The Invisible Path That Leads To Forgiveness GFLive 12-14-24

It should be obvious, but it’s not: we can’t protect our heart and keep it open at the same time, any more than it’s possible to be covered by a shadow, and feel the caress of a sunbeam touching our face.

Transcript

The material that I'm presenting on Insight Timer this morning is really, I think if I'm correct, The third of what are five talks that I'm giving on this idea of preparing for love and to be loved. I'm not allowed to promote directly any material off of this site, But I can tell you if you go to my speaker's profile or you search me out online, You can discover about these five talks. You're welcome to join them, And I hope you will. All right. Let's get started here. Our topic is take the invisible path that leads to perfect forgiveness, And I'll ask Kate to bring up the first key lesson, And if you will, Let her post that without it being interrupted. Read with me. It should be obvious, But it's not. We can't protect our heart and keep it open at the same time any more than it's possible to be covered by a shadow and feel the caress of a sunbeam as it touches our face. A long time ago, I believe it was Alexander Pope, An 18th century mystic, But a minister and a very wise man who wrote in some essay of his, Perhaps you're familiar with it, To err is human, To forgive is divine. To err is human, To forgive is divine. What we're going to look at together here this morning and through the remainder of the talks that I'm going to give, The reason that at its root forgiveness is divine is because without love, There can be no forgiveness. Forgiveness that's whopped up inside of us because we should be a forgiving person or because in quotes, That's what Christ or Buddha would do is nonsense. That's not forgiveness. That's the support of a certain image we have of ourselves that is in conflict with the human part that is going to err because that's what it does. And the reason that forgiveness is divine and connected to love is because, How shall I say, Love has no past. And if we live in the past at all, We will never know forgiveness. So I have a couple of stories and some ideas to share with you. I know that not everyone is going to have a heart open enough to listen to what's being said, Because for so many of us, Our enemies are deeply rooted. But the roots of our enemies run only as deeply, Run only as deep as the sense of self they grant to us when we tap from those roots. And our hope is that we can cut those roots, Cut ourselves free from those roots by the power granted to us in the light of love, If you will, In the possibilities that rest within our own willingness to discover the truth of this problem that we have with forgiving others. Two stories, One really long story in a way, And then we'll get into it. So here's an aspirant like you or myself, And he comes seeking a master that he has read, Heard, Seen, Knows in some way, Perhaps only through intuition, That this man, This woman has achieved a certain level of development that the aspirant wishes. So the aspirant comes to the master and the master says, Why have you come here? What is it that you seek? And the young master, The would-be monk says, I've come looking for forgiveness. And the master says, Why? What is it that you have done against your neighbor? Excuse me, Master, What do you mean, What have I done against my neighbor? You don't understand. I don't need forgiveness. Well then why are you here? Monk says, I'm hoping you can tell me how I might forgive all of those people that have hurt me. Master looks at him and says, Go away. You will not find that here. Now, Because the young monk had something true in his heart and was unable after all those years, All of the ways in which one justifies or finds possibilities to console oneself for the conflict that we have with others and with life, The monk returns and is asking the same thing 10 times in different ways. And 10 times the master sends him away and then one day the monk comes back and the master says, For what reason have you come here? What is it that you seek? And the young monk says, I'm hoping to learn why. No matter how much I try, I have so much animosity in my mind and in my heart towards others that I seem to be incapable of finding any forgiveness for, Let alone the world that seems to act against me. I don't understand why I have this animosity and I'm unable to forgive. And with that, The master looks at the young monk and says, Yes, I see you. Please come in. The door is no longer locked to you. So, The first little part of this story, The first part of this young monk's journey is that he had to realize to some extent before he could be accepted into a true interior work that would help him bring about this divine forgiveness, Was that the problem didn't lie with people that he blamed and that he wanted, He wanted them to forgive him. Rather, He understood the problem lay within himself. Fast forward a few years, The young monk comes to the master and says, I've been here for quite some time and I don't seem to be any closer. I still get easily ticked off at the other monks. There are so many things and relationships that irritate me. I'm not any closer. Master says, Well, What do you want me to do about that? The young monk says, Well, I've heard amongst the other students a rumor about the fact that there is an ancient book in the library that has all of the rules, Even has the power in it