Reason
#3: You want to be a better Christian. (Or Buddhist, or Yogi,
or ....)
Unconditional
Love and Forgiveness is the central message of Christianity,
and a key concept in other great world religions as well. Jesus
spoke of these principles many times, and walked this earth as
a blazing lamp of spiritual energy, kindling the fire of love
and Spirit in everyone he met. From the cross, he modeled the
ultimate act of forgiveness when he asked his Father to forgive
those who were torturing and killing him. He told us to love
one another as He had loved us, and to forgive our brother, seventy
times seven times if necessary. But he didn’t tell us how
to do it. I know many Christians who are very dedicated to their
path, and yet perennially frustrated with the typically human
petty hate and anger that plagues them from time to time. They
wonder, how do I love a person, Jesus, if he appears
to me to be immoral or just terribly annoying? Why must
I forgive my brother every time if he’s being a jerk and
hurting people? Why did you make such a big point about this
and leave us this mandate to forgive, when it’s just so
hard to do?
When
I was growing up in the Catholic Church, I heard about unconditional
love and forgiveness many times, and I knew that a good person
is someone who loves her enemy and forgives everyone who hurts
her. I was taught that forgiveness is the right thing to do.
But I never understood why it’s good to forgive, and it
felt to me like one more pressure, one more “should” that
I carried from my weighty religious training. I felt guilty for
being unable to forgive people, and yet resentful about being
told so often that I ought to do it. No one ever told me that
it would be beneficial to me personally, and no one ever demonstrated
to me how to do it. Now that I’ve experienced and witnessed
the freedom of forgiveness so many times, I think I understand
why Jesus made such a big point of it.
My
theory about Jesus’s focus on forgiveness is that He wasn’t
trying to pressure us to be good people and spare others the
brunt of our hate. Rather, the truth is that in His tremendous
compassion and love, Jesus could see that our hate is so very
hurtful to us. I picture Him looking out at the crowd, at face
after face that was shadowed with pain, loss, health issues,
disappointment in life, and toxic resentment. "Ouch!" He
thought. "They are carrying such terrible burdens inside — unnecessarily
--- and they don’t even know it! They’ve got to let
go of that stuff if they are ever going to experience the kingdom
of Heaven within themselves. As a healer, Jesus could see
that resentments cause illness, lack of harmony and poverty of
the spirit." When he exhorted everyone to live the ways
of love and forgiveness, I think he was saying something to the
effect of, “Come on, kids – lighten up! It doesn’t
have to be this hard. You’re only hurting yourselves. Let
go and live the new Law I give you: Love one another. You’ll
feel better.”
Christianity
is not the only religion that comes to life and greater vibrancy
with the practice of real forgiveness. The tools and experience
of forgiveness will help a Buddhist deal with the emotional pain
of impermanence in our personal lives, and truly live the principle
of non-attachment. A yogi will find the experience of union with
God’s Light within, if their “within” spaces
are not clogged up with stagnant energy and blocks in the chakra
system from old wounds that never healed. A Jewish person can
consciously choose to “clean house” at Rosh Hashana
if they know how to use the Eight Steps to clear up a relationship
that got messy in the last year - atonement happens. Unconditional
Love and Forgiveness are aspects of Universal Law, and every
great religion has intuitively named this in its own way in its
own time for its people.
When
we utilize an effective method of forgiveness to let go of a
hurt from the past, and we experience light and liberation flooding
in to our lives in the present, there is a dawning appreciation
of the real gift in the teachings of Jesus and other masters,
when they encourage us to forgive. Unconditional love and forgiveness
are spiritual practices, and spiritual practices are good habits
that we adopt in order to be healthy and to feel the joy of connection
to Spirit, day by day.
Forgiveness:
Do it for you.
