16 - Forgiveness – What Is It?
May
Divine Love suffuse the atmosphere of this room; may Heavenly
Love flood and irradiate the hearts of these who are here in the
silence of this moment. May love - the love of spirit, the
love of unity and joy - touch the souls of the beloveds who are here
in the silence of this place: feeling that touch and beauty of
love within themselves, may they come to understand the meaning of
forgiveness, to realise that without love no forgiveness becomes
possible.
I would say
as I speak through the voice of this medium, The only fashion in
which you in the earthly life can come to understand the meaning of
forgiveness, is to come to the realisation that love itself is
tested and strengthened by uncountable forgiveness; until love has
been tested and you learn to forgive you do not understand the
meaning of love itself.
In the ways
of earthly life you imagine that love consists of beautiful
feelings, of kisses and fondlings, of caresses and flattering
words: it is not until you come to the time when you are wounded,
when you are disappointed, that you come to a real testing and
understanding of the strength of love. The love which endures for a
lifetime, the love which endures throughout centuries of lifetimes,
such love is compounded of a great golden chain of forgiving
moments, forgiving gestures, forgiving thoughts; for the blossoming
of love is in the blossoming of forgiveness.
You who are
young in your ways of earthly life, you know nothing of the meaning
of this word, for in your foolishness of thinking and your
littleness of feeling you nurse your hurts within your heart and
your grievances within your mind. You hold the memory of the many
little pricks and wounds you have sustained, and say: “I try to
forgive: but I cannot forgive these things because people should
not say these words, people should not do these things. Therefore I
cannot forgive them.” When you cannot forgive, then know in
yourself that as you cannot forgive so you do not love, for the
measure of your lovingness lies in the breadth of your forgiveness
and the measure of love is in the measure of the ability to forgive.
It is hard
for the loved ones of earthly life to understand this; it is hard
for you, bound in the bondage of your human personality, to come to
realise the meaning of it. You may say unto me: “If we cannot
forgive, how can we understand how to start the chain of
forgiveness?”
If you wish
to forgive and feel your heart is not large enough to give
forgiveness in the fullness of its meaning, then begin by making the
little gestures of forgiveness: express the inward and invisible
desire of the soul in a physical and visible fashion. If you cannot
forget and cannot forgive with your deeper feelings, still you may
make the gesture by holding out your hand, by offering a kiss as a
symbol of your desire to forgive; you may give a gift to the one
who has wounded you and as you give that gift it is the outward and
visible sign of your inward and invisible desire to forgive. When
you have offered the gift, after you have written the letter, when
you have spoken the word and you have held out your hand, you will
feel better within yourself.
The person
to whom it is offered may not accept your gift or respond to your
gesture, may not reciprocate your kiss. I would say, This is not
important: what matters is that you have made the gesture of
forgiveness. You have tried to express your desire and that
which is within your soul because you know that you ought to
forgive: you are growing in your spiritual nature to the state in
which you wish that person to know that you have forgiven them.
Forgiveness
is not a virtue which you are able to develop in one great glorious
moment of triumph, do not think it can be achieved so easily - know
that the growth of forgiveness comes through slow and diligent
preparation. First, the soul must come to the realisation that
forgiveness is required; then there must come the desire to express
forgiveness and the realisation within the inner being that some
sign or signal of the forgiveness is required. Eventually there
must come within the inner consciousness that movement of compassion
or love which brings you to make the token of forgiveness to the
ones who have wounded you or the person who has harmed or destroyed
something which to you is very very precious.
When souls
have been freed from the torments of their body, we in spirit have
to teach them how to forgive. We have a great deal of knowledge and
experience in understanding the hardness and difficulty which the
soul and spirit experience in learning this very essential virtue.
