The Nature of Forgiveness | Is it Different from Compassion?

when I grew up it was a Methodist teaching and it was sort of dry yet there was this prayer Lord forgive us our trespasses and forgive us those who trespass against us and when you open the door last time to the book the Course in Miracles then I came across that principle of the forgiveness and I had a question on that what is forgiveness is it different from compassion is it different from the Buddhist concept of bodhichitta and I don't know thank you thank you and again it comes back to the state of connectedness with being it's only from that state of connectedness with the deeper dimension of who you are from there it becomes easier to forgive because forgive means there was something that was done on the level of form by one life-form due to you perhaps another life-form pain was inflicted or whatever it may be treat whatever the transgression is and it's only from there that you can see the relative nature of what was done because you are in touch with a space within you that was never hurt by that that dimension in you is beyond what can be injured it's only the form can be injured the psychological form somebody might have insulted you deeply the psychological form of who you are can be can feel pain or the physical form of who you are can feel pain and somebody inflicted that out of unconsciousness then recognizing the first step in forgiving is to recognize that this was an act of unconsciousness and you do not equate what this person did with who that person is and it's only from the place of connectedness with being that you can say no longer hold a grievance about that because you are in touch with that inside you that is beyond what can be injured if you're not in touch with that space then you still it's hard to forgive not forgiving means not to harbor grievance or resentment or any negative feeling about it and really that's only possible when you are connected with the formless in yourself as Course in Miracles says nothing real can be threatened nothing unreal exists herein lies the peace of God nothing real can be threatened it means what is ultimately real cannot be threatened but what is ultimately really is not the form it's that which is deeper than the form that cannot be threatened nothing real can be threatened nothing unreal ultimately exists it just seems to he analyzed the peace of God means in the knowing of that lies the peace of God but it needs to be that not conceptual knowing but knowing on the level of the depths of your being and then from there you can look at anything anybody did to you and say it's it's it's almost as if it didn't happen for a while for example I harbored grievances against my father for many years because he was he suffered from enormous amount of bottled up anger and living with him as a child was like living with a powder keg or an unexploded bomb somewhere in the house and everybody one knew that at any moment this the slightest thing somebody said usually was my mother the slightest thing to me said and the son this bomb would explode and there would be the entire house will be filled with destructive energy and for the sensitive child on any charge is sensitive young child it's a terrible thing to live in constant anguish at an explorer any explosion could be happen at any moment whenever he is in the house so I had the ambivalent feelings of fearing his return home after work and wanting him to come home to divide it and that was expressed once in a dream that I had as a child and in the dream I had cut my father up into little pieces and put in a plastic of some kind of sack and hated under the bed and after I'd done that in the dream my father arrived home and I greeted him and loved him and of course all this resulted even after when I was an adult already resulted in and quite a quite a plate of grievance towards him because it my childhood was fearful and unpleasant as a result and it was only when a transformation happened inside me and there was suddenly that deep inner peace that are realized he did what he did according to the way in which life had conditioned him he had when he was a child yet enormous amount of resentment against his family because of it of course the story can go on many generations he was the seventh child his father died when he was 15 and they took him out of the school they had to pay for school boarding school they took him out of boarding school because they said he we can't afford it anymore but his sisters were still in kept in boarding school so and then he had to do menial jobs and every day he was his anger was growing and growing and growing he carried it into the rest of his life there was not enough consciousness in him to disidentify from the anger he was the the anger was using him it left in him as an energy and he could come up anytime he was as much a victim as I was and I saw that after I had gone through the transformation and found inner peace I could see that he did he was a victim of his own circumstances there was not enough consciousness in him to see what he was doing and immediately forgiveness happened I didn't even have to say I have to try to forgive he never did It was as if he had never done anything to me because basically he hadn't he wasn't even there there was only the unconsciousness in him acting up and then as he grew older some of that anger dissipated remnants of it remained he also came into touch with some spiritual teachings especially the power of now that helped to some extent and so his ego grew less not didn't quite disappear but it grew less which my dad was a child his ego was gigantic and it was continuously fueled by anger at an angry ego is something it's it's the the Incredible Hulk Lord that's you and that so the forgiveness happened naturally and very often you see that when an injury happens very often it's there's a mental judgment of a situation and actually beyond that mental judgment not that much happened let's take a simple example you arrange to meet somebody or summary he says I'm going to help you with your moving I'm going to help you move house I'll be there at 5 o'clock to help you move with my car and he doesn't turn up and that just is as it is now the Oh mind then mind then comes in and says he let me down he or he betrayed me or he was whatever the judgment of the mind is and it is very often it is the the judgment of the situation that creates the emotion that feels injured if you can just be with oh he you said he would come but he didn't turn up that's the fact whatever your mind wants to add to it gives you the sense of injury and strengthens the ego so if you can just be with the pure facts this is why all that stuff when people about talking about other people what they fail to do or what they did what he did to me he betrayed me well what did he do well he went off with another woman on then he betrayed me betrayed me is an interpretation and the more you have that thought that he betrayed me the more you feel the emotion that goes with that thought and you feel but who is it that feels that emotion the egoic self feels betrayed because who you deeply are who you are in your essence doesn't feel betrayed but the order of fact is he went off with another woman that's what he did is that all yeah that's what he did if you refrain from adding a story to it then you don't experience the it this may not be this comes easy when you are connected with who you truly are then it it is easy to let go of the unnecessary imposition of stories upon events the event is neutral the story interpretation of it is what creates the anguish [Music] you

Channel: Eckhart Tolle

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Keywords: the nature of forgiveness, how to forgive someone, what is forgiveness, is forgiveness compassion, how to forgive, on compassion, eckhart tolle forgiveness, eckhart tolle q&A, eckhart tolle 2019, youtube eckhart tolle, personal development, self esteem, self compassion, to forgive, forgiveness, forgive, compassion, eckhart tolle

Id: D9XHKqn22HY

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 10 2019