Throughout the ages, in times of doubt, chaos, and darkness there have been four words that have soothed the soul and brought hope to the troubled mind…"God Has a Plan".
Now through the miracle of modern telecommunications and satellite technology, we have been able to more accurately pin-point what these words from the depths of the universe are truly saying.
Actually the words "God Has a Plan"are a highly inaccurate depiction of the real message. What the words really say are "God Has Some Flan" O.K.?
It turns out that God has a tremendous fondness for this Mexican dessert and he has been guiding the physical and cultural evolution of mankind toward the production of this confection for eons, when it was finally brought into existence in the back of a cantina many years ago, the Lord of Host exclaimed those four words in celebration of the occasion.
This also explains the sudden demise of the Aztec civilization. It has recently been discovered that the Aztecs were experimenting with various forms of a primitive rubbery substance which was actually a forerunner of Jello. In fact many of those priceless Aztec masks were nothing more than ancient Jello molds which were used to create desserts very popular at Aztec pot-lucks, retirement parties and kids sleepovers.
Had these developments been allowed to go on unchecked, the whole of Mexican civilization would have headed off in the wrong direction. Aztec civilization had to be liquidated in order to prevent this and to facilitate a real yen for Flan instead.
This of course gives rise to the theoretical question of why God didn't just make Flan Himself since he was so fond of it. The answer to this question is still veiled in mystery. It's like asking "if mankind had fallen, why didn't God just forgive us, why did he have to send his Son to save us? Huh?
This is a question Theologians will be debating for years. In the meantime, since God doesn't have a plan I suppose we all better abide by the other profound communiqué from the depths of the universe "WATCH OUT!!"
Over the past ten years, my wife and I have been facilitating personal growth courses that place a heavy emphasis on forgiveness. As a result of this experience we have learned a great deal about how and why people forgive one another. From our professional and personal experience we have also learned some things about the transformative potential of forgiveness i.e. forgiveness as a pathway to enlightenment and a means of transcending the ego driven world around us. Our guide and inspiration throughout these endeavors has been a book entitled “A Course in Miracles”. It teaches a form of spirituality that is as radical and deeply profound as anything that can be found on the planet. In this book, forgiveness is referred to as “The Last Illusion”, the happy dream that comes just before the end of all our dreaming as we awaken to Reality. I’ll have more to say about this later on. For now, suffice it to say that this book is an uncompromising view of metaphysics from a spiritual perspective and it’s the only view of the universe that we have found to be internally consistent enough to make any sense of things.
My formal study of forgiveness began with an examination of the word itself. The word “forgive” comes from the old English “faer”, which means to move forward, and “give” which in this case means the giving up of resentments. Forgiveness therefore means the process of moving forward with the giving up of resentments. Notice that there is absolutely no reference here to the perpetrator. The implications of this are huge. They impact our day to day existence as well as our ultimate view of the universe. First of all, it means that forgiving someone does not mean granting pardon to the person who purportedly hurt us. If I grant someone pardon it means that they get out of jail. If I forgive, it means that I get out of jail. It means I no longer have to walk around being consumed by resentment. On a deeper level, it means that I no longer have to live in fear of being judged or attacked by others for the character flaw I am judging or attacking in the perpetrator. On a still deeper level, it means that I no longer have to judge myself for the flaw that I see in the other. This last consideration goes to the ultimate nature of our relationship to the so called external world. Throughout the ages we have been told by men and women of great wisdom that the external world is nothing more then a projection of the conscious and unconscious contents of our minds, that the world we see does not reflect the state of reality but the state of our own minds. The truth of this wisdom is now being substantiated through the latest research in quantum physics. If what they are saying is true, then I simply cannot condemn another without condemning myself, for the condemned person I see before me is only a projection of my unconscious feelings of guilt and shame. Forgiveness therefore liberates me not only from a life of bitter resentment, but a life haunted by the unrelenting fear that others will “find out what I’m really like” and reject or condemn me. We see then that resentment and anxiety have their common root in our judgments and those judgments comprise a double edged sword. We cannot cut another without cutting ourselves. Forgiveness turns those swords into plowshares or at least gardening trowels that uproot the judgments and replace them with compassion and blessings.
“But wait, there’s more!” like the old T.V. commercials used to say. This definition of forgiveness also frees me from having to depend on what the perpetrator does or suffers in order to have my peace of mind. I don’t have to wait for him to apologize. If it’s a criminal act, I don’t have to wait until “justice is done” for me to feel right with the world again. Hell! I don’t even have to be right! In order for me to be “right”, I have to make sure that the other guy is “wrong” and get as many people to agree with me as possible, cause it’s no fun to be right if nobody else knows about it. Right? Real forgiveness frees me from all that illusory enmeshment with the world, and allows me to tap into a source of peace that is higher, deeper, and more lasting than anything that apology or retribution can offer.
