UMS Founder on "FORGIVENESS"

This Sunday, September 9th, our discussion will focus around the topic of Forgiveness. If you'd like some food for thought on this subject, below you can read the chapter on Experiences from Perceptions, a book written by UMS founder Damien Simpson.

FORGIVENESS

"Forgiveness is truly a gift to self, it allows love to return to consciousness where there was none."

Love frees the past, hate binds it to you! Love is asked to forgive what courtesy would have avoided. Forgiveness is truly a gift to self, it allows love to return to consciousness where there was none. Forgiveness allows light to return where darkness dwells.

That hurt or bitter feeling we hold onto so tight shows up at all the wrong times, like at great celebrations. Birthdays and weddings are but stages for these bitter feelings to steal the spotlight.

To blame anyone else for what you feel is to lose your power. Look how you choose to act, feel, to be. Choice is also your power. You may choose how you feel! There are no other rules! How you feel has, and is, always your choice. How are you doing?

Any single event, of itself, cannot hurt you. It is when you start heaping that hurt comes and brings its companion, the tear.

What is meant by heaping? Say a friend does something to hurt you, and your mind starts to remember all the other things they did or did not do. They forgot your birthday, or didn't buy you a Christmas gift. You know, "HEAPING." That's how you can get angry enough to make forgiveness seem foolish. If each event is kept in its place, it can be dealt with.

Remember, forgiveness is a gift first to self, for it allows love to return where there was none. What value is the score if there is no purpose in the game?

All too often we let those we love think the mistakes they made are behind them; and the beautiful, righteous persons we are have transmuted these experiences into tender understanding.

For so many, they are merely hidden in the closet. They are your nuclear weapons in case of emergency. They are kept to make sure, in time of necessity, that we win.

The right and wrong game becomes important. The need to be right can assimilate facts and interpret them to suit that need. All too often we set things in motion to prove we are right and times like these make us DEAD right.

In a city of millions, so few of us touch, get to know each other. How important the relationships must be, that in millions we have searched each other out, probably over lifetimes. So often we hear, "There are a lot more fish in the sea." Somehow I really don't think so.

We who have been given unto each other's keeping, must care more for each other and attack each other less. We must never tear at the fabric of each other's being.

It's like a torn garment, once it's tom. It may be mended, but it is not the same. It is a torn fabric. You will read in this book: LOVE CAUSES CHANGE, IT DOES NOT DEMAND IT. We may always make new friends, but the reason, the lesson, the joy is not as definite; somehow, each time we make new friends for old, bad reasons, something is lost.

Friends share tears together, but these tears are the holy water of the soul. When a friend is acting strange, cruel, you might remember, "Fear is the parent of all cruelty." Forgive the part that's cruel - treat and heal the part that is fear.

There are times we react because of an intimate past experience we can't tell anyone for fear they will not like, love, or respect us "if they knew." A husband can make a movement in love, but the wife remembers that move or action with a past experience of incest or rape from a friend/date. Many such experiences leave a scar, and often guilt. "I must have done something to deserve this, but I don't know what!" The wife may be afraid and keep her secret, again out of fear of what her husband might think.

What you may think of as wrong between you may have nothing to do with either of you. We must then know the difference between seeking truth and finding fault. If we make mistakes, then make them on the side of charity.

The Universal Law teaches us: "As we forgive, we are forgiven. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

Once we become mindful of forgiveness and its virtue, we then become mindful of God's forgiveness to us. Bucky Fuller stated, "On this planet we learn by trial and error, and we must give each other that right."

We must accept apologies when given, and act to show they are accepted. We need to count on forgiveness, it keeps our loving alive. Jesus stated, concerning Mary Magdalene, "Much is forgiven her for she loves much."

We, at times, cannot help but "key" into past and fearful or guilt ridden experiences. Something someone says; a red car went by ("it" happened in a red car) whatever; when these things that go bump in the night key in, our friend can be the lock by which the problem can be brought out of the cage of the past; and lock and key work together to free the mind and comfort the soul.

UMS Founder, Damien Simpson