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The Kennebec River - Bath, ME
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NOTE: For a statement on what "forgiveness" means in this writing, different from often meant, and arising as an expression of what has been called unitive consciousness (i.e., perceiving reality as non-dual), see the note at the end - "Unitive Wisdom and Forgiveness."
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Rather than trying to get forgiveness, forgiveness already awaits you.
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A guilt-ridden follower of the Sage spoke of grief about past mistakes. She called them sins. While she sadly enumerated these sins, the Sage patiently listened. He appeared unmoved by her tally of misdeeds. She was surprised, for she expected him to be alarmed by some things she had done, some of which she had never told anyone. After a time, she asked, "What am I to do about all this? I feel so burdened by it." The Sage answered, "The Sun shines upon you only at this moment. The moment you step out of the past, you step into forgiveness."
The Sage spoke in a manner she could understand. To step out of the past was to accept where she was already - the present. As long as we cling to the past, he knew, we cannot be where we are, yet we are there and cannot be anywhere else.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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During my Master's studies in counseling in the late 1990s, I counseled a dear woman suffering from major depression. I met her and some other patients at an outpatient site for persons with acute mental disorders. The clinic was the last step before the state hospital for mental disorders. The goal was to do all possible to keep our patients from there and as socially functional as possible.
One day, I said something like this to the patient, "You do not need to be forgiven. You are already forgiven. All you need to do is receive it." Upon hearing this, her face was brightened with a big smile. Though I had been a religious professional for over twenty years, I had no recollection of ever having that thought before. It came from somewhere else - other than my brain. And in saying it, I knew, like she did, its truth.
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Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, "The traces of a bad drought can only be erased by a bountiful rainfall, and rain can only fall in the present moment" (Our Appointment with Life). On reading this, I wrote the following: "The answer is always now." That was what I was saying to the patient. This is partly so for there is no past. Trying to heal the past in the past is futile, as fruitless as trying not to do what we have already done.
As our past is no more except as in vestiges in the present, healing of our sorrows and wounds happen now. This is a reason for learning to live in the moment. From living present to now, healing happens. If you are in the shade and step into the sunlight, you feel the warmth. You do not feel that warmth by refusing to leave the shade. So it is with grace. The Sun is where the Sun is. We position ourselves to receive It.
We may stay in the shade because we feel unworthy to receive a love that heals us. In seeing this, it can become an impetus to step into the Light-of-Love. In time, we see forgiveness and healing have nothing to do with being worthy or unworthy.
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Meditation can be a way of stepping - or sitting, if you wish - in the Light-of-Love. My deeply-felt suffering was what mainly led to my beginning meditation twenty-seven years ago. Likely, beginning to meditate for most persons is prompted by a sense of brokenness and an aspiration for inner healing.
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The word "regret" means literally "to bemoan the dead." When we live in regret, we live in a fictional past, like standing beside the grave of a loved one, unable to leave it. Yet, in leaving, we find we step into healing. We find we can retain the wisdom learned from the past without staying there.
In the healing process, we may return again and again into the thought of the past. When this happens, we do not judge ourselves for it; we gently return to the moment. The return to the fictional past and back to the present is healing in itself. In coming into this moment, we practice letting go - or letting be - and welcoming the arising of healing grace. Grace is already present, and we choose to be present to it.
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Unitive Wisdom and Forgiveness
In the above, "forgiveness" is not the same as "pardon." "Forgiveness" is usually equated incorrectly with the legal term "pardon." The basic meaning of "forgiveness" in the Jewish tradition, passed on to the early churches, is "to release." It is alike the term "absolve," often used in religion. Likewise, "forgiveness" above is not about a "god" forgiving you, a subject offering a release to an object. Forgiveness arises as an act of grace, with no necessity to posit a forgiver. I employ the term "grace" as the unseen agency from which forgiveness arises as a spontaneous act once we allow the act to occur. And forgiveness is never partial - this is borne out in the Old English, from which the present English derives, meaning "to give completely." The sense in forgiveness is of something happening that arises as a sense of being a gift, something one could not do for herself and, yet, somehow happened. We may begin with a sense of God forgiving us, but in the sense of union, forgiveness arises in the communion with God, or Life. Jesus, for example, would say things like, "Your sins are forgiven you," but never like, "I forgive you" or "God forgives you." Once, he is attributed with praying, on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." The highly stylized prayer attributed to Jesus and called the Lord's Prayer or the Our Father, likewise, uses the duality of subject and object, which reflects a less inclusive consciousness than I posit here. In the sense above, one could say "God-and-I together experienced forgiveness" or "I was forgiven" or "forgiveness happened," but not, "God forgave me," unless we mean by "God" something other than the usually intended personification of a separate entity - a big other self - by that word. In conclusion, in unitive wisdom, you cannot separate your forgiveness and God being forgiven, simply for there is no action apart from you two as one together or as you two as one - the "two" being relative, the "one" being absolute. Another way of saying this is God participates fully in the release, so is not aloof from it.
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
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