A Prayer of Forgiveness and Reconciliation though not of Reuniting

Dearly Beloved, I understand what you (acquaintance, friend, group of friends, family member, parent, sibling, siblings, son, daughter, entire family, colleague, superior, employee, everyone at a place of work, spiritual teacher/adviser, lover, romantic partner, significant other, spouse, soul mate, spiritual or faith community, sangha, household community, local community, other type of community, country, etc.) did and the reasons why.

I have compassion for you and feel empathy and Loving Kindness for you and I still invite you into my heart where some expression or form of real love still burns radiantly and brilliantly there for you.

And because of what I have, for now, determined to be my highest good, I have decided to place physical distance between us, and perhaps either some or much emotional distance between us as well, though not any spiritual distance. That is because I have come to realize and understand that the underlying power of true spirituality is simply love; simple love, and that this aspect of love never need be withheld either from you nor anyone.

I have felt hurt and perhaps mistreated by you. You did not seek to adequately understand, nor respect, nor embrace my full humanness which includes my vulnerability, my innocence, my childlike openness to you, nor my deep capacity for love and understanding, and I forgive you for all of that and so much more. And I forgive myself. And I forgive the circumstance. And I forgive the past. And I forgive any part of the present that also seeks or needs forgiveness.

And I now release that past. I free it from all encumbrances. I set it all free now. I embrace and make love to each present moment. And in doing so I realize that I now also set myself free. 

And So It Is! Blessed Be! Hallelujah!

Amen!

Forgiveness and Redemption

I have been thinking about forgiveness in recent weeks. It is not at all unusual for me to think about forgiveness. It is one of the topics I come back to over and over again in my internal and introspective life. And my internal and introspective life is very rich. I roll a lot of things over and over in my head. I focus guided meditations on them. I attempt to understand numerous things in life. I want to make a great number of things in life make sense. I want to discover ways in which they make sense to me with the faculties I have at my disposal. So I have been intensely thinking about forgiveness, off and on, for at least thirty years now. Forgiveness is extremely important to me. At present I seem to be spending a majority of my time thinking more specifically about self-forgiveness, something I believe both myself and many other people in the world need more of.

I was not thinking at all about forgiveness when I went to the Kitsap Regional Library earlier this week and checked out two DVD’s. Both DVD’s were produced in the 1980’s. I checked out an early season of Murder, She Wrote starring Angela Lansbury and I checked out the Roland Joffé directed film, The Mission, which came out in 1986.

In many ways I came of age, in the 1980’s. It is probably my favorite decade even though this decade also contained several of my deepest personal life tragedies and challenges. I started losing dear friends to AIDS in the 1980’s, for instance. And I also began to realize just how potentially devastating this disease was going to be for an entire community I was very connected to. I was in my twenties for the entire decade of the 80s. In all but the last two years of the 1980s I was either deeply thinking about or indeed studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood. In February of 1990 I turned thirty. A few months later I earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology. At that point my life took a very different turn in direction.

I typically lead a rather intense life both internally and externally. For the most part, though not always, I check out DVD’s from the library in order to spend some time outside of my very intense internal world and my equally intense external world. It is one of the very few ways I have easily available to me that allows me to relax and slow down my very active mind. The problem is that I do not enjoy cinematic “fluff” at all. I abhor romantic comedies, for example. It is a cinematic genre I wish would simply die a quick and painful death and be banished from the planet forever. On the other hand I am strongly drawn to American and especially foreign made dramas that have very complicated plots, even more complicated characters, deeply woven and interwoven tragedy, deep and thought provoking spiritual themes, good writing, a Christ like hero or heroine who almost always dies near or at the very end, and containing a very deep message that I can ponder for many hours after the final credits have rolled. So I am always faced with a conundrum when I go to check out DVD’s from the library. On the one hand I want something that will allow me to relax and simply be entertained. And on the other hand if my mind isn’t at least somewhat engaged I am completely bored and quickly lose interest.

Murder, She Wrote and The Mission, given this inherent conundrum, seemed like relatively good choices.

