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You are totally going to LOVE this message!
I want to explain to you what Jesus says about the True meaning of “sin”. He tells us that this word has been very misused. His definition makes much more sense than the old one. You know how it feels when you hear something and you just know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it’s the Truth? Well, this hit me like a truth train.
We’ve been taught to believe that “sin” is breaking the laws of God which results in punishment by God. The old definition says that when our behavior is less than perfect, it’s a rebellion against God and now we’re shamefully estranged from our Creator. The words sin, guilt and punishment are almost interchangeable! Some of us were even told that we are born in sin and that we are all sinners (guilt, guilt and more guilt). To top it all off, we were told that God sacrificed His son who bled on the cross to make amends for our sins.
Who could ever measure up to this? Think about it, what kind of God would require this of us?
Jesus clears up all of the confusion in A Course In Miracles and I’m going to share it with you. (I’ve included “What is Sin” from ACIM at the bottom of this message – scroll all the way down to view.)
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Correct Definition
Sin means, “lack of love” and is simply a mistaken idea to be corrected.
The word Sin translates from the Greek word “hamartia”; an archery term for “missing the mark. (As in, you missed the target, take another shot. Choose again…and this time…choose from a place of Love because that’s all there is my precious Child.)
You have just forgotten who you are.
So, to sin is simply to forget. We forget who we are. We forget that Love is who we are and that Love is what created us. We are wholly and unconditionally Loved, protected and innocent.
And here’s the clincher: It feels like hell and punishment when we forget who we are. When ego tells us we must strive to be worthy and earn love based on the world’s rules. When we feel separate from God, we operate from fear and guilt. We are making our own hell. We are forgetting the Truth. We are off the mark. God isn’t punishing anyone!! EVER.
There is nothing you could do or think that would change your Father’s Love.
All we can do is fall asleep to it. Yet even while we sleep, we sleep in His Arms. Our “sins” have no real effect on our relationship with God, and so they do not exist.
The concept of punishment only comes from our ego’s perception and never, ever from God. It’s like some imaginary disease.
We can believe in the lack of Love and punishment
but we can never make it the Truth.
I’m going to share a visual tool with you that Lisa Natoli taught me about “missing the mark”. I love it because it’s so simple and real and I use it every day.
How do you know when you’re off center? What is the indicator?
You’ll know by the way you feel. Period. If you don’t feel good, you know you missed the mark. There’s your sign. You fell asleep again. No punishment and no further pain required. Simply step back in. Wake yourself up. Choose again. Shift into Love. Welcome to Heaven.
Jesus tells us in A Course In Miracles that the body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. Its purpose is to strive. We are out looking for ways to get attention because we don’t know (forgot) we are already enough simply by being a child of God. We deceive ourselves thinking we are a body and then we run around, using the body’s senses, for validation.
Woah!!! Have we missed the mark or what?
This is what you came here to learn. You came here to remember. You’re a student in Planet Earth school. Every spot of fear and guilt is here for your learning. That’s why they call it an “awakening”.
You’re not a bad. Not even a little speck bad.
Listen to this! Jesus says we need only to remember the Truth and then all needs are satisfied, all cravings end, all hopes are finally fulfilled and fear and separation are gone. (Lesson 251) Does that sound like a mean and punishing God to you?? NO WAY!
Jesus wants us to realize that our experience of fear, guilt and lack stems from the BELIEF that we separated from Love, our Source. He helps us see that the world we are experiencing through our body’s senses is just the effect of our BELIEF in separation from Love. We are seeing illusions where Truth should be. We have distorted the world by our twisted defenses, and are now seeing what’s not there. We could never separate from Love and therefore we could never sin. The ‘life’ we think we are living is just a myth. It never happened in Truth, since nothing but our oneness in Love could ever be real. The Course does not deny that we make mistakes. It simply denies that our mistakes have any real effect.
In Lesson 101 of ACIM, Jesus also says, God’s Will for you is perfect happiness because there is no sin, and suffering is causeless. Joy is just, and pain is but the sign you have misunderstood yourself. Fear not the Will of God. But turn to it in confidence that it will set you free from all the consequences sin has wrought in feverish imagination.
