ourselves from Him.

And that guilt is so painful, so uncomfortable, so intolerable – that we end up projecting it onto others and making them at fault, guilty and to blame. So now we have grievances.

The real problem is that since how we see our bros is how we see ourselves – no exceptions – if we are holding any grievance against any brother we can’t know ourselves as extensions of pure Love.

We can’t be aware of our innocence or have the Peace of God.

We can’t awaken to the home we never left – blissed and blessed – in the awareness of the Oneness of Heaven.

So we remain stuck “here”, having the experience of challenges, sickness, pain, conflict, scarcity, lack, limitation, and all the other toys on the ego’s playground.

Except we don’t see that we’re doing it to ourselves – that what we’re believing is causing our suffering. We think it’s God.

Thus the second game-changer of this lesson is healing our fear of God or Love.

We fear God because we have made Him over in our own fear-based image. Judgmental, attacking, angry, wrathful, jealous – seeing us as guilty sinners that need to be taught lessons through painful experiences and circumstances.

But these are all actually characteristics of the ego mind and what it tells us is true about ourselves. And unconsciously, we believe it as fact.

So we project that unconscious guilt onto God and imbue Him with all of those fearful qualities – and then of course we’re going to be afraid of Him and think he’s going to punish us.

As A Course in Miracles explains,

“Perhaps you do not yet fully realize what holding grievances does to your mind. It seems to split you off from your Source and make you unlike Him. It makes you believe that He is like what you think you have become, for no one can conceive of his Creator as unlike himself.”
W-pI.68.1:5-7

So projecting our guilt onto other people and God is the ego’s attempt to make us think we’re free of it – to fake us into thinking we’re innocent by making others guilty.

So herein lies the third game-changer of this lesson. It shows us those unhealed places where the ego is hiding. It shines that blacklight on the stains of grievances we tell ourselves we don’t have or we’ve let go of – and it busts us. Just in case we’ve bypassed actually healing our grievances it helps us off the self-delusion bus and reminds us that denial is not just a river in Egypt.

I get it – I’ve done a buttload of work on my own grievances over the years, and I can sometimes bullshit myself into thinking that I’m no longer harboring them. I hear my ego arrogance congratulating me for now being grievance-free.

But then here comes lesson 68 cued up again in my daily Course practice and as I’m doing it I’m suddenly reminded that after 21 years of practicing ACIM I can still come up with somebody somewhere that did something that caused me to suffer in some way.

(If you do sincerely believe you’re in the category of I’m-all-set-because-I’ve-healed-all-my-grievances, that’s awesome. I still recommend revisiting this lesson periodically just to be sure. Just sayin.)

Lesson 68 is the drug-sniffing dog that outs our concealed judgment, condemnation, criticism, resentment – and it provides us with a beautiful process of seeing as friends those we’ve been holding in grievance.

In addition to the practice periods in this lesson, Jesus also talks about forgiveness – which is the one practice that replaces all grievances. The one that does allow us, as the lesson suggests, to see all bros as friends.

When we align with Love by practicing true forgiveness, the world itself seems to change. People behave differently. Situations resolve. Crazy solutions present themselves. Stuff just works out. Things become easier and more peaceful, there is less conflict.

This is the result of our allowing the miracle that is the shift in perception to be brought about. It happens as an action in the mind and the change is reflected back to us in our experience.

This is how Jesus worked His miracles back in the day, and he’s teaching us to transform our “reality” in the same way.

This forgiveness process is to be used whenever you become aware that you have a grievance – whenever your peace is disturbed in any way .

True Forgiveness Process

I forgive you / this because there is nothing to forgive.
I am dreaming an illusion of guilt and projecting it onto you/this situation
I forgive myself for dreaming this illusion and making it real.
I ask Spirit to change my mind and help me see this differently and release it to Him.

When we decide – and that’s all it is, a decision – to embrace the love that holds no grievances, it’s not just a game-changer.

It’s Game.F*ing.Over.

Literally. We stop playing the ego’s game of fear and choose the Reality of the Love of God instead.

We know then that there is no guilt, and nothing to fear.

All because we choose to do the one thing that enables us to see our brothers and thus ourselves as One – the pure, innocent, perfect extension of Love that is our truth.

As the Course reminds us,