to make it possible to forgive. But I honestly, I've looked completely through the library and I can't find anything there on the shelf close to what the others are saying. It's there. And the master says, Of course you can't. And then the young monk says, Master, I have a confession. I even stole into your personal library looking for this book. I couldn't find it there. The master says, Of course you can't. And the student says, Well, Then I don't understand. Where is this book? Where is this book that everyone speaks about? The master says, There is another world and this book has come from there. Well, Where? Show it to me, Please, I beg you. And the master says, I can't. Why not? The master says, Because you can only find this book in your heart. A long time ago, A beautiful man by the name of C. S. Lewis said that our task is not to seek for love, But rather to seek and find all of the barriers within ourselves that we have built against it. Our task is not to seek for love, But merely and rather to seek and find within ourselves all the barriers that we have built against it. No one believes that they have built barriers against love, Let alone barriers against the possibility of being able to forgive those or others in this life who have hurt us. We all believe in the images we have of ourselves. And by the way, The sweet sensations that come with identifying with these images. So our task and what I intend to do this morning, If I can get through all of it, Is to help us understand why, In fact, To forgive is divine. And why to forgive is divine is connected to this idea that Lewis was speaking of, That we're unable to see within ourselves that which has set itself against our brothers, Set ourselves against our husbands and wives, Even though at times we will say we love them dearly. You and I both know that come push to shove in an instantaneous moment, We are set against them angry, Judging them brutal in some way with the way we speak. How are we to understand this nature of forgiveness? As most of you know, I think anyway, If you've studied with me before, I'm a bit of a naturalist. I find so many of the great lessons about God, Love, About forgiveness in nature. And I draw upon that this idea as above, So below, Below being this world with its relationships, Where can I find the relationships in this world, A reflection of that which is above us and which contains the possibility of not consoling ourselves through some kind of comfortable conditioned ideas, But rather to find a relationship with that. And this is critical. That doesn't look for a way, It doesn't seek something to understand, To be able to forgive. It is built into the consciousness itself. So for this, I look at this, I look here, We have geese, We have all of these birds, I have 10 feeders, I love nature. Birds can fly endlessly through an open sky. The skies are always open to the birds, And there are no end to the skies through which these birds fly. As far as that bird flies, There's sky. Fish swim in the water, And it doesn't matter how great that distance is that they swim, There's no end to the waters through which they swim. We can see this. This is how it's built up. Their nature, Their character is not only a part of the open skies and the deep waters, But the open skies and the deep waters serve to strengthen these creatures and their relationship with their environment. If you can see this with me, It's an illustration that there is already in place a boundless relationship between birds and the sky, Between fish and water. It's already there. And if we can see something of that natural relationship, Then maybe we can extrapolate that through intuition, If that's the best we can do, And feel something of this beautiful, Timeless correlation where we come, If you will, To discover a certain secret love, This book of love that lives in us, Because just like the birds and the fish and the open skies and the endless waters, We too are in a relationship with what is made for us to reveal to us this endless relationship that we are made to have with an higher order of love, Where everything about, Everything that's taking place around us at all times, All of the people and the conditions, The people, The conditions, Those relationships, They are our open skies. They are our endless waters in which and through which we are empowered to come into a deeper and deeper correlation with this natural, In this instance, Supernatural relationship that we're intended to have through love with everyone and everything, And not something that we wamp up. That's why it's said in a thousand different ways that everything that we need, The unconditional love that alone can transform and not just heal any moment, But bring into that moment a resolution, A reconciliation with any partner we have with life. And by the way, Every partner in life, Every moment is already within us the capacity to understand and to forgive. It's built into the relationship. It's just that we don't understand that relationship yet. We're not present to it, And that's the purpose of these talks that I'm giving. So small transition. The fact is, And we have to discover it if we ever want to know anything about real forgiveness, Is that who or whatever may be our partner in any given moment is exactly who or what we need to realize the infinite possibilities that love has already sown into us. Let me bring up a key question. I've written them down so that you can