I was watching one of Spiritual Cinema Circle's better offerings last night and was taken by a statement one of its participants made. The movie is "Living Luminaries: On the Serious Business of Happiness" (I may have the sub-title slightly wrong). Rev. Michael Beckwith, who is one of my favorite visionaries, said, "So many people are so caught up in their search for success that they forget the search for significance."

Wow.

Exactly.

If the work I do isn't *significant*, does it ultimately matter if I'm successful at it? I don't think so. But what if the work I'm doing is significant without bringing me worldly success? Is that a better outcome? Yes, at least to some degree. Ideally, of course, I achieve both. 

Beckwith's observation is in keeping with the teachings of other luminaries, including one with whom I have the fortune to be personally acquainted, James L. White. Jim is passionate about helping people find and pursue their purpose in life.He's written a book called What's My Purpose? and offers courses and seminars and coaching along those lines. Like others in the world of self-help who are convinced that the key to happiness lies in finding and living your true purpose, Jim would probably agree with Beckwith.

If your purpose in life is to be successful according to the world's definition -- i.e., materially or in terms of power and fame -- then you're going to make a whole different set of choices than you'll make if your purpose in life is to be of significant value to others and to yourself.

The two are not necessarily in conflict but it does seem to me it would be supremely difficult to pursue them both with equal passion. When you choose where to focus, you opt out of a whole list of choices on the other side of the list.

But how does one measure significance? Does it, e.g., demand that you achieve some measure of fame or notoriety or audience? Is significance a matter of how many people find you significant? Or is it sufficient for you to feel that your work is significant? Is significance even subject to measurement? Are there degrees of significance?

This feels on some level like an extension of the learning I gleaned from my all-time best spiritual friend, the late Rev. Rory Elder. He taught me that life isn't about what you accomplish, it's about how you show up. May be these are two branches of the same plant.

I just finished teaching a short course called "A Course in MIracles and World Peace". (You can download audios and handouts on my Web site if you're interested.) Every time I teach the Course, I am, of course, reminded that the central practice of the Course is forgiveness. This time, I devoted my entire final class to this important topic.

As you know if you're familiar with the Course, it means something different by the word "forgiveness" from what we mean when we use the word in everyday speech. To students of the Course, forgiveness has nothing to do with releasing others from guilt or responsibility for acts they have committed that have injure or offended you. In fact, the Course says such acts are never real because they are of a nature that is inimical to God's inability to conceive of what we commonly call "sin."

Rather, the Course teaches us that all of us make only one mistake. We forget who we are. We don't remember that we are divine, eternal spiritual beings having for a time a physical experience. If we remembered that about our true nature, we would not engage in any of the behavior we and others perceive as "sin."

It follows, then, that the only thing that demands our forgiveness is the act of forgetting. This is a particularly powerful concept because in order to forgive someone else for forgetting who they are, we are inevitably reminded ourselves of who we are and thus are forgiving ourselves every time we extend that forgiveness to others.

Every problem we think we have in the world of appearances can be solved by this shift in consciousness, from perceiving certain behaviors not as sins requiring guilt and punishment but as errors requiring correction and forgiveness. That's a strong statement and I'm generally wary of any sentence that begins with or includes an absolute term like "every" or "always". But in this case, I believe it is true.

I was astonished when I went to my favorite bookstores and found there were literally dozens of books written about forgiveness. Two or three at least <em>seemed</em> to be approaching the subject from a Course in Miracles' perspective. 

So how does this sit with you?