I started by working my way through the season of Murder, She Wrote. I enjoy the character of J.B. Fletcher, I believe Angela Lansbury is a superb actress, and I find most of the story lines to be engaging. However, I was soon reminded of a plot technique that is used in almost every single episode. Near the end, after Jessica Fletcher has solved the murder and confronts the murderer, the murderer usually gives a full confession often accompanied by an explanation of why he or she committed the murder. Occasionally, during this admission and reveal, the murderer also immediately begins a process of repentance, demonstrating an understanding of how a different, less violent route could have been chosen and thus sometimes the very first hints of a process of redemption is begun.

Last night I finally made my way to The Mission. Next year will mark thirty years since The Mission was first released.  I have seen this film at least twenty times. It has been in the top five of my all-time favorite movies list since its release. This film brings together, as do many of the films on my all-time favorite list do, all of my absolute favorite film elements, including exceptional acting and complex spiritual themes and characters. It is among a growing list of movies I watch over and over again and never tire of watching. I will likely continue to watch it until I take my last breaths in this body. This film is not a light film. However, since I have seen the film so many times and can practically recite all the lines, by memory, word for word, it is no longer an incredibly intense film for me to watch—though it still is somewhat intense for me. The film centers largely on the character of Rodrigo Mendoza, played by Robert DeNiro (in a superb and spellbinding performance where he is also, in my opinion, at the absolute height of his physical and masculine beauty), a former mercenary and slave trader in eighteenth century colonial Paraguay where the indigenous Guaraní  people are being pulled between the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal, the Catholic church, and The Catholic Jesuit order. DeNiro’s character is a former mercenary and slave trader because about halfway through the film he has a spiritual awakening/redemption experience that results in his beginning the process of becoming a Jesuit priest. This awakening and redemption process is unwittingly brought on by his murdering someone he loved very much—his younger brother. These two scenes (the breakthrough spiritual awakening and redemption scene and the murder scene) even after all the many times I have seen this film, still bring tears to my eyes, every single time I view this film. This is because both scenes are so poignant and so well-acted and also because they each connect to a couple of very strong personal experiences in my own life.

After watching 80% of the Murder, She Wrote episodes and after watching The Mission, once again, I found myself thrown headlong back into deep thoughts about forgiveness, which ironically was exactly what I was trying to get a reprieve from. I guess I should have chosen my DVD picks more wisely. However, that’s OK. I like where these two DVD’s have taken me in terms of my current thoughts about forgiveness.

The Murder, She Wrote episodes got me thinking about the issue of self-forgiveness in some of the most extreme situations possible for human beings to find ourselves—forgiving ourselves for killing another person, or for possibly killing a number of people—something that someone like a war veteran might be dealing with. There was also an episode in this collection of Murder, She Wrote episodes in which a man had decided to take his own life though have it look like a murder so that his family, who would be left behind, would still qualify for the sizeable life insurance policy settlement they would get. There was a plot twist in this episode that had two characters living with deep guilt for decades for the roles they unexpectedly played in the dead man’s plans.

In The Mission I have already mentioned how the Robert DeNiro character became submerged into deep, agonizing guilt and shame after he kills his younger brother whom he loved dearly. This character believed there was no way he could possibly experience anything close to redemption for this act. Yet it was the love and care from members of the Guaraní tribe, people he had killed and had led into slavery, during his time as a mercenary and slave trader, who ultimately also played an important role in his own self forgiveness, largely because they were able to forgive him for his past deeds. However, the film made the extremely important point of making it very clear that it was not the love and care he received that led to his redemption, but rather his own self forgiveness. 

And as all of the Murder, She Wrote episodes present, admission of what we have done is perhaps the first step in the self-forgiveness and redemption process. Some of us are angry or cold-hearted (or both) or sociopathic enough to admit our faults and not have this not at all impact us deeply enough to begin the process of self-forgiveness. I however, believe and even larger number of us are like the Robert DeNiro character in The Mission. We simply feel so much guilt and shame or otherwise are so incredibly hard on ourselves we simply will not allow self-forgiveness nor redemption in. We do not believe we deserve to be forgiven.