share them with me. It'll help flesh out this early introduction to the material. Let's bring up the first key question, Please, Kate. Please don't pass over this. How is it that we've arrived at the conclusion that your inability, That my inability to forgive others is their problem? How did I ever come to the conclusion that my inability to forgive someone else is their problem? If you just pondered that one question long enough, You would realize, And I'll bring up the second question that is the partner to the first one, Kate, If you will, Whose whose limitation is our instant resistance to those who trigger it? Whose limitation is our instant resistance to those who trigger it that not only blames others for the bitterness of that ensuing suffering, But that also makes it nearly impossible to forgive others for it, Because suddenly we are awash with negativity, Filled with painful judgment, Negativity and judgment that we believe is the person's problem that we put that judgment on. Whose resistance is it? It is impossible for a human being to judge another human being without something summarily resisting whatever that other person has brought up inside of us. And so we blame the other person. We blame the condition for what the condition brings up in us and believes somehow or other that through this unconscious separation that takes place by an unconscious nature that would rather find fault with everyone and everything in the world than discover the fault lies within its own limitation. That our hope for forgiveness, Our hope to know anything about love must begin with being able to turn around in these moments to see that which we cannot see and which this nature does not want to see is true about ourselves. Think for a moment with me, If you will. You're driving in your car with your husband or your wife, You're at the office, You're in a business meeting, You're online in a Zoom call, Any one of 10, 000 different things. You walk into a restaurant to be seated, And with a casual glimpse that someone can give you a single word, A certain tone. And instantaneously, Whether you see it or not, You are transported out of that place. You're no longer standing in that restaurant. You're no longer sitting in a car. Your mind is completely captured by an instantaneous conflict that that unconscious nature has with whatever that reaction points to as being the source of this sudden suffering that's ripping through us. And that suffering that starts to rip through us, And it always does, Instantaneously confers a totally false idea. And what's the totally false idea that it creates? I bring a question to it. What is the distance between you and I when I'm angry towards you, When I have resentment towards you? What is the difference between you and I? And you're not even in a body anymore. You died 20 years ago. What is the distance between us that I look over this gulf, This great seeming space between us, You who are the source of my suffering, And I who must endure you? What is the source? What is that distance that I have, That you and I have between each other in those moments? I hope you'll agree there is this distance. Here's the answer. The distance between us in these moments is the difference that we imagine exists between us. I believe I'm different than you are. And not just different, I'm better than you are. I would never speak like that. I would never do something like they did. And in the moment where this judgment is unfolding, The summary resolution that whatever it is that's ruined this moment is because of you, When the fact of the matter is this difference between us doesn't exist without the judge who has made it. This difference between us does not exist without the judge, Without this unconscious human nature that belongs to nature herself and is really no different in one respect than all of the ways in which animals interact with each other. The only difference is that we have these primal urges that are justified or explained or rationalized away so that we're in an endless conflict with ourselves because we don't understand that we are a creature of two worlds, That we are indeed human and to be human is to err because we will always by default, Until certain things take place, Default into a relationship with an unconscious nature that always knows exactly what's wrong with everybody that sees the beam, The moat in everyone else's eye and can't see the beam in our own. But the fact is that this judge that believes it is other than the other person is not other than the other person, And that's what we don't know. And it's really the capacity that we have as human beings, A divine capacity, To actually begin to recognize what is true of you is true of I, That you and I, The whole idea of this separation is an illusion. This is why in that beautiful story, And I often recount it because of the depth and breadth of the beauty of the divinity in it, Even though it may not seem divine, It is. Here's Christ. He's walking through a marketplace and people are getting ready to stone Martha, Getting ready to stone this harlot who they blame back in the days. Still, The days haven't gone anywhere. Time has passed. Consciousness remains the same. She's slept with another man or something like that, And they're about to stone her, Because in the Jewish tradition back then, A person who performed that kind of deal had to be stoned to death. Do you really think that that barbarism from back then, You