That
bouquet had literally saved her life. How many “chances” were involved in this one incident? If that couple
had not decided  to take flowers to a rehearsal, if the husband had not taken
a byroad, if they had not arrived at the river just as the old woman was
approaching it, if she had not recognized their gift as a sign, she would havelost the last several years of her life, and her family would have been
deprived of their happiness in caring for her . Let me end this chapter with one final story . It happened to me in
February 1959, when I was nineteen years of age. On a particularly  cold evening I was hitchhiking home to Michigan from
Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Lexington Park, Maryland. My oldest
brother would be visiting too, and I would be seeing him for the first time in
two years. I had reached an isolated rest stop somewhere in the middle of
the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The temperature hovered around minus twenty-
five degrees, and the wind was blowing so hard that I could stand hitching
at the edge of the entrance ramp for only ten minutes or so at a time. It was
about 3:00 in the morning, and I was walking out to do another stint of
hitching when I passed another sailor returning to warm himse lf in the gas
station. It was too dark to see anything but the outline of his uniform, but
since we were both in uniform we briefly exchanged words. “Be careful out there, buddy ,” the freezing sailor said to me. “It’s so cold that you can only stay out there a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” I said, “I appreciate it.”
That was it. I went out to see if I could snare a ride, and the sailor
returned to the comfort of the rest area. After fifteen minutes of standing
there with no “luck,” I had to return to the rest area. As I walked into the
warm room, I saw the sailor with whom I had just talked in the dark. It was
my oldest brother , Jim, who was hitching home from Norfolk, Virginia, to
be with his family and to see me. How many variables had to be precise to bring us together in the middle
of nowhere, talking to each other in the dark, stranded in a freezing
windstorm? I don’t pretend to know the answer , but I do know that there are
no accidents in a perfectly synchronized universe. You will see it only when
you believe it. OceanofPDF .comFORGIVENESS
 
To for give…you must have blamed. Achieving an awakened life is virtually impossible until we put the
universal princi ple of forgiveness to work in our daily lives. I include a
chapter on forgiveness because I know that an inability to forgive truly is
the cause of many many people’ s suffering. In working with thousands of
individuals over the years I have  come to the conclusion that an absence of
forgiveness is tantamount to staying imprisoned in an unawakened life. It is
as important to learn and practice as are all of the other principles. We cannot become awakened and truly live an enlightened life as long as
we believe that we are restricted to form. As we have seen, enlightenment
and abundance go hand in hand . For an awakened life, we must transcend
our bodies, must learn to be detached, and to tune ourselves more finely to
the synchronicity of the universe. But if we have not learned forgiveness,
we may master all of the other principles and still remain prisoners. To
genuinely feel forgiveness is to understand and apply all that you have read
in this book. Forgiveness is the ultimate test for the person who is willing
and able to live the enlightened life. In the introduction to this book I included a story about visiting my
father ’s grave in 1974. That story is a story of forgiveness. And that act was,
without question , the catalyst for moving me into a new life of abundance
and love. It was the most freeing and loving thing I had ever done. Once I
rid myself of the hatred and anger that I had been storing inside myself for
this man whom I did not even know , I had inner space to be receptive to an
entirely new way of living and perceiving my world. That new world-view ,
devoid of judgment and hatred, became the turning point in my life. If you want to walk the path of higher consciousness, then you must take
a hard look at your own willingness to forgive. Most of us simply are not
very good at it. Most of us hang  on to our judgments and hatreds. Most of
us are very good at blaming others for the shortcomings of our own lives. Forgiveness—I mean true 100 percent forgiveness—involves  a dramatic
shift. Here we go again; back to the very stuff of the universe, and the verystuff of our existence. Thought! Not to forgive is not to understa nd how the
universe works and how you fit into it. THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT  FORGIVE BECAUSE IT  DOES
NOT  BLAME
 
Life is a series of events which we have created and attracted to ourselves. The universe is also a series of events, all of which occur indep endently of
our opinions about them. It all just is, and it is perfect. The stars are all in
their proper places. Each snowflake that falls lands exactly where it is
supposed to. The temperature each day is just what it is supposed to be—in
fact, even the assignment of a number on a thermometer is a kind of
judgment about  it when you think about it. The storms, the floods, the
droughts, the position of the rivers and mountains, the orbit of the planets—
all of it just is. The universe with all of its perfection is presented to us. There is nothing to forgive, because there is nothing to judge and no one to
blame. When we know we create all that we need for our existence, then we are
in a position to know that we created all the hatred and anger we have
toward others. We even have created the others in our life for the purpose of
having someone to blame. Our need to forgive is a monumental misperception. The belief that
others should not have treated us the way that they did is, of course, the
ultimate absurdity . The univer se is always working just the way it is
supposed to, and so is everythin g in it, even the things that we have judged
to be wrong, improper , cruel, and painful for us and others. Our desire to
improve those things is also a part of the perfect universe. How can others
not have treated us the way they did? Instead of being angry at the way we
were treated, regardless of how horrible we have assessed it to be, we need
to learn to view that treatment from another perspective. They did what they
knew how to do, given the cond itions of their lives. The rest of the stuff that
we carry around with us is ours. We own it all. If it is hatred and judgment,
then that is what we have elected to carry around with us and that is what
we will have to give away to others. You have litera lly given control of your life to those whom you have
judged to have wronged you. Learning to forgive involves learning to
correct the misperceptions that you have created with your own thoughts.Once you have your thoughts clear , you will assume total responsibility for
yourself, includ ing how you are treated, and you will get yourself to the
point where forgiveness is no longer something that you must practice. You
will have corrected all of your misperceptions and eliminated the three
sources of your discontent which create the need to forgive in the first
place. Understanding these “thought distortions” will lead to practicing
forgiveness and ultimately to freedom from ever having to for give. RIDDING YOURSELF OF BLAME, REVENGE, JUDGMENT
 
I believe that my arriving at this place in my life has to do with having rid
myself for the most part of these three big destructive practices. As long as I
had a trace of them in my life, the forgiveness principle got entangled with
them, and I was unable to live naturally and unimpeded. Now that I live
without them, forgiveness simply never comes up for me, except as
something that I share with others who are suffering so much because of
their desire to hang on to those ways of thinking. As long as we continue to
think in these ways, we have to work at forgiveness. When we transcend
this kind of thought, for giveness is no longer an issue. Blame. If we are unable to forgive those we perceive as having wronged us
at some time in the past, we need to look at the decision to blame them for
our unhappiness. Blame runs rampant in our culture, and very likely it runs
just as out of control in your life. The lawsuit explosion is testimony to the
unwillingness of most people to take responsibility for their own lives. Instead, they sue as many people as possible, disregarding personal
negligence, and ultimately making someone else pay for a misfortune. Advertisements offering legal assistance proclaim, “It’s not your fault,
regardless of the circumstances. You should think about suing for damages
now.” This mind-set of assign ing responsibility to others for our life
circumstances and misfortunes is the product of an attitude of blame. The
more you have exercised it in your life, the more likely you will find
forgiveness dif ficult to practice. You must be completely honest with yourself if you are ever to rid
yourself entirely  of blame. The way to begin is to take total responsibilityfor everything that you are in your life right now. That’ s right. Say to
yourself, “I am the sum total of my choices up until this moment.” Your
enculturation may make this a difficult precept for you to accept. You may
want to say, “I couldn’ t help it,” or “It was someone else’s fault,” or “I was
in the wrong place at the wron g time,” or “I was dealt a dirty deal,” or
“Family circumstances created my misery ,” or whatever other excuse you
have developed to absolve yourself of responsibility . Discard all of that and look at your life from a different perspective. Everything that happened to you is a lesson you can be grateful for. Everyone who came into your life was a teacher , regardless of how much
you choose to hate and blame him or her. There truly are no accidents. This
universe is working perfectly , including all the subatomic particles that
make up you, and those you blame. It is all just as it is supposed to be. Nothing more, nothing less! All of those situations, including when you
were a small child, contain immensely valuable lessons for you to absorb
and benefit from, lessons which are blocked by feelings of hate and blame. Assess how much you resist this principle of taking total responsibility
for your life and believing that there truly are no accidents in this perfect
universe. Follow this logic. Someone has harmed you in some way in your
past. You feel hurt and angry , and that anger ultimately turns to hatred. This
is your hatred. You carry it around with you wherever you go. You own it. It
is you and you are it. The hatred is all thought, and is with you wherever
you go. You have given someone permission not only to hurt you once, but
to continue controlling your inner life. The hatred infects your life while the
other person is still on his or her path doing exactly what he or she knows
how to do, independent of your current miserable state. The absurdity of
blame is that it gives other people control over us at the mom ent of their
dastardly deed, and continues to give them control over how we interact
with others. We become prisone rs without hope of achieving a higher sense
of awakening and happiness for ourselves. This is how blame works in us, and why it is a futile and destructive
activity . As long as we blame others for the way we feel today , we will have
to wait for them to change before we can grow out of our current
immobilized state. Forgiveness is a tool to use to transcend the negative
effects of blame. Once we have forgiven another , we no longer need to
blame him. When we have forgiveness for all, there will be no one left toblame for anyth ing. Ironically , then we also will have no need to forgive
anymore, and that is the real lesson of this chapter . Forgiveness means changing your misperceptions. When we forgive
another for anything that he or she may have done to us, we are really
saying, “I no longer give you the power to control who I am, how I think,
and how I’ll behave in the future. I take responsibility for all of that now.”
Thus, we really have nothing to forgive, since we create our own reality by
how we choose to process the behavior of others. We processed it in a way
that hurt us when we chose blam e. We might have chosen not to have hatred
within ourselves and simply let it go. Once we change our perceptions of
life’s hurts and pains and see that we create all that we need for this dream,
including the scoundrels, we no longer need to blame anyone for anything. This is the most freeing stage to reach that you can imagine. Being totally free from blame and taking complete responsibility for life
requires a great deal of discipline. It is a discipline of self-love rather than
self-contempt. When we love ourselves, we refuse to allow others to
manage our emotions from afar. Forgiveness is our means to that end. When
we choose this option, it eventually becomes an automatic reaction toward
those who treat us contemptuou sly, and then, of course, forgiveness is no
longer required. Forgiveness is an act of self-love, rather than some
altruistic saintly behavior . It gives us control over our inner life and
thoughts. Knowing that nothing is random, and that all of life is purposeful,
even people who seem so destructively different from us, allows us to
accept those “accidents” and those “scoundrels” as events with some
meaning for us. I can assure you that once you no longer need the lessons in
your life that unpleasant events  offer you, you will no longer have these
events. If forgiveness is something you need to practice, you will continue
to attract opportunities to practic e it. If your reaction is anger and hated and
defiance, then “those kinds of people” and “weird unlucky breaks” will
continue to be in your life. I rarely run into these things in my life anymore. I look for the good in everyone, and I take responsibility for all that comes
my way, and I mean all of it! Consequently , I see what I believe, over and
over again. You too are seeing what you believe, and if you are blaming and
full of hate, that is what you believe, and, of course, that is what you see as
well. Revenge. We live in a world which endorses anger and revenge. It is a
world whose people are almost always at war in one way or another . War is
our extreme tool for handling disagreement. War is waged between nations
by those within the nations who are not at peace with themselves. Wars are
waged even as an attempt to solve human problems—“wars” on proverty ,
drugs, illiteracy , and hunger . We pray to those who endorse forgiveness, we
claim to love and respect great spiritual masters and their teachings, but
when it comes to enacting forgiveness, we opt for revenge and war. Gunfire
in Bethlehem on Christmas Day and in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday are sad
reminders that forgiveness often is something that we pay lip service to,
while crucifying designated enemies. Revenge is the acting out of the thoughts of blame. Blame is in the mind,
and revenge is acted out in form. The acting out part immobilizes those who
choose revenge as a lifestyle, and violates the most sacred sacrament
available to us: “Thou shalt not kill.” Yet kill we do, in numbers too large to
comprehend, and we are building weapons so massive in their destructive
ability that entire cities can be rendered into ashes along with all of their
inhabitants. While this is all part of the perfect way of things that is so
paradoxical, so too is the desire to end it that peace-loving people feel
within their hearts. So as this violence continues and intensifies, we all must
ask ourselves, “What is the lesson that we as a total body of humanity are
struggling to learn in this situati on?” The existence of ourselves and future
generations depends on our finding that answer . Every day we hear of people  who have been wronged somehow—
injured, killed, maimed, raped, and robbed—and of the desire to exact
revenge on the perpetrators. Families of victims are filled with anger and
motivated by revenge. Hate flourishes along with demands for punishment
similar to the pain inflicted on their loved ones. Yet, even when that penalty
is carried out, the victimized continue to feel pain, suffering, and hatred. They poison their souls with debilitating anger , and cannot continue their
lives free of this unwanted pain. They are victimized not only by the
criminal, but by their need to exact their revenge. I remember a case that Earl Nightingale told me about. It really
impressed upon me the importance of forgiveness. A woman lost her only
daughter to a violent criminal act. For the next eighteen years the woman
was consumed by the desire for revenge, which remained unfulfilled, shebelieved, only because the death penalty had subsequently been banned in
the state where the murderer had received his death sentence. For eighteen
years, the mother was unable to function in a satisfying way, the way she
once wanted to. Throughout the years she sought help for her unhappiness
from a variety of sources. It was ultimately the act of forgiveness that freed
her. When she visited and forgave her daughter ’s murderer , still on death
row eighteen years later, she described it as a spiritual experience of love
for herself, her daughter , and the murderer . Blaming others for the condition  of your life fuels anger . There are many
everyday folks and professional s who endorse anger as a healthy response
to the world. To the degree that anger is one of many feelings (thoughts)
that we, as human beings, are capable of, I concur . It would seem as
unlikely for us never to have anger as for the sky never to have clouds. The
problem occurs when we hang on to it deliberately or helplessly , and find
that we have blame, revenge, and judgment which we are unable or
unwilling to let go of. I do not approve of hitting children to teach them not
to hit others, or believe that the expression  of ange r is always therapeutic. Nor do I believe in blaming others for my emotional state. I recommend being gentle with yourself and loving yourself regardless of
how others respond in the universe. Try not being attached to any belief that
others should not be what they are, and instead understand that they are on
their own path, and that your opinion about them has nothing  to do with
how they behav e. Fill yourself with love even toward those who would do
you harm , which  is what all spiritual leaders have said, and see if you still
have anger and revenge. This is difficult only if you are attache d to having
the world be other than the way it is. If you can accept even that which you
want not to be and send love where you previously sent hatred, you will not
need to have angry thoughts anymore. You will not need to “get even.”
Instead, you will find yourself unable to hang on to anger , or to immobilize
yourself with those thoughts. When you teach yourself to be the thoughts that are harmonious, rather
than those that are discordant and divisive, you will find anger an option
you no longer elect. Once you stop the blaming and take respo nsibility for
all of your inner world, the anger dissipates as well. When you finally send
away anger completely , you will no longer have your life distorted by the
need for revenge . You will not opt to turn control of your life over to those
who you perceive have wrong ed you. You will find a sense of peacethrough your act of forgivene ss, and you will remain on the path of
enlightenment. If enough indiv iduals integrate forgiveness consciousness
into their lives, perhaps we will one day make this our policy toward other
nations as well. Young people are dying today to avenge their ancestors. They are
fighting in the Holy Land, where Jesus walked preaching forgiveness. They
wage war interm inably . What does it prove? Where does it lead? To peace? Never! The vanquished respond with vengeance and increase the human toll
in battles over ancient enmities. It can all begin to change with you, if you
learn the universal principle of forgiveness, learn to transcend  hatred as a
response to hatred, and to give away peace in its place. It is not weak to
forgive, it is a gallant and brave act. Fighting weakens everyone who participates. Everything that you are
against weakens you in some way. As Paul beseeched us in Romans 12:21,
“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” You simply need
to forgive, and never let yourself behave in ways which you despise
yourself. An ancient Chinese proverb tells us, “The one who pursues
revenge should dig two graves.”
 