Here is where I believe one of the foundational tenets of Christianity is extremely useful, even for those of us who are not Christian, even for those of us who are atheist. Yes. That tenet states that nothing, (that is no thing, including paralyzing guilt and shame), can separate us from the love of God. Nothing! If you call yourself a Christian, I believe this is the only Christian teaching you need to deeply believe in. It seamlessly leads to every other useful Christian teaching and teaching of Jesus himself! If we are non-Christian or atheist, we can simply change that to an understanding that, universal love can never be separated from itself and a very deep understanding that we, every single one of us, is a unique expression of universal love. So then we have, Universal Love understands that nothing we can do can ever separate itself from us and us from it. Never! This is the truth, the way, and the life. Any other belief equals death for us in some way, shape, or form. I understand that often we have done things that are extremely difficult for us to believe we can be forgiven for. I have done things I tell myself I cannot be forgiven for. And yet I am also a man of faith. And so I tell myself that I believe that, nothing can separate us from the love of God. I must be lying to myself or not truly believing that somehow. It doesn’t say that nothing can separate us from the laws of man, or the unforgiving nature of man or woman, or the conscious or unconscious guilting and shaming of man or women. No! It says, nothing can separate us from the love of God (i.e.—Universal Love understands that nothing we can do can ever separate itself from us and us from it. Never!)

May you find forgiveness of self and of all applicable others and for all life situations, circumstances, and realities that have negatively impacted your life or that are believed to have negatively impacted your life. May you find the ever flowing fountain of self-love that is always available to you. May you find caressing touch of redemption. May you be free. And may you help others find the path of freedom. AMEN!

Art by Ahmedshadow

A Radical Forgiveness

For those who do not know, I live in Tucson, Arizona.

Like many people here in Tucson and indeed, around the globe--I have spent a fair amount of time in the last several days thinking about, hearing about and reading about what happened here last weekend. I do not know if it is a direct result of all of this, but this story, which I first read about some time ago, just kept coming back to my mind over and over again. It is a true story. It is a story that has been included, over the years, in a number of books, ministerial sermons and various other treatments and anecdotes. Perhaps you have heard the story before. I re-read it many times a year.

After the abolition of apartheid in South Africa, a commission was established to bring the violence of apartheid to light and to give both victims and perpetrators a chance to be heard.

The Commission brought an elderly black woman face to face with the man, a Mr. Van de Broek, who had confessed to the murders of both her only son and her husband.

 The elderly black woman stood in an emotionally charged courtroom, listening to white police officers acknowledge the atrocities they had perpetrated in the name of apartheid.

Officer Van de Broek acknowledged his responsibility in the death of her son. Along with others, he had shot her 18-year-old son at point-blank range. He and the others partied while they burned his body, turning it over and over on the fire until it was reduced to ashes.

Eight years later, Van de Broek and others arrived to seize her husband. A few hours later, shortly after midnight, Van de Broek came to fetch the woman. He took her to a woodpile where her husband lay bound. She was forced to watch as they poured gasoline over his body and ignited the flames that consumed his body. The last words she heard her husband say were "Forgive them."

Now, Van de Broek stood before her awaiting judgment. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission asked her what she wanted.

The old woman replied:

"I want three things," she said calmly. "I want Mr. Van de Broek to take me to the place where they burned my husband's body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial."

"Second, Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. I want, secondly, therefore, for Mr. Van de Broek to become my son. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him."

"Third, I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him, too. I would kindly ask someone to lead me to where he is seated, so I can take Mr. Van de Broek in my arms, embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven."

The assistants came to help the old black woman across the courtroom. Mr. Van de Broek, overwhelmed by what he had just heard, fainted. And as he did, those in the courtroom---friends, family, neighbors, all victims of decades of oppression and injustice---began to sing "Amazing Grace." Gradually everyone joined in.

Harvey, A. (2009) The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism, New York: Hay House, Inc.

Prevallet, E. (2005) Toward a Spirituality for Global Justice: A Call to Kinship. Sowers Books and Videos.

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A Teaching on Abuse

I want to begin this by stating I am a biological male. Some people will read this and not automatically be aware of that fact because this is going to go out into a wide network. It feels important to state my physical maleness.