know, It's a big thing these days. Do you really think that barbarism has disappeared just because you and I can judge others that we see as insensitive? Do you know that every time that you get negative toward another human being, You have thrown a stone at them? It may not be a physical stone, But you throw that thought, You throw that anger, You can feel it because you're justified. You're not like that person. So what Christ said when these people were getting ready to stone this woman, He said, Hold on a second. This is a spiritual story, A truth tale. He said, Go ahead and do it. If you're without sin, Go ahead and do it. Throw the stone. And that beautiful story suddenly reveals that they put down their stones and they walked away. Why? Because when Christ said, If you're without sin, Cast the first stone, What He was saying, Really, You've done nothing that deserves forgiveness. You've never made a mistake. You've never sinned, Meaning you've never missed the mark. If you haven't, Have at it. But if you can see that you're just as likely, Maybe you didn't sleep with another human being that you shouldn't have, But you sleep with greed, You sleep with anger, You sleep with all of this animosity and the enemies that you've dragged through time with you. You're always in bed with them, Are you not? And yet you hate this person that you say is other than you are. Can you not see that you're exactly like this other person? Because if you can, That's the beginning of love. Because in that moment, Compassion is born. And the compassion is born out of a sudden sense of humility, Because I'm not what I've imagined myself to see be. Thank you, God, For helping me see that I'm not different than those I judge. People without power judge people with power because they want the power they don't have. And they believe that if they had power, They would be other than they are. And I can tell you for a fact, Because I've grown up in that world, Everyone who seeks power is powerless by the extent to which they seek it, Because something in them is empty, And they're trying to overcome or change that which they can't deal with any other way. They want authority over it. Love is authority, And it never casts a stone. Would you get angry at a three-year-old? Let's imagine you're holding a three-year-old. You're holding it close to your face, A certain bond. That three-year-old that you were holding suddenly reached out and socked you across the face. If that three-year-old socked you, Would you want to sock it back? Well, I hope that sounds silly to you. Of course I wouldn't want to sock it back. I might say, Sweetheart, You shouldn't do that, Maybe, If the child's capable of any form of correction. But I can guarantee you if a three-year-old socked me, I'm not going to go to bed and think it, I'm not going to go to bed and live for the next 24 years thinking about that three-year-old that socked me, And then when I meet him or her 20 years later at some party, Still bear the grudge that I do. You can see this, I trust. So, Why wouldn't you bear a grudge against a three-year-old? Because you know the child doesn't know what it does. The child's just a little tiny animal squirming around, Probably didn't even mean to sock. When you can see that the same holds true of every human being, Of every relationship that you have with life, That just like you, They too know not what they do. And the reason you know that they know not what they do, Is because you have seen it is true about yourself. I'm not saying that we pretend not to be hurt. I'm not saying that there haven't been moments in our lives when, Because the other human beings in our life didn't know what to do with all of the pain that they were in, That they didn't even know they were in, That they didn't out of that pain lash out, That they didn't make some passive aggressive comment built out of years of layers of resentment that have accrued, And that have only accrued because that man or woman never knew what to do with those negative reactions and that recurring sense of resentment. They never understood anything other than to find someone or something outside of themselves first to blame for that pain and then to try and somehow or other get rid of that pain by putting it off on another person. And God help us, And he must, If we're ever to be able to love and truly forgive. The only way that we know that is true about another human being is that we get, If we're willing to see that in ourselves time and time again, That in the moment where it is possible, Listen, To give oneself up for the sake of another. No greater love does a man or a woman have than he or she who lays down their life for their brother. This is an interior and an exterior story at the same time. My brother says this unbelievably cruel comment, Knowing through the years that perhaps I've had a certain sense of inadequacy, Or my sister, Whoever it may be in your relationships with others, Knows through time certain secrets of yours and there's certain resentment that they build, And they don't mean to speak the things they do. Something owns their tongue, Something moves their mark, Their mouth, Something takes control of their face, And the next thing they know they are this expression of an animosity that has built up inside of the heart that knows nothing of this book that if it were opened would reveal a mirror where one could see that one is exactly like one judges in others. Maybe not