 
 
Judgment. Blame you can eliminate. Reve nge you can send out of your life. But the best you can do with judgment is to reduce the amount of it in your
daily life. Judgm ent means to view the world as you are, rather than as it is. It is impossible to avoid judgment completely , because virtually every
thought has some judgment in it. To tell yourself that this is a beautiful day
is a judgment. To send someone love is a judgment. To evaluate anyone or
anything is a judgment. Thus, you can only avoid judgment when you avoid
thinking altogether , and that would be absurd. But you can significantly reduce the amount of negative judging  that you
do, and this is a kind of forgiven ess that will help to improve the quality of
your life dramatically . The first thing to remember about judgm ents is that
they do not alter anything or anyone in the universe. Just because you
dislike someone  or react negatively toward some behavior does not change
the person or behavior you are judging. I remind you again to keep in mind
that when you judge another , you do not define that person, you define
yourself . Your judgments only say some thing about you. They describe yourlikes and dislike s. They do not define the person being judged. That person
is defined by his or her own thoughts and actions. Once you recognize this,
you begin replacing your inclination to judge with acceptance, and this is
forgiveness in action. When you accep t others, you no longer experience the hurt that goes with
judging them. When someone acts in a way you find disagreeable,
understand that your hurt, ange r, fear, or any strong emotion is how you
have chosen to process that person’ s behavior . If you are unable or
unwilling to notice that emotion and subsequently let go of it, then it is your
self that is in need of attention. That person’ s behavior has collided with
something unfinished or unac knowledged in your life. Distress at the
person’ s behavio r is your way of avoiding something inside of you. A fine
distinction, perhaps, but a very significant one. Your thoughts about how others are behaving are yours. You own them. You carry around the results of those thoughts. If you do not judge those
around you but instead accept them for precisely where they are on their
own path, eliminating your need to be upset by them, you have put
forgiveness into practice. Forgiveness is really just correctin g our own
misperceptions. You really have nothing to forgive, other than yourself for
having judged or blamed in the first place. All three of these qualities, blame, revenge, and judgment, are deeply
ingrained thinking habits. They develop in a culture which prizes itself on
blaming everyone else for everything that happens, and suing endlessly to
invoke “justice. ” They result from having thoughts of revenge drummed
into your head when you were a child, and justifying it all as “only proper ,”
patriotic, or just. Yet all of this behavior is extremely self-de feating and
irresponsible, to say nothing of unenlightened. And it is very stupid—to use
a judgment! Whenever you find yourself caught in this style of behavior , remind
yourself that you are the ultimate victim here. You are allowing your entire
life to be controlled by the beha vior of others, and no matter how much you
may justify it, you are still a slave to the whims of others when you act this
way. As Maslow  reminded us, “There is no such thing as a well-adjusted
slave.” Such behavior also keep s you in an unawakened state. You cannotget to a sense of purpose and live a life of harmony and balance while
simultaneously allowing someone else to dictate your thoughts and actions. You cannot let your purpose find you, live a spiritual and lovin g existence,
and at the same time blame and judge others, or be motiv ated out of
revenge. Enligh tenment demand s that you take responsibility for your life. Responsibility means literally to respond  with ability . Obviously , this is
impossible when you are disabled by hatred, blame, and revenge. Take a look at the lives of many  who are most admired in history . Those
who were fixed on revenge led us into war after war, killing
indiscriminately , destroying everything in their path, all in the name of
blame and anger . How can anyo ne make a positive contribution and tune in
to the force of love when he is preoccupied with vengeance? Impossible. Listen to the words of those you admire, and rather than put a label on
yourself such as Christian, Jew, Moslem, Buddhist, or whatever , instead
make a commitment to being Christlike, Godlike, Buddhalike, and
Muhammadlike. We, and all of the world, will be much better off for that
commitment, and we will begin living forgiveness every day, rather than
only talking about it in church, and then heading back to our daily lives to
help build more weapons, sue our neighbors, and judge those who are not in
geographic proximity to us. FORGIVENESS
 
One of the most poignantly memorable covers of a national magazine
appeared severa l years back. It was a picture of Pope John Paul II, sitting in
a dungeon with the man who attempted to assassinate him. That portrait of
forgiveness left a lasting impres sion on me. People whom we consider holy,
or spiritual, or role models of decency always are able to forgive without
qualification or doubt. They do not cloud their consciousness with thoughts
of anger , hatred, and revenge toward those who have attempted to wrong or
harm them. Rather , they provide us with a model of forgiveness that we can
use in our daily lives. Perhaps the picture of Christ forgiving those who are
in the process of torturing and killing him is the most powerful utterance of
this spiritual master . “Father , forgive them, for they know not what they
do.” This is the very essence of Christianity , and yet very few are able to
live up to these words.It is important for each of us to consider the meaning of those words
“they know not what they do.” People who are inflicting harm  on others
really and truly do not know what they are doing to others. They are always
acting out of their own anger , hatred, blame, or revenge. What they direct at
others says nothing about the others. However , it says something very
powerful about them. This is what you must learn about forgiveness. Those
people who have behaved toward you in any way which you find
disagreeable or hurtful really and truly do not know what they have done to
you. “Why?” you might reasonably ask. Because they are unable to see that
we are all connected. They are living out of their separateness. They see
themselves as separate from everyone else. They are like that cancer cell in
the body that has no reference to the whole. Because they are composed of
disharmony , they act out on their adjacent fellow humans in the same way
that the cancer cell gobbles up the adjacent cell, ultimately killing the body
and itself in the process. You would not blame a cancer cell for being a
cancer cell, would you? Obvio usly, you would expect it to do precisely
what it has to do, given its makeup. This is true of those who are behaving
in ways which you dislike. They cannot know what they are doing to others,
because they feel no reference to others. They are sendin g out their
disharmony toward you because that is what they have to give away . Hating
them for their behavior is akin to hating moss for growing on a tree and
destroying the appearance of the tree. The moss only knows  how to be
moss, and regar dless of your opinion about how it should not be behaving
in such mosslike ways, it will still continue doing all that it knows how to
do. Victimizers too are acting out on the basis of all that they know, and the
only way you can help them to stop behaving in such ways is to help them
to convert their disharmony into self-acceptance and self-lo ve, so that
eventually that will be all they have to give away . This in no way implies that victimizers should not be held totally
accountable for their actions. But it is you I am talking to here, not the
abuser . Compassion for others is impossible when you are filled with a belief
that you are separate and distinct from other human beings. Once you know ,
truly know in your heart, that you are connected to all others,  even those
who behave in evil ways, you then have reference to the entire being called
Human Being. With this new awareness comes the ability to forgive, and
this is why spiritual masters talk about the ability to forgive as a guidingprinciple in life. They know that those who send out hatred are only acting
out from where they are and how they have been thinking up until this
moment. The enlightened person is sure enough of his own divineness that
he does not judge himself in any negative manner because of the actions of
others. Indeed, forgiveness is man’ s highest achievement, becau se it shows
true enlightenment in action. It illustrates that one is in harmony with the
very stuff of the universe, that is, with the energy of love. It is the ability to
give this love away in the most dif ficult of circumstances. Our role models  remind us that the people who choose harm’ s way for
others know not what they do. For it is as true of anything I know about
human beings that we cannot give away what we do not have, and we only
give away what we do have. If we give away hatred or harm in any way, it
is because that is what we have. It is impossible for someone who has only
love within to give away hatre d. This is why your ability to forgive will
come automatically when you truly become awakened. Mark Twain said it
so beaut ifully , when he wrote: “Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds
on the heel that has crushed it.” A grand image indeed, and one to keep in
mind as you work on this universal principle of for giveness. MY OWN VOY AGE OF FORGIVENESS
 