Further, I have never been sexually abused. When I was 19 a friend who was also a catholic priest and someone who had a certain amount of real power over me at that time, attempted to rape me. It did not get very far at all. I don't believe I suffered any real trauma from this incident. He was not a very good perpetrator, I believe, because he suspected I would not be easy prey. He was right. This was a serious act on his part. But I also recognized that he really did not have the requisite pathology nor physical strength to pull this off with me. I fear other younger and less rebellious and less self actualized males were not as fortunate as I.

I also have never been physically abused. Over the course of my professional career as a psychotherapist I became an expert in the area of gay and lesbian couples domestic violence. This is a part of the domestic violence world many do not seem to have a good amount of knowledge about. It is very real and pervasive. I count myself as blessed to have never experienced physical violence in a romantic relationship nor in any other scenario.

I believe I have suffered a significant amount of verbal, emotional and psychological abuse over the years. I helped to create and run a domestic violence program in rural Kentucky when I was first starting out as a therapist. I learned some incredible life lessons during my involvement with that program and all the ancillary programs I needed to avail myself to as part of providing excellent service to those who were in the program I helped to run.

One thing those who like me quickly learned when working in the area of domestic violence is that many of those who are brutally and physically abused in romantic relationships are simultaneously emotionally and psychologically abused in those same relationships. And when those people are asked which form of abuse is the worst, the lions share of people will say the emotional abuse is the worst. They will often conclude by saying these immortal words, "at least with the physical abuse, the scars will heal."

I first became acquainted with emotional and psychological abuse as a result of living with an alcoholic mother from my earliest memory. There were other adults in the household who would often and successfully shield me from any abusive behavior from my mother. And there was very little. It mostly consisted of her saying somewhat mean things every very great while. Once I got older and was involved in many extracurricular activities at school it manifested itself mostly by my mother forgetting to come and pick me up after a band rehearsal or drama club practice; events where I was often sitting alone outside the school building for three hours or more waiting to get picked up. I would end up telling friends (when I was in high school and when offered rides) that my ride was coming, because of being too embarrassed to admit that ride was my mother and she was probably on a bender and that's why I was still there.

In this same household I also had the unfortunate and perhaps unusual experience of having another adult in the house who was jealous of my relationship and closeness with my grandfather. This was largely my memory of my experience of living in a household with my maternal grandparents until the age of 18. It was the thing I talked exhaustively about to my spiritual directors in the seminary and it is what eventually led me to conventional psychotherapy when I was in my early 30's.

Finally, about a year before my grandmother's death in 2000, when I was 39 years old, I confronted her with 30 plus years of anger, rage and confusion around living with her emotional and psychological abuse of me while growing up. At this point she was a woman in her 80's with Alzheimers. She was not in a completely demented state at this point and in fact she never quite reached that state before her death. She was still quite sharp. And it would not have mattered to me if she had not been. What needed to be said, needed to be said. At first she did not want to listen. It is the only time I can remember in my entire life raising my voice to my grandmother, demanding that she sit her ass down and listen to me. She listened. I spoke. It was truly a life changing event. All those years of suspecting what was to me experienced as the absolute most bizarre and insane thing imaginable---that she simply could not stand the fact that me and her husband, my grandfather, were so close, was validated. She admitted everything. She also admitted to having a difficult time loving me because I reminded her so much of my biological father, whom she despised. During the talk we each cried profusely. It was one of the most healing moments I have ever had in my entire life. By the time my grandmother died, we were at great peace. All had been forgiven. Hallelujah!

One unfortunate thing however, that sprung from all those years of being emotionally and psychologically abused, was the devastating blow to my self esteem. That resulted in my going through life waving a larger than life and multi -hued florescent even-- flag, that spoke to the world, "Come to me. Come to me all of you with such woundedness that you need to project onto another; that you need to be mean to another. Come to me...and I will give you rest. I will give you much needed succor."

And so a veritable parade of supervisors, boyfriends, faux friends, biker club brothers and sisters, strangers in every type service industry imaginable, beat an absolute path to my person, answering that megaphoned call.

