Last week two beloved friends became angry with me at different times and for different reasons. The first, after missing our usual contact for two days, called me during a break from work to tell me she was mad at me, and that her anger was blocking her awareness of love for me, so she wanted to get rid of it. She was unsure WHY she was angry, so we explored the issue, and she discovered that she had made a judgment about something I had done in the past that offended her and was contrary to the belief system we share.

After a lengthy discussion, the details of my supposedly heinous acts came out, and it was clear that she had made a false interpretation of things I had told her in the past, leading to an erroneous conclusion, judgment and anger. As we discussed it, it became clear that someone with less spiritual awareness had made a similar judgment almost a year ago, but instead of talking about it, had kept it as a "secret thought" that led to her separation from me.

Two days later the other friend called me after reading "What IS Forgiveness?" in A Course In Miracles workbook. That passage begins with "Forgiveness recognizes that what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred." She told me that she was hurt by something I had said, and was unhappy about the situation, again not feeling her love for me. When she told me what it was, I realized that she had made an interpretation of my words that were totally opposite to the meaning I had when uttering them. Again, this false interpretation led to judgment and hurt feelings.

In meditation that day it became very clear that these events occurred in CONSCIOUSNESS, in the MINDS of the people involved, and that it was their REALITY while the false interpretations existed. Based on that reality, their hurt feelings and anger were real, valid emotions as expressions of that reality. It didn't MATTER that the interpretations were incorrect, they existed AS reality in their consciousness, and led to real (as we judge them) results.

While this is not a new thought, this experience made an old thought REAL for me, and experience in MY life that proved the truth of the words of others. Shakespeare had Hamlet saying "there is no good nor bad, but thinking makes it so". Mary Baker Eddy gave the example of the grief experience by someone after the erroneous report of the death of a loved one. Whatever we BELIEVE becomes our reality, WHETHER THE BELIEF IS TRUE OR NOT!!! Based on that belief, we interact with others and live our lives, sometimes happily and sometimes miserably.

Yet we have CHOICE as to what we accept in our consciousness, choice what we believe in our own minds. "The mind is like a fertile garden. Something is going to grow there, either the flowers we plant there, or the weeds that blow there" as James Allen so beautifully said in As A Man Thinketh. ACIM says that we cannot judge anything, because we cannot know anything clearly enough to make any valid judgment.

There IS a Consciousness that IS all-knowing, the omniscient Mind of God. Within that Mind we "live and move and have our BEing". When we learn to suspend judgment, to say "I know nothing", to believe nothing on our own, we open to that majestic power and KNOW that eternal Love just IS.