What Brad Pitt taught me about forgiveness

“We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over.”–James Baldwin

So my new book about A Course in Miracles debuts in exactly four days.

So while I’d love to tell you about my travels, my upcoming speaking gigs, the 100 applicants for this year’s 222 Foundation award, I figure I owe a mention to those of you who insisted I turn my ACIM musings into this book.

More than anything, the Course is about the F word. Everything, it tells us, boils down to forgiveness.

But like most important concepts, forgiveness is widely misunderstood.

So I’ll let this story about Brad Pitt illustrate what the Course means when it suggests making forgiveness our chief goal.

The hunky heartthrob’s first job in Hollywood was dancing in a chicken suit in front of El Pollo Loco restaurant.

If he’d have stayed in that job, he’d have never landed his role in Thelma & Louise, he’d have never stunned us all in A River Runs Through It. He’d have never…well, I’ll let you look up his IMDb for yourself.

Brad’s willingness to surrender his first “acting” job is a classic case of forgiveness. All forgiveness means is letting go of where you are now. Letting go of what you’re just sure is true.

When we hang on to our certainty, to our beliefs that this is just the “way the world is,” we literally imprison ourselves. Life, the Divine Buzz, can’t get in.

Forgiveness simply means recognizing that today is a completely new day and that anything–absolutely anything–is possible. Forgiveness breaks the pattern of false perceptions. It allows us to experience reality unblinded by yesterday, unblinded by past beliefs.

It means letting go of the chicken suit.

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).