the exact same character, Obviously not. Maybe not the exact same quality, But in the interior world the measure, The difference, The distance between these characters and qualities is of no significance. The fact is that as long as, And here's the point if you will, As long as I have never understood this in myself and never been able to stand over these parts of myself and see them for what they are, Residue, Creatures, Characteristics dragged through time by a nature that won't let go of them, Because as long as it can cling to this conflict that it has inside of itself, Then it can find others to blame for it, And then it has that sense of continuity that is critical to this unconscious nature. But in order for this unconscious nature to continue with its animosity in the conflict that it's in, It must have something outside of itself to blame for its pain. And what I'm saying is that there must come a time, God willing, And not because you're trying to make this happen, But because you see, I've lashed out a thousand times, Maybe different words, Maybe more collected, Yeah that's beautiful, A more collected way to lash out at others, Where my image isn't impugned because inwardly I'm rationalized so thoroughly with the anger that I feel, And I'm so convinced that you have caused it, That there's no sense of myself as being mistaken here, It is you who are mistaken. And in that moment, If we can do it, If we can get that far to see this is true, What we say is true of you is true of ourselves, In that moment we are brought into another order of forgiveness, Another kind of love. Because our capacity to reflect that condition that we enter into, And that enters into us at once, Is to experience something that I've, Words I've mentioned before, Our infinite capacity to realize perfect similarity, Our infinite capacity to realize perfect similarity, Not just with that person, But to realize a perfect similarity with the unconscious nature that harbors this resentment, That harbors this pain, That cultivates it and nourishes it, With each and every circumstance by which that nature is allowed to express itself, By pointing to and blaming others for the pain that it is complicit in creating and continuing. Kate, Let's bring up the next key lesson, Please. It helps to summarize what we're looking at. Read along with me, Everybody. Forgiveness is born of our infinite capacity to realize perfect similarity, And in that realization, The ability to transcend the immediate but false sense of self that believes it is different than what it judges and blames for the unwanted experience of itself. Forgiveness is the infinite capacity to realize perfect similarity. Forgiveness is the moment where we realize the distance between us is this imagined difference between us, A difference that's imagined so that I can be the one who sits in judgment, So that I can be the one who understands what you don't, When underneath that judgment is pain, And underneath that pain is a misunderstanding of who and what we are. But within that pain and in that misunderstanding dwells the capacity, Lives this book that is only in the human heart, That once opened, Much like a mirror reveals to the one who is willing to look into it, That what I'm seeing in you, The pain that you're in that makes you pounce, That if I didn't have that exact same pain in me, I couldn't pounce back. I couldn't hold your feet to the fire unless there was a flame in me that I don't see, That burns me even as I blame you for the feeling of that pain. When we can see, To whatever extent it's possible, This is not small stuff I'm talking to you about. When we can see that we, Too, Know not what we do. I mean, If you knew that when you're with your sister, That when you're with some family member for a holiday gathering, Why do you think there's so much kind of love and hatred the whole idea of these family gatherings? Because you know these people that you're going to meet with, They're bringing into that family dinner, Sitting there with all of the abundance, They're bringing with them the poverty of a soul that still believes that its emptiness and its pain is because of what others have done to it. So in the face of this abundance, This massive poverty that expresses itself as this pain that looks around the table, Anytime somebody doesn't agree with what you said, Or God forbid challenges you, And up comes this pain. Well, Why did they challenge you? Because they're a happy human being? No, Because in my mind, I think they think they know better than I do. But no one knows who's better. No one knows what is better when we are bitter between ourselves. Bitterness is the proof that we don't know what the better path is. So we can begin to see this. I know that you don't know what you're doing. I want to go with the part of me reacting to this pain I feel. I want to go into my mind and say, You've always been like that. Something in me wants to drag me, The gravity of all this, These strange problems in the past, Sucking a human being into that world, Into that human consciousness. That is still so thoroughly divided that it never knows what it's doing, Not just to others, But to itself before it takes any action at all. So that I begin to see I'm as much a captive of this unconscious nature as you are. And part of this unconscious nature wants to lash out at the pain that you express because you're a captive of it. We struggle not with flesh and blood, Said