The seventh illusion, the illusion of Condemnation, may be used to experience the fact that you are deserving of nothing but praise. This is something that you cannot fathom, for you live so deeply within your illusion of Condemnation. If, however, you lived within the heart of praise every moment, you could not experience it. Praise would mean nothing to you. You would not know what it was.
The glory of praise is lost when praise is all there is. Yet you have taken this awareness to an extreme, taking the illusion of imperfection and Condemnation to new levels, where you now actually believe praise to be wrong - especially self praise. You are not to praise yourself, or to notice (much less announce) the glory of Who You Are. And you must be sparing in your praise of others. Praise, you have concluded, is not good.
The illusion of Condemnation is also your announcement that you, and God, can be damaged. Exactly the opposite is true, of course, but you cannot know this truth, nor experience it, in the absence of any other reality. And so, you have created an alternate reality in which damage is possible, and Condemnation is proof of it.
To repeat, the idea that you, or God, can be damaged is an illusion. If God is the All In All (and I am), and If God is the Most Powerful (and I am), and if God is the Supreme Being (it is true), then God is incapable of being hurt or damaged. And if you are made in the image and likeness of God (and you are), then you cannot be hurt or damaged either.
Condemnation is a device you have created to help you experience the wonder of this, by producing a context within which this truth can have meaning. “Damage” is one of the many lesser illusions that evolve every day from the Ten Illusions. The first illusion (that God and you need something) is what creates the illusion - that if you don’t get what you need, God and you will be injured, hurt, or damaged.
This sets up the perfect case for retribution. And this is not a small but a very big illusion.
Nothing has captured the imagination of humans more completely that the idea that hell exists, that there is a place in the Universe to which God condemns those who have not obeyed His law.
Frightening, gruesome pictures of this horrific place appear in frescoes on the ceilings and walls of churches all over the world. Equally upsetting images adorn the pages of catechism texts and Sunday-school booklets given to little children-the better to scare them with.
And while good, church-going people have for centuries believed the message that these images send, it happens that the message is false. That is why I inspired Pope John Paul II to indicate to a Papal Audience at the Vatican (July 28, l999) that “improper use of biblical pictures must not create psychosis or anxiety.” The biblical descriptions of hell are symbolic and metaphorical.
I inspired the Pope to say that the “inextinguishable fire” and “the burning oven” the Bible speaks of “indicate the complete frustration and vacuity of a life without God.” Hell is a state of separation from God, he explained, a state caused not by a punishing God but rather, self-induced.
It is not God’s function to administer retribution or to punish anyone, and the Pope made that clear in his Audience.
Still, the idea of a condemning God has been a useful illusion. It has created a context within which you could experience all manner of things, many aspects of being.
Fear, for instance. Or forgiveness. Compassion, and mercy, too.
A condemned man understands, at the deepest level, the expression of mercy. So does the person doing the condemning - or the granting of pardon.
Forgiveness is another nuance of the expression of love that it has served your species to experience. Forgiveness is experienced only in young, primitive cultures (advanced cultures have no need for it, understanding that, since there can be no damage, no forgiveness is necessary), but it has enormous value with the context of evolution - the process by which cultures mature and grow.
Forgiveness allows you to heal virtually any psychological, emotional, spiritual, and sometimes even physical, wound that you imagine has been inflicted upon you. Forgiveness is a great healer. You can literally forgive your way to health. You can forgive your way to happiness.
Your use of the illusion of Condemnation has been very creative in this regard, creating many moments in your life, and in human history, in which forgiveness could be expressed. You have experienced this as an aspect of divine love - moving you closer and closer to the truth of both love and Divinity itself.
One of the most famous stories of forgiveness that has done this is the account of Jesus forgiving the man on the cross beside Him, revealing the eternal truth that no one is condemned who seeks God. This means that no one is ever condemned, because everyone ultimately seeks God, whether they call it that or not.
Hell is the experience of separation from God. Yet anyone who does not wish to experience eternal separation does not have to. The mere desire for reunion with God produces it.
The mere desire for reunion with God produces it.
Forgiveness is never necessary, since no true offense can ever be committed by or against Divinity Itself, given that Divinity itself is All That Is. This is something that advanced cultures understand. Who would forgive whom? And, for what?
Does the hand forgive the toe for stubbing itself? Does the eye forgive the ear?
The hand may comfort the toe, true enough. It may rub it and heal it and make it better. But does it need to forgive the toe? Or could it be that forgiving is just another word for comforting in the language of the soul.
I have inspired it to be written: Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
When your culture, too, understands this, you will never again condemn yourself or another for those times when the soul is “stubbing a toe.” You will never again embrace a vengeful, angry, damning God who would condemn you to everlasting torture for what would that do to God.
In that moment, you will relinquish forever your idea of a condemning God, for you will know that love could never condemn. Then you will condemn no one and nothing, either, according to my injunction: Judge not, and neither condemn.
