The True Self is always humble. It knows that we
didn’t do it right and that it isn’t even about doing it right; it's just about
doing it. Our True Self knows that everything belongs. That means holding
together the good and the bad, the dark and the light, the sinner and the
saint—which are two parts of me and two parts of everything. It is our
participation in divinity which allows us to be this large.
Only God, it seems, is spacious enough to
include everything. Humans need to expel, exclude, deny, and avoid. We
just can't hold very much by our private selves. Only God in me, only me
in God, can hold the contraries. Forgiveness could almost be God’s very name
and identity.
Our first forgiveness is not toward a
particular sin or offense. Our first forgiveness, it seems to me, is
toward reality itself: to forgive it for being so broken, a mixture of good and
bad. First that paradox has to be overcome inside of us. Then, when we allow
God to hold together the opposites within us, it becomes possible to do it over
there in our neighbor and even our enemy. Finally, our worldview and politics
change. We can no longer project our evil onto another country, religion,
minority group, race, or political party.
Only the false self easily takes offense. The false
self can't live a self-generated life of immediate contact with God. It defines
itself by the past, which is to live in un-forgiveness. Forgiveness is the
only way to free ourselves from the entrapment of the past. We're in need not
only of individual forgiveness; we need it on a national, global, and cosmic
scale. Old hurts linger long in our memories and are hard to let go. We must
each learn how to define ourselves by the present moment—which is all we really
have. I will not define myself by what went wrong yesterday when I can
draw upon Life and Love right now. Life and Love are what’s real. This Infinite
Love is both in us and yet it is more than us.
