[avodeinst]

"Radical Forgiveness
by Colin Tipping, M.Ed

Notwithstanding our need to have revenge and restitution whenever we
perceive ourselves to be victimized, the power and importance of
forgiveness is central to every religion. It has even entered the
annals of psychology and is now seen as essential to mental health.

In the world of recovery and 12 step programs the forgiveness step is
considered to be the most transformational. We also know that
forgiveness is a highly effective adjunct treatment for cancer and
other immune deficiency diseases and that lack of forgiveness is a
reliable predictor of who is most likely to get cancer.

Yet forgiveness always seems so difficult – almost super-human. We
know we should forgive, but somehow we simply can’t do it. We
consider people who forgive as verging on sainthood. Why is this?
What makes it so arduous? Why do we find it so hard to let go of
toxic emotional baggage?

The answer lies in our powerful attachment to the victim archetype.
We have lived out of this archetype for eons. It pervades our mass
consciousness at every level and we have come to believe that victim
consciousness is absolutely fundamental to the human condition. Jesus
was the embodiment of forgiveness, yet we have even made him a
victim – the ultimate victim in fact. We will not give it up. Why?
Because the victim, archetype is sustained by the Ego, that wholly
false belief system that holds that we are separated from God and
that God is angry with us and will one day punish us.

Yet, herein lies the clue to why, deep down, we feel that forgiveness
is the key to our salvation. As we recognize that we are spiritual
beings having a human experience, we realize that we are NOT separate
from God after all. We never have been. It was simply a dream. We are
all here expressing the ever expanding consciousness of God.
What follows from this is even more interesting. Gregg Braden, in his
book, Walking Between the Worlds, shows that underlying all our
problems, anxieties, neuroses, unhappiness and loneliness, are just
three basis fears:

(a) fear of abandonment.

(b) fear of not being enough.

(c) fear of trusting.

These all come from our core belief that we are separate from God and
that He is angry with us and will punish us severely one day. They
play out in a myriad of ways – child abuse, spousal abuse, addictive
behavior, family dysfunction, relationship problems, and so on – but
the core issues underlying all these things are the same: those three
basic fears. As we let go of our belief in separation, we see that
these fears have no foundation whatsoever.

But how to let go? Ordinary forgiveness won’t help us because it is
firmly tied to the victim archetype. “Letting bygones be bygones,”
means I will let you off the hook, but I still believe you did
something to me. I am still a victim. No, to break free we must do
better than that. We must replace ordinary forgiveness with something
so compelling and spiritually liberating that it magnetizes us away
from our commitment to the victim consciousness. That something is
Radical Forgiveness.

Radical Forgiveness literally obliterates the belief in separation.
It takes us beyond the drama and the illusion of the many ‘stories’
we create around the three basic fears and enables us to see the
truth that we have NEVER been abandoned, we ARE enough right now and
that it is SAFE to surrender to Spirit. When we awaken to that truth,
we are able to understand the true meaning of our suffering and
transform it immediately, thereby releasing the victim archetype.
When we recognize that everything that happens is simply an
outplaying of our three basic fears and that we needed the experience
in order to heal those fears, our life changes immediately. We
understand then that, because we chose it, there is nothing to
forgive. We are no longer victims. We can then live our life knowing
that, without exception, everything that happens to us is divinely
guided, entirely purposeful, and for our spiritual growth. That is
the essence of Radical Forgiveness.

That doesn’t mean we won’t often slip back into victim consciousness.
We will. As soon as someone or something upsets us, we will almost
certainly revert back. And that’s OK. That’s what being human is
actually about. But we won’t need to hang out in victim consciousness
for very long. A day or two perhaps, a week maybe – but not years or
lifetimes – which has been the norm until now! ..."