Forgiveness
By Brenda Miller, CBrI, CBI
Forgiveness is one of the truths BreakThrough embodies
that can be difficult to understand and, nearly impossible
to do. It’s a ‘letting go’ that we can’t conceive of until
it happens, and when it does, it’s a feeling that registers
in a different place than our usual thoughts.
The ego, an often criticized aspect of ourselves has a
thankless job: that of recording and storing all of our
interpretations. For that reason, the ‘acquired’ section of
our storehouse (the unhealthy ego) doesn’t easily allow
forgiveness because experiences are being seen exactly as we
have seen them in the past. Forgiveness appears dangerous to
us because it implies that we are wrong and the other is
right. If we forgive, we’ve somehow betrayed ourselves.
In truth, when we forgive, we have undone the
misinformation in the storehouse, undone the ‘acquired’ part
of ourselves. Because we don’t want to be wrong, we guard
against losing what we’ve come to feel is an important part
of ourselves: the old wounds, the past, the ‘acquired’.
While most of us would deny that we feel our grievances are
an important part of ourselves, why do we hold on to them so
tightly, telling our story to our family and friends to gain
their support? As they commiserate with us, we reinforce the
‘acquired’ and ‘negate the ‘Innate’. Over time, as we do the
BreakThrough work, the ‘Innate’ is revealed simultaneously
with the release of the ‘acquired’.
In an obscure section of the storehouse (our inherent or
true nature), it is written that forgiveness is a miracle;
forgiveness is a central theme in acceptance. The ‘acquired’
and more accessible part of the storehouse has a different
story: ‘You are your grievances, hang on to them.’ So, we
clutch them to our chests, sometimes for years, even when we
recognize that grievances hurt us more than the other. When
we honor our old hurts, we strengthen the ‘acquired’ parts
of ourselves which perpetuates the lie we are living when we
cannot, will not, forgive, and conversely, this conceals our
‘Innate’.
If we feel that someone has a grievance against us, we
are usually oblivious to the fact that we actually have a
grievance against them.
Up to the moment we feel forgiveness happening, we feel
the trauma of the grievance. It is continually felt in the
body, but we are not usually able to identify why that old
shoulder or neck pain has flared up. The grievance in the
mind is spoken by the body, because the body speaks the mind
with incredible accuracy.
While it doesn’t feel like it, ‘forgiving’ is about
thanking another ‘for’ ‘giving’ us the experience that
helped us release the ‘acquired’ misinformation. While it
doesn’t feel like it, it demonstrates that there has never
been anything except support in all of our experiences.
While it doesn’t feel like it, the ‘other’, who appears to
cause our pain and misery, is simply a signpost to the
center, a signpost to the ‘Innate’. When we turn away from
the pointers to the center, and take the other road, we
condemn ourselves to perpetual suffering and chaos which
increases until we find a way to expose the ‘acquired’ lies
in the storehouse. The patterns repeat, relying on the
information stored away inside of us until we look deeper.
Hanging on to our grievances exhausts us because we are out
of alignment with our true nature. It takes more energy to
row against the current (support the ‘acquired’) than to go
with the flow (our tru! e self). Of equal importance, when
we carry our wounds into the future, they define it.
The paradox is that forgiveness is not necessary because
no one has ever done it wrong. No one has lived life wrong
because we all fit synchronistically into each others’
lives, holding the signposts for each other.
When forgiveness happens, the parting of the ‘acquired’
storehouse and our grievances is a huge relief. There is a
moment in time during forgiveness that’s like the moment in
time at dawn when darkness is overtaken by the light; where
the world holds its breath and makes promises about the
‘newness’ of the day and suddenly everything feels okay. In
this humbling moment, one is able to come from a place of
grace by forgiving all that appears to be.
