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Forgiveness is remembering the innocence of all creation in each unfolding moment. All forgiveness is essentially self-forgiveness. No one, including ourselves, deserves to suffer; painful things are merely part of life. Forgiveness allows whatever arises in our senses to come and go without attaching a story to it and then getting lost in the story. Suffering is created and maintained when we get lost in the stories, especially those of guilt and blame. To forgive is to let go of our attachments (grasping) to how we think anything or anyone is — even God. We become attached to the notion that if we experience life in a particular way, according to a particular storyline, then we will be happy. If ourselves or others do things in a particular way then we are lovable, otherwise we’re not. Attachments are the conditions we place on love and happiness. The more we hold on to our attachments, the more we suffer. Forgiveness leads us to enlightenment, as we awaken from the dream of separation from our essential infinite and eternal wholeness, which is our natural inheritance. Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23: 34). To forgive is to realize that we are all doing the best we can, given what we know and where we are coming from.
Hold Opinions Lightly
The Third Zen Patriarch, says, “Do not seek the truth. Only cease to cherish opinions.” Our opinions (how we think things should be) are for-giving up. It is not that we shouldn’t have opinions or life stories, only that we could cease to cherish them as reality. We all formulate opinions and live out different stories; however, when they cause us to suffer, we must be willing to relinquish those opinions and stories. We remember that we are consciousness aware of the opinions that maintain a story, rather than a person who is captured and enslaved by opinions and their stories. We can be sure that whatever opinions we form will eventually be disproved in the course of living. When we hold onto our opinions in the face of evidence to the contrary, we suffer. To hold religiously onto our opinions is to believe that the nature of life, the universe and God can be accurately defined within the limited awareness of our opinionated mind. Doing this would be like taking a photograph of a section of a river at on point in time and then saying that photo is the way all rivers are and will always be. All we ever get in life are snapshots or video-clips from our own limited perspective within the minuscule timeframe that is our life. Our opinions,and the stories we tell ourselves serve as maps. However, maps are not the territories they describe.
Loving and Being Loved
For many people feeling loved has felt conditional. Children grow up feeling that they must behave in a particular way in order to be loved. The parents of these children convey these ideas to their children directly or indirectly based on how they were raised. Parenting, like life, is an ongoing process of discovery; however, many parents think in order to be a ‘good’ parent they must act like they know what they are doing with their children. If a child is behaving in a way the parents don’t know how to handle, instead of embracing their own ignorance and innocence, they rely on acting in the ways they have learned. They end up doing much the same to their children as has been done to them. If a parent acts as if they know what they are doing and their opinions are right, and yet the child isn’t happy, that child assumes, ‘There must be something wrong with me.’ To be forgiving is to realize we know not what to do. With forgiveness, we innocently embrace each situation as unique by realizing our opinions are just our opinions and not something to be cherished. In so doing, we are free to choose a path of love and wholeness in place of one that perpetuates guilt, fear, isolation and suffering. Trying too hard to be forgiving can leave us searching for forgiveness, rather than resting as forgiveness. We can end up trying to convince ourselves why we should be more forgiving. Instead of giving up all hope of a better past, we may seek justifications for our actions or rationalize others’ behavior by continuing to blame ourselves. Meditation can become a sort of penance, a way to earn forgiveness. Let forgiveness be effortless and unconditional. In meditation, forgiveness allows us to witness all that arises in our awareness like innocent child, even though many of those aspects of our mind would appear to have lost their way. By being willing to give up our stories and judgments, our minds become more spacious. This is and excerpt from Essential Wholeness, Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram
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