When you take it upon yourself to fulfill your function here, your function being forgiveness, you are serving yourself and your brothers in a way that is beyond description, beyond imagination.
No greater responsibility exists. Nothing else is needed.

In the fulfillment of this function, your only function, you and your brother are set free from the chains that bind you to misery, pain, sickness, suffering and death.

When you learn to forgive as Jesus forgives, your life will be joyous beyond measure and eternal life will be yours for you will have met the condition of the Kingdom which is Unity.

Unless you learn to forgive your brother, unless you are willing to experience the unity in which you are joined, you cannot return to the Kingdom of God, from which you have exiled yourself in your imagination, although not in reality. It is the imaginary world you have constructed in your mind that has become your reality as a substitute for your real Home.

The dominant feature of the little "kingdom" you have constructed for yourself is the experience of separation. You seem to be separate from God, your Source, from your brothers, who are actually you, and from everything you perceive. Underlying all sense of separation is guilt and as guilt must always be projected from your mind onto the "world" you see, giving rise to judgment. Your brother then becomes guilty in your eyes and thus is his separation from you validated, made real and justified.

Judgment becomes the weapon by which you defend yourself from the world while simultaneously confirming and maintaining your separate identity.

Guilt is the feature of your mind that gives rise to the world you see as a defense against it. You can not live with it and you cannot live in the illusory identity you have given yourself without it. You must literally hurl it out of your mind and see it as if it were outside of you. But you cannot get rid of it entirely or you could not be here in an apparent world of separation. Hence the constant projection of what is actually your guilt, your sense of guilt, onto your brothers. This goes on continually both consciously and unconsciously and while this activity of your mind persists, you are caught in a trap of your own making and are subject to the chaos of the world you make and the subsequent fear, sickness, suffering and death.

Now the good news. There is a way out of "hell".
It is through the power of forgiveness.

Forgiveness rightly understood becomes an instrument, an activity of your mind by which guilt is undone or healed.

Your willingness to forgive your brother his "sins", which are really your own, becomes the means the Holy Spirit uses to convert the deep sense of guilt hidden in your mind and undo the sense of separation until the experience of Unity returns to your awareness.

Forgiveness rightly understood is the recognition that there is nothing to forgive. Nothing you thought your brother or you ever did ever happened. It's impossible for you to attack or be attacked. The knowledge that this is so is your deliverance for in this recognition lies also the recognition that the world you think you see does not exist.
And if you withdraw your allegiance to the dream-world you think you made and gave reality to, its illusory nature will become apparent.

You must , however, be willing to practice forgiveness.
Nothing more is required but nothing less either. It's a total commitment or willingness that must be practiced at all times and in all situations regardless of appearances. And, of course, it goes without saying that of your own self you can do nothing.

It is with the help of the Holy Spirit, by turning your life and your will over to God, that it is done.

In a fundamental sense the willingness to forgive your brother is the willingness to lay down your defenses, since the purpose of all defenses is the active denial of the Truth.

By forgiving your brother, who is yourself, you cease to deny the truth thus opening your mind to its Return.

-By Darrell P.