Spiritual forgiveness
When the
other person gets a turn, the other person says the same thing. They both have
the misguided notion that the other has the power to make them happy. An
objective outsider, observing this dance of mutual recrimination, recognizes
that neither one of them can make the other happy. They can’t make themselves
happy, let alone take the responsibility for someone else’s happiness.
If one were
aware, they would understand that they don’t have the power to make other
people happy nor do other people have the power to make them happy. We, each,
have the responsibility for our own happiness. To project this responsibility
on anyone else is to give our power away and to deceive ourselves, barking up
the wrong tree as they say, preventing us from coming to an accurate understanding of how to
achieve true happiness.
It says in
the introduction to A Course In Miracles
“The Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of Love, for that is beyond
what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the
awareness of Love’s presence, which is our natural inheritance. The opposite of
love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. The course can
therefore be summed up very simply in this way: Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”
The course is not talking about romantic love, or
brotherly love, or altruistic love, or parental love, or aesthetic love, it is
referring to something much larger, more fundamental, some might say transcendental.
The course is referring to Divine Love, Grace, being one with everything. What
did the monk say to the hot dog vendor? Make me one with everything. The monk
handed the hot dog vendor $5.00 for the $2.00 hot dog and when the hot dog
vendor failed to give him his change, the monk complained, “Where is my
change?” The hot dog vendor said, “You, monk, should know more than anyone that
change comes from within.”
On the earth
plane we suffer under the illusion that “special relationships” will make us
happy. “Special relationships” are romantic relationships, parent/child
relationships, best friends. As we develop these relationships we expect them
to be permanent and we project all kinds of expectations and requirements onto
them, that if met and fulfilled, we believe, will make us happy. When our
expectations and requirements are not met we complain of betrayal,
disappointment, frustration, discouragement that leads to resentments,
recriminations, grievances, that can becomes so severe that they culminate, in
the extreme, in homicide and suicide.
The suffering experienced because of unfilled expectations at a spiritual level
is totally unnecessary and can be absolved if we can forgive ourselves and our
loved ones for sins and dysfunction which, at a spiritual level, never existed
anywhere but in our own insane minds.
As the
Rolling Stones sang several decades ago, “I don’t get no satisfaction” and “You
don’t always get what you want.” Rarely would we admit that our pain and
suffering is self generated by our own conditions which we put on our efforts
to love another. We don’t say it, but we think it. “I’ll love you if…….” This,
of course, is conditional love. We pay lip service to unconditional love but it
is rare in our own behavioral repertoire, and few people are mature enough to
actually practice it, if we are honest enough to admit it.
When our
conditions, meaning our expectations and requirements, are not met we first
become afraid that we won’t get what we want, and then we become angry and frustrated,
and then we become discouraged and depressed. In psychotherapy we say “You can
either be mad or be sad.” It usually hurts a little less if we are angry, and
when we deal with our fear of loss with anger we look for someone or something
to attack with blame, accusations, and sometimes mental, emotional, and
physical abuse. When we act out our feelings of anger and sadness we often
think of ourselves as a victim while we also are being a perpetrator.
Often times
in counseling when our conversation turns to the observation that the client is
powerless to get their partner to love them the way they want to be loved I
will ask, “Do you think your partner is unwilling or incapable of loving you
the way you want to be loved?” Often times, the question is met with confusion
and puzzlement, and rarely can the client clearly and immediately answer. This
view of the relationship and situation has never been raised before, and the
client may ask, “What do you mean?”
I will say,
“Well considering the person’s personality traits, the way they are
neurologically wired, the way they were raised with certain values, beliefs,
opinions, and practices, do you think the person is capable of loving you the
way you want to be loved? Maybe they are just incompetent. It’s not that they
are unwilling, and holding out on you, but they can’t.” It is frustrating to
expect and require things from people that they are incapable of. While
somewhat degrading I will ask them if they ever heard the joke about the farmer
who tried to teach his pig to sing? When they say “no”, I say, “Frustrated the
hell out of the farmer and annoyed the hell out of the pig.” I quickly will
say, “I am not saying that your partner is a pig, but you are acting like a
farmer who is trying to teach a person to do something that they are incapable
of doing.”
It is at this
moment of awareness that the person is incapable, not unwilling, that we come
to the realization that we need to forgive ourselves for having inappropriate
expectations for gratification from a “special relationship” that are not going
to be met through no fault of the person we are expecting the gratification
from. We come to understand that “special relationships” based on expectations
and requirements for our satisfaction will eventually make us unhappy.
One of my
best professors in my graduate Master’s In Social Work program used to tell us
that we have to “take the client where they’re at, not where we want them to
be, or think they should be, or ought to be, we have to take the client where
they’re at.” When we can take people where they’re at we can begin to love them
unconditionally and we experience peace and love ourselves.
