Forgiveness noun /fəˈɡɪv.nəs/

• The act of forgiving or the willingness to forgive. ‘She is quick to ask for forgiveness when she has overstepped the line.’

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Forgive verb /fəˈɡɪv/

• To stop blaming or being angry with someone for something that person has done, or not punish them for something. ‘Hopefully, she'll understand and forgive you.’

• Used in polite expressions as a request to excuse one's foibles, ignorance, or impoliteness. ‘You will have to forgive my inquisitive mind.’

 

Self noun /self/

• The set of someone's characteristics, such as personality and ability, that are not physical and make that person different from other people. ‘The hero of the movie finally finds his true self.’

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Self- prefix /self-/

• Of or by yourself or itself. ‘Self-educated.’

 

Forgiveness is the one gift from God that people misunderstand the most. Forgiveness is always given to you, so you are always the one forgiving yourself.

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Let us examine for a moment what you really believe instead of this idea. You feel as though other individuals are distinct from you, and they are capable of acting in ways that have no influence on your ideas nor yours on theirs. Being apart from you, you do not directly benefit when you “forgive” someone for their sin. You demonstrate that you are superior to the person you are forgiving and live on a higher dimension; you provide compassion to an undeserving person. Due to his misdeeds, he is not worthy of your benevolent tolerance, and you bestow your gift upon one who is undeserving of it, for his sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you.

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Everyone makes an ego or self for himself, which is prone to extreme variation due to its fickleness. Furthermore, he also makes an ego for every individual he perceives, which is also highly unstable and changing. You never see a brother for who he really is, since that is beyond perception. What you see in him is simply what you put there, what you want to see, as it represents what you want to be the truth at a certain moment.

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Once you made an ego for your brother, you respond only to your own making; you respond only to what you perceive, regardless of how much you appear to be influenced by external events. You choose what you want to look at, and this is all you see because projection always makes perception. You do not react to it as if you created it, and you do not acknowledge that the feelings the dream you live in arouse have to originate from you. The characters that peoples your dream and their actions appear to be what define the dream, and you are not aware that you are making others to act on your behalf because if you were, the sin would not be theirs but yours.

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Everything you behold outside of you is a judgement of what you have seen inside of you. You must always receive the message you give because it is the message you want. You may think you judge your brothers by the messages they send you, but you have judged them by the message you give to them.

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You may think you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible only for what you think, because only at this level can you exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think, for you cannot separate yourself from the truth by "giving" autonomy to your behaviour. Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible; change means nothing at the symptom level, where it cannot work being without a cause.

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Now, an illusion about someone else cannot be maintained without also maintaining it about oneself. Since the mind cannot be split apart, there is no way out of this. Hence, because all you see in someone else are your own sins, you can never forgive anyone else. You put them there, and you want to see them there, not inside of you, but never think you can see sin in anyone but yourself. That means that it is a delusion and a fantasy to forgive someone else. You can only find forgiveness in someone else because you have held someone else accountable for your transgressions, and now you need to find your innocence in him.

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This is the world's greatest deception, and you are the greatest deceiver of yourself. It seems like there is always someone else who is aggressive, or bad, or evil, or sinful, and you suffer as a result of his transgressions. In such a scenario, how could freedom ever be truly possible? If this were the case, you would be a slave to everyone since everything he does has an impact on your destiny, feelings, suffering or joy, despair, or hope. You seem to be at the mercy of a world you cannot control; you have no freedom until someone else gives it to you, and since he is wicked, all he can give is what he is. While you are unable to perceive his sins and not your own, you still have the ability to free both of you for salvation depends on you who can forgive.

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The only way to fully find freedom is through genuine forgiveness. As long as it seems like this world of illusion is your home, both you and others will make mistakes or errors, and whatever you decide to believe in is your own responsibility. If you want to believe in mistakes, you have to make them real because they are not real, and you make mistakes real to yourself when you see them in others and respond to them as though they were real. Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, for you are always reacting to your interpretation of any situation rather than anything else, and thus your justification for the response is based on your interpretation. To interpret an error is to give it power, and by doing this, you will overlook the truth.

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To forgive errors is to overlook them. Do not see errors; do not make errors real. Therefore, see past mistakes and avoid allowing your perception to be based on them since you will come to believe what your perception appears to suggest, because your beliefs are changing thus the projection is changing and your perception is always the result of your own projection.

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Any attempt you make to correct a brother means that you believe correction by you is possible, and this can only be the arrogance of the ego. First, if you point out the errors of your brother’s ego you must be seeing through yours, because the God does not perceive his errors. Second, it is not up to you to change or correct your brother, just accept him as he is. His faults or errors do not come from the truth that is in him as a Son of God, and that truth alone is yours. His mistakes cannot change what he is and have no effect on the truth within you. To perceive the faults and errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you.

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The ego always feels that it is his duty, that it is kind, fair, and good to point out the errors he sees in others and correct them, ignoring that he had put them there in the first place. This makes perfect sense to the ego, which does not understand what errors mean and does not realize what it means to correct them. Errors belong to the ego, and the correction of errors consists in relinquishing the ego. When you correct a brother, you are telling him that he is wrong; what he is saying at a certain moment may not make sense at that moment, and it is certain that if he is speaking out of ego, he will not be making sense. But your job is still to tell him he is right. Do not tell him that verbally if he is talking nonsense as he needs correction on another level because his error is on another level. Your brother, because he is the Son of God, is always right. But his ego is always wrong, no matter what it says or does.

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Once you have overlooked errors, you have been saved. Once you have overlooked errors, you have been transformed. Always keep in mind that every meeting you have, every brother you meet is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself; as you behave towards him, you will behave towards yourself; as you consider him, you will consider yourself; and as you forgive him, you will forgive yourself, for all that you give is given to yourself.

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This is a world of opposites, and as long as this world holds reality for you, you have to make a decision between them every moment. Yet, you must learn what the alternatives are in order to be able to choose, otherwise, you will not be able to achieve your freedom. Allow yourself thus to understand exactly what forgiveness means to you and learn what it takes to set you free.

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Forgiveness looks on sinlessness alone and judges not; judgement and love are opposites because from one come all the sorrows of the world while from the other comes the peace of God. Your sinless brother is your guide to peace, for with this choice, you see your sinlessness, your everlasting comforter, and your friend beside you. Your sinful brother is your guide to pain, for if you see him sinful, you proclaim yourself a sinner, not a Son of God, alone and friendless in a fearful world. And whatever you choose to see, you will behold.

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Forgiveness is an earthly form of love. Forgiveness is the leaf that transforms the light of God into vision and lets you see the real world, removing all illusions that have twisted your perception and fixed it on the past that does not exist while reaching softly and silently beyond the world of illusions. Forgiveness is your function here. Forgiveness is the choice you make, perhaps the simplest one, and yet the only one that you can make for salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive.