TOPICS: By forgiving, you are setting yourself free – understanding the law that you reap what you sow – let go of the need to punish others – God does not need your help in holding other people accountable – by not forgiving, you tie yourself to the other person – seek healing of psychological wounds – outcome of healing is forgiveness – active forgiveness –
Question: What are your thoughts on Forgiveness. Can we forgive others? or is forgiveness only meant to be directed at ourselves, being that the only sin is a perception of fear rather than love.
Forgiveness is still
and quietly does nothing
it merely looks
and waits
and judges not.
Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:
Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The true meaning of forgiveness is to “set free,” yet most people simply do not understand who they are sitting free when they forgive. They think that by forgiving someone who has harmed them, they are somehow setting that person free from responsibility or letting them off the hook. This simply is not correct.
In the Bible you find the statement:
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord (Romans 12:19).
This simple statement refers to a cosmic law which is only partially explained in the Bible. In eastern religions this law is called the law of Karma, and by science it is known as the law of action and reaction. As I explain throughout this website, everything you do is done with God’s energy. When you harm another person, you are misqualifying a certain amount of God’s energy. God has created an impersonal law which insures that any impulse of misqualified energy you have ever sent into the universe will be returned to your lifestream. In other words, no lifestream can ever escape the consequences of its actions. Most Christians do not understand the ramifications of this law, and the main reason is that my teachings about karma and reincarnation were deliberately removed from Christianity.
This is one of the main reasons why even many Christians cannot fully forgive those who have harmed them—even though I told people to forgive seventy times seven. They simply cannot let go of the need to punish others or hold them accountable, and the reason is that they do not understand how God can repay other people. Most people have observed that some people commit atrocities and yet die without seemingly having been punished for it. The explanation is, of course, that you will not always have the return of the misqualified energy, your karma, in the current lifetime. Yet you will inevitably experience a return of that energy. God’s impersonal law, will repay.
When you understand the impersonal law of karma, you see that God is not an angry and judgmental God who is looking at every action you commit, seeking to punish you by sending you to Hell. If Christians truly understood the cosmic law that no one can escape the consequences of their actions, they might make great strides in terms of overcoming their erroneous and idolatrous image of an angry God.
Equally important, they could also make great strides in terms of overcoming the idolatrous concepts about forgiveness. When you realize how the law of God works, you see that you have absolutely no need whatsoever to punish another human being or to somehow hold them responsible. In other words, many people feel that by holding a grudge against another human being, they are supposedly helping to hold that person accountable for his or her actions. When you understand God’s law, you see this is completely unnecessary. God is perfectly capable of holding another lifestream accountable for its actions, and God does not need your assistance in terms of doing this.
A separate issue is the obligation to protect other people from those who repeatedly commit wrong actions, and I have spoken about this in more detail elsewhere.
My point here is that if you believe that God is incapable of holding another lifestream responsible, and therefore you need to hold a grudge or even take action to punish the other person, then you are actually assuming that you know better than God or that you are somehow acting as God’s avenging angel. These beliefs are erroneous and dangerous for your spiritual growth.
The simple fact is that when you hold a negative image or negative feelings toward another, you are creating a bond of energy between you. If you think about this logically, you might ask yourself why a rational person would want to create a bond of energy between himself and a person who has harmed him? Obviously, no enlightened person would want to do this. You would want to be completely free of the other person so that you can move on with your life in a positive direction. The key to your own freedom is to completely forgive the other person. My point is that in forgiving another, you are actually setting yourself free.
I am well aware that some people have been so severely hurt by another that they have fragmented their soul vehicles or have scars in their psychology. As I explained in other sections, such wounds in the lifestream or such emotional scars simply cannot be healed in an instant. So I am not hereby saying that every human being who has been hurt by another should be able to instantly forgive that person.
If you have been severely hurt, you should use appropriate tools to either heal your lifestream or your emotional body from all wounds. What I am pointing out is that as this healing process advances, there will come a point when no further healing is possible until you completely forgive the other person. One might say that total forgiveness is the ultimate outcome of the healing process. Yet for those who are able to (partially) forgive from the very beginning, it can also be the best possible beginning of the healing process.
So in short, if you are truly concerned about your spiritual progress, then you should indeed forgive others. You should also forgive yourself and you should forgive your God for any harm ever committed against you, either by God or by religious institutions or people in the name of God.
You say that “the only sin is a perception of fear rather than love.” You are on the right track with this statement, but I would prefer to say that the only sin is a sense of separation from your source, a sense of separation from love. It is the sense of separation that gives rise to fear, and from that fear springs all sins.
Your poem is beautiful, but forgiveness also has an active side. You cannot simply wait for forgiveness to happen as if by magic. You should set the stage for forgiveness to happen by healing your wounds and by raising your understanding. Keep seeking understanding until you receive the intuitive insight that, in a flash, makes you realize that forgiveness is truly the highest form of self-interest. You suddenly see that by forgiving everyone and everything, you are setting yourself see from the bonds that are keeping you trapped in a self-created prison in your mind and in a material prison on planet earth.
Copyright © 2004 by Kim Michaels