Do you feel as liberated as I do?
There is no sin. It’s all made up. What has no effect does not exist” (T-9.IV.5:5)
Creation is unchanged.
Heaven is right here for you.
What are you waiting for? How long do you want to live apart from God? How long are you going to keep yourself locked in a dark room? Come out!
Take this in: God is never going to give you more than you have right now because God has already given you everything. You don’t have to “behave” in order to get to Heaven. Heaven is right here and right now. You can rest.
Here’s more great news. You can now choose to replace these deceptive thoughts. Make a different choice and change the purpose as to what you’re going to use this body for.
Just as you have sent your senses out to reinforce a lie about who you think you are, now you can redirect those senses to report back to you and be witnesses for what is True. It’s time to keep the focus 100% on the Light that you are. And you have a guide to help you. As we learn to recognize our perceptual errors, we learn to forgive them. At the same time we are forgiving ourselves, looking past old distorted self-concepts to the Self that God created in us and as us.
As excited as I was when I learned this Truth, I still kept forgetting. I still experienced guilt and fear when I didn’t behave “perfectly” or sometimes it just felt like it was pumping through my veins for no good reason. I wanted to forgive everything and live only Love. To wake up for good. I posted sticky notes, wore a reminder bracelet, set my cell phone alarm, wrote about it in my journal, read everything I could get my mitts on, joined a study group, meditated on it and even burned my fear and guilt at a fire ceremony. LOL-Poof!
That was all helpful (and I still do most of them) but I still felt like crap and often found myself caught up in old “auto-pilot” fear thinking.
It wasn’t until I joined the Living In Purpose 6-Month Mastery Program for Miracle-Minded Thinking that I totally committed. Every single part of my life transformed. Today, I live in joy. If fear or guilt somehow sneak in, I don’t stay in it any more. I have everything. Nothing shakes me anymore. I never worry. I have no problems.
I’m 100% certain that Living In Purpose saved me thousands of years of suffering. For me, it was a real life, practical application program where I LIVED the principals every day consistently with tons of support and all the encouragement I needed. It transformed my life. This is why I work for the Teachers of God Foundation. I started as a volunteer, doing anything and everything I could, because I wanted this freedom for everyone. It has become my life’s purpose. I’m telling everybody. It’s THAT good.
It’s like the difference between hiring an expert personal trainer who walks beside you, motivates, elevates and encourages you for 6 months vs doing it alone. You don’t get lazy and slip back into old patterns. There’s also a group of people, just like you, practicing these principals right along side you and cheering you on. It’s so helpful and you make life-long friends. You get everything you need at every turn.
Before you know it, you’re activating other people around you just because you feel so good.
Here’s the link if you’d like to learn more or to register:
https://www.teachersofgod.org/living-in-purpose-program/
Also, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the program or this article about “the True meaning of sin”.
With so much Love and sincerity,
Linda Leland,
Teachers of God Foundation Team Member
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Section 4. What is Sin?
Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where the truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all? To sense is not to know. And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else.
The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. Its purpose is to strive. Yet can the goal of striving change. And now the body serves a different aim for striving. What it seeks for now is chosen by the aim the mind has taken as replacement for the goal of self-deception. Truth can be its aim as well as lies. The senses then will seek instead for witnesses to what is true.
Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts that are untrue. They are the “proof” that what has no reality is real. Sin “proves” God’s Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; eternal life must die. And God Himself has lost the Son He loves, with but corruption to complete Himself, His Will forever overcome by death, love slain by hate, and peace to be no more.
A madman’s dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game. The Son of God may play he has become a body, prey to evil and to guilt, with but a little life that ends in death. But all the while his Father shines on him, and loves him with an everlasting Love which his pretenses cannot change at all.
How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children’s toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, O holy Son of God, how long?
Father, my thanks to You for what I am; for keeping my Identity untouched and sinless, in the midst of all the thoughts of sin my foolish mind made up. And thanks to You for saving me from them. Amen.
– Lesson 251
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For more info, inspiration, and guidance similar to what’s described above — check out the Teachers of God Foundation’s listings of programs, events and other online offerings.
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