St. Paul, But with powers and principalities, With governing bodies that live inside of this unconscious nature that are intent on keeping that government, Those laws, Those rules in place so that I can be the authority that judges, Not you. You who judge me don't understand that you're misjudging me. We can see that everyone lives under the same throng that we do. And when we see that, To whatever extent we're willing to, That we live under all under the sway of this unconscious nature. It's the beginning of something that we cannot bring about for ourselves. Who wants to, Who wants to suffer for the sake of another human being, Let alone for the sake of ourselves, When the suffering engenders this moment in which I have to give up something that I don't know what it will be replaced with. And then comes the greatest lesson of all, Perhaps, Is that when you see that you can no longer be with others, That you can no longer carry around as you do, Even laying in bed at night, Reliving resentments, Going back over regrets, Where somehow maybe you did something to some other human being and you can't forgive yourself for it. Do you know when it becomes possible to forgive yourself? When you see with great clarity that just like you blame others for what seems to be unforgivable, They know not what they do, And you knew not what you did in that point in time. I said the worst things, I did the worst things. And because the nature that acted out what it did wants to continue itself at the expense of you seeing that that nature is not you, So that it might be given up, It will breed that which can't be forgiven in you. Because it will forever sit in judgment of yourself, Just as it sits forever in judgment of everyone else around you. It does the exact same thing, But we don't know it does because there's a certain consolation, Isn't there, In being unforgivable. Because being unforgivable means I get to keep living over and over again the experience where I did the unforgivable thing so that I can judge myself and live with that conflict and believe that that sense of myself proves that I'm not that which I despise, When the fact of the matter you are not what you despise, Nor is what you despise you. It belongs to this nature that we don't know anything about. To see that this is true to any extent of all is the beginning of a humility born of love, And without love there can be no true humility. Because true love reveals that which inside of us we've yet to see, That I'm not any different than anyone else I see. Perhaps they're off the leash. That's a good metaphor. Doesn't it bother you when you see others off the leash, Doing and saying whatever it is? Not that they should do terrible things, But, You know, Here's this person, Why are they, They're always giving themselves everything. How can they be like that? They're always doing, How can they be like that? They're off the leash. And you know what the problem is? You know why you judge them? Because something in you wants to get off of the leash, But something in you judges you so thoroughly, It holds that leash, It keeps that collar around your neck. I want you to know that what the people that you see off of the leash are not off the leash. They're on a different kind of leash. Something else is capturing them. Something else judges them and makes them do the things they do. They're running from judgment just as you are. And when at last you understand you need never run, Not only from those that you judge or from the judgment of yourself, You begin to have a compassion. I got to bring this to an end. There's this, Something Rumi, I will paraphrase it as best I can. He said, A thousand half-loves, Yeah, A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home, Or maybe to make one whole heart. But you get the idea. A thousand half-loves must be forsaken, Must be sacrificed to make one heart whole, To take the whole heart home. A thousand half-loves, That's what we're talking about. I have to recognize in these moments that it is a half-love that judges others, Not the proof that I have love. It is a half-love that judges myself, Not a whole love, Because whole love does not judge. It maketh the sun to shine on good and evil alike. So take these ideas that I've shared with you, And God willing, You can listen to the rest of the material and understand that whatever it is that I can't forgive in you is my limitation. And to recognize that limitation every time it comes up as some kind of seeming power to prove that I am above and beyond those that I judge, To see all of that at once is the birth of a certain new kind of understanding. And the last key lesson is this. Compassion is the flower. Forgiveness is its fruit. Love the divine vine. Compassion is the flower. Compassion is the flowering of the whole of the realization of this relationship that we are presently not conscious of. And out of the whole of that realization comes this forgiveness, The fruit of it. But that fruit and that flower belong to love. You work at this, Put all of this together, And you will start to see these things that will—they're not going to release you instantaneously from this summary judgment, This summary reaction. That takes a very long time. But it will turn those reactions and that judgment into something that transforms you, As well as transforming your relationships with others, Because now you have learned something about the true nature of forgiveness that is born of love.