| Answer
from Jesus:
Forgiveness is one of the
most misunderstood concepts. The true meaning of forgiveness is to “set
free,” yet most people simply do not understand who they are sitting
free when they forgive. They think that by forgiving someone who has
harmed them, they are somehow setting that person free from responsibility
or letting them off the hook. This simply is not correct.
Even in the Bible you find the statement,
Dearly beloved,
avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is
written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord
(Romans 12:19).
This simple statement refers
to a cosmic law which is only partially explained in the Bible. In Eastern
religions this law is called the law of Karma, and by science it is
known as the law of action and reaction. As I explain throughout this
website, everything you do is done with God’s energy. When you
harm another person, you are misqualifying a certain amount of God’s
energy. God has created an impersonal law which insures that any impulse
of misqualified energy you have ever sent into the universe will be
returned to your soul. In other words, no soul can ever escape the consequences
of its actions. Most Christians do not understand the ramifications
of this law, and the main reason is that my teachings about karma
and reincarnation were deliberately removed from Christianity.
This is one of the main reasons why even many Christians cannot fully
forgive those who have harmed them—even though I told people to
forgive seventy times seven. They simply cannot let go of the need to
punish others or hold them accountable, and the reason is that they
do not understand how God can repay other people. Most people have observed
that some people commit atrocities and yet die without seemingly having
been punished for it. The explanation is, of course, that you will not
always have the return of the misqualified energy, your karma, in the
current lifetime. Yet you will inevitably experience a return of that
energy. God’s impersonal law, will repay.
When you understand the impersonal law of karma, you see that God is
not an angry and judgmental God who is looking at every action you commit,
seeking to punish you by sending you to Hell. If Christians truly understood
the cosmic law that no one can escape the consequences of their actions,
they might make great strides in terms of overcoming their erroneous
and idolatrous image of an angry God.
Equally important, they could also make great strides in terms of overcoming
the idolatrous concepts about forgiveness. When you realize how the
law of God works, you see that you have absolutely no need whatsoever
to punish another human being or to somehow hold them responsible. In
other words, many people feel that by holding a grudge against another
human being, they are supposedly helping to hold that person accountable
for his or her actions. When you understand God’s law, you see
this is completely unnecessary. God is perfectly capable of holding
another soul accountable for its actions, and God does not need your
assistance in terms of doing this.
A separate issue is the obligation to protect other people from those
who repeatedly commit wrong actions, and I have spoken about this in
more detail elsewhere.
My point here is that if you believe that God is incapable of holding
another soul responsible, and therefore you need to hold a grudge or
even take action to punish the other person, then you are actually assuming
that you know better than God or that you are somehow acting as God’s
avenging angel. These beliefs are erroneous and dangerous for your spiritual
growth.
The simple fact is that when you hold a negative image or negative feelings
toward another, you are creating a bond of energy between you. If you
think about this logically, you might ask yourself why a rational person
would want to create a bond of energy between himself and a person who
has harmed him? Obviously, no enlightened person would want to do this.
You would want to be completely free of the other person so that you
can move on with your life in a positive direction. The key to your
own freedom is to completely forgive the other person. My point is that
in forgiving another, you are actually setting yourself free.
I am well aware that some people have been so severely hurt by another
that they have fragmented their souls or have scars in their psychology.
As I explained in other sections, such wounds in the soul
or such emotional
scars simply cannot be healed in an instant. So I am not hereby
saying that every human being who has been hurt by another should be
able to instantly forgive that person.
If you have been severely hurt, you should use appropriate tools to
either heal your soul or your emotional body from all wounds. What I
am pointing out is that as this healing process advances, there will
come a point when no further healing is possible until you completely
forgive the other person. One might say that total forgiveness is the
ultimate outcome of the healing process. Yet for those who are able
to (partially) forgive from the very beginning, it can also be the best
possible beginning of the healing process.
So in short, if you are truly concerned about your spiritual progress,
then you should indeed forgive others. You should also forgive yourself
and you should forgive your God for any harm ever committed against
you, either by God or by religious institutions or people in the name
of God.
You say that “the only sin is a perception of fear rather than
love.” You are on the right track with this statement, but I would
prefer to say that the only sin is a sense of separation from your source,
a sense of separation from love. It is the sense of separation that
gives rise to fear, and from that fear springs all sins.
Your poem is beautiful, but forgiveness also has an active side. You
cannot simply wait for forgiveness to happen as if by magic. You should
set the stage for forgiveness to happen by healing your wounds and by
raising your understanding. Keep seeking understanding until you receive
the intuitive insight that, in a flash, makes you realize that forgiveness
is truly the highest form of self-interest. You suddenly see that by
forgiving everyone and everything, you are setting yourself see from
the bonds that are keeping you trapped in a self-created prison in your
mind and in a material prison on planet Earth.
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Copyright
© 2004 by Kim Michaels |