As I stood at my father ’s grave back in 1974, I was not aware of the
changes and challenges that lay ahead of me, but I knew that I was
participating in some very powerful drama. As I talked to my father , with
tears streaming down my face, I sensed something changing for me, and by
the time I left Mississippi, I knew that I was a new man. I knew  somehow ,
in some inexplicable way, I had been sent to that gravesite for a reason. Forgiveness, that is, correcting my misperceptions about why I was carrying
around all of that hatred for so many years, freed me to do the things that
were waiting for me. I created a life of excitement, abundance in every
sense of the word, and love that I had previously known nothing about. I set about writing, speaking, making tapes, and doing a great deal of
media publicity over the years. I was making regular appearances on
national televisio n, speaking to large groups and earning more money than I
had imagined for myself. Then one day I received something in the mail
that was to put my newfound ecstasy to a real test. A registered letter
arrived from an attorney , inform ing me that I was going to be sued. ThoughI felt the lawsu it was without merit, I was in shock. No one had ever
threatened me with a lawsuit, and I did not even know an attorney . After thousands of dollars and almost two years spent in legal battles, I
realized I had slipped back into old vengeful ways. The anger that I felt
filled me with a rage that was destroying me. I was not eating  properly . I
lost a great deal of weight. I felt terrible all the time, and still the anger
mounted in me. I felt like the ultimate victim. Not one day would go by
without me thinking angrily , “Why is this happening? Why won’ t it go
away?”
Then one evening, after giving a speech to a large group of people and
relating the story of how I had forgiven my father at his grave, and of all the
mysterious happ enings that had occurred in order for me even to find his
grave, a beautiful light explo ded inside of me. It finally hit me that
forgiveness is the key. Not hatred and anger , but forgiveness. In that
moment it was all over for me as far as that unjust lawsuit was concerned. That night I had the first restful night’ s sleep in a long time. I thought about
the people who were suing me, and I sent them all forgiveness. The next
morning I completed my act of forgiveness totally . I was no longer going to
participate in this absurdity . I let go of thoughts about any problems that
might come my way, and instead I focused all of my thinking on the people
involved. My heart opened up to them and I stopped the angry thoughts. That morning I sent them flower s and a selection of books to read. I notified
my attorney that I was through paying legal bills for this thing and that he
should simply stand by and not respond to anything else concerning this
case. My thoughts which previously were full of anger were converted to
love almost instantly . I knew in my heart that I could handle any
contingency that might arise from this case, and that it was all going to be
fine. Three days later, I received a notice from the group’ s spokespe rson that
they were dropping the case, and apologizing for any problem s they had
caused. They had signed a release. It was all over! While I had spent thousands of dollars, and lived a nightmare for two
years, I had finally learned the lesson of forgiveness that I had been
introduced to back in Biloxi. I had to re-create a miserable existence again
in order to have the message really clear this time, and all that I spent, and
all that I went through were all done for a powerful reason. To teach me the
lesson of love over hatred. To get it firmly entrenched this time. That theonly response to hatred is love; everything else will bring you down again. I
do not regret one penny that I spent on the experience. The moment I
switched from anger to forgiveness it was all over for me. I was free in that
one simple swift instant, and the rest simply had to be played out in form. After that brush  with the legal system had disappeared from my life, I
made a pledge to myself that I would put forgiveness completely into
practice. I contacted every single person in my life toward whom I had any
hostile or even mildly annoyed feelings. I decided to clear them  all out with
forgiveness. I wanted to be absolutely certain that if I died in the next
moment, not one single person on this planet would have any leftover
animosity towar d me that I had not tried to rectify , even though it was
obvious to me that “none of it could have possibly been my fault.” (Don’ t
we all feel that way?) There were several people who had borrowed money
from me and obviously were not going to pay me back. I had not talked to
them in years, and the fact that they had not repaid the debts had damaged
our relationships. I sent each of those people autographed copies of my
books, some tapes that I had produced, and some flowers, with a note
saying that I was wishing them well, sending them love, and trusting that
they were happy and joyful. I did not mention the debt. In my heart I had let
it go by deciding that it was okay for them not to repay me. It was over, and
I had not only forgiven, but I had sent them expressions of love instead of
annoyance and bitterness. In every other area of my life, I made an internal commitment to forgive,
regardless of how minor the events were. It only took a few hours and it
was all behind me. No enemie s left at all. No one to direct  any hatred
toward on the entire planet. No family members to blame for anything that
had taken place years and years earlier . No former colleagues or bosses with
whom I had disagreements. I was now on a forgiveness bandwagon, and it
was working dramatically . My relationship to all of those people was clean, and I was not only
sending love, but receiving it as well! Several of the debts came in, and
though some have never been repaid, it is fine. I love them all, and now,
today , as I write this book, I cannot think of a single person on this planet
that I have any leftover bad feelings with. Moreover , I now know that I truly have no one to forgive, and I never
did. I simply had to correct my misperception that others were  causing me
to be miserable, that they were the cause of my discontent. Paradoxically ,through the act of forgiveness, I have come to the place where  forgiveness
never comes up for me. I have learned to accept others exactly as they are,
and never pretend that I love something I don’t. But I also know  I no longer
need the immobilizing emotional reactions that used to accompany my
encounters with people who were behaving in ways which I disliked. Consequently , acceptance has allowed me to see them for what they are and
where they are, and to remind me of the same thing in myself. Any hostile
or negative reaction in me, as a result of the behavior of others, really just
lets me know where I am, or am not, and no longer requires any
forgiveness. I have come to the point of not needing to forgive, by
forgiving. One more paradox. PUTTING FORGIVENESS INT O ACTION
 
It is obvious to me, and I am sure to you as well, that we all resist
forgiveness when we prefer to use blame. We seek out revenge when we
live in a world which practices  it in every corner of the globe. We find
forgiveness a plausible princi ple when we read our holy books, yet
extremely difficult to live by, because it violates that need to get even and to
“right the score.” We also fail to look realistically at what an inability to
forgive does to the person who is carrying around the anger and hatred. The
first time we read about someone performing an absolutely horrendous act
of violence on someone else, our innate reaction is: “I hope they kill the
bastard!” When someone wrongs us in some way we tend to forget these
important words on forgiveness and say to ourselves, “I’ll get even,” or “I
hope he gets his.”
The entire business of putting forgiveness into action on a daily basis
involves accept ing the other six universal principles in your life. The
forgiveness part will come automatically when you go through the gate—
when you befriend your own personal transformation and honor the
intelligence that is behind your form and all form. When you use your
power of thought to be at harm ony rather than fighting the flow of energy
that is our universe. When you stop carving up your world and live in
oneness with all human beings,  knowing that we are all connected by that
divine intelligence, all of us, even those who do not think and behave as
you would prefer . When you know in your heart that what you think about
expands and you stay focused on what you love and what you are gratefulfor. Whe n you release yourself from all attachments and let yourself live
fully. When you have the knowledge that everything is synchronized and
working perfectly in this onesong. When you start living this way and thinking this way and allow others to
do the same, then forgiveness will come automatically . You will have no
hatred or disharm ony left inside to give away . The forgiveness will come as
naturally and automatically as Nureyev performs a leaping pirouette after
thousands of hours of practice, or as Isaiah Thomas twists and turns for a
driving lay-up. No one can tell these two geniuses how to perform their
seeming miracle s. They do it from intuition after practice, practi ce, practice. Forgiveness is very much like that. After practicing the lesson s of higher
consciousness, you will find forgiveness the easiest of all the universal
principles to put into your daily life. It will happen automatically . If it is not
happening automatically now, then you have more practice to do on the
other areas of your life. Do not bemoan your inability to truly forgive. Simply work at living the
principles of higher harmonious consciousness, and before long you will
find it happening without any effort. When you see others practicing the
acts of blame, anger , and vengeance, forgive them and be open to
supporting them  in changing their choices to hurt themselves and others. You will start devoting yourself to helping others to eliminate their
vengeful, unfor giving thoughts, and then you will know that it has
happened for you as well. It will be as if you were on automatic pilot,
reacting with your thoughts the same way you react automatically , without
consciously thinking, when you do something that you have practiced many
many times. But until that automatic act of forgiveness clicks in, here are
ways to speed up that process. GIVING IS THE KEY  TO FORGIVING
 
