Forgiveness

A Course in Tranquility Lesson 9 of 14 – Forgiveness

According to the dictionary, the definition of forgiveness is, “to cease to blame or hold resentment against.” Resentment and the inability to forgive is a major obstacle to spiritual realization on multiple levels. It locks us in a pattern of anger, or despair. It bathes our bodies in stress hormones that tear down our immune system, damage our genetics, destroy our brain cells, and create conditions for heart disease. By not learning the proper way to forgive, we hold our attention on a pattern of negativity, and continue to define our self as a limited being, a victim of circumstance. To what noble end, do we do this? For what reason, do we torture our selves so?

Life on earth is precious. Here we have bodies that span the material, astral, causal and transcendent realms. On this world we have the marvelous capacity to neutralize karmas that span the breadth of our existence. To waste our lives in an energy pattern of accusation and spite, serves only to deplete our vitality, and wastes our life that could be better utilized in cleaning up our karma and strengthening the experience of love and harmony within our being.

It’s been said before that the greatest obstacle to tranquility and spiritual realization is sustaining a false sense of self. We can do this by identifying with our bodies, minds, history and personality. We can also do this by maintaining an inflated sense of self importance, meaning that there is something special about our specific incarnation. When we do this, we are affirming that we are separate from the wholeness of life. We can do this by maintaining low self esteem, affirming that there, again, is something so special with us, that we are to be mistreated and fail at everything we do. Both of these states result in a sense of separation. To maintain a feeling that you have been wronged, victimized, and mistreated, and to hold on to those feelings is a way of telling the universe that you don’t want to take responsibility for your states of consciousness and experiences in life. You are blaming a world “out there” for what happened to you.

Now it may be that you have been mistreated, or even injured and severely traumatized by another person or situation. And while you always have a choice, you may not have consciously known that at the time, and so the negative event occurred. As we grow in wisdom, we learn that no matter what happens to us, we can choose how we want to respond to that situation. We can say, “That terrible thing happened to me! I cannot forgive the other person for what they did to me!” And there is the potential that what we are really saying is, “I hated that situation. I am angry at my self for letting life move in such a way, that I allowed that to occur! I cannot forgive my self for my own choices that led to that situation.”

Bad things happen to good people.  Good things happen to bad people. There is seemingly no sense to it. But if you look beyond the immediate, external conditions of this life, we can consider that we have been embodied countless times. Even in this life time, we have played countless roles. Sometimes we have been angelic and kind.  Other times we have been angry and conceited and vicious. Sometimes our thoughts are pure and wholesome and loving. At other times, our thoughts are dark and malevolent. All of these thoughts, actions and chosen roles add up. There is a mixture of good and bad. Knowing that, we can see that there will be times when good seeds sprout up easily, and a time when thorny weeds of karma will sprout up in our garden.

To be tranquil is to make peace with this fact that we have been haphazardly tending our garden without much of a plan or forethought. To this end, the seeds that sprout are a combination of positive and negative experiences. They grow based on the appropriate season, weather conditions, and environment. Once we can accept this, then we can begin the process of analyzing our inner and outer circumstances, to get an idea of what is really deep down below our conscious mind (the dirt) and pay attention to what we are really growing.

We begin by being mindful in our daily life. We see our thoughts of anger sprout up and we decide to pluck them out of the dirt and to no longer water those thoughts. We see our selves as the victims of bad habits. We note this, and decide, that’s enough of that. Each time a bad habit arises we cut it down, and pull up the roots by no longer indulging in the habit. Each time a new shoot of negative habit pops through the earth, we grab it and throw it out. We watch our circumstances around us, and with dispassion we see the people in our lives and how they affect us. Those that make us feel bad and do not sustain our spirit peace, we remove from our garden, one by one. The thoughts situations that give rise to violence against our bodies and mind, are also to be weeded out.

We notice that good plants come up as well. The roses of friendship grow. The delicious apple trees of kindness and love, poke up through the dirt. The nectarine plant of financial good fortune force up through the weeds. Thoughts of discipline and service, struggle towards the sunshine. Feelings of joy and divine wholeness are hidden and scrawny beneath the vines of envy and vice. In our mindfulness, we clear away the obstacles to the growth of these divine aspects of our nature. We let these karmas grow until they bloom and are pollinated by the bee of optimism. Then when they go to seed, we purposefully plant more. We continue to weed out that which drags our souls through the mud, and plant those wondrous seeds that lift us into divine peace.

