Harm and forgiveness

If someone takes my stuff, that does not harm me, because I am not my stuff. If one confuses oneself with one's possessions, one can take it personally, which is a distortion of perception. A girl I knew was angry because someone stole and drank her bottle of champagne. She said, 'I can't believe you did it to me'. No, they did it to your bottle of champagne. You are not your bottle of champagne. The girl was very confused about who she was!

I am spirit. Spirit cannot be harmed. I happen to live in a body, and the body can be harmed.

To the extent that I maintain the illusion that I am my body or my material circumstances, to that precise extent am I inviting fear into my life, as these are inherently vulnerable and unstable.

The reliance on God talked about on page 68 obviously cannot suggest that bad things will stop happening to my material circumstances or my body if I rely on God: no, reliance on God is recognising that I am a child of God (and as a child of God I am spirit; like begets like), not a ten-dollar bag of chemicals (as Bill W. referred to the body) or a random set of external circumstances I have lent my name to (in breach of the principle behind Tradition Six).

True forgiveness lies in removing the judgement; removing the judgement involves a change in perception of who I am.

If I believe I can be harmed, e.g. by theft, malice, etc., forgiveness is merely a commitment to lying and saying that the harm has not happened.

That's like pasting a sticking plaster over a festering sore. It does not remove the sore.

No: the underlying problem has to be removed. Once that is removed, there is nothing to forgive, because I have not been harmed.