This is one of the greatest lessons I have ever learned in my life. If you can
master this one without any cynicism, you will find forgiveness  is a way of
life for you. Giving is the answ er to “Why am I here?” Since you cannot
own anything, and all of your attachments prevent abundance from arriving
in your life, then all that you can do is give, of yourself, and of all of those
things that keep circulating back into your life. Most of us are so into
hoarding all that we can get for ourselves and our families that we forget theneed to keep it in motion. In our rush to acquire, we find ourselves creating
angry relationships, even with strangers, as we set up defenses in
anticipation of their taking something away from us. Keep in mind that it is impossible to create any bitterness or hatred
toward others when your primary objective is to be a giving human being. Forgiveness comes almost autom atically when you detach yourself from the
need to get something and instead focus on reaching out to others. The
irony is that the less you are obsessed with getting and the more willing you
are to give, the more you seem to get. What you think about expands. Thus, if your thoughts are on getting all
that you can and beating the other guy who you believe is trying to do you
in, then you are constantly think ing about, worrying about, and planning on
the notion of deception. Your thoughts are focused on the dishonesty of the
other guy and the callousness of the world. That is what will expand in your
life, because that is what you are thinking about. Consequent ly, you will
find yourself getting more and more fearful about being cheated, insuring
yourself against the possibility , hiring attorneys to protect you, and loading
yourself up with adversaries. You literally put yourself in an adversarial
relationship with almost everyone that you meet. And sure enough, you find
this sort of thing continuing to expand. Now take a look at the opposi te approach to your life. Your thoughts
(you) now shift to a new perspe ctive. You are not thinking about your own
quotas, your own acquisitions, your financial picture, at all. You are instead
giving away what you have inside. That is, harmony and acceptance. Since
you are not looking to gain anything from anyone, you have nothing to fear. Suppose someone enters your life who might be determined to cheat you,
and that person encounters in you someone who truly cares about him as a
human being. The likelihood of the cheating behavior will be dramatically
lessened when there is no expectation of it. Looking for harmony and
cooperation and giving it to others will most likely result in your receiving
the same  kind of treatment. You will not attract enemies, because you are
not putting yourself into an adversarial position with anyone, regardless of
what anyone sends you. Giving becomes the key to creating relationships in
which forgiveness is unnecessa ry. This truly works! Bear with me before
allowing any of your enculturated skepticism to creep in here. Of course, I am aware that there are people who behave dishonestly , in
the world. I know that horrible criminal acts occur regularly . I know thatmany people believe that we should keep building more and more prisons
and put all of “those kinds of people” away for good. But building more
prisons to put away more and more people simply is not workin g. We have
doubled and quadrupled the number of prisons in the past decade, and they
are still overcrowded. The answ er will come when we discov er why we
have so many people who want to take from others, and work at correcting
that approach to life. Raising our own consciousness is the only way that
we can begin such a journey . I have found that the quickest way to disarm
anyone who is focused exclusively on what he can take from me is to let
him know , with kindness, that I do not live that way . I recently purchased an automo bile and found after the closing that the
dealer had adde d a charge of almost two hundred dollars into the contract,
over and above the price that we had agreed upon. I did not discover this
until I had returned home and looked over the final papers more carefully . For me, this was a perfect opportunity to practice all that I have been
writing about in this book. Years ago, I probably would have been angry ,
felt cheated, and had an unplea sant exchange with the car dealer. Not this
time. I simply called, and expressed my opinion to the salesman about what
had happened, and explained that I did not feel that he had acted from
integrity in the closing. I also talked to the owner , and I again expressed
how I felt about it, without any anger or bitterness. We had a pleasant
exchange, and the dealer apolo gized, but felt that he could not refund the
money since we had signed the papers and after all a “deal is a deal.” I told
him that I did not respect this particular business practice, and I then let it
go. I did not need to forgive him, since I was not owning any anger about
the situa tion. I vowed I would look more carefully at contracts before
closing in the future. That was the end of it. Until the following letter
arrived some ten days later . Dear Wayne:
After giving our conversation on the phone further thought, I
have decided to refund the $188 .50 that is in question. I feel that
it was a misu nderstanding and not an attempt to mislea d.
However , our customers’  positive feeling toward us is very
important and I hope that this refund will be evidence of that. If I can be of any other assistance, please let me know . Thank you.I donated the money that I received to the End World Hunger cause, and
five days later I received a check for $988.50 from Argentina, for royalties
on something that I had written fifteen years ago. I gave six hundred dollars
of that money to help out some relatives, and six days later I received a
check for $6,269.50 from Mexi co, also totally unexpected, for something I
had done many years ago. For me, speaking from my heart, I truly know
there is truth in the maxim “What goes around, comes around.”
You know that there are certain  principles working within you to keep
you alive and functioning, such as salivation, digestion, elimination, and the
like. Know also that the principles of abundance, synchronicity ,
detachment, and oneness are operative in the universe. All you have to do is
tune in to them and let them work through you exactly as do the principles
that maintain your physical perfection. When you are in harmony yourself,
you want to give that internal bliss away , and that is the focus of your life. Since you are energy, and every thing else in the universe is also energy, all
you want to do is keep it flowing. No blockages, only flow. When you send
it out, it will keep coming back. Remember to give for the sake of giving,
and to keep it circulating as it flows back, and you will soon see it working
in your life. If you doubt this principle it will not work in your life. Your doubt is the
blockage. But everyone that I know who has truly put it to the test finds that
it works beautifully . For me, I am beyond believing. I simply know it to be
true. Thus I seldom encounter those who might cheat me. Whe n I do, I act
from love rather than anger , with the realization that they canno t experience
what I am talking about while they are fixated on getting rather than giving. The quality of their lives is affected by their thoughts of scarcity and trying
to get from others, and they believe they will never have enough. I believe I
will always have enough, no matter my circumstances. Consequently , I can
give, and it keeps coming back almost magically . I keep it all circulating,
since I do not want to be attached to any of it. People simply do not steal
from me. This realization about giving hit me strongly a few years ago when I
began giving away large numbers of my book Gifts from Eykis . The more I
gave, the better I felt and the more abundance kept coming back into my
life. I realized that giving and receiving were the exact same thing. Nodifference. Ever y gift I gave gave me something back. I found a profound
shift taking place as I practiced giving. This was not a conscious choice to be more philanthropic. I still resist
when someone tells me what to give. It was an automatic response to the
shifts that were taking place in my consciousness. The givin g was truly
enriching my life in ways that I had not anticipated. In a meditation one
night, I saw that we are truly here only to give, and that love is the most
important thing to be giving, regardless of the circumstances. I still, however , have great difficulty in suspending anger when I see
evidence of man’ s inhumanity to man. The newspaper picture of the angry
young man who has just murder ed two innocent people is a very tough test. I someti mes stare at that photo, which we all have seen, and ask myself,
“Am I capable of giving him love too?” I try to see that person as a tiny
baby . To see his innocence and the fact that he too, regardless of his crimes,
is deserv ing of love. This is admittedly a tough place to get to, particularly
when you or a loved one has been the victim. Our judgment of him does not
define him, he is already defined by his own thoughts and actions. Joel
Goldsmith, writing in Parenthesis in Eternity , says:
Loving our neighbor as ourselv es, then, is giving our neighb or
that same recognition of the godliness that we give ourselve s,
regardless of the appearance of the moment. That neighbor may
be the woman taken in adultery or the thief on the cross, but we
have nothing to do with that. What we have to do with is to love
all our neighbors by knowing their true nature, just as we would
be loved by having them know our true nature, in spite of what
outward appearance may temporarily be evident. We can begin by sending love and compassion to the part of ourselves
who is struggling with pain and sorrow and anger . When we can truly be
there for ourselves, we are able to be a part of that universal energy, that
higher consciousness, that godliness that is in each and every one of us, and
we are able to give it even to those who harm us, because it is what we have
inside of ourselves. It truly is in every one of us, to be love, if we allow it. Giving, in any capacity that you can muster , without any expectations of
return for your efforts, is the biggest step that you can take to bring
abundance into your life and to eliminate the need to forgive. Paradoxically ,as long as you do not expect it, you will find yourself receivin g more and
more as well. Ultimately , you will discover that giving and receiving are
one and the same. FORGIVING YOURSELF: AND WHY  NOT? When you are living the principles discussed in this book, you will find
yourself being gentler to yourse lf. This is the act of self-for giveness, which
shows that you are living the awakened life. I have a beautiful pillow in my
office that says, “I’m allowed.” It was made by my sister -in-law many years
ago. For me it is a reminder that I am allowed to live my life as I please, to
make mistakes, to learn from those mistakes, and on and on. Many live
their lives believing they are not allowed. Judgmental adults succeeded in
convincing them that there are irrevocable rules which state what you can
say or not say, which order you never to be late, not to drink or smoke, to
hate the enemies assigned to you, never to masturbate, to disregard all
religions except the one you were born into, to dismiss those who appear
different from you, never to get divorced, and so on. At some point in your
life you adopted  these rules for yourself and made them a lifetime code of
conduct. Yet you also found that it was impossible to live up to all of them
all of the time. Consequently you filled yourself with guilt for not having
lived up to the judgmental code that was imposed upon you. This guilty feeling is something that inhibits your own awakening, and
the only way to escape it is to forgive yourself for everything that you have
done. Once again, the absurdity of the need to forgive surfaces. You really
have nothing to forgive yoursel f for, and yet if you don’t, you still wallow
around in your own guilt. The more you learn the lessons of higher
consciousness and live your life from this perspective, the less inclined you
will be even to think about needing to for give yourself. Look at any and all beliefs that you carry around with you in terms of
how well they serve you in living a life of harmony and purpose. If you
behave in a way that is in violation of those supposedly irrevocable rules,
you have not really done something wrong! You have merely done
something. And it is done. If you are, however , plagued with remorse and
guilt, then judging the action as wrong seems appropriate to prevent its
recurrence. Does it? Probably not. So, instead, learn from it by deciding if it
is something that you want to repeat based upon your values, and thenmove past it. It takes effort to determine if you are still opera ting on the
controls impose d by others. The effort is well worth it if you are not taking
responsibility for your own mind. You are allowed, plain and simple. You
do not need to be forgiven by anyone else, only yourself, and even that is
truly unnecessary once you accept yourself completely . You will know
when you have mastered the art of self-for giveness. When you are no
longer judgmental toward others, you will have forgiven yourself and be on
your path of enlightenment. Releasing judgm ent of another is actually releasing judgment of yourself. Your need to put others into categories defines you, not them. When you
stop doing this, you have forgiven yourself for whatever aspect of yourself
you see in them. The more at ease you are with the behavior of others, even
if you would not act that way yourself, the more you are at ease with
yourself. The more you continue to react with intellectually violent
responses to the conduct of others, the more you know that you have work
to do on self-for giveness. Say to yourself, “I’m allowed .” Not because I tell you you are, or
because your parents are no longer in charge of you, or because some
authority figure granted you permission, but simply becau se you are
lovingly there for yourself. No guilt, no anger , no self-flagellation over
things that you consider mistakes. A simple understanding that you do not
fail in life, you only produce results, and you have the right to learn and
grow from any results that you produce. The word “failure”  is itself a
judgment, and if you label yourself a failure in any context, you are judging
rather than accepting yourself. Self-acceptance will turn into self-love, and
when you are filled with self-love, that is what you will have to give away . Consequently , the willingness to forgive yourself is the necessary step to
being in harmony with all of the universal principles. It gives you
permission to be whatever you choose. And it gives you the right to self-
determination. Everything that you have done is over, regardless of your
opinion about it. It simply is. Try to simply be. The past is over, and
everything you did got you to the point that you are at right at this moment. Everything had to happen exact ly as it did, without any exceptions in order
for you to be here, reading these words in the exact location in which you
find yourself right now. You needed to do it all, and all you have to do, to
really learn this lesson of forgiveness, is to allow that thought in and
lovingly forgive yourself. Receive the lesson from it and be in harmonywith yourself and everyone that you encounter . The more peaceful you are
with that idea, and the more willing you are to be gentle with yourself, even
if you slip, the more you will find forgiveness your way of life. Which
means the more you will find acceptance, which is the absence of the need
to for give, as your way of life. You will notice  so many others  violate the values and beliefs  that you
hold. Refuse to judge them. Reach out to help when asked, and know that
where you are on your path, you can choose to be unaffected by their
conduct. The more you know that you are thinking and acting in harmony
with what the universe can be, the less you will be inclined to judge others. And you will have stopped judging yourself as well, and that is a glorious
aspect of this process. You are treating yourself the way you truly want to
be treated, as the divine being that you are. You have the intelligence that
supports all form running through you at all times. You are important
enough to know that, and divine enough to give it away . SURRENDERING: THE UL TIMA TE ACT
 
I am bringing this book, this wonderful labor of love for me, to a close with
a final concept that I call surrendering. This in no way implies giving
control of your life over to another person, organization, or set of ideas. By
surrendering I simply mean trusting in the forces and princip les that are
always at work in this perfect universe, just as you surrender every day to
the principles that make you a working, loving unit, without questioning,
fighting, demanding, or even asking to fully understand them all. And just
as you surrender also to the greater principles that govern the universe and
all of the living beings contained within it. The act of forgiveness is easier when you surrender . When you know that
all of us are on our own paths, doing exactly what we know to do at the
moment, given the conditions of our lives, then you can let go of any malice
toward others for acting out their own destiny . You also know that you
brought every person and his or her behavior into your life in some way,
and for some reason. With surrender , you sense that there is a powerful
lesson for you as a result of that person’ s being in your life, even if he or
she visited havoc and pain on you. Forgiveness comes with surrendering to
the perfection of it all. Surrende ring replaces questioning why some things
are so painful and dif ficult to grasp.Surrendering goes beyond forgiveness, and can easily carry the burden
not only of this particular chapte r but of the entire book as well. Inherent in
the business of surrendering is the notion of trust. With surrender you trust
the perfe ction and beauty of it all, and at the same time know the paradox
that all of the suffering that seems to go on all over our planet  is a part of
that perfection, as is your own strong desire to end it. Death is not a punishment, but a transition. The only thing that dies is
form, while thought is eternal energy. You are that thought, and can never
die. Surrender completely and stop fighting anything and everything. When
you have this trust you will wonder why you did not surrender long ago,
because of the peace and serenity that you will feel. One way to move in to surrende ring is to make a personal commitment to
forgive every single person that you have ever had any conflict with. Send
each one a gift and a note wishing him or her well, and when you are
tempted to haul out those old thoughts of bitterness and angu ish, remind
yourself that that relationship has healed with the balm of forgiveness. It is
as if you knew you were going to die tomorrow , and you knew also that you
could not make  the transition if you left any people behind you that you
hated. Imagine heaven requiring  love for everyone, no exceptions, and you
having the capacity to make that happen. In many ways, heav en on earth
does require exactly that—love  that is not conditional, that is free from
demands, that allows the loved one the right to be anything that he or she
chooses without  losing your love. This is the kind of surrendering that I am
talking about, a kind of trust that everything is in perfect working order in
the universe, including yourself. As I approached the writing of this work, I surrendered. I accepted that
the principles that I was writing about are true and omnipresent in the
universe. I trusted that comple tely, as I do right now. As I proceeded to
write, I allowed  myself to flow throughout this entire project, no strain, no
worry , no fear that I would not be able to complete my undertaking. I
surrendered to the idea that this book would be written and that I had
nothing to fight or struggle abou t in the production of this work. I would sit
down and simply outline the ideas that I have had as a result of my own life
experiences, my research and reading, my listening to great spiritual
masters. Everything that I needed seemed to come in at just the right time. While
working on a particular chapter , I would receive a tape in the mail fromsomeone who had heard me speak, telling me that this would clarify some
of the points. It always did. On other occasions, someone woul d send me a
book in the mail, telling me that I simply had to read it. That book would be
the one that I needed on that particular day. Many many times when I
wanted a specia l quote to use, I would reach into the massive pile of books
and pamphlets on my huge glass table, and my hands would bring out a
book. While I sat at the typewriter , I would open that particular book to a
page, and there it would be—perfect. Just what I wanted to embellish the
point that I was making. Never before have I had this experience of
effortless perfec tion for such an extended period of time. I surrendered to it
in my writing, and allowed it to flow unimpeded through me to you. No
worry , no stress, no fighting any of it, simply knowing that it is all working
perfectly . I am not advocating an absence  of planning or caring. In fact, you will
find yourself caring and preparing even more than ever before. What I am
describing is the process of knowing that everything is going to work out
because you are at harmony within. You only have love and serenity to give
away . In the process of going about your life’s work, have that inner
knowledge that it is all going to be as it should be. This is what surrendering is about. Inner knowingness. Inner contentment
that overtakes you when you trust the force of the universe to be in
harmony with yourself. Knowing that abundance is your birthright and that
it all flows to and through you when you are no longer challenging
anything. It is like having a guardian angel or a loving observer as a part of
your consciousness, a companion that you are always having compassionate
silent conversations with, a consciousness behind your form. That part is
always perfect. There is no struggle or suffering in that part of you. That is
your transcendent dimension of thought. A sensiti ve Norwegian poet, Rolf Jacobsen, wrote a beautiful poem titled,
“Guardian Angel.” It deserves to be read slowly and lovingly . I am the bird that knocks at your window in the morning
and your companion, whom you cannot know ,
the blossoms that light up for the blind. I am the glacier ’s crest above the forests, the dazzling oneand the brass voices from the cathedral towers. The thought that suddenly comes over you at mid-day
and fills you with a singular happiness. I am the one you have loved long ago. I walked alongside you by day and look intently at you
and put my mouth on your heart
but you don’ t know it. I am your third arm and your second
shadow , the white one,
whom you don’ t have the heart for
and who cannot ever for get you. We all have our own connection to that invisible part of us. There is
much more to life than simply living out our days as form, and then
disappearing into an abyss of infinite nothingness. Our thoughts are a magic
part of us, and they can carry us to places that have no boundaries and no
limitations. In that dimensionless world of thought everything is possible. It demands nothing of you, this awakened life, only that you fill yourself
with the life energy that makes the dynamic work, and that you celebrate
the invisible part of you as well as the visible. Let these ideas in and simply
see where they lead you. As you do:
Remember , you do not have to struggle…
You do not have to fight…
You do not have to win…
You only have to Know . OceanofPDF .comNAMASTE
 