So often what
we call love is really egotistical attempts to decrease our fears of
loneliness, isolation, and death. Unconditional love, on the other hand, begins
with first loving our self and then extending our sense of well being and
gratitude to others for our awareness of Love’s presence in our lives. If we
want Love in our life we have to be more loving, loving unconditionally without
expecting or requiring anything in return. When we do this we should have fun
doing it which adds abundant grace to our lives and great peace.
Unconditional
Love is not of this world. It does not reside on the ego plane. It is something
that seems strange and unattainable and yet it is present constantly often
outside our awareness blocked by the nonsense and illusions which we create and
project onto our lives and relationships. Our egotistical desires, intentions,
and thoughts often get in the way and block our awareness of Love’s presence
like clouds blocking our sight of the sun. When we see glimmers of the sunlight
of Love we become aware of being a part of ever widening and more encompassing
systems of being, an interconnectedness with life we hadn’t been aware of so
much previously. This growing awareness leads us to enlightenment.
So often my
clients who are frustrated and discouraged say to me, “I just don’t
understand!” And I quietly say, “Yes, you do. I think you understand it very
well. You just don’t want to accept it. As the Buddhists say, ‘It is what it
is’. You need to forgive yourself for your expectations and requirements, and
your partner for their failure to meet them. You need to recognize the torture
you put yourself and your partner through because of the conditions you project
that are not getting met. Forgiveness, in this case, means recognition,
acceptance, and rising above the situation.
Spiritual
forgiveness is “rising above” the ego plane and letting the projected illusions
go. Drop the conditions projected by your expectations and requirements. As the
spiritual masters have counseled in all faith traditions for centuries, let go
of your attachments. As they say in Alcoholic Anonymous, “My life is unmanageable.
I need to turn my life over to my Higher Power. Let go and let God. You do your
best and the universe will do the best.”
Wayne Dyer,
the psychologist, perhaps said it best when he said, “Forgiveness is really
just correcting our own misperceptions.” The purpose of other people is not for
them to meet our expectations. The purpose of other people is for us to learn
how to forgive ourselves our juvenile resentments and to love unconditionally.
Humanity will have arrived when everyone loves everyone all the time. The path
to this kind of love is forgiveness and the recognition that what I do unto
another I do unto myself.
Discussion guide:
Describe a time when have you been afraid, angry, frustrated, disappointed, sad when someone let you down? How were you able to take care of yourself in spite of the distress?
Describe a time when you were so upset about a relationship that you thought of killing yourself or someone else. Perhaps, simply, you thought that life was not worth living. How did you manage these feelings and get yourself out of this situation?
What role, if any, has your faith played in your managing the above situations?
What else has helped you manage these situations?
What has been your experience with forgiveness? What did you learn as a child about forgiveness from your family, church, friends?
If you are a parent what have your taught your children about how to do forgiveness?
Have you ever been in a relationship where the other person has to be right about everything and will never or rarely say they are sorry? What do you think about these kinds of relationships in terms of what causes this dynamic and how it should be handled?
Do you believe in a God that loves you unconditionally or do you believe in a God of judgment who will punish you for what you think are your sins? Where does this belief in a punishing God comes from?
Do you hope that God or fate punishes some people in your life or in the world for the bad things you think they have done? If yes, who are the people and what have they done that deserves punishment? Do you think they could ever be forgiven?
Who do you need to forgive for what? What will it take for you to do it?
What do you need to forgive yourself for? What will it take for you to do it?
Describe a time when have you been afraid, angry, frustrated, disappointed, sad when someone let you down? How were you able to take care of yourself in spite of the distress?
Describe a time when you were so upset about a relationship that you thought of killing yourself or someone else. Perhaps, simply, you thought that life was not worth living. How did you manage these feelings and get yourself out of this situation?
What role, if any, has your faith played in your managing the above situations?
What else has helped you manage these situations?
What has been your experience with forgiveness? What did you learn as a child about forgiveness from your family, church, friends?
If you are a parent what have your taught your children about how to do forgiveness?
Have you ever been in a relationship where the other person has to be right about everything and will never or rarely say they are sorry? What do you think about these kinds of relationships in terms of what causes this dynamic and how it should be handled?
Do you believe in a God that loves you unconditionally or do you believe in a God of judgment who will punish you for what you think are your sins? Where does this belief in a punishing God comes from?
Do you hope that God or fate punishes some people in your life or in the world for the bad things you think they have done? If yes, who are the people and what have they done that deserves punishment? Do you think they could ever be forgiven?
Who do you need to forgive for what? What will it take for you to do it?
What do you need to forgive yourself for? What will it take for you to do it?
