What is an unforgiveable offence?
Is it cheating and deception?
How about abortion?
Banging your best friend’s girlfriend?
Or maybe, murder?
Mass murder? For sure mass murder is an unforgivable offense right?
Terrorism is.
Or Endless war?
Genocide! Genocide is absolutely unforgivable. Don’t you agree?
Natives, Jews, Armenians…the list goes on…. since forever.
When I think of the stories in my life that forced me to face betrayal, my response has always been self preservation, and distance. Forced by some story, some version of honor that created a separation and aloneness.
When I look at any of these situations, I can always trace a trail of responsibility. Whether it was a dab, dash, or rather a splash, integrity shows that every situation is co-created; two beings dancing through emotion, fears, vulnerabilities, desires and chaos.
An unforgivable offense…a violation of the deepest kind. A physical, emotional or spiritual attack, outside of your consent.
And as life should have it, we flow through these situations regularly. Work, Lovers, Governments, Religions etc etc etc.
The result: separation, misunderstanding. Broken promises, pain, backlash, nothing that can ever mend a broken heart.
As I meditated on the concept of an unforgivable offense, I thought of separation, and I understand that separation is not our truth. We are not separated, because how we show up for another, is a reflection of our relation with truth. Truth, you cannot deny. You can try to store it away for a while, numb out, make excuses, but deep down, one will always know truth, for this is a time of purification, and the truth can no longer be avoided.
An unforgivable offense. Can these words be perpetuating a story of ultimate separation?
How will we heal racism, or sexism? Crimes against humanity? Are we destined for an eternity of endless wars between labeled factions? The emotional stain remains on the hearts of all those victimized. The path to reconciliation of any atrocity, personal or national, religious or race, will be a long and tiring road. Who can actually make it? How many will perish on their travels through the desert, seeking the promised land of equality, justice, respect, sovereignty and dignity.
The journey is quite frankly impossible.
Why?
If we can not dig deep in our own spirit to find compassion for those people around us, family and friends, who have erred and wronged us, if we can not forgive those people who have many a time, delivered pleasure and joy in our life, who will we forgive?
Where to begin when one contemplates forgiveness? What is in it for me? Why should I let this go? How can I let anyone do something like that to me? Although these seem to be the first questions to come up, they are quite simply egotistical.
The source of forgiveness is overflowing love. Love, in the greatest sense, is giving oneself for something bigger than oneself, selflessly, without expectation.
“How can I be so strong? Where can I muster the courage? And why me? “
“What pattern am I not seeing? Where am I out of love? I am out of love when I am in contraction and separation.”
It quite simply cannot matter that another has not loved you back as you wanted. That just isn’t the way love works. Although it can manifest as 1 to 1 correlation, universal love usually delivers itself back to you by someone/thing other than that of your expectations or hopes.
So how can we deny truly choosing love? Not romantic love, but real love… Higher Love!
As I contemplate what is unforgivable, I ask, how does that make my world more united or safe?
It doesn’t. It is imaginary safety, because the source of safety comes from oneself. No one can make you feel something inside that you do not already believe. My safety is my responsibility, my creation.
“So what is in forgiveness that I can learn? What is it about forgiveness, that will show me the limitations of my ego, and deliver a gift of clarity?”
What I discovered is, if I do not make the effort to forgive, I am denying a part of myself. I am denying my reflection. I am denying those parts where I have erred and asked for forgiveness. I am denying the fact that there is no real separation between forgiving and being forgiven.
If I cannot forgive someone I have loved, and who I have poured love into, what really is the quality of my love; a cheap moussant posing as quality champagne?
If we do not get into the practice of forgiving those we have loved, how can we ever expect any true planetary reconciliation? How can a woman forgive her rapist? A black family forgive the police force, a gay man his aggressor, parents who lost their children to military occupation, a generation of Native Americans enduring the memories of ethnic cleansing, or a people enslaved?
It won’t happen. The separation is getting wider, the differences increasing, the tolerance diminishing, and the compassion nonexistent.
Reconciliation of any issue cannot happen if individually we cannot work towards forgiveness of our loved ones who may have erred.
As we forgive ourselves, we can learn to forgive another that we love, and from there the one that perpetrated, the people who have kept us down and small, and dare I dream, those who have tortured, raped and killed our ancestors.
What is an unforgiveable offense?
Maybe just an opportunity to flip the page of history, right an old wrong or, open a doorway to planetary healing.
In these times, every action counts, especially those that have put us up against a wall and forced us to go deeper than ever. Every reflection a gift, an opportunity.
Those actions that come out of times of crisis, chaos and destruction, are the telling actions of one’s commitment to higher love, a love that transcends the ego, and the story of unforgivable offenses.
What can emerge from the cleansing waters of love in forgiveness?
The unknown awaits.
Written by Frank Mondeose
