1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 So welcome back. We have been visioning a dream, listening to our longing, our discontent, forming images, falling in love with that dream, building a feeling of deserving by virtue of who we are not what we have done. We have recognized that if we let fear dominate us we will be constricted. If we don't give we will be constricted and there is one more phase through this gap now that could cause us to be constricted and it's the way we handle our perceptions. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 So I want to begin with a story that a minister friend told me. He told me about an argument that he had had with his wife. He and his wife had a really good relationship but now and then they would argue and argue about something. He said well we'd forgive each other and we would go on, but this particular argument went on little by little, day after day until it had been almost a week. Then they had this one complete blowout argument this one evening and he said 'I want you to know though, Mary. At the end of that argument she came to me on her hands and knees. I said 'Oh really?' and he goes 'Yes and she said to me come out from under that bed you coward.' Of course it was a joke and it made me 214
20 21 22 23 laugh but it does introduce the idea that in human relationships and in these experiences we have on this human journey there is one elementary spiritual practice that liberates us from the constriction of experiences that can hold us back, and that is the practice called forgiveness. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 You know, a little tiff with a friend or a spouse you forgive that. You get cut off in traffic you forgive that. Someone gives you the wrong change, you forgive that. But when you have deeply loved or trusted or given of your heart and then feel betrayed, to forgive in that moment has a very powerful evolutionary potency for your soul. We are building a dream. We are working with this creative energy of the universe to bring into form a desire we hold in our hearts. So we begin by paying attention to the dream that came through our yearning and our longing. We test the dream. It's worthy of us. We planted the seed. We know the seed is good, that it is a crop we want to grow. We talked about how we need to keep the garden weeded so that those weeds of fear can't choke out our dream. We've talked about learning to give, about nourishing our dream as we would a seed; with attention, with substance, letting the water seep deep into the roots of our dream so that it will flourish. And now we look at the condition of the soil itself. 215
38 39 You can't grow a healthy dream in toxic soil. Any farmer knows the soil must be as healthy as the seed for the crop to prosper. That leads us now into forgiveness. 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 Even the best dream, the best seed if it's planted in soil that is toxic with resentment cannot survive. So if you are wondering if you have any forgiveness work to do just ask yourself this question. Am I breathing? If the answer is yes, then the answer is yes. We all have forgiveness work to do. It's at the core of what's called the perennial philosophy. It's in every one of the world's religions, in all good psychology, in all mental health we are taught that forgiveness is a mental, emotional spiritual practice that opens the doors of perception and frees us to live a life that is worth living. So if it's a simple thing it is easy to forgive but when it's a big deep feeling of betrayal then there is a much deeper and more profound exercise. And the gift to us is even much, much more profound. 51 52 53 54 55 56 There is a story that author Rachel Naomi Remen tells about when she was a young girl whose family didn't have very much money. So her father would always bring home jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles would be the family activity. Naomi said that as a young child she remembers the family gathering around the table, putting the pieces together to create a picture. Her father, to increase their 216
57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 fun, would bring home the puzzle pieces but hide the box the puzzle came in so no one knew what they were constructing and it would be a surprise. You know how you get the puzzle box and you put the lid out and you can see what it is you are trying to put together. But he would hide the lid. So she said when she was seven or eight she had quite an imagination and some of those puzzle pieces really scared her. Some of them were oddly shaped and dark and she couldn't figure out what they were. The box was gone so she couldn't even see what the puzzle would look like when it all came together and in her child's mind some of these odd little dark pieces began to look grotesque and mean and scary and awful. These little pieces actually began to frighten her. 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 So to deal with her own fear around those dark pieces she would take them and she would hide them under the couch cushion or she would put them in a drawer. Of course the family in constructing the puzzle they would get down and there'd be twelve pieces missing. Over time they began to realize that Naomi was the culprit. That she was the one that was hiding the pieces. So her mother would say Naomi now go find the pieces to the puzzle and she would go dig out the pieces and then they would fit into the puzzle. She said it was about the third time she dug out the hidden puzzle pieces and finished the picture that this big realization 217
