So far from what I thought!

Forgiveness is a powerful tool and one of the most misunderstood terms in the English language. As a small child I was taught to forgive my playmates, my sisters, or others who made me mad or hurt my feelings. Raised in a Christian home, I was taught many ideals based in Christian principles. Forgiveness was only one of them. I always thought forgiveness was for the other person. I forgave someone. I was gracious; they were forgiven.

Even though the heart of the training was slightly off-center, it was closer to the truth than I realized. As a child, I didn’t realize forgiveness had nothing to do with them and everything to do with me and that it was actually about me letting go and choosing not to hang onto the hurt or pain. I didn’t realize forgiveness was the way out of separation and separation was the force behind all fear and suffering.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was YOU. ~ Unknown

Being raised Christian I was taught that if I believed in Jesus, he forgave me all my sins. As I understood this, all that was required was my belief. Believe and be forgiven—cause and effect. It was a done deal. When I was a small child, I believed. Church was the center of life. Choir practice, youth events, church picnics and camping trips were the stuff of my adolescent and teenage years. Dad was a deacon; Mom volunteered. Our family was about church.

Sweet sixteen came and went and with it, the basic premise of my life. Simple forgiveness no longer rang quite true. If I was forgiven, why did I feel so bad? Why did I agonize over how I looked, what I wore, how much I weighed? Why did I believe, somewhere deep inside, that I was not enough? Why did I want so badly to be accepted, to belong, and know, no matter how hard I tried, that I didn’t fit in? If I was forgiven, assured a place in heaven, why did my heart ache for something more?

I knew at the core, that everything was askew, and would never be quite right again, at least not in the simple way it had been when I easily slipped a child’s hand into the hand of Jesus and walked with Him, oblivious to doubts and dark nights. It took me many years of make-believe, pretending to go along with the program before I cut the ties, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and began an amazing journey, only in recent years, seen to be circuitous.

The next twenty-five years took me through the desert of godlessness to the high plains of Divine Union and bit by bit, often painfully, imbedded a new understanding of forgiveness. Godlessness is such an intensely lonely place. No matter what I achieved, no matter what I acquired, no matter how many friends or lovers, I was still alone. At first, speaking the word ‘God’ was impossible. It rang with the fierce bitterness of betrayal. Speaking it, I knew I was a fraud, undeserving of letting the word grace my mouth in my uncertainty of its namesake’s existence.

Insight by insight, the path unfolded before me. Books fell off shelves into my hands and I couldn’t read them fast enough, sometimes reading three or more a week. Truth—I had to find the Truth. If what I knew was not Truth, then what was? I had to know. The longer the path wound, the more willing I was to find Truth, regardless of its message. I didn’t care anymore for my versions of truth, the versions being rewritten daily in the stories of my mind. God was reeling me in, like a fish dancing on the waves. A magazine would capture my attention and when opened, the face of a teacher would speak to me. Some teachers were real, some not. I was learning to discern what felt true, what felt pure. Sufism, Buddhism, Mysticism, Shamanism, all the isms tutored me, connecting all the pieces of the puzzle—and then I found Elle Re.

I don’t know how many times she said it, but one day, the first day I was ready and willing to hear, I learned about forgiveness. Elle has an amazing way of twisting the mind’s hold on words so that the words break open and spill their truth. Forgiveness, she said, was about everything being for the giving, forgiven back to God. What I heard that day was all mind was capable of hearing. I didn’t know then, that before it was done, everything I believed I was, everything I held onto for security, everything I held against any other, everything that made me special or unique, everything I wanted or desired, everything without exception, would be given back to God. I would be allowed to keep nothing. Another phrase I often heard her use was, “Nothing is for the keeping—everything is for the giving.” How very true that is.

True forgiveness is not an action after the fact. It is an attitude with which you enter each moment.” David Ridge

As I sat in meditation yesterday morning, I understood at last what it means, what Christ meant about true forgiveness, and knew that I was truly forgiven. True forgiveness comes when we believe enough to give everything we are back. It is the most amazing leap of faith, letting go into the unknown, letting go to God. Mind can only sense annihilation so each step along the path, feels like the last. Each step feels as if surely, nothing could remain if this ‘Yes’ is given—this ‘no’ forgiven. But, with each step, the ease grows. With each step, the ‘Yes’ deepens and resonates throughout the vibration previously called ‘me’. With each step God’s call Home strengthens. With each step an incredible expansion replaces the previously uptight human package—always bigger, always more than believed possible. With each step access is granted to previously unheard of knowledge and grace—timelessness, synchronicity, flow—each effortless and magical beyond conception. God’s grace is the call.

