Paul and sidekick
In these three weeks of forgiveness that Kathleen is hosting, I’ve reached a point of loving my father again, after seemingly threescore years and ten of hating him.
Before I was yearning for relief from something – stress and fear – whose origins I didn’t even know. They turned out to lie in male-line hatred.
What really matters is how we feel inside, right?
I didn’t feel very good and I was withdrawn from people. Now that has all lifted.
What’s the next horizon for me? It’s the achievement of real peace. Inner peace. Deep peace, which I’ve actually known on one occasion. (1)
But let me recap. I think my father hatred may prove to be another empty, insubstantial illusion even though it’s been part of a deeply-held secret. I’ve always posed as a righteous victim but never admitted publicly that I was a father hater.
I’ve always known at some level that I considered myself one because I remember saying to myself that a boy who hated his father was not worthy of love. I was therefore unloveable.
I think that the borderline was that I’d never said the words publicly. (2)
Now I’m asking my inner POTUS (President of the United Self) to grant me a pardon from my past sin (missed mark) of hating my Father, to grant me inner peace on the matter and in general.
Notice here again – as with our earlier discussion of “inner security” – one cannot experience being granted peace in the matter without already knowing what peace is. Peace-in-this-instance must be preceded by a general experience of peace or one cannot recognize it for what it is.
A matter like peace is not really taught person to person as much as it’s learned from our circumstances. We learn the futility of war and seek peace. We learn the bitterness of hatred and seek peace. We learn the sadness of family strife and seek peace.
It’s our blocks, barriers, and illusions that prevent our accessing that inner, always-already-present knowledge – which we glimpse in realized moments – of divine states like peace.
I discussed my own experience of deep peace with Archangel Michael on An Hour with an Angel once.
I said it was coincidental that he called peace “like granite,” because I too wanted to use the word “granite” to describe peace in the experience I had. It was solid. Nothing could have moved it. (3) He agreed.
I’m starting to see something vaguely about the road ahead. Let me put it in the form of two hypotheses.
My first hypothesis is that it’s possible to experience deep peace ongoingly by forgiving everything. I probably took that leaf from Kathleen’s book.
My second hypothesis is that at the moment I can most easily forgive everything by remembering a time with the person in question before the mayhem started and then beginning again from there, abandoning all other memories and concerns.
“I remember you as you were.” (4) Nothing else matters.
***
The final touchstone in all this is: Do we choose to be happy or do we choose to be right? Do we choose to forgive or do we choose to hate? How do we want to feel?
I’m choosing out of what we used to call “enlightened self-interest,” a self-loving desire to be happy and peaceful. As Karen Langlotz said: “I realized I didn’t want to be drinking that poison anymore. I wanted relief and I was willing to forgive.”
And she did:
“My counsellor helped me have a conversation with Fred. I remember I was a child. I felt I was authentically talking to him. I remember letting go of pain and understanding more. I can’t remember it exactly, but I was a child talking to him and there was healing and I forgave him. I FORGAVE HIM!” (5)
I think everyone arrives at a place of seeing that resentment and hatred are simply toxic cocktails we serve ourselves day after day (definitely not Happy Hour). When people wake up, they begin to look for some means of forgiving. For Kathleen it may be turnaround; for me it may be going back in time. There are many approaches.
As a result of the effort thus generated, we will reach a point, I think, where all is forgiven and our minds are at rest … and at peace.
That’s what I hunger for now.
Footnotes
(1) The one where I was watching my thoughts as a train passing by and recognized a peaceful face among the people on the platform. There was afterwards what must have been a transmission or download and I was in deep peace. (“The Peace that Passeth Understanding,” July 18, 2017, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2017/07/18/the-peace-that-passeth-understanding/.)
(2) I thank the reader who asked me to process “financial stress” publicly, which led by a trail of hitherto-unseen breadcrumbs to this.
(3) I think he used the word “granite” to trigger my comment. Another evidence of powers of reading thoughts and memories.
(4) There are many other tools as well, but this is the one I’ll be testing out in this next series of experiments during these three weeks of forgiveness, in my life-as-a-workshop.
Keep in mind again that by dumping all our “bad” memories, we aren’t forgetting. What is permanent and useful will survive the dumping process. Whatever is eternal cannot be destroyed. The Self is eternal and the Self knows all. A memory dump will not affect it.
(5) Karen Langlotz, “#Metoo Incest Forgiveness,”