THIS INCARNATION 13

p. 105-109

FORGIVENESS EQUALS FREEDOM

That is another way of understanding the depth of forgiveness/letting go/release/surrender.

To allow that to happen we need to embrace ourselves as being worthy to be free.

“Now, the damage you each do to yourselves through this action or, if you would like to say, inaction, is surmountable and there is an easy way to forgive, if you will allow it, and this is to give peace, to offer peace, to claim peace in the rage, to decide in peace where there has been frustration impressed upon a situation. To deny the self, this entrenches the self. To deny this for your fellows entrenches your fellows in the same response. If you wish to move the response, you may, but you must first attend to the self.”

It has been recorded often times when an animal has been chained up or caged for a long period of time that when they are released, they stay within the confines of their old cage or tether. Even those there are no longer any physical restraints, their habits or this sense of safety or necessity that goes along with being in this limited space becomes almost instinctual.

So here we are. We have learned to live a tethered existence and to think that is all that we have, and perhaps even all that we deserve. We are offered the opportunity of freedom, and sometime even the possibility of freedom might be something that frightens us away.

There are many stories like the eagle who was raised by chickens,  taught to believe the “reality” of their limitations, and perhaps yearning for something more, and maybe even having the seeds or something more, but never quite being able to move out of the mold that has been created for them.

“I know who I am, I know what I am, I know how I serve” will align you to peace, if you allow it. And we must underline this, if you allow it. If you bring peace to a situation from deciding that you can allow it, you will claim peace. And as you claim peace, you express peace and you call peace to you, and that is what happens very easily as you decide you can be forgiven for judging yourself so harshly. You may decide this for your fellows as well.”

When we claim, “I know who I am I know what I am I know how I serve” we are claiming that freedom that has always been ours. We are not inventing something new. All of the seeming blocks or hurdles that we think we need to overcome to get to that space of freedom are all part of the lessons we have chosen to learn. As we are often told “there are no accidents or mistakes or errors along this path.” Whatever it is is that we encounter is there as we choose to participate in our continuing growth and evolution.

We are reminded here as well that we learn from experience not simply from thoughts or ideas. Again, when we claim “I know who I am and I know what I am I know how I serve” we are aligning ourselves to the experience of that Truth. Even if my perception of that experience only lasts for a split second I need to be aware that time limitation is only true if we are using linear time is being are measuring stick. That HOLY INSTANT is also a reflection of eternity.

To get a sense of what we mean by experience and how the energy of the experience can stay with us far beyond time and memory, we will simply take an example from your own lives. There have times when you have experienced yourself as being deeply loved or grateful or the presence of someone or something greater than what your mind can grasp. If you were to take a moment to go back in your mind to that experience and sit with it and let it sit with you for moment. Begin to realize that the energy of that experience is still with you, not a grasping sort of way, but as a way of opening your heart to it. This is much more than a memory. It is more than an idea or an image. It is more like a bookmark in your life. But the experience in itself opens the heart  and can remind us  of the truth that you might have forgotten.

There're also many parables about learning and experience some of them are reflections of the spiritual journey. For instance imagine there is a king who decides who would like to be more understanding of his people, especially those who are poor or destitute. He decides to dress himself in rags go to live with his impoverished people for a while. He will certainly have some experience of what it is like to be poor, at the same time, he will always recognize, in the back of his mind, that he is the king and that at any moment he can snap his fingers has personal poverty will disappear.

Now there is entirely different set of dynamics that would be working if, before he can enter it into this impoverished place, his memory of who he is would be wiped clean. Notice the difference of his experience without knowing that he is the king. Which one of those experiences will teach you more which one will be more real?

In the Christian tradition this is reflected in the parable of the Prodigal Son. For a time, because his first overwhelmed with all of pleasures that he is seeking and then because he is overwhelmed by devastating poverty, he forgets who is. He forgets his heritage; he forgets his loving father. The question that is often asked is “Whose gratitude will be greater? That of the prodigal who tirelessly works his way home or that of the other son was never left?

We were given the wonderful question: “What happens or what is happening when we think we have forgiven another or even ourselves, and we know that we have worked rather diligently to create that energy of forgiveness, of release, of letting go. And then the thought of that person or that circumstance comes to us again and we feel our guts twisting around it. Does that mean we have been mistaken, that we have duped ourselves? That we really did not do the work we thought we did? That is certainly one possibility but most of the time that is not true.

The majority of times when circumstances such as of that arise we realize that forgiveness very much like grieving sometimes happens in layers. We deal with the circumstance as best we possibly can, work with it and let it go, and then there are going to be times when there is more or deeper stuff that needs to be released and worked on. When you are living from your soul this kind of situation reveals itself as “I am not completely finished with this one yet. It has come up in my consciousness and brought to my attention to realize that there is further work around forgiveness and release that must be done here. I can even thankful that is up for me to heal, to cleanse, to forgive, to release.

Because my stuff come sup again is not a sing of failure, simply that there is more work to be completed AND I now have the ability and the tools to continue the work.

I shared an incident in my life that would crop up periodically for me. Every time it would come into my consciousness there was still be some energy around it and I would realize it sometimes again and again and realize that there is more and more of the necessity to release in forgive. Until there came a moment when the memory of that incident came up and there was no more energy surrounding it. It was something that happened to me in my life that I was sad and sorry that it happened. I wished it had not but that was no more sense of the necessity of grieving or forgiveness. That particular circumstance was done, was finished. There was no more energy of anger or fear, shame or unfairness that was connected with it anymore. Grateful. 

One last observation. a classmate described his life experience as not having a tremendous amount of difficulty with worthiness. Admittedly not perfect, but when falling short of the mark would simply get up brush himself off and try it again. Forgiving himself and others seemed like quite a natural thing to do rather than a struggle with worthiness or blame or shame or guilt.

He mentioned that this seems rather unfair since so many others seem to be overwhelmed with that sense of unworthiness or what I like to call “not enoughness.”

It appears as if a large number of the human race have chosen to work through this lesson of unworthiness; to work through it to come to a deeper sense of the Truth of who they are. As was mentioned before, without getting into too much exploration of reincarnation, that we do choose our agenda and some of this agenda goes beyond the individual into what we might call a racial unconsciousness.

Perhaps there have been times on planet Earth when this sense of unworthiness was not so overpowering or not so much of a struggle, however, it appears at this time in our history this lesson of worthiness is one that many of us have chosen to learn this time around .

So much of what we have grown up with as Christians comes from that one misinterpreted moment when the Roman centurions said to Jesus, “Lord I am not worthy.” Unfortunately no one follows up on the rest of that verse.

The Roman official had come to Jesus to ask that his servant might be healed, and as Jesus set out to the officials home the man said, “Lord I am not worthy that thou should enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” In other words, “I don't want to put you out. You don't have to walk all the way to my home. I know the power within you, and if you choose to heal my servant, even from this distance, I know it will be so. His declaration was not one of unworthiness so much as it was a declaration of faith.

How unfortunate for so many of us and we were taught that unworthiness is more of a truth than worthiness/our true nature itself.

As always, with Love and Gratitude.