What is forgiveness?

For me, the really powerful truth of forgiveness is that it is a *different way of seeing* which holds the tension between our essence and our ego.

We are so conditioned to identify with our pain body that whether we are acting from love: “I open my heart to you” or acting from pain “I close my heart to you” we use the same pronoun “I” to describe it. Both actions seemingly arise from “me”.

But on closer inspection I don’t believe this holds up.

The “I” that opens my heart is very different than the “i” that closes my heart. They are two completely different states of consciousness. The ego does not want us to differentiate between them because it benefits from us feeling guilty/unworthy/ashamed by our own actions. In fact, it reinforces the probability that we will continue to act out of fear of being bad which can only cause suffering for ourselves and others.

But when we realize that it was the ego/serpent in us that transmitted the pain rather than the truth of who we are we begin to see things in a way that allows us to experience redemption. We can still mourn and grieve our unconsciousness but we can rest in the knowledge that it was not a conscious choice.

As Kabir says, “All are forgiven and moreover, dears, no one has ever been guilty.”

And if we experience ongoing torment of our guilt we now get to name that too as the serpent who is using its own misdeeds as leverage to extend its power in our lives.