The key is to do this with dispassion, the state or quality of being unemotional or emotionally uninvolved. By that, I mean, that we do not freak out by all the weeds that we have in the garden, or all the work that it is going to take to clean it up. We see the job, we do the job, and we let the end result be what it will be. We do not stress over how few seeds of joy we have. We collect the seeds that we can, and day by day, we plant more. For each choice we make to be joyful and to avoid harmful circumstances and people, we are blessed with a new handful of beautiful seeds. All of this can take time, but the other option is to remain in your weed overgrown garden of negativity, limitation and restriction. Who knows, maybe the first weed that needs to be singled out is the weed of laziness and apathy? Make a priority list, and start with one negative tendency at a time. Eventually, you will find the list is empty, and now all you have to do is tend your flowers.

Note on letting go of past situations that were unpleasant:  No matter who or what did something bad to you, you can decide to do your best to not allow that situation to happen again. You were receptive to the situation for whatever reason. You don’t need to find out why, you need to decide to not make choices that lead back to that experience. You can decide that by the grace of God, or the cosmic power within you, that you are no longer receptive to that situation. The more you affirm that, you will find that you more often make choices that do not lead down the dark road of your past. So you see, there is no reason to blame anyone or anything for what happened to you, because the past cannot be changed anyway. But you can reclaim your divine right to choose, and make sure that you are willing to avoid such circumstances in the future.

Our Ancestral Influence on the Power of Forgiveness

When we were children and developing our sense of self, we took pride in being somebody. It was a joyous time of coming into manifestation, building up a personality, and exploring our talents and interests. The seeds of our past karmas were beginning to sprout in the Spring of life. Yet, many of us found that our personality was being incubated in an unsupportive environment. Rather than the roses of love and grace, it was the weeds of egotism and self-centeredness that were cultivated.

For every success, we were met with expectations that were unreasonable. We heard our caretakers criticizing us, or reacting to our curiosity out of fear. We watched our parents, take pride in the negative side of life. “Can you believe what ‘so and so’ did to me,” they would say, thereby demonstrating that our ego, and our sense of importance was based on the imagined insolence of other people. As time went by, we also began to adopt this method of defining our sense of self.

Suffering from resentment, requires the following equation:

(A lack of responsibility for the circumstances in which we find our selves)

+

(An inflated sense of importance)

–

(The wisdom that the world presents to us what we present to it)

=

(The need for forgiveness)

Variable 1 – A lack of responsibility and how to address it

When I was younger, I had this weird idea. When I would hear about a person’s problems or difficult circumstances, I found myself often thinking, and to the displeasure of those around me saying out loud, “Well, they must enjoy it. Otherwise, why would they continue to experience it.” Now, that seemed a little odd coming out of the mouth of a kid in junior high school. And it was comments like that, that consistently prompted my grandmother to say I needed an attitude adjustment. However, it’s now twenty some years later, and I am still sticking by that assertion.

Now, at the time, that comment was coming from my feeling that if something was unpleasant, I was going to do whatever it took to get away from that unpleasantness. And I couldn’t understand why others didn’t follow that same logic. That makes sense to just about anyone, right? However, as the years went by I started to notice that I possessed a strange aberration that was great for spiritual growth but not so accepted by the majority of society. This was a lack of attachment.

As we grow up we are surrounded by people. These are family, friends, etc. Our minds get used to their familiarity. We let down our guard and feel safe, even if their company isn’t really that supportive. We are lulled into a trance like state. Even if the people around us, belittle us, support negative habits, perpetuate moods, or prevent us from attaining our highest goals, we don’t mind, because we are comfortable. This is not really a problem unless you deny the truth of the situation.

What do I mean by “deny the truth of the situation”? Well, if you are where you are in life, and you are saying things like:

“I can’t ever be happy.”

“It’s impossible to get healthy.”

“The world is an unsafe place.”

“Who do I think I am, thinking I can know the reality of God.”

“I’ll never find a relationship where I am loved and respected.”

“There is no basis to the assertion that we live in a supportive universe.”

