The Growing Capacity for Forgiveness
The Holy Nights and the unfiltered light of the spirit have led us deeply into our soul as an evolving, developing inner moral imagination. Over and over again, the spiritual hierarchies ask us to reflect on the experience of becoming, the experience of polarities and the experience of freedom.
Do pause for a few sacred moments and consider your personal sense of becoming during these nights. Do you feel different than the way you were before the Holy Nights began?
What about the polarities of human consciousness? Can you feel a center or see a center between two opposing experiences? Have you sought the awesome and awful point of balanced ambivalence?
And have had any moments where freedom from your numerous identities appeared - when you realize the spiritual sense of "I" that lives free of all qualifiers, containers and judgments.
If you have experienced any of these awarenesses, tonight's message will be, maybe not easy, but less difficult. If you have some awareness, you have forgiven something.
Without forgiveness, can you become an evolved self, can you live between the ever-present polarities and can you be free?
Tonight look at both aspects of forgiveness - to forgive and to be forgiven. Do you seek both equally? Just imagine yourself in the inner experience of both. What do they feel like? If during the Holy Nights you can truly imagine forgiving and being forgiven, the coming year will be blessed.
Don't go into any of your stories or dramas tonight. The specifics of our stories generally keep us from forgiveness, so release any specifics and just focus on feeling forgiveness. Feel a release, a restoration, a renewal. Feel wholeness and lightness.
Now think about the five sense that perceive the world - sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. How does each sense forgive? Can you forgive easily through one sense? Is there one sense that cannot bear to forgive something that offends it?
Here is another Holy Nights imagination that calls for poetry. Begin writing down a list of feeling words connected to forgiveness. Choose three words from the list and use them in a poem (or a paragraph) about the coming year and how forgiveness will live in your soul. Please share your efforts.
Do pause for a few sacred moments and consider your personal sense of becoming during these nights. Do you feel different than the way you were before the Holy Nights began?
What about the polarities of human consciousness? Can you feel a center or see a center between two opposing experiences? Have you sought the awesome and awful point of balanced ambivalence?
And have had any moments where freedom from your numerous identities appeared - when you realize the spiritual sense of "I" that lives free of all qualifiers, containers and judgments.
If you have experienced any of these awarenesses, tonight's message will be, maybe not easy, but less difficult. If you have some awareness, you have forgiven something.
Without forgiveness, can you become an evolved self, can you live between the ever-present polarities and can you be free?
Tonight look at both aspects of forgiveness - to forgive and to be forgiven. Do you seek both equally? Just imagine yourself in the inner experience of both. What do they feel like? If during the Holy Nights you can truly imagine forgiving and being forgiven, the coming year will be blessed.
Don't go into any of your stories or dramas tonight. The specifics of our stories generally keep us from forgiveness, so release any specifics and just focus on feeling forgiveness. Feel a release, a restoration, a renewal. Feel wholeness and lightness.
Now think about the five sense that perceive the world - sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. How does each sense forgive? Can you forgive easily through one sense? Is there one sense that cannot bear to forgive something that offends it?
Here is another Holy Nights imagination that calls for poetry. Begin writing down a list of feeling words connected to forgiveness. Choose three words from the list and use them in a poem (or a paragraph) about the coming year and how forgiveness will live in your soul. Please share your efforts.
first I'd like to share a comment I read in a Chapel once:
ReplyDeleteForgiveness is a great idea until we have someone to forgive!
It always reminds me of the challenge of true forgiveness.
And now the image that came to me as I reflected on forgiveness....
Forgiveness laps over all like a gentle tide
Smoothing the wrongs
Wrongs of thoughtlessness like to dig or not and how
Wrongs of need like worm castes
Wrongs of pride in creation destruction permanence
Wrongs of right
All smoothed and soothed
With the soft strokes of forgiveness
rippling gently over all
Forever
Maybe
Always
Forgiving
Relentlessly
Reminding
That all shall pass.
