From our correspondents
Forgiveness - Part II
„I have forgiven one person, but I hate another from the bottom of my heart...” We can hear such words from people who think they have understood what forgiveness means. However, let us pose a question: is it possible to speak about forgiveness and hate sombody at the same time? Is forgiveness possibly a kind of business we want to do, or is it something completely different, much greater and nobler?
To approach the reply to this question, let us imagine a boy climbing up a high pear tree to be able to watch his surroundings from its top. What makes this ordinary example interesting and instructive for us in relation to forgiveness?
Especially the fact that after the gradual rise through the individual branches the boy is going to obtain a sufficient overview, he will be able to observe everything that is below him. Not only his scattered favourite toys, but also his neighbour´s dog, which might have been barking at him angrily many a time. It is not possible for the image of a broader view to be different.
What results from this is easily comprehensible to everyone. In reality it is not possible to love one person and hate another one, because if we compare climbing a pear tree to gaining a high degree of life overview, which is a presumption of unbiased perception and of forgiveness, then from this overview (similarly to a boy who can – from his position up in the treetop – forgive the dog that often pursued him barking) we will also perceive everything around us in a broader way. Friends as well as those who hurt us, or at least we think that they try to hurt us.
Considering the consequences, forgiveness is a state of inner refined perception of reality as an impartible whole in the context of all beings and all phenomena, whereas its value consequently becomes evident in interpersonal relationships. In fact, it is utterly independent from them and it can show in the person´s inward experiencing even if he or she is not in a conflict with a neighbour.
Nevertheless, forgiveness, conditioned by the high attitude of overview regarding life situations, has nothing in common with the passive tolerance of boundless vices of characterless people, because it would be inappropriate compliance, supporting their impetuous decline. The contrary is true! In the interest of the good it is sometimes even inevitable to prove determined strictness if the peaceful way was not passable, yet in decisive severity the power of the overview of spiritual maturity, thus complete liberation from the feelings of self-pity, must dominate. In the opposite case, forgiveness would be just a mask of cowardliness, because it would be deprived of its constructive effect. Yet unfortunately, many people have not understood this and so in the assumption that they forgive others they are silently rushing towards their own failure in the fulfilment of educational roles in relationships, which makes them suffer from health breakdown and wasting the time measured for them to use it properly.
An example of the inverted form of forgiveness is for instance a partner relationship in which the woman has seriously fallen ill with a malign cancer tumor. When she learned about it, she told her husband and both of them were very frightened. No modern treatment had been effective until they realized the true cause of the disease´s rise. What did it consist in?
During the first years of their living together, the man was very aggressive and oversensitive when his wife dared to “step in his way” while he was pursuing his selfish and reckless wishes. For some time she was successfully facing this, but – because it had cost her a lot of life power and also pain – she finally decided to keep silent and tolerate everything in the spirit of “forgiveness” just not to throw her husband off “balance” by chance and to maintain peace in the family. She was actually very successful in this... seen from the outside. However, in her soul it was simmering more and more (holding back the feelings led to the production of toxic substances, poisoning the organism) until a serious disease broke out, itself being a sign of oppression.
Now let us ask a question: was the woman´s attitude real forgiveness if it essentially hurt her in its consequence and it did not help the man to re-value his authoritative conduct which he was supposed to learn to control? And eventually, what worth does it have that occasionally he generously accompanies his wife to various examinations if he had hurt her himself and in his core he had not changed at all? Yet if the woman died prematurely and could not fufill her own life goals, which she was born for, she would karmicly burden not only herself, but at the same time, in the effects of the Laws of Creation, the man would be karmicly burdened as well, because he had his share in it despite the fact that he knew nothing about it. The same as anybody else, he also had the possibility to develop spiritually and to recognize the needs of others, too.
However, it was not wanted as correct that the woman should protect the preservation of her own pride and health by invoking useless quarrels through her persistant and irritated verbal opposition to her husband, as we can observe it many a time in some cases in which theatrical arguments are a way of “solving” misunderstandings. It would suffice if she used other outward (non-verbal) manifestations of her will and in the utmost case even in the form of a temporary or permanent separation if she was in no way fully accepted and could not realize her own life mission. Surely the partner relationship should never be bondage and enslavement, but it is the space prepared by God for the realization of the most beautiful life ideals in the spirit of unanimity and understanding of two people.
A thing also worth mentioning in this context is that the described form of self-harming, often ending in a premature death, is from the moral point of view fully identical with a suicide if the person knows that he or she shortens his or her life by persisting in negative feelings and in spite of that he or she does not search for a way leading to freedom. Therefore people who for example despise those who have taken their lives in the state of momentary anxiety and they themselves consciously and constantly shorten their own lives with a stiff attitude of the hypocritical feeling of forgiveness are actually much worse-off than self-murderers, which they will have to learn on themselves sooner or later.
In the following part of the lecture about forgiveness we are going to deal with what is necessary to be aware of in order to be able to maintain the life overview even in burdening life trials and to experience the state of forgiveness permanently.
T.L.
