We are incapable of
forgiving ourselves or others, because it is within our very nature to
ceaselessly strive to be other than we are. We cannot accept ourselves,
and but without said self-acceptance forgiveness cannot take place,
because forgiveness implies a surrender to that which is, just as it is.
We can, however, cultivate an attitude of gratitude, and this allows
for the possibility of forgiveness to take place. This is so because
gratitude deepens us through a recognition of our interdependence with
all of life. Necessarily, this recognition that our richness and quality
of life experience is relational takes us out of a context in which our
ego games have meaning, and into a context in which the actuality of
love takes precedence over all other considerations. Even forgiving
oneself is relational, and if the relationship in question is not
changed, then forgiveness has not taken place.
So there you have
it. You cannot forgive yourself, nor can you forgive others. It can
happen though—and it frequently will-- that others will ask you to
forgive them. It may also happen that you yourself, though assuredly
knowing better, feel for whatever reason impelled to ask others to
forgive you. In either case, what is being asked for by the one party or
the other is nothing less than an identification, the one with the
other, so profound and so unconditional that not only are both radically
transformed on that account, but also blessed with unfathomable depth
of compassion and understanding for each other. As the old cliché would
have it…they have become ineluctably one.
But not to worry. If it
is impossible to forgive yourself, even less so can you expect others
to do it for you. Indeed, the impossibility of forgiveness is the very
condition that allows it to take place—but again, only then if the
impossibility of forgiveness is coupled with a thorough understanding of
its absolute necessity. There is in the grace of forgiveness a
recognition that wounds were inflicted and that it did matter. It
matters still, though in a different way than heretofore. What mattered
once within the framework of social mores now can be seen within the
context of a human life—becomes a precious and irreplaceable facet of
the full richness of a love that is shared and lived out over time with
others.
People who sweetly and with saccharin smiles tell you that they
forgive themselves regularly, as part of their spiritual practice, are
lying to themselves, and are deluding you. They have their reward.
Invariably they are after the very opposite of forgiveness, and this is
hardly difficult to attain. It is the numbing out into the fantasy of
our lives, which chronic state of awareness has virtually become our
natural state. To forgive ourselves, however, is hardly natural for us,
though it is the direct experience of a certain psychic condition which
entails nothing less than to acknowledge the incontrovertible facts of
the matter, as they are.
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