And Raven the victim was created. Doctor Frankenstein himself could not have created a more perfect specimen for the task he was created for.

So I began a chapter of unconscious and victim inspired living somewhere in my childhood that lasted until I was 48 years old. So what happened when I was 48? When I was 48, Hallelujah-- I experienced the big Trifecta, the Triple Crown, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit Trinity of calls to awakening. I experienced, in the course of 8 short months, the absolute rejection and betrayal of a group of people I had called my brothers and sisters in a motorcycle club I had founded. I also experienced the dramatic, mean spirited and seemingly heartless rejection of my boyfriend at the time. And I was unceremoniously laid off from my well paying job. The layoff, to some degree, was done in a very thoughtless, racist and corporate world type of way by not my corporate employer but by my doing very good work in the community but not truly knowing how to treat its employees non profit in San Francisco.

I honestly do not know what kept me from considering suicide. I believe one can be too blindsided by things to even consider suicide. But as has been the case for so many for time immemorial, the experience of my greatest pain brought forth in me my greatest invitation to awaken. And so gradually and then in speeded up fashion, I began to awake from a more than 40 year slumber.

One of the first things to disappear was my victim identity, even though the clarion call for people to come into my life who were abusive to me did not seem to dampen in the slightest. The call was still there apparently. The response was still there apparently. What was no longer there was the identity.

Ho’oponopono practice: I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

I learned of this practice shortly after experiencing the Holy Trinity. I had studied various teachings on nonduality years before this discovery. It was this discovery however, that made it all come to life for me. Anyone...anyone I perceived as wronging me in any way was met either verbally or in spirit with: I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Such simple words. Such tremendous transformation. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

In these few years, as a result of some things that are known to me and other things that are not known to me, I have learned something curious about abuse. Here it is: I can appear, from all appearances, to be be on the receiving end of significant abuse (verbal/emotional/psychological) in my life and in some of my relationships and not feel abused at all. To that end there are some things I am certain of: I don't create defining stories about myself. I do not create defining stories about the other who could be perceived as being abusive towards me. I am not in denial about what is happening. It is not my attempt at being nice that keeps me from feeling abused. I am not nice in that way. I am not codependent. I don't minimize what's happening.

I am.

I have not labeled myself a victim anymore. I have not labeled the others as perpetrators of abuse or "people who are abusive to me." I have experienced what the world would label as abuse simply as something that is in that moment and have resisted any desire to add additional labels to it. I do my Ho’oponopono practice (I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you ). I practice this silently and continuously while I am experiencing what would be considered abuse. I engage in other helpful and beneficial practices as well. I also practice metta and tonglen, both from the Buddhist canon. I do reiki work on myself and these others. Ho’oponopono is believed to be from Hawai'i, from the Huna tradition. I engage in other practices still.  The Ho'oponopono practice however, forms the energetic foundation of all the practices. I am also completely open to needing to remove myself from a physical relationship with someone if I am guided in that action. In such a case, I continue to do all these practices from afar.

I honor the abuse you have experienced in this life. I honor the non-abuse you have experienced. I honor you not knowing whether or not you have experienced any real abuse in this life. I honor the victimization you have experienced whether it be real or imagined. I realize that at the end of the day that distinction becomes immaterial. I respect any unique journey you may have that is related to all or any of this. I am not saying that you can or that you should now or eventually have the same experience as mine with regard to these matters. I do understand violence. I do understand victimization. I understand it all. I do not write this in judgment. I do not write this in ignorance. I wrote it in authenticity and openness.

I believe what I ultimately am doing here is trying to talk about what most call abuse and all the related topics on a different level from the levels these discussions usually take place on. I understand what I am saying may be viewed as controversial. I understand I may be viewed as minimizing or being insensitive or that my words may be interpreted as the mad ramblings of someone completely lost in the netherworld of codependency or lost in the sugary sweet land of sugar coated bliss and/or with an additional case of terminal niceness. It is OK to believe that. It is all Ok. I am OK with some not getting what I'm talking about here.

I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

© Raven/Sage Mahosadha

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