One of the more interesting facets of Forgiveness is that it can only function in the present moment. It can be about our past but it can only happen in the here and now.
Judgement on the other hand functions very well in the past and the future ... in fact it has a very difficult time functioning in the present at all. If you look at it clearly you will notice just like me that it is always about something that happened and it seems to want to prevent you from having something in your most immediate future or even further up the time line.
Forgiveness is what I do, not what I think.
Judgement is about how I think and how I look at things, not what I do.
These are two very different places in this universe. My mind can encompass both places. Now comes a slight twist; Judgement is a very necessary part of Forgiveness. Whereas Forgiveness is not necessarily a part of judgement; there is a pecking order here and if you get it backwards you can spend a great deal of time wondering just what the heck is going on. Judgement is a place you have to pass through to get to Forgiveness. Whereas Forgiveness is a place you arrive at ... then do it. Purely Subjective! You can feel it afterwards and most do. It is the release of an enormous amount of energy that had been invested in a protection racket.
To begin to move toward Forgiveness we have to see what happened and how it affected us ... what it took from us ... and what it left us with ... And that process is deeply woven in thought processes and Judgement.
Whereas when we reach Forgiveness, we recover the energy that we invested into protecting us from the afterglow of those events that hurt us deeply. Again we are sorting through thoughts. I like to call them The Ghost of Christmas Past. We think, and think is the key word here, that the pain of these lost memories still has the power to destroy us like they once nearly did.
With Forgiveness, the Ego releases those thoughts and pains of the past and the energy the Ego used to maintain its guardianship over our well being in the present moment. Forgiveness gives us back a clear mind to appreciate our future and now the Ego can invest that energy in the creativity of being us in the present.
All of this is about point of view. It is the difference between objective Judgment and Subjective action. Very powerful! ... but a point of view none the less.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the nature of hope. How healing must begin with hope. When I look at my parents, I believe that my father lived in hope. He was the white knight, he rescued my mother and did so, I think, in the belief that if he just kept rescuing her that maybe one day everything would be okay. I followed his lead. Every relationship I have ever been in with the exception of the current one has been about hoping he would get better: that he would commit, that he would stop screaming at me, that he would stop telling me how fat I was, that he would stop hating me, etc. etc. My mother, on the other hand, has never lived in hope. And now, that my dad has gone, she has no one who is willing to rescue her anymore and all she can talk about is how much she wants to die, how much she hates where she lives, how lonely she is, etc. She doesn't look out the window and appreciate the beautiful sunset, or the little children playing in the park or that she is still, at 89, walking without a walker. She has no hope. But, while starting with hope is key, it is not enough. To hope we must add forgiveness, empathy, and, above all, truth and love. If we cannot be truthful about the lives we have lived and love ourselves not in spite of but because of all we are, then hope will never be enough.
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