76 77 78 hit her. That every puzzle piece, even though by itself it looked dark or grotesque it was an essential part of the whole puzzle. The picture would not be complete without every piece. 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 And so it is with different aspects of our lives. There are certain pieces to our puzzle that when we look at them just as a snippet of our lives or this experience or that relationship, it can look mighty grotesque that this happened. And in and of itself it very well may be, but in the whole scope of life and in the big picture these pieces are essential and so these pieces are not to be discarded or hidden. We just need to find where they fit. They are meant to be a part of a grand and glorious picture. 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 When you look at the great stories of all time, the masters, the sages, the avatars, we actually recognize that in the life story of each one of them there is always the element of betrayal. In fact in the life of Jesus there would not even be a resurrection had there not been a crucifixion and there would be no crucifixion without a betrayal. When you look at the scope of your own life you will find elements of betrayal. We all do. Years ago I remember having the honor of counseling a young woman whose life wasn't working. She didn't have a 218
95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 relationship that was meaningful. She seemed to jump from job to job. She felt as if no one really liked her and there was just one complaint after another that she had. As we began to explore her life we began to see a surfacing of resentment that showed up again and again and again. That resentment was directed at many different things and people, but underneath it there was a core of deep hurt and when we began to spend some time to get close enough to what the deep hurt was about, she told me her childhood story. She had been raised in a family where her father was an abusive alcoholic and would come home in rages and terrorize the family. She said that from the time she can remember she never ever felt safe in her family. She never knew when the father would come and when she would be awakened in the middle of the night and listen to his tirades. She was terrified. She remembers one night when he held them all at knifepoint. She remembers another night when he held them all at gunpoint. She said he kept playing with the bullets that night. He had three bullets and he kept playing with those three bullets and as she and her brother and her mother sat on the couch he was saying one for you, one for you, one for you. Then he passed out. But this same scenario went on and on throughout her childhood and when she was seventeen she had a mental breakdown. She ended up in hospital for a month. When she left there they helped her get into a foster home where she completed her high school. She 219
114 115 116 117 was thirty-seven when she came to me and we began to talk about her life. So for twenty years, from the time she had been living in the foster home, she had built such a huge field of resentment about her father, about what he had done, about the abusive nature in which she had been raised. 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 When I heard her story there was part of me too that wanted to throw him in prison, find some sort of retribution for this man and the kind of abuse that he had levied. The mother had finally left him and no one had heard from him for many years. But you see spiritually what was happening was that because she had the resentment, the person being punished wasn't her father it was her. The person who was suffering at the hand of what had happened over twenty years ago was her. The person who could free her was her. 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 So we began to talk about the possibility of what really was in her hands. No matter what had happened to her she had the power to choose the kind of life she would lead. She began to look at what she had been doing with her own thoughts. Her own thoughts about her father and how she had never come to peace, how she had no idea how to make it better. So we began to look at the nature and the power of authentic forgiveness. 220
133 134 135 136 137 138 So I encourage you to think about forgiveness this way. Forgiveness is giving for. We hear forgiveness. It's giving for. It's giving one perception for another. It's a change in perception that opens our lives, our awareness to love's presence and to the experience of ourselves as co-creators in an abundant universe; as co-creators in a field of energy that has our best in its interest. It has our best good. 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 See now, Einstein once said that every single one of us makes a fundamental decision and that decision, the way we make it will determine the whole course of our lives. The question we make a decision about is this: Is this universe friendly? He said as long as you believe that the universe is malevolent, conspiring for bad, you will live in fear, torment, even in the tiniest of possibilities. But if you make a decision that the universe is actually friendly, seeking ever freer fuller expanded good then you will open yourselves to that kind of support. The Talmud says every blade of grass has an angel leaning over it whispering grow, grow, grow. It's as if every cell is coded with the possibility to grow and become more of itself. That the universe is constantly following an inner urge that is in the center of all life itself that says evolve, become, express, be, do. And once you've made the 221
