T. 17. III. 1 – 3. Jesus: To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness, then, is a selective remembering, based not on your own selection! For the shadow figures your ego would make immortal are the ‘enemies of reality!’
Be willing now to forgive the Son of God for what he did not do! The shadow figures remaining in your mind are but the witnesses you carry with you to demonstrate that your brother ‘did’ what he did not, and truly, could not have done to you! Because you have brought them with you, you will continue to hear the shadow voices. And you, who have kept them by your own selection, do not understand even how they came to be in your mind, nor what their purpose is! They but represent ‘the evil’ that you deceive yourself by thinking was done to you. You bring them with you as witnesses that you may justify returning evil for the evil, ‘evening the score,’ hoping that their witnessing will place the guilt on another, and keep yourself from its harm.
Although they speak quite clearly for the separation, these shadowy figures hide in the dark spaces of the mind, so that only those obsessed with keeping separation can hear them. They offer you the seeming reasons why you should enter into ‘unholy alliances’ which only support the ego’s goals, and make your relationships witness to the ego’s ‘power.’ These shadow figures from the past would make the ego ‘holy’ in your sight, and teach you that what you merely do to keep the ego safe, is what is actually love!
Yet the shadow figures always speak for vengeance! And therefore all relationships into which they enter are totally insane! Without exception, these relationships have as their purpose the exclusion of the truth about the other, and of yourself as well. This is why you see in both of you what is not there, and make both into the slaves of vengeance. And it is why whatever reminds you of your past grievances attracts you to it, and seems to go by the name of ‘love.’ It does not matter how distorted the associations by which you arrive at the connection may be!
And finally, this is why all such relationships become attempts at union through the body, for only bodies, the outer reflections of separation, can be seen as means for vengeance wrought by one separate thing upon another. That bodies are central to all unholy relationships is clearly evident. Your own past experience has taught you this! But what you may not realize are all the reasons that go into making the relationship unholy. For unholiness seeks to reinforce itself, just as holiness does, by gathering to itself what it perceives as like itself.
In the unholy relationship, it is not the present body of the other with which union is attempted, but ‘the unseen bodies’ of those who are no longer here! For even the body of the other, already a severely limited perception of him, is not the central focus as it is, or in entirety. What can be used for fantasies of vengeance, and what can be most readily associated with those on whom vengeance is really sought, is centered on and separated off as being the only parts of value.
Every step taken in the making, the maintaining, and the breaking off of the unholy relationship is a move toward further fragmentation and unreality. The shadow figures enter into it more and more, as the one in whom they seem to be, steadily decreases in value in your perception.
How can the Holy Spirit bring His interpretation of the body as a means of communication into relationships whose only purpose is separation from reality? What forgiveness is enables Him to do so! If all but loving thoughts have been forgotten, what remains is eternal.”