Clear Path to Peace

Forgiveness is a link between me, you and freedom.  Every time I forgive, I release my pain and make room for Love.  It isn’t about being weak or relinquishing power, it’s about letting go of what hurts … for me, and for you, if you choose.

Forgiveness, in a radical sense, is for all of us. For more peace in our hearts and in the world. For a new beginning.  That’s what this time is all about – new beginnings and fresh starts.  How can we be fresh and new when we’re carrying boatloads of past pain, anger and resentment?  We can’t.  We need to clean house.  Make space. Allow the grace of the Holy Spirit to wash us in the River of Love. Our world, and our sanity, depends on it.

On our forgiveness path, we examine many aspects of our emotional life. For instance, what is the difference between sympathy and empathy, and how do they fit into a life dedicated to generosity and healing?

We are often taught that sympathy is the same thing as love. “Oh, you poor thing!” = “I really care about you!” My mother taught me that from the time I was about 4 years old. Agreeing that sympathy is love became the normal way that we interacted with each other.

But when we’re having sympathy for someone, it’s not respectful of who and what he or she is. We might be giving caring action or words, yet we think that people in general are victims of their circumstances and that, to receive sympathy, there must be something terribly wrong with them. These thoughts create a distortion and an imbalance. Sympathy actually lowers the energetic vibration of our interaction together, because it is based on falsehood instead of truth. There isn’t much room for real love to enter.

In sympathy, there is no respect for our inner divinity, which everyone shares. Instead, there is a belief that our outer circumstance is, in fact, reality. That’s a mistake. A Course in Miracles says, “I am not a victim of the world I see.” (WB 48)

When this error is corrected, then we realize that we are in fact all equal beings, no matter what the circumstances. We can reach out with compassion to simply join with our friend, to support with love while accepting whatever the situation is in the moment. This is empathy. It doesn’t need the drama, excuses or pity that comes with sympathy. Instead, we simply open to the possibility that there is a perfection beyond what we can perceive, and we are all sharing it all the time – in sickness or health, pleasure or pain.

How can we be more generous with ourselves and others, by giving empathy instead of sympathy? Our forgiveness path requires that we make the switch – consciously – so that we can respect our inner light and reach to it, past our circumstances in life.  Instead of saying to each other, “Oh, poor baby!” we say, “I know you can wake up out of this, no matter what it is.” Sounds like real friendship to me.

Here’s a quote from the wonderful book, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd.

“People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It’s that hard. If God said in plain language, “I’m giving you a choice, forgive or die,” a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.”

That’s how we usually think about forgiveness. What Kidd is pointing to is not that forgiveness is hard to do, but that we often don’t want to do it. It seems hard because of our PRIDE.  We let pride get in the way. We’d rather stay right than come into peace.

With honesty, openness and willingness (H.O.W.), true forgiveness melts pride, attachment and stubbornness. It is the bridge that takes us from fear to love, the path that brings us home.

There are so many religions and philosophies – a whole world to choose from.

The Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, famously said, “My religion is kindness.” For me, my religion is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is saturated with kindness. It also welcomes deep honesty and a compassionate look at the difficulties we create together in this life. Focusing past pain and trauma, we forgive anyway. Why? To directly experience peace and freedom.

Forgiveness is the ultimate energetic transmission of soul friendship – both with ourselves and with our brothers and sisters throughout the world.

As I’ve explored in earlier posts, what I mean by “forgiveness” is not traditional forgiveness, which assumes there is a victim forgiving a perpetrator because a sin was committed. Instead, it is the forgiveness that is expertly and exhaustively delineated in A Course In Miracles, and also offered in Colin Tipping’s work of Radical Forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the voluntary realization that on the level of truth, no sin was ever committed Inside this constant Reality, we are ALL equal, eternal and wise beings made of light, and nothing wrong ever happened.

(This is not to say that there aren’t earthly consequences for committing violence – there are, and there need to be. The pain of violence can be healed for everyone involved, including the offering of community support, education and compassion. Having worked in prisons, I understand that we can’t skip these steps. All levels need to be included here.)

With forgiveness, we release the emotional constriction of guilt and shame that goes along with any attack…both our own and others’.

This is why forgiveness may be seen as a spiritual path. Every time I forgive, I realize the edges are friendly, and all my misery is self-created (no matter what it looks like). I open up to conscious awareness of my eternal nature as divine love.

With each act of forgiveness, I rise in love – shedding fear and the mistaken perception of being separate from my world and my human family.

I’ve noticed that when I forgive, I’m much more intimate with this moment. It’s like I’m molting a layer of skin, and everything feels fresh and new. I’m literally taking off the veils….doing a lovely strip tease and getting naked before God, and before myself, and before the whole of creation.

This is a very juicy spiritual path. It’s the only path I want …full of revelation, release, healing and inspiration. How about you? Are you kind and juicy…kinda juicy?

There are so many reasons to forgive….and by forgive, I mean the kind of forgiveness that is radical, spiritual, and unapologetically universal. When we forgive this way, we do it for our own internal freedom.  We do it because we crave Reality with a capital R, and Truth with a capital T. We forgive for the sake of all creation, including ourselves. We do it to heal our memories and to begin anew….to be born anew into this fresh and innocent moment.

My journey into forgiveness really began with my mother. She was an amazing, beautiful and talented woman. She was loving and kind and a good mother. And…she was very, very afraid and sad. So afraid and sad, in fact, that she did not want to be here on planet Earth. And after a while, when I was 23, she took her life. She said, “Enough.” and flew away to be with the angels.