151 152 decision that the universe is friendly you open yourself to having access to the support that really is here. 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 Buddha said that a person who holds resentment is like someone who picks up a hot coal all the while expecting the other person to be the one who gets burned. I have also heard it said that resentment, and holding resentment is like drinking a little bit of poison every single day expecting the other person to die. See, the energy we hold is the energy we are in. So this young woman, whose life was burned in the holding of a resentment that she had held for many, many years made a decision to do life differently. She simply made a decision. I want to forgive this. I have no idea how to do this. Does he deserve it? Absolutely not. I want the freedom that it will bring. At first she got trapped in the thought that to forgive meant that she had to make it ok that he had done these things. She had to make it ok that this little child had been terrorized. She had to make it ok that he never got into recovery. She had to make it ok that he used a knife or a gun to terrorize his family. Eventually she came to understand that forgiveness has nothing to do with that at all. Forgiveness has nothing to do with accepting abusive behavior. Forgiveness is not about being a doormat. Forgiveness has nothing to do with a willingness to re-experience behaviors that have been 222
170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 abusive. Forgiveness is simply the freeing of a person who no longer wants to be ruled by his or her own resentment. When we are ruled and fueled by resentment we push our own good away from us. We poison the field where our precious dream is growing. Forgiveness is a shift in perception that frees me. Forgiveness is not done for someone else. Forgiveness is done for me. Forgiveness is a shift in my perception. That means I find a new way to see what it is that I have experienced because as long as I am full of resentment or rage over a betrayal or a hurt that rage and that resentment are indeed what I am full of. 178 179 180 181 182 So the work of forgiveness is internal and it's done in me. Every time we think of that person. Every time we think of that experience. Every time it comes to mind. Instead of an expansion of energy, which is love's presence, there is a contraction of energy; the resentment, the fear, the anger. 183 184 185 186 187 188 So think about right now in your own life somebody who has been difficult for you. Could be a friend, could be a parent, could be a coworker. Somebody in your own life where every time you think of that person there is just this kind of contraction of energy. This is a good place to start. This is a good place to recognize that there is some work here in terms of freeing up some energy that is 223
189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 now being used for holding resentment. That same energy could actually be building your dream. It's unavailable to build the dream if it's holding the resentment. It's only if I free that energy that now I have the resource that's required to keep the field clean so that the dream can grow and that my energy is really available for it. I will tell you more about this later in our lessons, but I had the opportunity to spend some very close time with His Holiness the Dalai Lama; sat right next to him for three days in a row, three different times. In those discourses I heard him speak about the fact that we all have friends and friends are easy to love. Then we all have sacred friends. Sacred friends are those that are very, very difficult to love, those very, very difficult to forgive, those very, very difficult to wish well. Those, he said, are the sacred friends because they are the ones in the opportunity of that relationship that our hearts have the opportunity to really expand. He calls the Chinese government his sacred friend. 202 203 204 205 206 207 So the first part of learning this kind of forgiveness is that you separate the being from the behavior. We learn to separate the being that has participated in an activity that hurt us. We separate the being from the behavior. So when you think about each one of us as a spiritual being having a human experience, we come to recognize that we are all operating at various stages of awareness and at whatever 224
208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 stage of awareness, we are all learning how to experience and express love. The unskillful stages of learning how to express and experience love are very selfcentered, very self-centered. And in that self-centeredness we make choices that often cause a great deal of harm. What we learn to be true is that every one of us is either expressing love or calling for love with every action we take. When we are calling for love we are often very unskillful. Most gross forms of that unskillfulness is abuse, gossip, whatever. But the being, each one of us is a spiritual being surrounded by the developed state of our personality over years of experience learning about how we do things and who we are. So your practice, my practice is to learn to see past the person who did the behavior into the essence of who they are. 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 So we will begin by saying I make a commitment to experience the freedom of forgiveness and if I really want to experience of forgiveness then I am willing to work with my own thoughts about how I am holding this individual hostage in my own mind. There have been people in my life I felt so hurt that the way I was running my thoughts they were not safe to walk down the streets of my mind. Because I would attack them every time they would walk down the streets of my mind. But whenever I would think of a particular person who had hurt me the 225
