Session 34.5. On Forgiveness

[Patrick]

Of course, everything I am sharing is based on my understanding of Confederation teachings which can often be somewhat different from “conventional” or mainstream understanding. Forgiveness as portrayed by the Confederation is one such notion.

@Phoenix

But forgiveness is a reward. Forgiveness is known as a good thing no? It is a thing where you are willing to give more love and positive things to another? So your perspective is that people that abuse and torture children should receive positive things. Isn’t this incentivising?
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The generally held view of forgiveness as it is held by most people, as the subject is understood via common wording. Is that it does involve actually dealing with others. I did do a search for the term to see exactly how the Law of One defines it and I am starting to wonder if they believe in the concept at all. Or if it is a red herring they only included because it is something we believe in?

We are told that forgiveness is personal and not something we give to another. Our forgiveness is not even required by another. They can forgive themselves without involving others just as much as we can forgive without involving others.

What we do when we forgive is that we let go of our end of the karmic inertia. As in letting go of our end of a rope. The other can still keep a hold of it and so choose to remain bound by the karmic ramifications even if we were to forgive and let go of our side of it.

@Phoenix

If a child that had been tortured found out that people in the general society had “forgiven” their abuser… What do you think they would feel?

I hope it would inspire them to see forgiveness in a different light than what they have been led to believe by society.

@Phoenix

It is not clear what the difference is between stopping the behaviour and forgiving the self and stopping the behaviour and not forgiving the self? Is it just something they added in because we believe in it? Is it just we change our behaviours after understanding and accepting them?

The way this works is that by forgiving yourself, you are letting go of the karma. Here is how it would play out. If I have wronged another, then I may forgive myself for this misstep and never again repeat whatever offended the other. This would remove any karmic ramifications I might have acquired by my offense.

Of course, this is not very realistic. Chances are the misstep will be repeated and require again to repeat the process of forgiving the self and starting fresh again.

I believe the goal is not really to succeed in never repeating offenses, but rather in trying to do so.

It is the setting of the intention to forgive that is an extremely meaningful statement from the self to the self, rather than success in forgiving.

Basically, we are putting karma on ourselves in the first place so that we get repeated opportunities/catalysts/chances to come to this realization in due time and freely choose to let go. It’s a process that may take billions of years of experience where we try everything else to balance our karma. But all we achieve is swinging it one way then the other. Until we discover for ourselves that true forgiveness is the only thing that stop karma for good.

@Phoenix

Wouldn’t that be the sin of despair? You are saying they will never attempt to change their behaviour and earn forgiveness so we just forgive them anyway? Also, does this not devalue the efforts of those that do legitimately earn forgiveness?

We can always hope to inspire others to change their behaviour. Not by asking them to change, but by demonstrating alternative ways of doing things, alternate ways of thinking and being.

We can only be a living example that hopefully will inspire. We can make an example of our lives.

This has to be done while balancing compassion with wisdom and vice-versa. It is unwise to become a martyr for example and let yourself be exploited.

@Phoenix

What you were saying earlier, what is the value of not forgiving the guys mother? Well I can’t really speak for him. He is a philosopher and he can speak for himself and his discussions are hours long.

But A) What is the value of forgiving? Since earlier, just now in the conversation, you were not clear about your “hand on hot coals” argument applies to just you or to everyone? Because if it applies to just you then there is no reason to forgive. But if it applies to everyone then you weren’t being truthful when you said it applied to just you?

I believe this applies to everyone, but it is only my personal belief that it does.

I do not feel a need for a consensus that would validate this point of view.

To me, it is just how things are in my Universe.

I made a thread about each of us creating our own Universe here and why what is called “consensus reality” is really just an illusion: We create our own story