Active Peace is about the foundations of personal and collective healing, bridging inner and outer, and becoming ever more conscious and free. I’ve recently gained a new appreciation that forgiveness is part of the deep work of active peacemaking, as a way to lessen the burdens so many of us carry at the deepest levels, the anxiety, fear, and separateness.

The holidays always inspire me to draw inward into a reflective, heart-centered space and this year was no different. I bought and read the Fall edition of Parabola magazine whose title, Mercy and Forgiveness, caught my attention as I waited in the check-out line to buy a few last groceries before Christmas.

I also re-read Ronald Rolheiser’s book Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity. I’ll share a couple of specific inspirations. 

Self-Forgiveness

The first is Rolheiser’s emphasis on self-forgiveness. As mature adults, as people with some spiritual maturity, and regardless of how outwardly successful we may be, many of us will still find ourselves struggling with doubt and insecurity. This tells us that there are things in our lives that we have not loved yet. 

Forgiveness may be a way to unblock that love. Forgiving your imperfections, your ongoing dissatisfaction, arrogance, judgments, anger, and greed. Rolheiser writes:

“We make the choice daily: every time we find ourselves shamed, ignored, taken for granted, belittled, unjustly attacked, abused, or slandered we stand between resentment and forgiveness, bitterness and love. Which of these we choose will determine both our maturity and our happiness.”

Self-forgiveness has a more redemptive, spiritual feel than the more typical focus on self-acceptance. My own process of acceptance feels, more or less, like a solo, inside job. Forgiveness involves something more transpersonal—an energy emanating from Source that resonates with the core of my being. We can call that movement of energy love.

In her piece in Parabola called The Toughest Spiritual Practice, the well-known yoga teacher Seane Corn writes of her ongoing journey of forgiveness around the abuse she suffered as a young girl.

“I could not transcend suffering until I forgave my molester and every other harasser, manipulator, and abuser. Forgiving them never once meant that I condoned their behavior….Forgiveness means I refuse to carry them, their energy, their wounds, and their story within me.”

It was a moment of self-forgiveness that melted her heart and shook her out of blame and repressed anger. The little girl needed to be forgiven for not being able to protect herself. The adult needed to forgiven for abandoning that young part of herself. 

Forgiveness of Humanity

What if you could forgive not just yourself and a handful of select others but all of humanity? How helpful will it be to hold grudges in this collective rite of passage?

If you could forgive people for the ways they annoy you, if you could forgive humanity for its ignorance, you’d create a vast amount of spaciousness and energy from which you can move in a more relational, life-affirming way. That’s the power and promise of forgiveness.

It’s this level of clarity, of connection to truth, love, and innocence, that turns an ordinary human being into a mystic, into Jesus and Buddha, into a free and fearless force for transformation. This is the potential we all have, and moving toward that level of wholeness makes forgiveness possible. Spiritual maturity, forgiveness, learning to see each other more clearly, and getting along better are all inseparable.

The more environmental and social systems unravel, the more we need to cultivate this level of maturity as a foundation for our personal and collective wellbeing.

In Part Two of this article I’ll share a second insight that gets right to the heart of why forgiveness is so challenging and the shift in perspective that makes it possible.

If this level of engagement with the foundations and the deep work of active peacemaking speaks to you, consider joining me for the Online Active Peace Practice Group.

Photo credit: Eberhard Grossgasteiger on Unsplash