“And that’s not all!” It has often been said that with great power comes great responsibility. The converse is true as well. By taking total responsibility for my feelings about the offending incident or transactional pattern, I begin to see the power that I have in regard to all of my feelings. I begin to see that the feelings I have about any incident depend on the “story” I tell myself about that incident, and the story can be changed according to my purposes. If I want to be a victim in order to blame someone else for my fate, then I’ll tell myself a victim story and experience the attendant feelings of outrage, helplessness, and shame. If, on the other hand, I get tired of being a victim and want expand my horizons, I’ll tell myself a different story and experience the attendant feelings of peace, relief, liteness, etc.
And believe me, this is just the beginning. There is no area of our lives that forgiveness will not heal. It can have a positive effect on the mind, the emotions, the spirit, our relationships, our level of abundance and even our bodies as I will demonstrate later.
My experiences in the field of emotional healing and addiction treatment have taught me that forgiveness can be divided into seven levels. I have named them as follows:
Obligatory Forgiveness
Pragmatic Forgiveness
Parental Forgiveness
Compassionate Forgiveness
Co creative Forgiveness
Spiritual Forgiveness
Transcendent Forgiveness
I do not pretend to have a lock on what forgiveness is or on all the different forms it may take. I’m just using these categories as tools to help organize and present forgiveness as I have come to know it. We will explore each level and note the benefits for the practitioner. I hope you find it to be a subject worth exploring.
LEVEL ONE
OBLIGATORY FORGIVENESS
The first level of forgiveness I call Obligatory Forgiveness. It’s something we do because we feel it’s the “right” thing to do. Most of us learned this form as children. We were told to forgive our friends and siblings because that’s what good children do. It’s what good Christians do because that’s what Jesus did all throughout his life. One way or another we somehow get the message that it’s better to forgive than to hold a grudge. It is nobler and Christ like. The bottom line is that we forgive on this level because we somehow feel we SHOULD forgive.
I do not mean to minimize or trivialize this level of forgiveness. It does something that is very important, it stops the bloodshed! It restrains the impulse to continue whatever form of verbal or physical violence may be going on at the time. This is essential for any group of people to live together. The fact that it has persisted for centuries as part of the socialization process shows that it must have some real value for people. Since it is often the first faint voice inside us to oppose the ego driven desire to “get even” it may have some vestige of the divine in it. As combatants in the heat of conflict, perhaps the only voice for God we can hear is that nagging voice in the back of our minds that says we SHOULD forgive, that it just feels like the right thing to do.
In any case, whether it is of divine or social origin, this form of forgiveness has prevented untold amounts of violence in every form from dragging on interminably. If enlightenment is the crown of civilization, Obligatory Forgiveness is a pillar of its foundation. It has freed up our energy for more interesting things than a perpetual impersonation of the Three Stooges.
LEVEL TWO
PRAGMATIC FORGIVENESS
The second level of forgiveness, Pragmatic Forgiveness, is best exemplified in the rooms of the Twelve Step movement. The recovering addict is taught to let go of his resentments simply because his life will not work if he holds on to them. Since resentment has been found to be a major cause of relapse, it only makes sense that he should give them up as part of a sober lifestyle. This same principle of enlightened self interest applies to all of us across the boards. Plainly stated, resentment has a harmful effect on our mental and physical health. The fight or flight mechanism which comes into play when we get angry, produces measurable changes in the body such the secretion of fatty acids into the bloodstream. This was only meant to be a short term condition for the purpose of providing fuel for a battle or a sprint away from danger. When we hold on to resentments, however, the fatty acids continue to pour into our bloodstreams until our cholesterol goes through the roof. On an emotional level, the continued harboring of resentments has been shown to be closely linked to depression as we make ourselves miserable to punish others. People in the “woo woo” segment of society have been saying these kinds of things for decades. Nowadays, countless books and articles have been written by doctors and psychologists on the mind – body connection, and several have specifically mentioned forgiveness as essential to the restoration of health. The best way I’ve ever heard it expressed is “Holding on to resentments is like eating rat poison and expecting the rat to die.” It’s as simple as that. If you want a longer happier life, forgive and stop eating rat poison!
LEVEL THREE
PARENTAL FORGIVENESS
“Father Forgive them, for they know not what they do” The preceding quote embodies the essence of this third level of forgiveness. It is the forgiveness of the wise parent for the ignorant child. It is a form of forgiveness that confirms the innocence of the so called offender. It says in essence “If you had known better, you would have done better”. The forgiving party knows that this is the best the other person could do according to the way they saw the world. Jesus knew that the ones who crucified him were living in an illusion of death and separation. He knew that his teachings were a threat to a power structure that helped to hold this illusion in place. We know from A Course in Miracles that whatever is unreal always feels threatened. From his broader perspective, he understood that they were only doing what they thought was necessary to maintain the sanctity of their laws, laws that came directly from God. He therefore asked his father not to punish them for doing what they thought was God’s will. As children, how many times did our parents forgive us for doing outrageous things? I can still see my mother rolling her eyes and praying for strength after I nearly set fire to our T.V.set. Parental forgiveness tells us to let go of our resentments because “They just didn’t know any better”
LEVEL FOUR
COMPASSIONATE FORGIVENESS
The shortest and best definition of compassion that I have ever read defines it as “fellow feeling”. On this planet we’re all feeling a lot of the same things but very few of us take into account how the other fellow is feeling when we’re angry. We are all too acutely aware of how pissed we are, and how wrong the other fellow is! Compassionate forgiveness challenges us to consider what the other person must have been going through in order for them to have acted as they did. It asks us to get past our immediate judgments about the other person and see him as a feeling being, someone who may have been hurting quite a bit when they did whatever offended us. It asks us to go inside and see if we’ve ever felt that way. It wants us to look at our past and see if we’ve ever made similar mistakes acting on that same feeling. Compassionate forgiveness says “We have all been hurt and we have all hurt others. By letting the other guy out of jail, you’ll be setting yourself free too.” With this form of forgiveness we begin too see the oneness of our brothers and sisters. No matter who we are, we all have those same basic feelings. And sometimes we hurt so bad we end up hurting others. Hurt people hurt people!