At the time of her death, I was pregnant with my first child. It was such a shock that she killed herself, and even more so because I was 8 months pregnant….and single…and almost penniless. It was a time when I really needed my mother, yet her message in death was that life was not worth living. 

How could I make sense of this? How could I go on with life, when my own mother told me that creation, and living, and even survival were just not worth it? Why couldn’t she stay to help me with my new mothering? And how could I cope with all the feelings that came up in me, including relief that her craziness, fear and sadness were gone?

I gave birth to my incredible daughter and lavished my love upon her. It took me eight years to open the emotional box into which I’d placed my grief, confusion, anger and disillusionment. I was blessed to be at a retreat called the Enlightenment Intensive, which is modeled on zen meditation practice done by monks in zen monasteries. I let myself crack open there, and I felt the tender emotions that I’d been afraid to feel before.

Maybe you’ve had the thought – “If I go into those memories and feelings, I’ll drop into a bottomless pit, and I’ll never, ever be able to crawl out again.  I better not go there.”   

I’ve had that thought, too. I know exactly how it feels to stand at the edge of the pit, peering with dread into the oblivion that seems so dark and scary and mysterious. So it took a bit of courage to allow myself to let go … and trust that somehow, I’d survive. I needed to fall, and I let myself take the plunge. 

I didn’t really think of what I was doing as forgiveness at the time. I just wanted relief from all the pain I was feeling.

Another eight years went by….and then I discovered the work of Colin Tipping and Radical Forgiveness. At my first seminar, it was clear to me that there were more layers to peel away before I could truly be free.

Through Radical Forgiveness, I learned to find the “gift in the situation” and embrace my mother just as she was, just as she is. A divine, eternal being of Light. Just like me.

Her life and her death were just what I needed for my awakening. Her life and death pointed me toward the Divine, and especially into the lap of the Divine Mother.  I discovered that the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah, will never leave me…even if my earthly mother needed to go into her next cycle. I could finally be at peace with all the events that happened, and even better, see how they served me in ways I needed.

Of course, what I just wrote is a really short version of the story. But you don’t need more details, and they aren’t important. What is important, and revolutionary, and evolutionary…is the bridge of forgiveness as it is taught in A Course In Miracles. The bridge is offered by the Holy Spirit to bring us – consciously – to the innocence and health that never left us.  I left….or so I thought….then I walked the bridge and came home.

This coming home is why we forgive. The journey offers us depth, compassion and understanding of the human condition. It leads to the peace that passeth all understanding…available to every person at every moment. This is the mercy of the Divine, and the promise that was, is, and ever shall be kept for us.

I walk with you on the bridge of forgiveness, grateful for your company.

Here is a poem I wrote about releasing grievances.  How can we live in peace if we hold on to pain and hurt from the past? Every day I see ways in which I can release deeper…and love more.  Poetry is one way to express this.  Hope you enjoy it as you bring more forgiveness into your life. 

Fishing

I rescind

my recriminations

and revoke

my grievances

scooping them into a grand net

and hauling them

heavy and teeming

as they are

back aboard ship

like a great catch

of haddock or snapper

thousands of grudges

flapping their tails

and gasping for air

exposed – in plain view –

dying on the deck

of my schooner

gulls hungry overhead

I have sent into this world

many angry thoughts

and I’m fishin’ em all back

to be given

as prasad

as sacrament

an offering

returned to the God of the Sea

    — Ana Holub  

“Do I need a safe space where I can begin to let go of that which is poisonous within me – because of what I have done, because of what was done to me, because of what I failed to do? Do I need to begin a journey of forgiveness for the sake of my own freedom?”
— Father Michael Lapsley, Institute for the Healing of Memories

Father Lapsley is a great inspiration in the area of forgiveness. Active in the civil and social rights movement in South Africa during apartheid, Father Lapsley received a letter bomb that blew off his hands, nearly blinded him and impaired his hearing. He continues his work in South Africa, teaching people to release their personal and collective pain and come into forgiveness for the “sake of our own freedom”.

In South Africa, the work of his organization is the closest I found to my work in the United States. I had the honor of meeting Father Lapsley during a visit to Capetown in 2007. He has truly deepened his own spiritual process through what he has received in this life, and he readily shares it with others.

I give thanks for the blessing of knowing that Father Lapsley is here on Earth, generously giving what he knows to be true. There are many inspiring people quietly living their lives for the benefit of all of us. Father Lapsley is one. To support his work click here:Institute for the Healing of Memories

Everyone wants to experience giving and receiving love. We want an experience of connection; it’s how we are hardwired. Yet there are many times when we seem to hurt each other instead, either consciously or unconsciously. The crux of the matter here is that we allow emotions of fear, doubt, anger, hurt and sadness to get in our way. The emotions form energetic knots that call for our attention, and for release. They arise in our consciousness and block the natural flow of love and peace which defines our true nature. What to do?

There are many processes that support deeper clarity and peace. Prayer, meditation, physical exercises, massage….the list is long and varied. One of the most effective and valuable processes that we can employ is forgiveness. According to A Course In Miracles , “Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation.” Forgiveness counseling clears our emotional pain and brings us to a direct perception of unity and peace. When we add breath techniques, body wisdom and intuitive guidance, we give ourselves a superlative opportunity for spiritual growth. With forgiveness, emotions that disturb our peace are cleansed. We feel renewed and ready for a fresh, creative beginning.

click here for more information: www.anaholub.com