What is a Grievance?

"Love holds no grievances. My grievances hide the light of the world in me." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 68 & 69

"With your own wrists manacled, it is hard to break another's chains." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 449, Lines 1-2

What is a grievance? A Course in Miracles says that, "You who were created by Love like ItSelf can hold no grievances and know your Self. To hold a grievance is to forget Who You Are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body. To hold a grievance is to let the ego rule your mind and to condemn the body to death. It seems to split you off from your Source and make you unlike Him. It makes you believe that He is like what you think you have become, for no one can conceive of His Creator as unlike himself. Shut off from your Self, which remains aware of Its likeness to Its Creator, your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake. Can all this arise from holding grievances? Oh, yes! For he who holds grievances denies he was created by Love, and his Creator has become fearful to him in his dream of hate." (ACIM; Workbook 68, 1:1-7, & 2:1-4)

Whew. That pretty much covers life as we know it, doesn't it? The symptoms of holding a grievance are clearly given in the above quote: seeing ourselves as physical beings; seeing ourselves as ruled by our ego reactions and emotions; seeing ourselves as separate and cut off from Love; seeing death as a part of life; seeing others, including God and His world, as punitive and vengeful, when it is always and only our own grievances we are projecting and seeing. An isolated mind sees only its lonely and miserable self. Thank God it's all made up. Thank God it's not Who We Are.

We can awaken from dreams. We can wallow in them and remain fascinated by them as long as we choose... but we can awaken. Forgiveness of grievances is the key. No matter what appears 'wrong' in our life and world, we can forgive and let the dream go. God created nothing unlike HimSelf. And as ACIM says, "God is still Love, and this is not His Will." Mary Baker Eddy calls grievances 'sins.' To sin is to 'miss the mark.' We miss it completely when we project our separated mind as emotional baggage, physical suffering, and death. We let it go by forgiving, and having the courage to hold fast to what is True. "God is still Love, and this is not His Will."

The willingness to indulge our grievances, to nurse them as if they were precious to us, is the greatest sin of all. We miss the mark completely, and are lost in the dream. The courage to forgive and let them go, to allow the Holy Spirit in us to do Its perfect work, is our only task in the world. There is not one illusion of suffering that will not fall away in the presence of true forgiveness. What is Real is always effortlessly Present. "My grievances hide the Light of the world in me." And yet, "God is still Love, and this is not His Will."

So no matter what lies before us today, no matter what form our seeming problems take, we know that they are simply some form of grievance we are hanging onto, projected out so it doesn't seem like we are doing it at all. The good news is that we can forgive. We can ask for Light, and for courage to forgive and forgive again, seventy times seven, to infinity and beyond. We can be willing to bare our hearts and minds to God, and cleanse them of all selfish desires and self-interest. We can return Home to Self.

What is a grievance? It is the unwillingness to be Whole, the desire to be special and separate, fragmented and wounded and autonomous to the end. We may only have this little identity, but we insist that at least it is ours. And we nurse and cherish it and struggle to maintain it against every perceived grievance, not recognizing that every grievance (every person, place, or situation) is a fragment of Self that must be welcomed Home through forgiveness. And that everything we truly long for lies in this Re-membering of the Son of God.

It is impossible to really care about anyone or anything when we are drowning in our own grievances. We can't be a true friend or a true lover or a true parent when our grievances rise like a wall between us and what we supposedly love. Until we forgive every grievance, until we release our stories of grievances (no matter how self-righteous and subtle), we will continue to project our own stories of sin and suffering onto other people and situations, and onto our own bodies.

What is a grievance? It is the insistence that we are not the cause of the world we see, and that guilt lies outside of us. As ACIM puts it, "You see neither guilt nor salvation as in your own mind and nowhere else. When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. In understanding this you are saved." Truth remains, quietly shining in the part of your Holy Mind that has never slept. The world is not as we imagine it, for as God's True Creations we remain forever Whole and Loving and Free.

"Love holds no grievances. I would wake to my Self by laying all grievances aside and wakening in Him." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 68, 7:5-6