God is my only goal today.
1. The way to God is through forgiveness.
²There is no other way.I
³If the mind had not given value to sin, what need would there be to find a path to where you already are?
⁴Who could harbor uncertainty?
⁵Who could fail to be sure of who he is?
⁶And who could remain asleep, lost in murky doubts about the holiness of him whom God created sinless?
⁷Here we can only dream.
⁸But we can dream that we have forgiven the one in whom all sin is impossible, and this is the dream we choose today.
⁹God is our goal, and forgiveness is the means by which our minds at last return to Him.
2. And so it is,
our Father,
we would come to You,
in the way You have appointed.
²We have no other desire but to hear Your Voice,
and find the path Your holy Word has shown.
I Dreams are not abandoned by dying, but by ceasing to believe in them. And what is forgiveness if not the end of belief in sin? Your enemy is not your brother who seems to attack you, nor the cruel world that seems to oppress you, nor even your body that seems to confine you. Your true enemy is your own beliefs: that obsessive tendency to think that your mind’s latest thought is true.
Stop deceiving yourself! Let go of the stories you tell and be at peace. Forgive your imaginings, let fantasies pass by, for you already know they are not true. Do not try to draw perverse pleasure from them, for salvation cannot be found in illusion, but only in what is real.
In the dream of the world, you, your brother, and everyone seem guilty. That is precisely the plot of the dream that captivates you and from which you draw a false pleasure in punishing and being punished. That is the problem: you do not clearly distinguish between pain and pleasure, and because you are confused, you confuse them. Forgiveness is the way out of that confusion. To forgive is to stop dreaming. And that is simple. Only you can make it difficult.
The way to God is through forgiveness. There is no other. For forgiveness is nothing more than letting illusions pass, ceasing to give them value. If the mind had never granted power to sin—to illusions—what need would there be to find a way to reach God, when you already dwell in Him?
The greatest obstacle that separates you from God is not the things of the world that may still remind you of His beauty—a sunrise, a flower, a starry sky—but the guilt you project upon your brother. That illusion of sin is the most powerful distraction, the one that most draws you away from the idea of God. To forgive the brother in whom sin is impossible is the greatest step toward your awakening.
God is my only goal today. This is the basic exercise of purification: to focus the mind upon a single purpose. To purify means to simplify—to choose only one thing, to set aside all other aims, and fix your gaze upon God. At first we work with the heavier illusions, those of guilt and condemnation. But later, even sensory experiences are left behind. The path leads us inward, where all grows still and God reveals His Presence.
Father, today I choose forgiveness as my only way to You.
May every illusion of sin dissolve in my mind, that I may remember You as my only goal and know myself in Your Love.