I celebrate the place in you Wher e we ar e all one.
_OceanofPDF.com_Youll_See_it_When_You_Believe_It_-_Wayne_Dyer.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        That
bouquet had literally saved her life. How many “chances” were involved in this one incident. If that couple
had not decided  to take flowers to a rehearsal, if the husband had not taken
a byroad, if they had not arrived at the river just as the old woman was
approaching it, if she had not recognized their gift as a sign, she would havelost the last several years of her life, and her family would have been
deprived of their happiness in caring for her. Let me end this chapter with one final story. It happened to me in
February 1959, when I was nineteen years of age. On a particularly  cold evening I was hitchhiking home to Michigan from
Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Lexington Park, Maryland. My oldest
brother would be visiting too, and I would be seeing him for the first time in
two years. I had reached an isolated rest stop somewhere in the middle of
the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The temperature hovered around minus twenty-
five degrees, and the wind was blowing so hard that I could stand hitching
at the edge of the entrance ramp for only ten minutes or so at a time. It was
about 3:00 in the morning, and I was walking out to do another stint of
hitching when I passed another sailor returning to warm himse lf in the gas
station. It was too dark to see anything but the outline of his uniform, but
since we were both in uniform we briefly exchanged words. “Be careful out there, buddy,” the freezing sailor said to me. “It’s so cold that you can only stay out there a few minutes. ”
“Thanks,” I said, “I appreciate it. ”
That was it. I went out to see if I could snare a ride, and the sailor
returned to the comfort of the rest area. After fifteen minutes of standing
there with no “luck,” I had to return to the rest area. As I walked into the
warm room, I saw the sailor with whom I had just talked in the dark. It was
my oldest brother, Jim, who was hitching home from Norfolk, Virginia, to
be with his family and to see me. How many variables had to be precise to bring us together in the middle
of nowhere, talking to each other in the dark, stranded in a freezing
windstorm. I don’t pretend to know the answer, but I do know that there are
no accidents in a perfectly synchronized universe. You will see it only when
you believe it. OceanofPDF. comFORGIVENESS
 
To for give…you must have blamed. Achieving an awakened life is virtually impossible until we put the
universal princi ple of forgiveness to work in our daily lives. I include a
chapter on forgiveness because I know that an inability to forgive truly is
the cause of many many people’ s suffering. In working with thousands of
individuals over the years I have  come to the conclusion that an absence of
forgiveness is tantamount to staying imprisoned in an unawakened life. It is
as important to learn and practice as are all of the other principles. We cannot become awakened and truly live an enlightened life as long as
we believe that we are restricted to form. As we have seen, enlightenment
and abundance go hand in hand. For an awakened life, we must transcend
our bodies, must learn to be detached, and to tune ourselves more finely to
the synchronicity of the universe. But if we have not learned forgiveness,
we may master all of the other principles and still remain prisoners. To
genuinely feel forgiveness is to understand and apply all that you have read
in this book. Forgiveness is the ultimate test for the person who is willing
and able to live the enlightened life. In the introduction to this book I included a story about visiting my
father ’s grave in 1974. That story is a story of forgiveness. And that act was,
without question, the catalyst for moving me into a new life of abundance
and love. It was the most freeing and loving thing I had ever done. Once I
rid myself of the hatred and anger that I had been storing inside myself for
this man whom I did not even know, I had inner space to be receptive to an
entirely new way of living and perceiving my world. That new world-view,
devoid of judgment and hatred, became the turning point in my life. If you want to walk the path of higher consciousness, then you must take
a hard look at your own willingness to forgive. Most of us simply are not
very good at it. Most of us hang  on to our judgments and hatreds. Most of
us are very good at blaming others for the shortcomings of our own lives. Forgiveness—I mean true 100 percent forgiveness—involves  a dramatic
shift. Here we go again; back to the very stuff of the universe, and the verystuff of our existence. Thought. Not to forgive is not to understa nd how the
universe works and how you fit into it. THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT  FORGIVE BECAUSE IT  DOES
NOT  BLAME
 
Life is a series of events which we have created and attracted to ourselves. The universe is also a series of events, all of which occur indep endently of
our opinions about them. It all just is, and it is perfect. The stars are all in
their proper places. Each snowflake that falls lands exactly where it is
supposed to. The temperature each day is just what it is supposed to be—in
fact, even the assignment of a number on a thermometer is a kind of
judgment about  it when you think about it. The storms, the floods, the
droughts, the position of the rivers and mountains, the orbit of the planets—
all of it just is. The universe with all of its perfection is presented to us. There is nothing to forgive, because there is nothing to judge and no one to
blame. When we know we create all that we need for our existence, then we are
in a position to know that we created all the hatred and anger we have
toward others. We even have created the others in our life for the purpose of
having someone to blame. Our need to forgive is a monumental misperception. The belief that
others should not have treated us the way that they did is, of course, the
ultimate absurdity. The univer se is always working just the way it is
supposed to, and so is everythin g in it, even the things that we have judged
to be wrong, improper, cruel, and painful for us and others. Our desire to
improve those things is also a part of the perfect universe. How can others
not have treated us the way they did. Instead of being angry at the way we
were treated, regardless of how horrible we have assessed it to be, we need
to learn to view that treatment from another perspective. They did what they
knew how to do, given the cond itions of their lives. The rest of the stuff that
we carry around with us is ours. We own it all. If it is hatred and judgment,
then that is what we have elected to carry around with us and that is what
we will have to give away to others. You have litera lly given control of your life to those whom you have
judged to have wronged you. Learning to forgive involves learning to
correct the misperceptions that you have created with your own thoughts. Once you have your thoughts clear, you will assume total responsibility for
yourself, includ ing how you are treated, and you will get yourself to the
point where forgiveness is no longer something that you must practice. You
will have corrected all of your misperceptions and eliminated the three
sources of your discontent which create the need to forgive in the first
place. Understanding these “thought distortions” will lead to practicing
forgiveness and ultimately to freedom from ever having to for give. RIDDING YOURSELF OF BLAME, REVENGE, JUDGMENT
 
I believe that my arriving at this place in my life has to do with having rid
myself for the most part of these three big destructive practices. As long as I
had a trace of them in my life, the forgiveness principle got entangled with
them, and I was unable to live naturally and unimpeded. Now that I live
without them, forgiveness simply never comes up for me, except as
something that I share with others who are suffering so much because of
their desire to hang on to those ways of thinking. As long as we continue to
think in these ways, we have to work at forgiveness. When we transcend
this kind of thought, for giveness is no longer an issue. Blame. If we are unable to forgive those we perceive as having wronged us
at some time in the past, we need to look at the decision to blame them for
our unhappiness. Blame runs rampant in our culture, and very likely it runs
just as out of control in your life. The lawsuit explosion is testimony to the
unwillingness of most people to take responsibility for their own lives. Instead, they sue as many people as possible, disregarding personal
negligence, and ultimately making someone else pay for a misfortune. Advertisements offering legal assistance proclaim, “It’s not your fault,
regardless of the circumstances. You should think about suing for damages
now. ” This mind-set of assign ing responsibility to others for our life
circumstances and misfortunes is the product of an attitude of blame. The
more you have exercised it in your life, the more likely you will find
forgiveness dif ficult to practice. You must be completely honest with yourself if you are ever to rid
yourself entirely  of blame. The way to begin is to take total responsibilityfor everything that you are in your life right now. That’ s right. Say to
yourself, “I am the sum total of my choices up until this moment. ” Your
enculturation may make this a difficult precept for you to accept. You may
want to say, “I couldn’ t help it,” or “It was someone else’s fault,” or “I was
in the wrong place at the wron g time,” or “I was dealt a dirty deal,” or
“Family circumstances created my misery,” or whatever other excuse you
have developed to absolve yourself of responsibility. Discard all of that and look at your life from a different perspective. Everything that happened to you is a lesson you can be grateful for. Everyone who came into your life was a teacher, regardless of how much
you choose to hate and blame him or her. There truly are no accidents. This
universe is working perfectly, including all the subatomic particles that
make up you, and those you blame. It is all just as it is supposed to be. Nothing more, nothing less. All of those situations, including when you
were a small child, contain immensely valuable lessons for you to absorb
and benefit from, lessons which are blocked by feelings of hate and blame. Assess how much you resist this principle of taking total responsibility
for your life and believing that there truly are no accidents in this perfect
universe. Follow this logic. Someone has harmed you in some way in your
past. You feel hurt and angry, and that anger ultimately turns to hatred. This
is your hatred. You carry it around with you wherever you go. You own it. It
is you and you are it. The hatred is all thought, and is with you wherever
you go. You have given someone permission not only to hurt you once, but
to continue controlling your inner life. The hatred infects your life while the
other person is still on his or her path doing exactly what he or she knows
how to do, independent of your current miserable state. The absurdity of
blame is that it gives other people control over us at the mom ent of their
dastardly deed, and continues to give them control over how we interact
with others. We become prisone rs without hope of achieving a higher sense
of awakening and happiness for ourselves. This is how blame works in us, and why it is a futile and destructive
activity. As long as we blame others for the way we feel today, we will have
to wait for them to change before we can grow out of our current
immobilized state. Forgiveness is a tool to use to transcend the negative
effects of blame. Once we have forgiven another, we no longer need to
blame him. When we have forgiveness for all, there will be no one left toblame for anyth ing. Ironically, then we also will have no need to forgive
anymore, and that is the real lesson of this chapter. Forgiveness means changing your misperceptions. When we forgive
another for anything that he or she may have done to us, we are really
saying, “I no longer give you the power to control who I am, how I think,
and how I’ll behave in the future. I take responsibility for all of that now. ”
Thus, we really have nothing to forgive, since we create our own reality by
how we choose to process the behavior of others. We processed it in a way
that hurt us when we chose blam e. We might have chosen not to have hatred
within ourselves and simply let it go. Once we change our perceptions of
life’s hurts and pains and see that we create all that we need for this dream,
including the scoundrels, we no longer need to blame anyone for anything. This is the most freeing stage to reach that you can imagine. Being totally free from blame and taking complete responsibility for life
requires a great deal of discipline. It is a discipline of self-love rather than
self-contempt. When we love ourselves, we refuse to allow others to
manage our emotions from afar. Forgiveness is our means to that end. When
we choose this option, it eventually becomes an automatic reaction toward
those who treat us contemptuou sly, and then, of course, forgiveness is no
longer required. Forgiveness is an act of self-love, rather than some
altruistic saintly behavior. It gives us control over our inner life and
thoughts. Knowing that nothing is random, and that all of life is purposeful,
even people who seem so destructively different from us, allows us to
accept those “accidents” and those “scoundrels” as events with some
meaning for us. I can assure you that once you no longer need the lessons in
your life that unpleasant events  offer you, you will no longer have these
events. If forgiveness is something you need to practice, you will continue
to attract opportunities to practic e it. If your reaction is anger and hated and
defiance, then “those kinds of people” and “weird unlucky breaks” will
continue to be in your life. I rarely run into these things in my life anymore. I look for the good in everyone, and I take responsibility for all that comes
my way, and I mean all of it. Consequently, I see what I believe, over and
over again. You too are seeing what you believe, and if you are blaming and
full of hate, that is what you believe, and, of course, that is what you see as
well. Revenge. We live in a world which endorses anger and revenge. It is a
world whose people are almost always at war in one way or another. War is
our extreme tool for handling disagreement. War is waged between nations
by those within the nations who are not at peace with themselves. Wars are
waged even as an attempt to solve human problems—“wars” on proverty,
drugs, illiteracy, and hunger. We pray to those who endorse forgiveness, we
claim to love and respect great spiritual masters and their teachings, but
when it comes to enacting forgiveness, we opt for revenge and war. Gunfire
in Bethlehem on Christmas Day and in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday are sad
reminders that forgiveness often is something that we pay lip service to,
while crucifying designated enemies. Revenge is the acting out of the thoughts of blame. Blame is in the mind,
and revenge is acted out in form. The acting out part immobilizes those who
choose revenge as a lifestyle, and violates the most sacred sacrament
available to us: “Thou shalt not kill. ” Yet kill we do, in numbers too large to
comprehend, and we are building weapons so massive in their destructive
ability that entire cities can be rendered into ashes along with all of their
inhabitants. While this is all part of the perfect way of things that is so
paradoxical, so too is the desire to end it that peace-loving people feel
within their hearts. So as this violence continues and intensifies, we all must
ask ourselves, “What is the lesson that we as a total body of humanity are
struggling to learn in this situati on. ” The existence of ourselves and future
generations depends on our finding that answer. Every day we hear of people  who have been wronged somehow—
injured, killed, maimed, raped, and robbed—and of the desire to exact
revenge on the perpetrators. Families of victims are filled with anger and
motivated by revenge. Hate flourishes along with demands for punishment
similar to the pain inflicted on their loved ones. Yet, even when that penalty
is carried out, the victimized continue to feel pain, suffering, and hatred. They poison their souls with debilitating anger, and cannot continue their
lives free of this unwanted pain. They are victimized not only by the
criminal, but by their need to exact their revenge. I remember a case that Earl Nightingale told me about. It really
impressed upon me the importance of forgiveness. A woman lost her only
daughter to a violent criminal act. For the next eighteen years the woman
was consumed by the desire for revenge, which remained unfulfilled, shebelieved, only because the death penalty had subsequently been banned in
the state where the murderer had received his death sentence. For eighteen
years, the mother was unable to function in a satisfying way, the way she
once wanted to. Throughout the years she sought help for her unhappiness
from a variety of sources. It was ultimately the act of forgiveness that freed
her. When she visited and forgave her daughter ’s murderer, still on death
row eighteen years later, she described it as a spiritual experience of love
for herself, her daughter, and the murderer. Blaming others for the condition  of your life fuels anger. There are many
everyday folks and professional s who endorse anger as a healthy response
to the world. To the degree that anger is one of many feelings (thoughts)
that we, as human beings, are capable of, I concur. It would seem as
unlikely for us never to have anger as for the sky never to have clouds. The
problem occurs when we hang on to it deliberately or helplessly, and find
that we have blame, revenge, and judgment which we are unable or
unwilling to let go of. I do not approve of hitting children to teach them not
to hit others, or believe that the expression  of ange r is always therapeutic. Nor do I believe in blaming others for my emotional state. I recommend being gentle with yourself and loving yourself regardless of
how others respond in the universe. Try not being attached to any belief that
others should not be what they are, and instead understand that they are on
their own path, and that your opinion about them has nothing  to do with
how they behav e. Fill yourself with love even toward those who would do
you harm, which  is what all spiritual leaders have said, and see if you still
have anger and revenge. This is difficult only if you are attache d to having
the world be other than the way it is. If you can accept even that which you
want not to be and send love where you previously sent hatred, you will not
need to have angry thoughts anymore. You will not need to “get even. ”
Instead, you will find yourself unable to hang on to anger, or to immobilize
yourself with those thoughts. When you teach yourself to be the thoughts that are harmonious, rather
than those that are discordant and divisive, you will find anger an option
you no longer elect. Once you stop the blaming and take respo nsibility for
all of your inner world, the anger dissipates as well. When you finally send
away anger completely, you will no longer have your life distorted by the
need for revenge. You will not opt to turn control of your life over to those
who you perceive have wrong ed you. You will find a sense of peacethrough your act of forgivene ss, and you will remain on the path of
enlightenment. If enough indiv iduals integrate forgiveness consciousness
into their lives, perhaps we will one day make this our policy toward other
nations as well. Young people are dying today to avenge their ancestors. They are
fighting in the Holy Land, where Jesus walked preaching forgiveness. They
wage war interm inably. What does it prove. Where does it lead. To peace. Never. The vanquished respond with vengeance and increase the human toll
in battles over ancient enmities. It can all begin to change with you, if you
learn the universal principle of forgiveness, learn to transcend  hatred as a
response to hatred, and to give away peace in its place. It is not weak to
forgive, it is a gallant and brave act. Fighting weakens everyone who participates. Everything that you are
against weakens you in some way. As Paul beseeched us in Romans 12:21,
“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. ” You simply need
to forgive, and never let yourself behave in ways which you despise
yourself. An ancient Chinese proverb tells us, “The one who pursues
revenge should dig two graves. ”
 
