The Gift of Forgiveness

What you will read here is a gift. It is a gift from me to you. Yet, I do not lose the gift I give you, and both of us will gain from my gift to you. You will not benefit because my loss; you will benefit because you will have been given something which you did not have before. This concept is very different from the generally accepted idea that someone loses whatever he gives, and somebody else gains by receiving the gift. Such "gifts" can only be a bid for more valuable returns; a loan with interest to be repaid in full; a temporary lending, meant to be a pledge of debt to be repaid with more than was received by him who took the gift. It strips all meaning from the gifts you give. For giving has thus become a source of fear; fear of the repercussions, fear of the invisible price tag the gift comes with.

A gift can only be a true gift, if there is no loss to the giver, and both receiver and giver gain from the gift. This means that you, as the giver, are better off when you give; you receive benefit when you give. In short, you give yourself what you give another. As you benefit from the gift you give to another, there can be no fear about re-payment or returns.

No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first that you have it in your own possession. The world believes that in order to possess a thing, you must keep it. However, it is only by giving that you recognise that you have received in the first place. This is the proof that what you have is indeed yours. And in order for you to keep it and to make it grow even more powerful, you must give it away, because by giving it to someone else you give it to yourself; over and over again.

However, we perceive others so different and separate to ourselves and you think that their behaviour has no bearing on your own thoughts, their attitudes have no effect on your own, and their appeals for help are in no way related to your own. You think that they can sin, that you can judge their sin, and yet remain separate from condemnation and remain at peace. Equally, when you "forgive", when you "give pardon" to an other, there is no gain to you directly. You give charity to one unworthy in order to make the point that you are better. His sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you, and although he has no claim on your forgiveness, you hold out the "gift" to him. It is very kind of you, but has no value beyond pure charity - a hand out to the misfortunate!

If this is what true forgiveness is, then forgiveness has no grounds on which to rest. It is an eccentricity in which you sometimes choose to indulge. Yet it remains your right to let the sinner not escape the justified repayment for his sin. The sin you forgive is not your own. The person who committed the sin is totally separate from yourself. If that is the case you can not gain from "giving" him your forgiveness. The only way this is possible, is for the giver and receiver to be one. But that means that the sin which was committed has to be yours as much as someone else's. Forgive someone else and you forgive yourself. Now forgiveness does have meaning.

The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite and release from pain, which can only come through forgiveness. The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, only sins. It wants forgiveness, yet it sees no hope. It wants escape, yet can conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere. The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair. Yet, it regards its judgement of the world as irreversible, and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair.

An unforgiving thought is one which make a judgement that it will not raise to doubt. The mind is closed and will not, can not allow doubt to enter. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. When you don't forgive, you must judge, as you must justify your failure to forgive. Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you, has actually never occurred. By "giving pardon" to sins, you prove they are real. If sins are real, then a human being can alter reality into whatever he wants it to be. In Truth, there is only one reality, not millions organized by individual wishes from wanting souls. Forgiveness, therefore, sees that there was no sin in the first place. And in that view all your sins are forgiven.

We are confused by this changing world we apparently live in, its twists of fortune and its bitterness, and all the "gifts" it merely lends, only to take them away again. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusionary deceptions. It attacks, and then attacks again. This threat brings anger, anger makes attack seem honestly provoked, and righteous in the name of self-defence. Who would defend himself unless he thought he was attacked, that the attack was real, and that his own defence could save him?

You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening. A sense of threat is an acknowledgement of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has the power to force you to defend yourself. All the world structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve to preserve its sense of threat.

But what is it you are defending?

It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself and needing your defence. What else but your body has such frailty that constant care and deep concern is needed to protect its little life? Yet, it is not the body that can fear, nor can it be a thing of fear. It has no needs but those which you assign to it. The body is in need of no defence. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it can not fill, to purposes beyond its scope. The body only starts to break down, to decay when it is asked to perform duties it can not do.

Defend the body and you have attacked the mind. For you have seen in it faults, weaknesses and limits from which you think the body must be saved. It is these thoughts that are in need of healing as the Mind does not have any weaknesses nor limitations. You need to forgive yourself for your mistaken belief, and the body will respond with health when your thoughts have been corrected and replaced with the truth.

Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Look for freedom in a body, and you are looking in a place where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered in its presence. Because if the mind was indeed in the body, it would be extremely vulnerable. It is the ego which holds the body dear and lives in it, not the mind.

Let's therefore free ourselves of the illusion that we are a body, and that harm done to the body is an attack on our Self. Without this notion it is madness to think that harm has been done, that something happened at all. If nothing happened, it is easy to "forgive and forget".

Forgiveness, the most beautiful gift anyone can give or receive. To receive forgiveness, it is essential you give it to yourself and everyone else.