There appears to be no end, no goal zone, and for the seeker in search of the finality of done, there is alas, no destination. From this place of Clarity, there is no end to creation, to expansion. Just like the Universe, expansion within the universe of ‘I’ is ongoing, infinite. Each day brings with it extraordinarily vast horizons. Standing on the Whole side of the gateless gate, what some in today’s jargon are calling the portal, there is only God. From this vantage point there is clear seeing that there is only God, regardless of whether or not the awareness of this is present.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” Peter Ustinov

Myth or Magical Connection

Reality is not only stranger than we suppose but stranger than we can suppose.
- J. B. S. Haldane

Have you ever dreamt about being a magician, able to expand time, capable of accomplishing everything important to you? Perhaps you have toyed with the idea of cloning yourself so you can get your work done, and have an amazing personal life too. Perhaps, more often than you like to admit, these musings may seem like the only ways you’ll ever find balance, but alas, they are just myth, the stuff of daydreams and conjecture, of futuristic speculation or physical impossibility—merely wild imaginings or the rantings of a crazy person.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
- George Bernard Shaw

Something within us knows this potential. We have even experienced it more often than we understand. We actually experience it many times in each day, whether conscious of it or not. We call it flow, effortless, magical. We experience it when we are so engaged in what we are doing that we become the doing. The skateboarder becomes skateboard, concrete, body, and environment. Athletics, our hobbies, our passions draw us into that reality. We become the experiencing, with no separation between us and our heartfelt, fully absorbed engagement. This happens at work as well when we are puzzling a solution, in love with the mystery, open to emerging ideas, unconcerned about time’s pressures. These experiences are what make the thought of timelessness possible. The only difference between normal experience of flow and timelessness is that we see it in snippets and it appears to approach us unbidden. Seemingly we can’t summon it at will.

Einstein realized this when he advanced his theory of relativity. Time is relative. It is the reason as we get old, time appears to accelerate. Christmas seems to come faster and faster each year. When we were young, time stood still, especially so when we wanted it to move. When we were 15, turning 18 and graduating from high school felt as it would never come. Yet, once we had children, they magically grew from 2 to 15 to 30 overnight. Some days feel as if they last forever, others vanish quickly.

If we can experience timelessness, or its inverse, accelerated time, we can choose to live outside of time. After all, time is not real. If it were, would it behave in such a relative manner? In order to live outside the constraints of time, we have to understand the common threads that induce the appearance of timelessness. There are three components that nourish this possibility, what A Conscious Collective, calls ‘Love, Grace and Community’.

Love expresses as genuine curiosity and openness, an insatiable willingness to learn, being fully present, bowed in humility. It is the hub of wholeness and ‘love in action’. It is the door into absolute potentiality.

Grace flows from the foundation of Love into that place of discovery, where we use everything as catalyst, and enter into the mystery playfully, holding the space to honor all paths and fellow travelers, excited to be smack dab in the middle of this incredible experiment. Grace is the door into unlimited possibility. It is here that flow and timelessness are naturally available.

Community becomes the expression of Grace. Love and Grace extended beyond the ‘me’ into the ‘we’ of Community, beyond ourselves into service and open the door into amplified probability. This is the space of absolute productivity, unreserved commitment, unconditional inclusivity, revolutionary evolution. Here we passionately belong, our values integrated into everything we are and do. Sustainability, both individually and collectively, is an innate outcome, effortlessly a foregone conclusion. Possible—is it myth or magical connection?

This last six days I have been working with my partners and close friends in San Diego. We had a full schedule of meetings and a hope that we could find time to finish mapping a new ‘WEllness Business Model’ with which we have been playing. I arrived hopeful and yet, aware the full slate before us. The magic began almost instantly although we didn’t notice it until later. Time expanded to allow more in depth conversations, for traffic concerns, to make all the appointments and connections and some we hadn’t planned. It wasn’t just that we got more done, made amazingly deep connections, and felt no time constraints. We felt like instruments, played by the Divine, led effortlessly, spaciously from moment to moment within the context of motionless time. We would arrive home, with only minutes before the next event, and have time to relax, prepare, synthesize, and plan—to take an unexpected shower, a nap, or a walk in the radiant sunshine. Time expanded to include anything we were called to do. This grace descended from our love and expressed in the community we created. Our willingness to be the listening, authentic listening—tuned and refined us, aligning us with our true purpose and usefulness.

What we believe to be possible is our reality. We are the magician, the creator, the crazy person we have held at a distance. Ask and you shall be given. O, ye of little faith. All is possible. This Grace sits with me now as I write this missive from the plane on my way home. I have no reason to believe it will ever leave and if perchance it appears to, I have but to return to Love, and Grace cannot but follow.

There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo

Would love to hear your opinion. What do you think? What does your intuition tell you? Have you had the experience of timelessness? Tell us about it.