 
 
Judgment. Blame you can eliminate. Reve nge you can send out of your life. But the best you can do with judgment is to reduce the amount of it in your
daily life. Judgm ent means to view the world as you are, rather than as it is. It is impossible to avoid judgment completely, because virtually every
thought has some judgment in it. To tell yourself that this is a beautiful day
is a judgment. To send someone love is a judgment. To evaluate anyone or
anything is a judgment. Thus, you can only avoid judgment when you avoid
thinking altogether, and that would be absurd. But you can significantly reduce the amount of negative judging  that you
do, and this is a kind of forgiven ess that will help to improve the quality of
your life dramatically. The first thing to remember about judgm ents is that
they do not alter anything or anyone in the universe. Just because you
dislike someone  or react negatively toward some behavior does not change
the person or behavior you are judging. I remind you again to keep in mind
that when you judge another, you do not define that person, you define
yourself. Your judgments only say some thing about you. They describe yourlikes and dislike s. They do not define the person being judged. That person
is defined by his or her own thoughts and actions. Once you recognize this,
you begin replacing your inclination to judge with acceptance, and this is
forgiveness in action. When you accep t others, you no longer experience the hurt that goes with
judging them. When someone acts in a way you find disagreeable,
understand that your hurt, ange r, fear, or any strong emotion is how you
have chosen to process that person’ s behavior. If you are unable or
unwilling to notice that emotion and subsequently let go of it, then it is your
self that is in need of attention. That person’ s behavior has collided with
something unfinished or unac knowledged in your life. Distress at the
person’ s behavio r is your way of avoiding something inside of you. A fine
distinction, perhaps, but a very significant one. Your thoughts about how others are behaving are yours. You own them. You carry around the results of those thoughts. If you do not judge those
around you but instead accept them for precisely where they are on their
own path, eliminating your need to be upset by them, you have put
forgiveness into practice. Forgiveness is really just correctin g our own
misperceptions. You really have nothing to forgive, other than yourself for
having judged or blamed in the first place. All three of these qualities, blame, revenge, and judgment, are deeply
ingrained thinking habits. They develop in a culture which prizes itself on
blaming everyone else for everything that happens, and suing endlessly to
invoke “justice. ” They result from having thoughts of revenge drummed
into your head when you were a child, and justifying it all as “only proper,”
patriotic, or just. Yet all of this behavior is extremely self-de feating and
irresponsible, to say nothing of unenlightened. And it is very stupid—to use
a judgment. Whenever you find yourself caught in this style of behavior, remind
yourself that you are the ultimate victim here. You are allowing your entire
life to be controlled by the beha vior of others, and no matter how much you
may justify it, you are still a slave to the whims of others when you act this
way. As Maslow  reminded us, “There is no such thing as a well-adjusted
slave. ” Such behavior also keep s you in an unawakened state. You cannotget to a sense of purpose and live a life of harmony and balance while
simultaneously allowing someone else to dictate your thoughts and actions. You cannot let your purpose find you, live a spiritual and lovin g existence,
and at the same time blame and judge others, or be motiv ated out of
revenge. Enligh tenment demand s that you take responsibility for your life. Responsibility means literally to respond  with ability. Obviously, this is
impossible when you are disabled by hatred, blame, and revenge. Take a look at the lives of many  who are most admired in history. Those
who were fixed on revenge led us into war after war, killing
indiscriminately, destroying everything in their path, all in the name of
blame and anger. How can anyo ne make a positive contribution and tune in
to the force of love when he is preoccupied with vengeance. Impossible. Listen to the words of those you admire, and rather than put a label on
yourself such as Christian, Jew, Moslem, Buddhist, or whatever, instead
make a commitment to being Christlike, Godlike, Buddhalike, and
Muhammadlike. We, and all of the world, will be much better off for that
commitment, and we will begin living forgiveness every day, rather than
only talking about it in church, and then heading back to our daily lives to
help build more weapons, sue our neighbors, and judge those who are not in
geographic proximity to us. FORGIVENESS
 
One of the most poignantly memorable covers of a national magazine
appeared severa l years back. It was a picture of Pope John Paul II, sitting in
a dungeon with the man who attempted to assassinate him. That portrait of
forgiveness left a lasting impres sion on me. People whom we consider holy,
or spiritual, or role models of decency always are able to forgive without
qualification or doubt. They do not cloud their consciousness with thoughts
of anger, hatred, and revenge toward those who have attempted to wrong or
harm them. Rather, they provide us with a model of forgiveness that we can
use in our daily lives. Perhaps the picture of Christ forgiving those who are
in the process of torturing and killing him is the most powerful utterance of
this spiritual master. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do. ” This is the very essence of Christianity, and yet very few are able to
live up to these words. It is important for each of us to consider the meaning of those words
“they know not what they do. ” People who are inflicting harm  on others
really and truly do not know what they are doing to others. They are always
acting out of their own anger, hatred, blame, or revenge. What they direct at
others says nothing about the others. However, it says something very
powerful about them. This is what you must learn about forgiveness. Those
people who have behaved toward you in any way which you find
disagreeable or hurtful really and truly do not know what they have done to
you. “Why. ” you might reasonably ask. Because they are unable to see that
we are all connected. They are living out of their separateness. They see
themselves as separate from everyone else. They are like that cancer cell in
the body that has no reference to the whole. Because they are composed of
disharmony, they act out on their adjacent fellow humans in the same way
that the cancer cell gobbles up the adjacent cell, ultimately killing the body
and itself in the process. You would not blame a cancer cell for being a
cancer cell, would you. Obvio usly, you would expect it to do precisely
what it has to do, given its makeup. This is true of those who are behaving
in ways which you dislike. They cannot know what they are doing to others,
because they feel no reference to others. They are sendin g out their
disharmony toward you because that is what they have to give away. Hating
them for their behavior is akin to hating moss for growing on a tree and
destroying the appearance of the tree. The moss only knows  how to be
moss, and regar dless of your opinion about how it should not be behaving
in such mosslike ways, it will still continue doing all that it knows how to
do. Victimizers too are acting out on the basis of all that they know, and the
only way you can help them to stop behaving in such ways is to help them
to convert their disharmony into self-acceptance and self-lo ve, so that
eventually that will be all they have to give away. This in no way implies that victimizers should not be held totally
accountable for their actions. But it is you I am talking to here, not the
abuser. Compassion for others is impossible when you are filled with a belief
that you are separate and distinct from other human beings. Once you know,
truly know in your heart, that you are connected to all others,  even those
who behave in evil ways, you then have reference to the entire being called
Human Being. With this new awareness comes the ability to forgive, and
this is why spiritual masters talk about the ability to forgive as a guidingprinciple in life. They know that those who send out hatred are only acting
out from where they are and how they have been thinking up until this
moment. The enlightened person is sure enough of his own divineness that
he does not judge himself in any negative manner because of the actions of
others. Indeed, forgiveness is man’ s highest achievement, becau se it shows
true enlightenment in action. It illustrates that one is in harmony with the
very stuff of the universe, that is, with the energy of love. It is the ability to
give this love away in the most dif ficult of circumstances. Our role models  remind us that the people who choose harm’ s way for
others know not what they do. For it is as true of anything I know about
human beings that we cannot give away what we do not have, and we only
give away what we do have. If we give away hatred or harm in any way, it
is because that is what we have. It is impossible for someone who has only
love within to give away hatre d. This is why your ability to forgive will
come automatically when you truly become awakened. Mark Twain said it
so beaut ifully, when he wrote: “Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds
on the heel that has crushed it. ” A grand image indeed, and one to keep in
mind as you work on this universal principle of for giveness. MY OWN VOY AGE OF FORGIVENESS
 
