Many of you know, I have been digging deep to learn what true forgiveness really is. The other day while reading the blog of a teacher I respect very much there was one part that struck a cord with me and I wanted to share it with whoever is interested...
~~~“If you didn’t blame, there would be nothing to forgive.” That’s important to remember. We get to stages in our life where we’re blaming other people for our unhappiness and our pain and our hurts. If we stopped blaming, where might we be? Ram Dass once said to me, “Who is anybody to forgive anyone else?” If we must forgive, we must first have blamed. To forgive is to stop blaming and to accept with compassion that everyone is simply doing the best they can given the conditions of their life and what they have to work with at the time.~~~
Very interesting perspective on forgiveness. If you never take offence then there is never anything to forgive. This brings to thought a principle I learned several years ago from one of my close friends and personal mentors Thomas Simpson. "Never pick up another person's offence" is what he said to me. At the time in my effort to show my loyalty to a friend I had the mind set that if a friend had a problem with you then I had a problem with you and I forged many a enemy under the burden of someone else's conflict. Putting this simple principle to work in my life has changed my life immensely. My thought now after reading this is what if we never take up offense at all? Not even our own whether it is justified or not... If by understanding that every human is dealt a different set of cards and there is no way of knowing what inner demons a person is battling with that compelled them to act in such a manner, we learn to never take up an offence, then there is never any need to forgive. When the seed of bitterness trys to take root it will have no fertile soil to grow in. Very interesting indeed. I am going to meditate on this for a while...
