Nov 16
20
How to Forgive and Forget
Is it as simple as following steps 1, 2, 3?
If You Don’t Do This, You Can’t Have That
The title is in plain English and so is what follows and the only challenge to plain English is that too many different English words mean too many different things to too many different people, to convey anything meaningful to anybody.
Take the word forgive – what does this word mean to you? One night I had been called by a psychiatrist friend of mine asking if I would come to his office and bring my Bible. He’d been providing his brand of psycho-therapy for this particular patient for twelve years. She was in her sixties, the Dean of Women at a college campus in the Pacific Northwest; she had started to remember some things and he thought she was ready to hear what “this kook friend,” as he referred to me, had to say.
That night she was rid not only of her dependence upon the psychiatrist, but of an acute hearing impairment and she was taken off all meds. It was also the first step to the doctor retiring from his psychiatric practice.
Can something be lost in translation?
Both the doctor and I learned, that night, the importance of understanding what it means to “forgive” in the original language. It actually comes from two distinctly separate words which the translators of the King James Version, KJV, of the Bible translated into English in the 1600s and every modern English version still uses the same word, as forgive, still giving a message in plain English that does nothing and the reason for that is, even if you understand the two words, you need to understand HOW to apply them.
Two hints here, if you cannot forget, you haven’t forgiven. But we’re back to the same issue, what does forgive mean to you? As you are about to see, it doesn’t matter what the word forgive means to you, because the two separate words in the original mean significantly MORE!
The first term in the original means to let go, or release. The second, again, completely separate term, means to send away violently! What is interesting to me, at least, is that the, “if you don’t forgive, God won’t forgive you” stated in perfectly plain English is NOT what is being said in the original language either.
Careful how you use your finger, it might hurt you.
What is being said is, “if you are standing praying while blaming somebody for anything, then you can just forget all about praying because it won’t get you anywhere; AND, in context, the whole thing has to do with the sidekicks of Jesus being amazed because the fig tree he had cursed the previous day was withered; it was totally dead, from top to bottom and he was telling them they didn’t have to be amazed, they could do it as well, but first they had to acquire what he called (again) in the original language, “the faith of God” or, more accurately, “God-faith” and they could go around killing trees as well! Then he provided the “formula” for acquiring this God-faith.
Can we presume that in the 1600s forgive covered all that ground and the translators of the king jimmy version knew what they were doing?
The provided formula for acquiring God-faith and living in the peace and power of the forgiveness that God has already provided, IF you also forgive is actually quite simple, again, in the original language.
Killing trees because your hungry is not cool Jesus and Brad. Stop it!
The way to pray to acquire all this promised POWER (with which to kill fig trees by the way) is to release anyone you identify as being the cause to your problem from all blame, which means you taking the responsibility for all the crap in your life – while getting a picture in your mind of lifting all blame over your head and casting it violently down off a cliff into the sea UNTIL you no longer blame anyone else for anything. That’s it, how to forgive AND forget.
Forgiving AND forgetting is one way of getting into the awareness of being a part, a particle of, I AM that, I AM and having your own burning bush experience of being introduced to being guided by the creative force of everything – you may want to begin the journey by simply saying “before there was ever [insert your given name] I AM.”
Say it violently and in this way you will be removing all the blame you tend to lay at the feet of your parents for everything, including naming you and thus leading you to the delusion that the name they gave you is YOU.
It’s time…
The referenced patient had been waking up to the fact that all her emotional and physical problems were caused by her grandmother. When it came to me that she needed to forgive her grandmother and take personal responsibility for what happened, she reacted, “ME!” It was my grandmother who abused me!”
Her breakthrough began about thirty minutes later after she understood and accepted the original meaning of forgive and that what she had been teaching others forever, that is, “If you don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive you” wasn’t in the original version either.
It was also quite exciting to watch her, with tears of joy, tell her grandmother, who had been dead for forty years, that she loved her and forgave her because she didn’t know what she was doing.
Is it time to rid yourself of feeling powerless?
Some people, after learning to stop blaming anyone else need additional help and that is to stop blaming themselves – taking responsibility does not mean putting the blame on yourself which is just another way of living in guilt, which produces the same powerlessness that blaming others does. Once you’ve released and violently sent away all blame of others, you simply need to do the same thing for YOU. Live in forgiveness for others AND for you. It has already been provided, change the title from, If You Don’t Do This, You Can’t Have That to IF you do this, you will have that, which is living in the presence and power of I AM that, I AM.
A story you may have heard before, but is an important anecdote is about a young man having a conversation with his father about the difference between two words; commitment and contribution. The father sagely said, remember we had ham and eggs for breakfast. The chicken made a contribution, but the pig made a commitment.
As one sage has said, the sacrifice has already been made, you don’t have to die, but if you really want to live, the sacrifice has to be accepted, not repeated. Commit to practicing forgiveness (releasing and sending away violently) for you and others; live in power without the limits imposed by blame.
– Brad Cullen
Visit www.youwithoutlimits.life, click on the contact tab, enter your name and best e-mail address and in the comments box type in: HANDBOOK and you will receive your own FREE PDF copy of the YWL handbook for facilitators of small groups (we are all facilitators and co-learners), the group you facilitate can even be all in your own mind helping you remove the limits created by blame and guilt.