Gowithin.net’s Interview with the Electrifying Gary Renard.
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GoW: Can a person quantum forgive and forget the bad things that they think a person has done to them? Can they forget the bad illusory things in the world of form that they think people have done to them?
Gary: I don’t think that people can always forget. The old saying is “forgive and forget”. I don’t think that is always the case. ACIM says, “when it is forgiven, it is gone”. It means that the emotional charge behind it is no longer there. There is no more lack of peace. If you can remember something that you had forgiven and you don’t feel bad about it anymore, then it is forgiven. If it brings up more discomfort or any kind of lack of peace, then it has not been completely forgiven. If you remember it or think of it and it does not bother you, then you have successfully forgiven it. It’s really about how you feel, whether you are at peace or not. That‘s the bottom line. I think that that’s important because people may think it should never return to your mind once you forgive. We are going to retain the memory of a lot of things as long as we have a memory, we think we appear to be here (in this world of time and space) and functioning in a normal way. But, you can start sending your peace and it will not matter. What’s the point!
Another point to remember is that it’s just as easy to forgive a memory, even if it happened 20 to 30 years ago or in a past life you remember in this life as it is anything happening to you right now, for what is memory except a picture in your mind. The world is also a picture in your mind. There isn’t really any universe of time and space. There has never been one. The life you think you’ve been living has never existed. It’s not real. It’s like a trick. ACIM calls it “a slight of hand, a vast illusion”. The Course says, “there is no world for what we are seeing is a movie, a projection coming from our own mind”. It’s like when we go to the movies and we sit down and get lost in the scene of what’s going on the screen. We forget that that’s just the effect and that the movie is really coming from the projector and that projector is hidden well. That’s what it’s like for us in the world. The projector is hidden and we are not supposed to think about it. The projector is hidden in our own unconscious minds. That unconscious mind retains all knowledge, which means somewhere in our unconscious mind we know that the projector is coming from us and when we judge it then we are judging ourselves.
It’s very much in harmony with some of the Buddhist ideas and principles. Some Buddhists will say there is only one ego appearing as many. It means that there is only one of us who thinks that it’s here. You’re it. There‘s not somebody else. There isn’t really anyone else out there. What we see is just a projection. You may be viewing that projection from a different point of view. But, there is still one projection. There is still one ego. That means that there is only one mind. And when you awaken from the dream of time and space, there is no more time and space. It’s really when you are awakened that you are convinced that it was just a dream. So, it’s a process of awakening and that you are convinced that it was just a dream. So, it’s a process of awakening and it doesn’t happen all at once. And another good reason for that is that because it doesn’t happen all at once, you won’t be as afraid to wake up. It’s done in a process so that you won’t be terrified. I like to say if you woke up all at once right now, you’d crap a brick. It would be too much too fast.
So, forgiveness leads to what the Course calls the “Happy Dream” where it’s a dream of forgiveness, a kinder gentler kind of dream from what was going on before.
GoW: Generally, how does one live the spiritual life?
Gary: Well, it wouldn’t be the way most people think because ACIM is a course in cause not effect. It’s not about how you act or how you behave in the world. Most Course students, who come from the old fashioned Christian kind of a background, see a guy like me who goes out and have a few beers at night, say something stupid once in a while, flirt with a few women once in a while, they may look at me and say the he (Gary) is not a spiritual guy. But, the way the Course is teaching it, it’s not about what you do in the world. It’s about how you look at people and how you think about other people. If you are doing it in a light hearted kind of way and you are remembering the truth, then you know the people you are looking at are spirit. And this kind of spirit is whole, complete, full, immortal and invulnerable. I know if I look at people that way, or think about people that way, even if I forget it once in a while and come back to it, that’s how I will think about myself. So, ACIM is much different than other spiritual paths. For example, it would be possible for you to go through life practicing ACIM without anyone else knowing it. Most people wear their spirituality on their sleeves and want to proselytize for it and want to get the world to convert to it. It would be stupid for me to go out and convert the world to my way of thinking when my way of thinking is that there is no world. If there is no world, then what do I have to save the world for? Why do I have to convert the world? It’s a difficult position for some people to be coming from. This is why ACIM says, “that through learning this course it is necessary to question each value we have”. This is important because most people think it is about being out in this world, saving people from starvation and death, helping that person who is poor, renounce possessions, getting a lot of possessions, or whatever else that they think they need to be or do. ACIM says, “that none of that matters, none of that is true”. Every value you have out in the world is not true because there is no world. It’s a very different kind of spirituality. I think people are shocked by it at times. You’ve heard stories of people throwing their Course books in the river, up against the wall, or giving them away.
There’s a part of you who has to think now that Jesus makes much more sense in the things that he said 2000 years ago and why he was able to forgive people while they were killing his body. Here’s ACIM saying the “guiltless mind cannot suffer”. It means that someone like Jesus or Buddha, at the end of their seeming incarnations in this world, were not suffering no matter what people appeared to be doing to them. They were not feeling any pain. That’s why the guiltless mind cannot suffer. If you forgive the world like Jesus, then you will reach a point where you cannot suffer. If you completely forgive the world like Jesus, then you will be completely forgiven. If you only partially forgive the world, then you will be partially forgiven. Whereas, if you go all the way with it, then you can’t help but end up like Jesus and Buddha who had awakened and broken the cycle of birth and death and won’t have to reincarnate anymore (not that they and we had ever reincarnated anyway because as we had said earlier, it’s an optical illusion). ACIM says that the body is not real. If the body is not real, then how can you incarnate into a body that isn’t here? It looks real, I’m not saying it doesn’t look real. I’m not here to deny anyone’s experience. I’m saying that even if it looks real and it seems to feel real, it’s not real. That will become your experience more and more as you forgive. The body will become more like the figure in the dream than this heavy thing that you’ve been dragging around seemingly all your life.