You Are Not Bad, and You Are Not Going to Hell

Suffering is not happiness and it is happiness you really want.

— ACIM, workbook lesson 73

People often suffer from trying to live up to expectations that have been imposed on them. These expectations may come from a church, a community, or even one's own family. When I was eighteen, I attended a Catholic retreat where I was expected to confess my sins to a priest. Yikes! I remember thinking that this couldn't be right because:

1. I was not a sinner, and

2. if I was, why would I confess to a total stranger?!

I also attended a lecture where I was told that one shouldn't have sex before marriage and that liking someone of the same sex was wrong. I was laughing inside, thinking, This is just stupid!

My parents are of different religions. My dad is Presbyterian, and my mom is Catholic. When I told them I was not comfortable with what I heard at church, they told me I could choose my religion when I was older. That was a true blessing because they recognized that, even though I was young, I knew the truth. We all know the truth; we just forget it sometimes. What gets in the way of remembering the truth within is usually guilt — a parasite in our minds that feeds on our energy and does not let us live our happy!

Time and time again I find that my students and clients are carrying around heavy guilt because of something they did in the past, leading them to believe that they are basically bad. They say things like:

"I lied and cheated, and then I left my family."

"I 'came out' to my parents and family too early."

"Because I did something really bad in the past, I am no longer like everyone else."

A Course in Miracles suggests instead that we all feel guilty for just one reason: We think we have separated from God. Even if we seem to have many problems, this is really the only problem. This might be hard to understand at first; I didn't get it for a while, either. For now, I just ask you to trust me about this, and I'll help you understand it as we go along.

Who Is God?

First of all, who is God really? The Course sums it up very simply: "God is but love, and therefore so am I." What this means is that our Source is pure love, not some punishing Father who wants us to confess our sins, follow commandments, and believe only certain things and not others. For a lot of us, love can often seem to be very far away. Without really thinking it through, we tend to blame ourselves for our distance from love.

Once we believe we have separated from God, our Source of love, as if that weren't punishment enough, then we begin to fear being punished for turning away. Because we believe we should be punished, we do it to ourselves. We start creating unsolvable problems — what I call our "big deals" — so we can pay for the mistake of separating from God. Then we get obsessed with our big deals instead of the real problem underneath them all. As the Course suggests, we are never upset for the reason we think.

Before you know it, we've created an entire world of illusions where we think we can hide from a cruel God — who never wanted to punish us in the first place. We're followed everywhere by our self-created guilt. That doesn't feel too good, so then we decide all our problems are somebody else's fault.

That means we project our guilt onto the world, and now we are really screwed. The result of our projections is distrust, unhappiness, and betrayal between individuals and even war between cultures and nations. We suspect others of causing our misery, and we get locked into conflicts, big and small, that we just can't seem to resolve. We usually don't see that our conflicts are rooted in the belief that we somehow turned away from God and lost touch with love.

How Did We Lose Touch with Love?

In the beginning, there was perfect happiness. Sometimes this state is referred to metaphorically as the Garden of Eden, but it's really a state of mind that's pure bliss. Ecstasy! No judgments, sadness, anger, or sickness existed ... only love. Then arose a very silly thought: "Is there something else?" That was the beginning of doubt, and as the Course suggests, "No one has been sure of anything since" (ACIM, ch. 3, section V).

Exactly when did this mistaken thought occur? The answer is: just a moment ago.

It's happened countless times before, but the only time that counts is the most recent one because the only time that matters is now. We are constantly thinking that we are separate from God, removing ourselves from the love that is our true nature. That's why we remain in such a painful world. How long we've been there is really beside the point.

If you want to live your happy instead of being trapped in a world of separation, you have to understand that you've created all the big deals that keep you in a separated state. Here are just a few of the typical, familiar big deals:

• "I can't afford my taxes."

• "Modern politics are ruining the country."

• "The system is rigged against me."

• "I have to go to court."

• "He didn't text me!"

• "I didn't get the job."

• "I lost my driver's license."

You believe such problems are real, buying into them and giving away your power. It appears that something is happening outside yourself, and you worry about it day in and day out, even lose sleep over it.

You may be thinking: But my problems are really happening! I have to deal with them. They exist! I used to feel that way, too, until I began to look past the form of things and see the bigger picture. Gradually, I became aware that if I kept believing in the form of all my problems, I was going to keep losing my peace and never get it back.

The good news is that even though it seems that we have separated from God, we are still with God and in God. Our Father holds us in such high regard that he would never ever make this sick, sad, depressing world real for us. You might consider it God's will that we must suffer in order to learn and grow, but is this what a truly loving parent would do?

According to the Course, God is not some faraway divine person who sits in judgment of us and doles out punishments or rewards. God is simply the capacity for perfect love that is always within each of us. Forgetting God means forgetting who we really are. Forgetting ourselves means looking at the world through the eyes of fear, when we have the choice of looking through the eyes of love. Looking out with fear is very common, but it's not compulsory!

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