And let’s imagine that you say, “I can’t ever be happy,” because you subject your self to friends that wallow in their grief, talk about one depressing life episode after another, etc, yet you make no effort to tell them to be quiet or find new friends…

Or imagine that you say, “It’s impossible to get healthy,” because everyone you socialize with either watches TV, drinks too much, smokes too much, and never once has the idea to go exercise or play an active sport…

Or let’s imagine you say, “The world is an unsafe place,” because you are attached to people that gossip about the latest terror attack, or shooting in a city 500 miles away, and don’t have any motivation to lift your self out of that kind of company…

Maybe you say, “Who do I think I am, thinking I can know the reality of God,” or “There is no basis to the assertion that we live in a supportive universe,” because everyone around you is too focused on their human frailties, rather than accepting a higher possibility, and you just love them all so much, you can’t bear to find company that is less stuck in that mode of thinking…

Or maybe you say, “I’ll never find a relationship where I am loved and respected” and you come home every night to a partner who belittles you, and insults you in front of the kids, or criticizes your dreams, yet you made a commitment to them 8 years ago, and by God you are going to see that commitment to the end…

These are all direct examples of denying the truth of a situation. The real truth is that you are attached to circumstances that don’t support you, and you don’t have the motivation to make a change. This is understandable. 99% of the planet lives like this. So it’s not really a problem, unless you truly do want to be happy, tranquil and spiritually aware.

Sounds a little harsh, yet it is the way it works.

Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and does not give up father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” (Luke 14:32)

At the initiation into a spiritual tradition, an initiate is asked to bring a fruit, a flower and a modest donation. The fruit is to represent giving up the fruits of our actions. The flower represents our devotion to the path. The monetary donation represents putting all of our resources at the service of the Guru. This is not to make the Guru rich, but to symbolically indicate that we are willing to give up everything for that which we seek, remembrance of our oneness in divinity.

Lahiri Mahasaya, was known to have asked a disciple before initiation, if the disciple would give Lahiri all of his money, his possessions, his family and his wife. Now Lahiri didn’t want these things for himself. He was asking only to find out the extent of the disciples sincerity.

In a story from Autobiography of a Yogi, a man had scaled the Himalayas in search of the master Babaji. When he finally came to Babaji’s camp he asked to be Babaji’s disciple. Babaji refused and the man threatened to throw himself over the edge of the cliff if he was not accepted. Babaji said, “Then jump.” The man tossed himself off the cliff, killing himself. Babaji, asked his disciples to go get the man and bring his body back. Babaji brought the man back to life, and then accepted him as a disciple.

As you can see, in all of these situations, we must be honest about our intentions. If we want to go all the way, then we do what is necessary. We give up our attachments and move forward. If we don’t, we need to be honest and say, “Yes, I’ll do a little, but I am happy in this normal human state. Don’t expect too much of me, and I won’t either.”

If you can be firm in your decision to go all the way, or be honest about what you are willing to do, you won’t have to put your self through mental or psychological agony, because you are being self honest about what you will and will not do, and that you are willing to accept the consequences.

What does this have to do with forgiveness? Let me get through a description of the other variables, and then we’ll tie it all together. Thanks for your patience.

Variable 2 – An inflated sense of self-importance

By thinking that you are so special, that people mistreated you, just because they “had it in for you” specifically, is a great way to keep on inflated sense of self importance. If you think that way, then you are going to find reasons in your environment and in the people around you to continue to generate situations that support that notion. Believe it or not, most people mistreat other people because they are unclear about the meaning of their own lives. They do not yet understand or remember, that what they do to another a person they are doing to God and their very selves. They have been hypnotized to think that if they can do something to dominate or injure another, that they will know true power. They are misguided, partially because they were not shown another way in this world. If you accept their authority and allow them to scar you for life, you are supporting their own inflated sense of self importance. You continue the problem, and prevent the world from waking up. You sustain your own inflated sense of self importance as a victim, and sustain their sense of self importance as the perpetrator. Why do you think Jesus said:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

He said it because this neutralizes the false sense of self and separateness of all parties involved. This is the work that we are working towards, not our own tranquility and love, but a universal tranquility and love. If no one else showed the perpetrators in your life how to love and be kind, then it is your job.

