Forgiveness Two – I Set Myself Free

Part Two of Three

I love this one. I realize I have been the captive bird, the prisoner. How did the whole situation come about? Let me take one version from my life: I found myself accepting the authority of another. I put myself in his power by giving up my power. Of course at the time I didn’t see it that way at all.

Here is the story in short form: a few years previous to this incident I had joined an intentional community. We were approximately 30 adults and 9 children who had pooled all our resources to realize our common dream – at least those were our thoughts. The story unfolded over the course of ten years in which I learned very much, but also suffered very much under the emotional turbulence that pervaded the community.

For the first two or three years of our ‘honeymoon’ together it looked as if our dream was coming true. However, the real reason for our coming together started to surface more and more clearly: we all wanted to learn about power, especially power over others. At the time, of course, it just felt like emotional and psychic hell, and I had no idea why I was there. The actual state of affairs was that our ‘community’ had become a classic cult, complete with  total economic dependence in a remote part of the world (no easy ‘escape’) and a strong, charismatic and very intelligent ‘leader’ personality at the head of it all. Having pooled all our resources, no one had any money etc. so members were dependent on the small leading clique for everything. It all developed piece by piece over the course of a few years and was not really clear to me until it was too late.

This following incident brought my situation to a head for me: the head honcho called me over to his table during our New Year’s celebration. All the members and also some friends from the locality were gathered together in our dining area. In a conversational tone he told me that someone had seen me over in the kitchen house secretly pilfering gin, which was strictly against our rules. He said that I had to promise to never do it again or pack my things and leave immediately.

The impact on me was devastating. The first thing that impacted me was the injustice: I had done nothing of the sort, neither then nor ever before. To add to the inner turbulence I was feeling, I was given no chance to even deny the accusation. Without going into more detail: I felt similar to an innocent person who is convicted of a serious crime without the slightest opportunity to defend himself.

This incident created such internal pressure in me that I spent the next days and weeks mulling over what it meant for me. I felt an acute sense of injustice which took me back to my childhood and I started to piece together what had brought me to this point in my life. One thing was clear: I had super-imposed my father (a strict authoritarian who used corporal punishment liberally) onto this head honcho and was reacting to him in the same pattern as with my father.

I finally left the cult shortly after that incident with strong anger toward several of the persons in the leading clique. “What they did to me/us!” was the voice in my head. After almost three years, in which I was able to work with some very gifted therapists and teachers, I was able to see clearly the gift that each and every one in the group had been for me. Thanks to them, I had learned many very important lessons that continue to uplift me today. If no one had ‘played the bad guy’ I would perhaps never have been able to uncover my childhood abuse and trauma and, finally, heal it.

The experiences in the cult gave me the opportunity to recognize the absolute truth of the fact that we are all attracting exactly and just those situations and people that allow us to learn what we need and desire to learn here and now. Every drama is a sure sign of pay-dirt. Only if we know that, are deeply convinced of that, and don’t resist the situation, will we get the gold.

This is the gold I received:

IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT ME – THERE IS SOMETHING HERE FOR ME TO LEARN – PERIOD.

IF I THINK THE ‘OTHER’ IS AT FAULT AND HAS CAUSED THE SITUATION TO MY DISADVANTAGE AND I MUST BLAME THEM, CHANGE THEM – I AM DELUSIONAL.

THERE IS NO ‘OTHER’ – IT IS ALL THE INFINITE INTELLIGENCE ACTING ITSELF OUT THROUGH VARIOUS FORMS LIKE YOU AND ME IN ORDER TO GAIN KNOWLEDGE OF ITSELF – IT NEVER INTENDS HARM TO ANY OF ITS FORMS.

FORGIVENESS STARTS WITH ME RECOGNIZING THAT I CAUSED HARM BY JUDGING ANOTHER PART OF THIS ONE, AND LOSING SIGHT OF THE ONENESS OF MYSELF IN ALL THINGS, ESPECIALLY IN THE ‘OTHER’.

FORGIVENESS IS COMPLETE WHEN I SEE MY ‘MISTAKE’ AND TAKE IT AS A LEARNING STEP AND RELEASE ANY JUDGMENT OF ANY PART OF THE SITUATION, ESPECIALLY MYSELF.

WHEN I UNDERSTAND HOW MY HEART CONNECTION WITH ALL THINGS DETERMINES ALL INTERACTIONS – I NO LONGER JUDGE AND I HAVE LEARNED MY LESSON. THEN I LET GO OF ALL EMOTIONAL RESIDUE FROM THE INTERACTIONS AND CAN ‘FORGIVE AND FORGET’.

FORGET DOES NOT MEAN TO LOSE TRACK OF WHAT HAPPENED BUT TO BE MAGNANIMOUS AND GENEROUS EMOTIONALLY AND LETTING THE EVENTS WASH AWAY FROM MY MIND AS IN A REFRESHING SPRING RAIN, KNOWING THAT NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED. MY REALITY AS THE ONE IS/WAS/WILL BE EVER UNTOUCHED.

Related articles

• Forgiveness One – B4Peace (newearthpulse.wordpress.com)
• Forgive Yourselves for What In Truth You Have Not Done (johnsmallman2.wordpress.com)
• I Ching This Week: Forgiveness (theichingweekly.com)
• How Heavy is Your Grudge? (againstthemain.com)
• Bloggers 4Peace March Edition: Freedom of Forgiveness (ellynbaker.wordpress.com)
• Great one on Forgiveness (farawayinthesunshine.wordpress.com)
• Blog for Peace (bloggers4peace.wordpress.com)

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