LEVEL FIVE
CO-CREATIVE FORGIVENESS
Now we’ll look at forgiveness from the perspective of co-creation with God. Co-creative forgiveness asks us to consider the idea that we all have God’s creative spark in us, and we use it to draw into our lives exactly what we desire. This is a tough one for many folks to swallow. That is, until they look at how the same patterns, the same abusers, the same financial problems, the same rejection, THE SAME DAMN THING just keeps showing up in their lives over and over again, and the only common factor they can find is “ me”. This can be quite devastating and quite empowering at the same time. On the one hand, we ask ourselves “Why would I do such a thing to myself?” One answer can be found in Colon Tipping’s excellent book “Radical Forgiveness”. In it he tells us that we draw these people and circumstances into our lives because we have some profound spiritual lessons to learn from our interaction with them, and we’ll keep drawing them into our lives until that lesson is learned. Rather than being judged and condemned, our “harshest teachers” should be thanked for their contributions to the awakening of our souls. The empowering aspect comes in as we realize that we have been in charge of our destinies the entire time, even when we felt totally victimized by the world. The helpless victim and the powerful villain are drawn together in a kind of addictive dance until one or the other wakes up and moves on to a new level of awareness. From this new perspective I see what I’ve been up to all this time, let go of my resentments toward the Snidely Whiplashes in my life and click the remote past the Drama Channel!
LEVEL SIX
SPIRITUAL FORGIVENESS
The higher we go in the levels of forgiveness the simpler things become. A Course in Miracles says “Teach only love, for that is what you are.” If that is what we really are then how can we be hurt? By “love” the course means unconditional love, and this, by definition cannot be hurt. The only part of me that can be hurt is the ego i.e. that belief system that says I am nothing more than a body separate from all other bodies and condemned to extinction…..blah……blah……blah……and if I love you, you better love me back so I can be special and the only one you’ll ever love…….blah……blah……blah and if I don’t catch this pass it means I really suck and nobody’ll like me…….blah……blah……blah……..and if I spent fifty bucks on you for Christmas and you only spent twenty on me…..blah…….blah…….blah…….blah…..blah. Notice all the “if”s in this system. Those all denote conditions. And when those conditions don’t get met, we (our egos) get hurt. Otherwise our true selves, our spirits remain completely unthreatened and unharmed. So what is there to forgive? Think what our lives would be like if we could always live in the certainty of this truth.
LEVEL SEVEN
TRANSCENDENT FORGIVENESS
Transcendent Forgiveness rests upon the truth that life is indeed but a dream; a beautiful, complex and tragic dream, but a dream none the less. The world we see is only the projection of a mind conditioned by guilt to manifest a world of separation and death. “A tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.” Thousands of years ago, the Hindus referred to it as Maya, the illusion. Buddha called it the realm of Samsara and Jesus made constant reference to the unreality of this world. Thus he said to “be in this world but not of it” i.e. don’t get over invested in this world because it’s not real anyway. Transcendent forgiveness challenges us to act on this truth. It’s saying that if we really believe all this is an illusion then stop acting like it’s real. Forgive one another because NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED. That’s it! End of story…….literally. It’s time to drop your story because you made the whole thing up and you have no further need of it. And what better way to manifest this then by forgiving your brother for what he never did?
“So, if this is all an illusion, what does that leave us with?” you may well ask. The answer is simple…….God. God is the only thing that’s real, and when we practice forgiveness at this level, we re educate the mind to this truth. There’s an old twelve step saying that goes “Act as though until it’s so.” When we practice Transcendent Forgiveness, we’re acting as though.
The truth is we are all safe at home with God while we’re dreaming these dramas of separation and death. Transcendent Forgiveness is the last happy dream we’ll dream before we awaken in his presence again. Can’t you just hear the exchange between God and his son when that glad moment arrives?
God: Hi, where did you go?
Son of God: Nowhere.
God: Well, what did you do?
Son of God: Nothing.
God walks away muttering: I really love that child, but I wish he’d open up a little.