How To Create Harmony - Forgiveness

Forgiveness is something that we, culturally, are becoming less and less good at. We find it hard to forgive even the most basic of mistakes, impulses or reactions, resulting in unsavoury consequences for our businesses, relationships, teams and above all, our own mental health.

 

In our search for an answer, we all find 1000's of reasons for our low moods or feelings towards another person, organisation, event or official. Some may look familiar:

 

• "My boss is always having a go, and puts me off doing a good job and makes me mad"
• "I work my fingers to the bone for this company, and never get recognition, it really depresses me and stresses me out"
• "That presentation went so badly, what's the point in doing anything else today, maybe I should look for another job because I can't get my head around this one"
• "The ref was terrible, he made so many bad calls, he put us off and that's why we lost"
• "It's just that guy, he's impossible, he just rubs me up the wrong way. We can't do business at all, it's really stressful"

Now, I can see how that looks like a totally plausible explanation for why you feel the way you do about a person, company or event. The trouble is, looking in this direction not only never solves the problem, but it is also holds the feelings in place and all of the problems that go along with it.

 

Einstein abstract notions pointed towards a solution (and who are we to argue with a acknowledged genius?):

 

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it"

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction"

 

Now, in order for us to make sense of this, we must first be pointing in the right direction and understand what is really at work.

 

The REAL creator of your experience

 

Conflict and disagreements are inevitable across life. Why? Because we all get lost in thought from time to time. 

Thought creates our experience of all things, and it is also the driving force behind all interaction and therefore, conflict. With that in mind, anything we experience will be a product of our thinking, including the feelings we have about those things too. It's all born of the same principle.

 

The experience we have about certain things is actually just a formulation of thought, experienced through our consciousness. When we think something, our consciousness brings it to life, and we experience it as real. This fundamental truth is playing out for all of us, all the time, even as we read (and write) this blog.

 

In situations of objection, disagreement and conflict, it is not the external variable that is responsible for the feelings we have, rather our own thinking. If we really understand that, at a fundamental level, we see that everyone is formulating their experience the same way, from the same place, and we are all innocently taking our thinking as reality and trying to deal with it as if it's "out there".
It's totally innocent, but the products of it all are actually shaping our world (and it's an increasingly troubling place).

 

Why Forgiveness is essential

 

Looking in the direction of "I am the creator", we can see that something is working behind the ego, behind our intellectual understanding of the world and behind any experiences we have.
The fact human beings are creating experience the same way, worldwide, means that regardless of the form that our thinking takes and how that plays out, we all have something in common.

We all get lost in our ego, in our thinking about life, and we are all the creators of that experience, and the form in which it appears.

In fact, our thinking is approximating our understanding of the world. Our attempt to deal with what we see as real by thinking about it actually leads us further from the truth and the solution than we assume.

What Einstein was saying is absolutely true. No problem can ever be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. In any case of conflict or bad feeling, an attempt to "get our head around it" will actually hold our consciousness in place. Which means that we can have no chance of finding the solution to the bad dynamics and personal feelings we experience. The only answer is forgiveness. This is why it is so important to us.

 

When we can really see that anyone, regardless of how it looks or plays out, has just created their experience and perception the same way we have, we can forgive them. If we don't see that, then forgiveness is something that has to be worked on and is a really hard pill to swallow, because intellectually it often doesn't make sense.
That doesn't mean that we should condone, or justify their behaviour or "let them off the hook" in any way. It just means that we ourselves have also become lost in the experience, and therefore, lost in our thoughts about the act, event or person. We then become part of the problem.

 

I am not suggesting for a minute that all criminals should instantly be forgiven and have their sentences and punishments expunged.
What I am saying is that they are as lost in their own thinking as the rest of us. It has just played out in a different way. What they have done should absolutely still carry a punishment. No action is without consequence after all, but if we cannot see a situation with more perspective, then we cannot expect others to do the same. I have used crime as the example here, but it really relates to any circumstance.

 

When we forgive, we bring a new perspective to the situation. Our own consciousness rises, and we are able to see problems neutrally, without getting bogged down with the bad feelings that were present in the situation.

 

Why?

 

• Because we are only ever feeling our thinking.
• If we are feeling bad, then we are not seeing situations with a great deal of perspective.
• By trying to think our way out of it, we are actually holding the feelings in place, and keeping our consciousness low.
• We will never see the full perspective of the situation and be able to move past it looking in this direction.

 

This does not just extend to forgiving others. We also would be wise to forgive ourselves too. We can often get lost in our own thinking, fly off the handle, lose our way, cause conflict and bad feeling. But we can forgive ourselves because it is just an illusion we have created. We just get lost in our thinking sometimes.
We have created that experience, and that situation, and just a quickly, once we see that, we can bring a new perspective to it, see it differently, and have a different experience.

 

The only person responsible for your experience is you!

 

Forgiving ourselves and others may just be the most important shift we can make in our work and social life, because it gives us back the power to see past problems and to even prevent them from happening in the first place.

 

Like Einstein alluded to, one thing we need is courage, to look in the opposite direction from the one we think we understand. This goes against what we think we know, it challenges our education and to an extent our upbringing and conditioning. This is why it takes courage to look in this direction. The reward is to realise, at an experiential level, a new way of interacting with each other and to the world around us.

The 2nd thing Einstein alluded to was 'a touch of genius'.
Genius is not created from complexity, rather simplicity and commonality. Making sense of what has never been fully understood, for ourselves and others. We are all capable of genius, if we are willing to have courage and look in the other direction.