The Way to Forgiveness

By Neal

Consciousness; our awareness, is our capacity to feel and appreciate life; it is really the essence of our life. We should treasure it as we treasure life itself and not let it get trapped or stuck. It should keep flowing freely, without obstructions, like our blood.

The most important part of consciousness is what we associate with the heart: our ability to love, care for others, feel gratitude, and connect with others. This consciousness is not only in us but flows between us all, and we’re very sensitive to how it flows. Happy when we get it and sad or mad when we don’t. Even small things like a door not held, a driver cutting you off, or no likes on Facebook. But when someone important to us, like parents, siblings, children, friends or even coworkers don’t give us the consciousness we need or expect from them, the hurt can run deep. That’s when forgiveness becomes hard.

Withholding forgiveness is really withholding consciousness. We think, “you weren’t conscious of me, I won’t be conscious of you. But this ends up blocking our own flow of consciousness.

Forgiveness doesn’t come from being told it’s right to forgive. It comes when your awareness grows beyond your own pain to see the fuller picture. Instead of reacting to how someone was unconscious of you, realize that was their own unconsciousness. Because ultimately, we all deserve to be recognized, if someone can’t recognize you, that’s their handicap.

Here’s an example: I host the Inspirational Meditation program on OME. The other day we were talking about forgiveness and a woman Cheryl brought up an incident that happened to her. She was in a supermarket, all of a sudden, she was hit hard from behind by a shopping cart, hit hard enough to get a bruise on her leg. She could have been so mad that she didn’t even want to look back. She could have walked out of the store and carried the feeling about how inconsiderate people are. But she turned around, probably to curse the person out, and saw that it was a little kid pushing a cart, and the kid wasn’t even tall enough to see over the groceries in the cart. Her anger disappeared because she understood why it happened.

This is a good example, because we humans like that little kid are all pushing shopping carts full of our conceptions of the world and more. So full that we can’t see over it, so we are bound to bruise people sometimes. When we get hurt though, instead of dwelling in our pain, we can take the time to look back. We might see what was blocking that person from seeing me. This lets our consciousness flow to them rather than blocking it in our pain.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning what happened or tolerating more of it. You can have compassion for someone and still leave an abusive situation, set boundaries, or change a relationship entirely; the difference is you act with understanding, not bitterness. Instead of holding onto what they did you can keep your consciousness flowing freely and see the bigger picture.

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. Forgiving ourselves for the suffering we caused to others or to ourselves, mistakes we made, bad decisions and more. Just as in forgiving others, we can’t blame ourselves for the consciousness that we didn’t have but we shouldn’t condone it either.

I’ll share my personal story with you. I had a terrible tragedy in my life. My Son who was 35 years old committed suicide. He was more than my Son; he was a truly wonderful person. When this happened, I felt that it was completely my fault. I thought of all the things I should have done and said and all the things I should have done differently, all the things I should have been conscious of from his childhood to the last day.

I could have grieved the rest of my life away, but I knew not to, Afterall, what good would that do for the world to be self-absorbed in my own grief. Yet I couldn’t just forgive myself for all the times I was unconscious of what he needed from me. I couldn’t forgive myself and still keep this unconsciousness. I was determined to clear away everything that made me so unconscious. Maybe I would be able to give to others the attention I failed to give to my son. Thankfully, I was already doing this meditation that was designed to clear away what blocks our minds.

This meditation was founded by someone who saw beyond their shopping cart and designed a way to show us how to empty those carts so that we can see where we are going. I was doing this meditation for a few years. I would take things out of my cart then put them back in again or put something a little different in. But after this tragedy I realized how important it was to empty that cart and see the world as it is, no matter how attached I was to the things in the cart.

Surprisingly, now I’ve become more joyful than I ever was or ever imagined I could be. I certainly didn’t forget my son or what I could have done better. But I found that joy doesn’t come from our life being the ideal we think it should be or from having all the things that we want or think we need. It doesn’t come from money, recognition, relationships, pride, or even health.

Joy comes as our consciousness grows, for the simple reason that this world right here and right now is an amazingly beautiful place. The more our awareness grows the more we can realize that, and the more joyful we become. The only reason we can’t see it, is because we can’t see past the things in our shopping carts. We are so focused on what we have in those carts and what we need to put in them that we can’t see past them.

Once that cart is empty, we can see that this world is truly a heaven. At that point, forgiveness just happens naturally. Because you can see that everyone, including yourself, has been blinded by the full shopping carts they’re pushing.

So, don’t let your awareness be blocked by holding onto past hurts and all kinds of other things. Your awareness is what leads you to the joy that is naturally there. Work on what is blocking your consciousness from flowing, and whatever hurts you’re holding, you will automatically forgive.