Forgiveness: The Way To Renewal

The substance of the Soul is light and the essence of the Soul is love; the experience of the Soul is joy and the dimension of the Soul is timelessness. These essential qualities generate the Soul’s activity in the material worlds which can be summed up in the well-known phrase “See, I make all things new”. This experience of renewal is the spiritual reality of the Soul perceived by all knowers and mystics down the ages including our present time too. Eventually it will be the unmediated experience of all. 

But a problem that many people face in realising this effect of the Soul is that so much interfering thought and emotional distortion come between one’s personal consciousness and the inner reality which we are ever seeking to find. An even bigger obstacle comes from our refusal to ‘let things go’. We can become stuck in a world where only memory is real. We find ourselves clinging to the past, for we fear the abyss of uncertainty which we call the future and are dismayed by the smallness of the fleeting present moment. But actually it is this infinitely small point in time that is the gateway for our expansion into the presence of the divine Now which is the only place where creativity and transformation can truly take place.

A particular hindrance to this realisation is our attachment to the wrongs that have been done to us. These can become chains that bind us to the past and prevent us living and serving fully in the present. All spiritual traditions recognise this problem and address it in a dual way. Firstly we are urged to cultivate non attachment. This works on our emotional reaction to injury – both accidental and, particularly, intentional. Once achieved a true detachment will release us from these “ties that bind”. 

Secondly we are asked to forgive. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that ‘everything is all right’. But it does mean penetrating through to a deeper level of perception where something of the causative chain of events becomes clarified, and we begin to see the truth in the saying: “To understand all is to forgive all.” Because of this illumined understanding, one can now grasp the opportunity of the present moment to redirect all the energies and forces involved into positive channels.

In this way forgiveness transmutes the law of cause and effect from the vicious circle of vengeance – of ‘an eye for an eye’ – into the creative spiral of progressive goodness. Forgiveness is thus the great agent of release, transformation and renewal for all, enmeshed as we are in the imperfections of the human condition. The initiating actors in this are true examples of people absorbing the karmic consequences of specific situations with sacrificial love, and as a consequence lifting all humanity nearer to the light in the spirit of renewal.