Now obviously, this doesn’t mean to seek out situations where this will occur. But if they have already occurred, or are currently occurring, you can love and bless those around you, then move on and choose different circumstances. The inflated sense of self importance is then neutralized, because you no longer invest your precious divine life on this earth in feelings of resentment, anger or revenge.

Oh, and by the way, in the situation you feel you need to forgive, it’s pretty safe to say, that even if you weren’t there to be on the receiving end, someone else would’ve been. People who like to harm others, have a way of finding receptive outlets, and it doesn’t seem to matter very much who it is.

Variable 3 – The World Gives Us, What We Give It

One of the prime mistakes spiritual aspirants make in this life, is that they think if they meditate and pray daily, yet do not tend their mental and emotional garden, that everything works out just fine. They then wonder why life doesn’t improve very much, or at least as much as it has for the spiritual masters they look up to. We’ve already discussed the garden metaphor, but it is worth revisiting.

As you go through your day, you need to pay attention to the thoughts that go through your head, and the emotions you habitually feel. As you fall asleep at night, watch the thoughts that go through your mind. They are a clear indicator of what station your dial is turned to, and what you can expect your life ahead to be like.

After you notice the habitual thoughts you think, feelings you feel and expectations and beliefs about life, you need to make a conscious effort to choose new thoughts and feelings and expectations. Does this take vigilance and work? Yes, it does. Is some savior going to come out of the sky or appear in a vision and do this for you? No. All truthful spiritual teachers admit that they are there to point a seeker in the proper direction or to be a good example, yet they are not there to do the work for the student.

A good health coach, can empower you with positive thoughts and push you to see just what you are really capable of, but they can’t force you to eat healthy food, or lift heavy weights. You have to do that your self. The company of supportive people carries you a long way, but for lasting results you have to do the work your self, so then you can move into that role of being the support for others. By admitting that there are supportive people in the world, and that you are one of them, you attract supportive people.

You Don’t Need Forgiveness

If you affirm that you need to be more forgiving, or that you need to develop forgiveness, what you are saying to the Universe is: “Hello Universe, would you please send me some reasons that will empower my decision that I have to work on being more forgiving?”

What you need, is to admit that you have more control over your life situation than you let on. What you need is to say:

“I’ve made some choices, that one way or the other led me to experience these negative circumstances.  Maybe I know what those choices are and maybe I don’t. And if I don’t, I’m just going to say ‘it must be a past life karma’. But whatever the reason, I’m done with it. I am going to do my utmost best to avoid thoughts, feelings, people and places that rekindle my desire to put my self in a difficult situation.

If I screw up every now and again, fine. I’m still not going to blame the other person. I’m going to reassess what I could have done differently, and do it.

If there is nothing I can do, I’m going to be thankful that at least I was here to bear the brunt of this situation so someone else didn’t, then I’m going to give it up to God, so no one else has to hear about or deal with it.”

(Note: if you need counseling to deal with a situation, there is nothing wrong with that. Just don’t turn it into a hobby.”

Love

Once you have this under control, then you need to practice love. Love transforms all that it touches. In a state of love, there is safety and peace, and an openness to change. Why do you think Gandhi chose the path of non violence? It was through transforming violence with love, that the world was changed.

Aggression, difficulty, anger, violence, perversity and jealousy, are all manifestations of a frustrated life. When there is no outlet or no sense of possibility of being heard, understood or loved, these negative expressions of God manifest. In a state of love, all is accepted and heard. The energy of the negative expression unwinds its self. Every time negativity is met by love, the unwinding continues. One day, there will be nothing left to unwind. We will know our blissful tranquil state, all of us will. But in the meantime, we have to create that state within our selves. For every person that undertakes this task, it becomes easier for the current and future generations to open up to the possibility of love and being.

Of course, remember, that love can take many manifestations. We are not talking about “idiot love”, or being someone’s door mat. Wisdom is strong and decisive, while also being surrendered and compassionate. You can love another person, yet be clear that you don’t take any crap from them. That is love, because it shows strength, and it also shows love for the individualized self (you) which is equally an expression of the divine.  Some times you have to tell another person to “knock it off” or you need to restrain them from violence, or give them an ultimatum. As long as it is done without attachment, smugness or enjoyment, then it is still love.

Sincerely, Ryan Kurczak 2010