You who
live in the gentleness of your English land in which tolerance
flowers like a beautiful blossom - you understand so little of the
sufferings of your brothers and sisters. You do not see, as we of
spirit sometimes see, men and women who have been starved or
tormented and beaten because of their race, or because their skin
differs from the race and skin of the people who ill use them; you
do not see the bitterness in the souls who come into spirit life
smarting under the lashes of injustice. We are familiar, as you are
not, with those who are freed from their body after they have spent
long years languishing in prison places where they were deprived of
their freedom of speech and movement, deprived of their appreciation
of beauty and the precious companionships of love which enriched
their lives, because their actions have been contrary to the law of
their land or the political opinions of the lands wherein they
dwelt.
When
released from the body, such souls come to spirit twisted by the
bitterness of their torments, by the bitterness of their feeling
against their tormentors. And they cannot accept the compensations
of spirit life until they learn to let go of some part of their
bitterness in forgiveness.
In your
gentle land you are guarded against such sufferings. You do not
know the bitterness with which women may come into the life of
spirit because their children, those near and dear, have been
separated from them through the tumult of war, or the starvation
which has come into their land through the greed of rulers or the
greed with which selfish men and women take the land or water which
would sustain their life.
Women who
have seen their children die from hunger come to the spirit life not
with love and joy but with their souls stained by dark shadows and
twisted by the bitterness of the sorrow and pain they endured as
they saw the seed of their life wither and die. They meet again
with those who have died before them - their children live on in the
life of spirit! But the bitterness in their soul has to be
eradicated; some token of forgiveness has to blossom within their
soul ere they may move out of the shadows of their sorrow into the
regions of compensation and joy.
Within such
souls we develop an understanding of the need to forgive by teaching
them that bitterness begets bitterness and hatred begets hate - all
they can do is try to understand, try to forgive. We sow within
their soul the understanding that because of their pain they must
not bring greater pain and greater hurt; they must try to
forgive. Out of the effort and trying there slowly blossoms the
ability to let go, and as they let go of their bitterness they are
able to emerge gradually from their sorrow into a state of peace;
then are they re-united with their loved ones. As love grows within
the soul, by love they are able to forgive the sorrow, the hurt, the
injustice, the suffering, the unnecessary pain, the starvation, the
torment – at last they are able to forgive and cultivate the blossom
of love within the soul.
It is so
with you in your earthly life; you are each living your life in
this gentle land and feel something of the little pricks and small
injustices, the little hurts which wound your soul. You say: “How
can we forgive?” I say to you, You forgive by first realising that
it is necessary to forgive. As you cultivate the
desire to give that forgiveness, loving spirits, the understanding
spirits, come near to cultivate the spirit of love within you. And
as love grows within your soul so does forgiveness become possible.
It is only
those who are very small in themselves, those whose soul is
shrivelled by lack of love who cannot forgive. Those who receive
love, who are bathed in streams of spiritual love and encircled by
earthly love, these gradually learn to understand the true,
beautiful and perfect blessing: love itself is forgiveness, and the
tokens of love are the tokens of forgiveness itself.
We who
serve from spirit and come back to teach through our mediums, to
touch and love you through the influence of our mediums – why do we
come? Why do we leave the regions of light and enter into the
heaviness of the mortal atmosphere? Why do we come? We come
because we love you. We come because our love is often the token of
our forgiveness to a world which wounded us, to a world which hurt
us, and sometimes crucified the soul and body with the heaviness of
mortal experience. We come because the only way in which we can
forgive the mortal world is by loving it, and loving it by serving,
by healing, by teaching it.
So I say to
you, Go forth in the ways of your mortal life and forgive, forgive
and forgive again; love and love and forgive again and again. In
this you show the fullness of your spiritual stature, you share with
the peoples of your land the full radiant power of your beautiful
soul and spirit.
In love and
light I place before you the emblem of forgiving love, which is the
emblem of the cross raised on high, radiant with light, shedding its
beams into every life and every place. This symbol of the cross of
Christly love is the emblem of beautiful forgiveness.
May peace
be with you and may peace be amongst you.
|