I forgive you with my sight
ReplyDeleteMy eyes will not pierce you
I forgive you with my hearing
My ears will not oppose you
I forgive you with my taste
My palate will not rebel against you
I forgive you with my touch
My finger will not point at you
I forgive you with my smelling
My nose will not recoil from you
From my thinking you will receive mercy
The exoneration of your I
From my speech pardon will come forth
Absolution for your humanness
From my feeling you shall obtain indulgence
Amnesty for you weary soul
And by my doing you shall not be harmed
But earn clemency for your drained body
And by all of this you shall heal
And your healing will be my healing
For you see, forgiveness is a necessity in my temple
And we shall both collect our pearls
And travel back to All That Is
Where our adorned gowns we will wear
And for us our friends will hold a feast.
I can do this. This I am familiar with. The most important change I have ever made in myself is learning to forgive. The love I feel in sharing who I am with the people I love makes me a beautiful person.
ReplyDeleteI am warm
It is ease to be comfortable
We are equal and united
family, parents and children.
The calm shroud of peace settles over the forgiven
ReplyDeleteWhile the mistakes and debts of the soul are driven
Away to the land of calamity
And are replaced with majestic serenity
One forgives another for oneself
For the letting go of a perceived wrong
Allows for the coming in of peaceful wealth
And freedom to sing one’s own quiet song
To forgive does not mean you agree
It does not mean you are happy or sad
To forgive means you have become free
To progress forward and discard the bad
To be forgiven for one’s transgressions
Brings relief and peace to the soul
For the powerful force of dread is lifted
When forgiveness permeates the whole
I will let go
ReplyDeleteInto the openness
Of trust
In my soul
My true nature
Not that which
Craves
Holds on
Says how it 'should be'
But that which
Opens
Gently
Into the miracle
Of what is
And the wonder
Of what will be...
I heard her say: “I forgive you”,
ReplyDeleteIt smelled fishy; I’d done nothing wrong.
I saw her scornfully smirk,
Tasting the tension unleashed,
“Touch me with the light of truth;
Let all pretense and judgment dissolve”.
I awakened; the nightmare shattered,
Antiquated patterns had emerged in the dark.
Founts of Forgiveness overfloweth; long since given; and, duly received;
Allowing Soul’s sweet Freedom to slumber, snuggling softly into silken dreams.
2011, like being in Heaven
ReplyDeleteThe most import choice for me is Love
no matter what it’s looking like, sister and forgiveness is my key
Release from my fears and deep conditioning
Those old shackles, slave bracelets jingling with every move I make
Judgments and criticisms of self and others, my brothers
Keep me separate, keep me from awakening
Ah yes, I remember, forgiveness is the key
That ease of being, this movement towards Love
Will lighten the load and free my soul!
let it go - the
ReplyDeletesmashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go
let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear
so comes love
~ e. e. cummings ~
(Complete Poems 1904-1962)
Being forgiven is like traversing the mountainous crags of my troubled soul
ReplyDeleteThe shame hangs over me like a dense nasty fog
I am minuscule, and reduced to my unconscious story
I indulge and read and listen until my I has had enough. Enough!
My I bids my Will to recognize the story and slays it with the sword of Light
God's breath whispers to me warmly...to forgive myself
I open to know LOVE
Soulful longing
ReplyDeleteLonging for love and forgiveness
Forgiveness of self
Self love
Love of light
Light shines through open hearts
Open hearts forgive
to simply be
ReplyDelete(fresh, growing)
in clear light
(soft, glowing)
to float free
(warm, flowing)
o yes, to be
(by letting be)
to simply know
(by letting go)
that you and i are we
clutching,
ReplyDeletethe pain of yesterday.
releasing,
loss, resentment,anger.
encouraging...
hope
renewal
honor
In the midst of this field, I stand
ReplyDeleteFree.
The morning Sun warming my face,
Releasing me from the long, cold night.
Just there,
In a glint of sunlight raying,
I am
Renewed,
Infused,
In Love with living
And with all that is.
Fertile earth sprouts green beneath my feet.
Brand new blue sky above,
Gentle, fragrant breeze surrounds.
Arms open wide, I revolve,
And behold,
Wide expanses lead outward in all directions, each
Ripe with possibility.
The Song of the Sun:
New Day Dawning, Sweet Forgiveness
FORGIVENESS.....is
ReplyDeletethe Key to Happiness.