227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 attack thoughts were just raging. The conversations in my head--have you ever had imaginary conversations with people who have hurt you? You are telling them off. You are making them pay. You realize how wrong they were and they realize it too now in this conversation and how right you were and they beg you for forgiveness. Well the energy that we are expending on someone like that, it's never going to happen. I've seen it happen in the movies but in my lifetime not a whole lot of people have gotten down on their knees and begged for forgiveness. It's a different way. 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 But this woman, she began to pray and see it differently. I used this story because it's a profoundly significant example of someone who experienced some of the most horrendous abuse. It covers all realms of physical. It was a person I actually knew saw and experienced and I saw her and the power of the transformation that happens with forgiveness. This is a literal, literal transformation. Here is a woman who couldn't have relationships at work. She flitted from job to job. She was insecure, she was unhappy. She was caught. Her father's behavior had happened twenty years before but she was caught now. And she made a decision. She made a decision to work at seeing things differently. To free herself from the bondage of that old hurt. And this is what the masters of all ages have said, that 226
246 247 248 249 250 251 there is no history that we have there is no circumstance that's bigger than the being that we are. That who we are is greater than anything that has ever happened to us. So she began to practice asking maybe I could see him differently. I don't know how to do that but I would like to see him differently. I would like it in my own mind when thoughts of him come to me I would like to be able to feel differently about that. 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 An idea did come to her that maybe what she really needed to do was make contact with him. At first she said absolutely not. She had not had any contact with him for seventeen years. But she so wanted to transform her life that she decided to follow that thought because it kept coming to her. It kept coming to her, make contact with him. Make contact with him. So she tracked down his address from an old acquaintance and she sent him a postcard that was scheduled to arrive around Father's Day. She wasn't feeling any good feelings about him yet but she wrote in words, she said for whatever we experienced in our past I would like to create a new beginning. So I would like for you to either call me or write me or perhaps we could even see each other and she sent the postcard. She came to me many different times and we were sitting and talking as the weeks ensued about how she had felt about sending that postcard. You know 227
265 266 what? Her father never responded. She knew from their mutual acquaintance that he had received her postcard but the man never responded. 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 So now she begins to feel betrayed again, but this time for a second time. When she had sent out this invitation to reconnect he rejected her. He was her father. He had abused her as a child and he rejected her as an adult. And then the most magnificent thing began to happen. She began to hold that there was a way of seeing him that was apart from his behavior. That somehow underneath and behind and within all this unskillful, hurtful, abusive behavior must be somebody who is so terrified of getting close. Someone who had no way of knowing how to communicate or how to live in love or how to relate that what happened for her was a feeling of compassion began to grow in her. Where for twenty plus years there had been nothing but fear, resentment, anger, hurt, simply by a willingness to ask for a kind of help from her higher power, a willingness to see things differently she began to be differently. She began to see differently. She began to think oh my gosh. I can't even imagine what kind of pain he must have been in. There was absolutely no difference in the world. Not one iota had changed in her world. Her father never changed, but she did. 283 228
284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 It's been about fifteen years now since I first knew this woman and I have see her grow, develop, unfold, expand and not only her joy but her abundance, her ability to live and to give. She met and fell in love with a wonderful guy. They got married. They had two kids. She has a career she enjoys. She had become a master gardener because she loves to work in her off time in her gardens. So many, many aspects of her life have blossomed. This was a woman who was once afraid to even leave her own apartment. Remember, forgiveness is not about the other person. Forgiveness is not an invitation to have anyone come and abuse you again. It's not even that whatever happened is ok. Forgiveness is a shift in perception that removes a block in us so that we can live in the freedom to experience and attract and live in the dreams that are the desires of our own hearts. 229