As I stood at my father ’s grave back in 1974, I was not aware of the
changes and challenges that lay ahead of me, but I knew that I was
participating in some very powerful drama. As I talked to my father, with
tears streaming down my face, I sensed something changing for me, and by
the time I left Mississippi, I knew that I was a new man. I knew  somehow,
in some inexplicable way, I had been sent to that gravesite for a reason. Forgiveness, that is, correcting my misperceptions about why I was carrying
around all of that hatred for so many years, freed me to do the things that
were waiting for me. I created a life of excitement, abundance in every
sense of the word, and love that I had previously known nothing about. I set about writing, speaking, making tapes, and doing a great deal of
media publicity over the years. I was making regular appearances on
national televisio n, speaking to large groups and earning more money than I
had imagined for myself. Then one day I received something in the mail
that was to put my newfound ecstasy to a real test. A registered letter
arrived from an attorney, inform ing me that I was going to be sued. ThoughI felt the lawsu it was without merit, I was in shock. No one had ever
threatened me with a lawsuit, and I did not even know an attorney. After thousands of dollars and almost two years spent in legal battles, I
realized I had slipped back into old vengeful ways. The anger that I felt
filled me with a rage that was destroying me. I was not eating  properly. I
lost a great deal of weight. I felt terrible all the time, and still the anger
mounted in me. I felt like the ultimate victim. Not one day would go by
without me thinking angrily, “Why is this happening. Why won’ t it go
away. ”
Then one evening, after giving a speech to a large group of people and
relating the story of how I had forgiven my father at his grave, and of all the
mysterious happ enings that had occurred in order for me even to find his
grave, a beautiful light explo ded inside of me. It finally hit me that
forgiveness is the key. Not hatred and anger, but forgiveness. In that
moment it was all over for me as far as that unjust lawsuit was concerned. That night I had the first restful night’ s sleep in a long time. I thought about
the people who were suing me, and I sent them all forgiveness. The next
morning I completed my act of forgiveness totally. I was no longer going to
participate in this absurdity. I let go of thoughts about any problems that
might come my way, and instead I focused all of my thinking on the people
involved. My heart opened up to them and I stopped the angry thoughts. That morning I sent them flower s and a selection of books to read. I notified
my attorney that I was through paying legal bills for this thing and that he
should simply stand by and not respond to anything else concerning this
case. My thoughts which previously were full of anger were converted to
love almost instantly. I knew in my heart that I could handle any
contingency that might arise from this case, and that it was all going to be
fine. Three days later, I received a notice from the group’ s spokespe rson that
they were dropping the case, and apologizing for any problem s they had
caused. They had signed a release. It was all over. While I had spent thousands of dollars, and lived a nightmare for two
years, I had finally learned the lesson of forgiveness that I had been
introduced to back in Biloxi. I had to re-create a miserable existence again
in order to have the message really clear this time, and all that I spent, and
all that I went through were all done for a powerful reason. To teach me the
lesson of love over hatred. To get it firmly entrenched this time. That theonly response to hatred is love; everything else will bring you down again. I
do not regret one penny that I spent on the experience. The moment I
switched from anger to forgiveness it was all over for me. I was free in that
one simple swift instant, and the rest simply had to be played out in form. After that brush  with the legal system had disappeared from my life, I
made a pledge to myself that I would put forgiveness completely into
practice. I contacted every single person in my life toward whom I had any
hostile or even mildly annoyed feelings. I decided to clear them  all out with
forgiveness. I wanted to be absolutely certain that if I died in the next
moment, not one single person on this planet would have any leftover
animosity towar d me that I had not tried to rectify, even though it was
obvious to me that “none of it could have possibly been my fault. ” (Don’ t
we all feel that way. ) There were several people who had borrowed money
from me and obviously were not going to pay me back. I had not talked to
them in years, and the fact that they had not repaid the debts had damaged
our relationships. I sent each of those people autographed copies of my
books, some tapes that I had produced, and some flowers, with a note
saying that I was wishing them well, sending them love, and trusting that
they were happy and joyful. I did not mention the debt. In my heart I had let
it go by deciding that it was okay for them not to repay me. It was over, and
I had not only forgiven, but I had sent them expressions of love instead of
annoyance and bitterness. In every other area of my life, I made an internal commitment to forgive,
regardless of how minor the events were. It only took a few hours and it
was all behind me. No enemie s left at all. No one to direct  any hatred
toward on the entire planet. No family members to blame for anything that
had taken place years and years earlier. No former colleagues or bosses with
whom I had disagreements. I was now on a forgiveness bandwagon, and it
was working dramatically. My relationship to all of those people was clean, and I was not only
sending love, but receiving it as well. Several of the debts came in, and
though some have never been repaid, it is fine. I love them all, and now,
today, as I write this book, I cannot think of a single person on this planet
that I have any leftover bad feelings with. Moreover, I now know that I truly have no one to forgive, and I never
did. I simply had to correct my misperception that others were  causing me
to be miserable, that they were the cause of my discontent. Paradoxically,through the act of forgiveness, I have come to the place where  forgiveness
never comes up for me. I have learned to accept others exactly as they are,
and never pretend that I love something I don’t. But I also know  I no longer
need the immobilizing emotional reactions that used to accompany my
encounters with people who were behaving in ways which I disliked. Consequently, acceptance has allowed me to see them for what they are and
where they are, and to remind me of the same thing in myself. Any hostile
or negative reaction in me, as a result of the behavior of others, really just
lets me know where I am, or am not, and no longer requires any
forgiveness. I have come to the point of not needing to forgive, by
forgiving. One more paradox. PUTTING FORGIVENESS INT O ACTION
 
It is obvious to me, and I am sure to you as well, that we all resist
forgiveness when we prefer to use blame. We seek out revenge when we
live in a world which practices  it in every corner of the globe. We find
forgiveness a plausible princi ple when we read our holy books, yet
extremely difficult to live by, because it violates that need to get even and to
“right the score. ” We also fail to look realistically at what an inability to
forgive does to the person who is carrying around the anger and hatred. The
first time we read about someone performing an absolutely horrendous act
of violence on someone else, our innate reaction is: “I hope they kill the
bastard. ” When someone wrongs us in some way we tend to forget these
important words on forgiveness and say to ourselves, “I’ll get even,” or “I
hope he gets his. ”
The entire business of putting forgiveness into action on a daily basis
involves accept ing the other six universal principles in your life. The
forgiveness part will come automatically when you go through the gate—
when you befriend your own personal transformation and honor the
intelligence that is behind your form and all form. When you use your
power of thought to be at harm ony rather than fighting the flow of energy
that is our universe. When you stop carving up your world and live in
oneness with all human beings,  knowing that we are all connected by that
divine intelligence, all of us, even those who do not think and behave as
you would prefer. When you know in your heart that what you think about
expands and you stay focused on what you love and what you are gratefulfor. Whe n you release yourself from all attachments and let yourself live
fully. When you have the knowledge that everything is synchronized and
working perfectly in this onesong. When you start living this way and thinking this way and allow others to
do the same, then forgiveness will come automatically. You will have no
hatred or disharm ony left inside to give away. The forgiveness will come as
naturally and automatically as Nureyev performs a leaping pirouette after
thousands of hours of practice, or as Isaiah Thomas twists and turns for a
driving lay-up. No one can tell these two geniuses how to perform their
seeming miracle s. They do it from intuition after practice, practi ce, practice. Forgiveness is very much like that. After practicing the lesson s of higher
consciousness, you will find forgiveness the easiest of all the universal
principles to put into your daily life. It will happen automatically. If it is not
happening automatically now, then you have more practice to do on the
other areas of your life. Do not bemoan your inability to truly forgive. Simply work at living the
principles of higher harmonious consciousness, and before long you will
find it happening without any effort. When you see others practicing the
acts of blame, anger, and vengeance, forgive them and be open to
supporting them  in changing their choices to hurt themselves and others. You will start devoting yourself to helping others to eliminate their
vengeful, unfor giving thoughts, and then you will know that it has
happened for you as well. It will be as if you were on automatic pilot,
reacting with your thoughts the same way you react automatically, without
consciously thinking, when you do something that you have practiced many
many times. But until that automatic act of forgiveness clicks in, here are
ways to speed up that process. GIVING IS THE KEY  TO FORGIVING
 
This is one of the greatest lessons I have ever learned in my life. If you can
master this one without any cynicism, you will find forgiveness  is a way of
life for you. Giving is the answ er to “Why am I here. ” Since you cannot
own anything, and all of your attachments prevent abundance from arriving
in your life, then all that you can do is give, of yourself, and of all of those
things that keep circulating back into your life. Most of us are so into
hoarding all that we can get for ourselves and our families that we forget theneed to keep it in motion. In our rush to acquire, we find ourselves creating
angry relationships, even with strangers, as we set up defenses in
anticipation of their taking something away from us. Keep in mind that it is impossible to create any bitterness or hatred
toward others when your primary objective is to be a giving human being. Forgiveness comes almost autom atically when you detach yourself from the
need to get something and instead focus on reaching out to others. The
irony is that the less you are obsessed with getting and the more willing you
are to give, the more you seem to get. What you think about expands. Thus, if your thoughts are on getting all
that you can and beating the other guy who you believe is trying to do you
in, then you are constantly think ing about, worrying about, and planning on
the notion of deception. Your thoughts are focused on the dishonesty of the
other guy and the callousness of the world. That is what will expand in your
life, because that is what you are thinking about. Consequent ly, you will
find yourself getting more and more fearful about being cheated, insuring
yourself against the possibility, hiring attorneys to protect you, and loading
yourself up with adversaries. You literally put yourself in an adversarial
relationship with almost everyone that you meet. And sure enough, you find
this sort of thing continuing to expand. Now take a look at the opposi te approach to your life. Your thoughts
(you) now shift to a new perspe ctive. You are not thinking about your own
quotas, your own acquisitions, your financial picture, at all. You are instead
giving away what you have inside. That is, harmony and acceptance. Since
you are not looking to gain anything from anyone, you have nothing to fear. Suppose someone enters your life who might be determined to cheat you,
and that person encounters in you someone who truly cares about him as a
human being. The likelihood of the cheating behavior will be dramatically
lessened when there is no expectation of it. Looking for harmony and
cooperation and giving it to others will most likely result in your receiving
the same  kind of treatment. You will not attract enemies, because you are
not putting yourself into an adversarial position with anyone, regardless of
what anyone sends you. Giving becomes the key to creating relationships in
which forgiveness is unnecessa ry. This truly works. Bear with me before
allowing any of your enculturated skepticism to creep in here. Of course, I am aware that there are people who behave dishonestly, in
the world. I know that horrible criminal acts occur regularly. I know thatmany people believe that we should keep building more and more prisons
and put all of “those kinds of people” away for good. But building more
prisons to put away more and more people simply is not workin g. We have
doubled and quadrupled the number of prisons in the past decade, and they
are still overcrowded. The answ er will come when we discov er why we
have so many people who want to take from others, and work at correcting
that approach to life. Raising our own consciousness is the only way that
we can begin such a journey. I have found that the quickest way to disarm
anyone who is focused exclusively on what he can take from me is to let
him know, with kindness, that I do not live that way. I recently purchased an automo bile and found after the closing that the
dealer had adde d a charge of almost two hundred dollars into the contract,
over and above the price that we had agreed upon. I did not discover this
until I had returned home and looked over the final papers more carefully. For me, this was a perfect opportunity to practice all that I have been
writing about in this book. Years ago, I probably would have been angry,
felt cheated, and had an unplea sant exchange with the car dealer. Not this
time. I simply called, and expressed my opinion to the salesman about what
had happened, and explained that I did not feel that he had acted from
integrity in the closing. I also talked to the owner, and I again expressed
how I felt about it, without any anger or bitterness. We had a pleasant
exchange, and the dealer apolo gized, but felt that he could not refund the
money since we had signed the papers and after all a “deal is a deal. ” I told
him that I did not respect this particular business practice, and I then let it
go. I did not need to forgive him, since I was not owning any anger about
the situa tion. I vowed I would look more carefully at contracts before
closing in the future. That was the end of it. Until the following letter
arrived some ten days later. Dear Wayne:
After giving our conversation on the phone further thought, I
have decided to refund the $188. 50 that is in question. I feel that
it was a misu nderstanding and not an attempt to mislea d. However, our customers’  positive feeling toward us is very
important and I hope that this refund will be evidence of that. If I can be of any other assistance, please let me know. Thank you. I donated the money that I received to the End World Hunger cause, and
five days later I received a check for $988. 50 from Argentina, for royalties
on something that I had written fifteen years ago. I gave six hundred dollars
of that money to help out some relatives, and six days later I received a
check for $6,269. 50 from Mexi co, also totally unexpected, for something I
had done many years ago. For me, speaking from my heart, I truly know
there is truth in the maxim “What goes around, comes around. ”
You know that there are certain  principles working within you to keep
you alive and functioning, such as salivation, digestion, elimination, and the
like. Know also that the principles of abundance, synchronicity,
detachment, and oneness are operative in the universe. All you have to do is
tune in to them and let them work through you exactly as do the principles
that maintain your physical perfection. When you are in harmony yourself,
you want to give that internal bliss away, and that is the focus of your life. Since you are energy, and every thing else in the universe is also energy, all
you want to do is keep it flowing. No blockages, only flow. When you send
it out, it will keep coming back. Remember to give for the sake of giving,
and to keep it circulating as it flows back, and you will soon see it working
in your life. If you doubt this principle it will not work in your life. Your doubt is the
blockage. But everyone that I know who has truly put it to the test finds that
it works beautifully. For me, I am beyond believing. I simply know it to be
true. Thus I seldom encounter those who might cheat me. Whe n I do, I act
from love rather than anger, with the realization that they canno t experience
what I am talking about while they are fixated on getting rather than giving. The quality of their lives is affected by their thoughts of scarcity and trying
to get from others, and they believe they will never have enough. I believe I
will always have enough, no matter my circumstances. Consequently, I can
give, and it keeps coming back almost magically. I keep it all circulating,
since I do not want to be attached to any of it. People simply do not steal
from me. This realization about giving hit me strongly a few years ago when I
began giving away large numbers of my book Gifts from Eykis. The more I
gave, the better I felt and the more abundance kept coming back into my
life. I realized that giving and receiving were the exact same thing. Nodifference. Ever y gift I gave gave me something back. I found a profound
shift taking place as I practiced giving. This was not a conscious choice to be more philanthropic. I still resist
when someone tells me what to give. It was an automatic response to the
shifts that were taking place in my consciousness. The givin g was truly
enriching my life in ways that I had not anticipated. In a meditation one
night, I saw that we are truly here only to give, and that love is the most
important thing to be giving, regardless of the circumstances. I still, however, have great difficulty in suspending anger when I see
evidence of man’ s inhumanity to man. The newspaper picture of the angry
young man who has just murder ed two innocent people is a very tough test. I someti mes stare at that photo, which we all have seen, and ask myself,
“Am I capable of giving him love too. ” I try to see that person as a tiny
baby. To see his innocence and the fact that he too, regardless of his crimes,
is deserv ing of love. This is admittedly a tough place to get to, particularly
when you or a loved one has been the victim. Our judgment of him does not
define him, he is already defined by his own thoughts and actions. Joel
Goldsmith, writing in Parenthesis in Eternity, says:
Loving our neighbor as ourselv es, then, is giving our neighb or
that same recognition of the godliness that we give ourselve s,
regardless of the appearance of the moment. That neighbor may
be the woman taken in adultery or the thief on the cross, but we
have nothing to do with that. What we have to do with is to love
all our neighbors by knowing their true nature, just as we would
be loved by having them know our true nature, in spite of what
outward appearance may temporarily be evident. We can begin by sending love and compassion to the part of ourselves
who is struggling with pain and sorrow and anger. When we can truly be
there for ourselves, we are able to be a part of that universal energy, that
higher consciousness, that godliness that is in each and every one of us, and
we are able to give it even to those who harm us, because it is what we have
inside of ourselves. It truly is in every one of us, to be love, if we allow it. Giving, in any capacity that you can muster, without any expectations of
return for your efforts, is the biggest step that you can take to bring
abundance into your life and to eliminate the need to forgive. Paradoxically,as long as you do not expect it, you will find yourself receivin g more and
more as well. Ultimately, you will discover that giving and receiving are
one and the same. FORGIVING YOURSELF: AND WHY  NOT. When you are living the principles discussed in this book, you will find
yourself being gentler to yourse lf. This is the act of self-for giveness, which
shows that you are living the awakened life. I have a beautiful pillow in my
office that says, “I’m allowed. ” It was made by my sister -in-law many years
ago. For me it is a reminder that I am allowed to live my life as I please, to
make mistakes, to learn from those mistakes, and on and on. Many live
their lives believing they are not allowed. Judgmental adults succeeded in
convincing them that there are irrevocable rules which state what you can
say or not say, which order you never to be late, not to drink or smoke, to
hate the enemies assigned to you, never to masturbate, to disregard all
religions except the one you were born into, to dismiss those who appear
different from you, never to get divorced, and so on. At some point in your
life you adopted  these rules for yourself and made them a lifetime code of
conduct. Yet you also found that it was impossible to live up to all of them
all of the time. Consequently you filled yourself with guilt for not having
lived up to the judgmental code that was imposed upon you. This guilty feeling is something that inhibits your own awakening, and
the only way to escape it is to forgive yourself for everything that you have
done. Once again, the absurdity of the need to forgive surfaces. You really
have nothing to forgive yoursel f for, and yet if you don’t, you still wallow
around in your own guilt. The more you learn the lessons of higher
consciousness and live your life from this perspective, the less inclined you
will be even to think about needing to for give yourself. Look at any and all beliefs that you carry around with you in terms of
how well they serve you in living a life of harmony and purpose. If you
behave in a way that is in violation of those supposedly irrevocable rules,
you have not really done something wrong. You have merely done
something. And it is done. If you are, however, plagued with remorse and
guilt, then judging the action as wrong seems appropriate to prevent its
recurrence. Does it. Probably not. So, instead, learn from it by deciding if it
is something that you want to repeat based upon your values, and thenmove past it. It takes effort to determine if you are still opera ting on the
controls impose d by others. The effort is well worth it if you are not taking
responsibility for your own mind. You are allowed, plain and simple. You
do not need to be forgiven by anyone else, only yourself, and even that is
truly unnecessary once you accept yourself completely. You will know
when you have mastered the art of self-for giveness. When you are no
longer judgmental toward others, you will have forgiven yourself and be on
your path of enlightenment. Releasing judgm ent of another is actually releasing judgment of yourself. Your need to put others into categories defines you, not them. When you
stop doing this, you have forgiven yourself for whatever aspect of yourself
you see in them. The more at ease you are with the behavior of others, even
if you would not act that way yourself, the more you are at ease with
yourself. The more you continue to react with intellectually violent
responses to the conduct of others, the more you know that you have work
to do on self-for giveness. Say to yourself, “I’m allowed. ” Not because I tell you you are, or
because your parents are no longer in charge of you, or because some
authority figure granted you permission, but simply becau se you are
lovingly there for yourself. No guilt, no anger, no self-flagellation over
things that you consider mistakes. A simple understanding that you do not
fail in life, you only produce results, and you have the right to learn and
grow from any results that you produce. The word “failure”  is itself a
judgment, and if you label yourself a failure in any context, you are judging
rather than accepting yourself. Self-acceptance will turn into self-love, and
when you are filled with self-love, that is what you will have to give away. Consequently, the willingness to forgive yourself is the necessary step to
being in harmony with all of the universal principles. It gives you
permission to be whatever you choose. And it gives you the right to self-
determination. Everything that you have done is over, regardless of your
opinion about it. It simply is. Try to simply be. The past is over, and
everything you did got you to the point that you are at right at this moment. Everything had to happen exact ly as it did, without any exceptions in order
for you to be here, reading these words in the exact location in which you
find yourself right now. You needed to do it all, and all you have to do, to
really learn this lesson of forgiveness, is to allow that thought in and
lovingly forgive yourself. Receive the lesson from it and be in harmonywith yourself and everyone that you encounter. The more peaceful you are
with that idea, and the more willing you are to be gentle with yourself, even
if you slip, the more you will find forgiveness your way of life. Which
means the more you will find acceptance, which is the absence of the need
to for give, as your way of life. You will notice  so many others  violate the values and beliefs  that you
hold. Refuse to judge them. Reach out to help when asked, and know that
where you are on your path, you can choose to be unaffected by their
conduct. The more you know that you are thinking and acting in harmony
with what the universe can be, the less you will be inclined to judge others. And you will have stopped judging yourself as well, and that is a glorious
aspect of this process. You are treating yourself the way you truly want to
be treated, as the divine being that you are. You have the intelligence that
supports all form running through you at all times. You are important
enough to know that, and divine enough to give it away. SURRENDERING: THE UL TIMA TE ACT
 
I am bringing this book, this wonderful labor of love for me, to a close with
a final concept that I call surrendering. This in no way implies giving
control of your life over to another person, organization, or set of ideas. By
surrendering I simply mean trusting in the forces and princip les that are
always at work in this perfect universe, just as you surrender every day to
the principles that make you a working, loving unit, without questioning,
fighting, demanding, or even asking to fully understand them all. And just
as you surrender also to the greater principles that govern the universe and
all of the living beings contained within it. The act of forgiveness is easier when you surrender. When you know that
all of us are on our own paths, doing exactly what we know to do at the
moment, given the conditions of our lives, then you can let go of any malice
toward others for acting out their own destiny. You also know that you
brought every person and his or her behavior into your life in some way,
and for some reason. With surrender, you sense that there is a powerful
lesson for you as a result of that person’ s being in your life, even if he or
she visited havoc and pain on you. Forgiveness comes with surrendering to
the perfection of it all. Surrende ring replaces questioning why some things
are so painful and dif ficult to grasp. Surrendering goes beyond forgiveness, and can easily carry the burden
not only of this particular chapte r but of the entire book as well. Inherent in
the business of surrendering is the notion of trust. With surrender you trust
the perfe ction and beauty of it all, and at the same time know the paradox
that all of the suffering that seems to go on all over our planet  is a part of
that perfection, as is your own strong desire to end it. Death is not a punishment, but a transition. The only thing that dies is
form, while thought is eternal energy. You are that thought, and can never
die. Surrender completely and stop fighting anything and everything. When
you have this trust you will wonder why you did not surrender long ago,
because of the peace and serenity that you will feel. One way to move in to surrende ring is to make a personal commitment to
forgive every single person that you have ever had any conflict with. Send
each one a gift and a note wishing him or her well, and when you are
tempted to haul out those old thoughts of bitterness and angu ish, remind
yourself that that relationship has healed with the balm of forgiveness. It is
as if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, and you knew also that you
could not make  the transition if you left any people behind you that you
hated. Imagine heaven requiring  love for everyone, no exceptions, and you
having the capacity to make that happen. In many ways, heav en on earth
does require exactly that—love  that is not conditional, that is free from
demands, that allows the loved one the right to be anything that he or she
chooses without  losing your love. This is the kind of surrendering that I am
talking about, a kind of trust that everything is in perfect working order in
the universe, including yourself. As I approached the writing of this work, I surrendered. I accepted that
the principles that I was writing about are true and omnipresent in the
universe. I trusted that comple tely, as I do right now. As I proceeded to
write, I allowed  myself to flow throughout this entire project, no strain, no
worry, no fear that I would not be able to complete my undertaking. I
surrendered to the idea that this book would be written and that I had
nothing to fight or struggle abou t in the production of this work. I would sit
down and simply outline the ideas that I have had as a result of my own life
experiences, my research and reading, my listening to great spiritual
masters. Everything that I needed seemed to come in at just the right time. While
working on a particular chapter, I would receive a tape in the mail fromsomeone who had heard me speak, telling me that this would clarify some
of the points. It always did. On other occasions, someone woul d send me a
book in the mail, telling me that I simply had to read it. That book would be
the one that I needed on that particular day. Many many times when I
wanted a specia l quote to use, I would reach into the massive pile of books
and pamphlets on my huge glass table, and my hands would bring out a
book. While I sat at the typewriter, I would open that particular book to a
page, and there it would be—perfect. Just what I wanted to embellish the
point that I was making. Never before have I had this experience of
effortless perfec tion for such an extended period of time. I surrendered to it
in my writing, and allowed it to flow unimpeded through me to you. No
worry, no stress, no fighting any of it, simply knowing that it is all working
perfectly. I am not advocating an absence  of planning or caring. In fact, you will
find yourself caring and preparing even more than ever before. What I am
describing is the process of knowing that everything is going to work out
because you are at harmony within. You only have love and serenity to give
away. In the process of going about your life’s work, have that inner
knowledge that it is all going to be as it should be. This is what surrendering is about. Inner knowingness. Inner contentment
that overtakes you when you trust the force of the universe to be in
harmony with yourself. Knowing that abundance is your birthright and that
it all flows to and through you when you are no longer challenging
anything. It is like having a guardian angel or a loving observer as a part of
your consciousness, a companion that you are always having compassionate
silent conversations with, a consciousness behind your form. That part is
always perfect. There is no struggle or suffering in that part of you. That is
your transcendent dimension of thought. A sensiti ve Norwegian poet, Rolf Jacobsen, wrote a beautiful poem titled,
“Guardian Angel. ” It deserves to be read slowly and lovingly. I am the bird that knocks at your window in the morning
and your companion, whom you cannot know,
the blossoms that light up for the blind. I am the glacier ’s crest above the forests, the dazzling oneand the brass voices from the cathedral towers. The thought that suddenly comes over you at mid-day
and fills you with a singular happiness. I am the one you have loved long ago. I walked alongside you by day and look intently at you
and put my mouth on your heart
but you don’ t know it. I am your third arm and your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you don’ t have the heart for
and who cannot ever for get you. We all have our own connection to that invisible part of us. There is
much more to life than simply living out our days as form, and then
disappearing into an abyss of infinite nothingness. Our thoughts are a magic
part of us, and they can carry us to places that have no boundaries and no
limitations. In that dimensionless world of thought everything is possible. It demands nothing of you, this awakened life, only that you fill yourself
with the life energy that makes the dynamic work, and that you celebrate
the invisible part of you as well as the visible. Let these ideas in and simply
see where they lead you. As you do:
Remember, you do not have to struggle…
You do not have to fight…
You do not have to win…
You only have to Know.
5
How many variables had to be precise for the author to meet his brother at the rest stop?