READ THIS! THEN GIVE US YOUR RESPONSE:
How do you forgive yourself for killing someone?
How do you forgive yourself for an accident in which you killed someone?
The following letter was received by me in my email box on Sept 24, 2013. I have changed the name of the writer to “friend” in order to preserve the author’s privacy.
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Dear Neale…I would like to ask you a question that I would like your help with. I almost do not have the courage to ask, but I will not let the opportunity pass. I am going to ask you now, and God help me, I will truly be whole when I can forgive myself.
I understand the Spiritual truth of the events that have happened in my life, and have been able to forgive others for their part, sometimes I still feel the hurt of being abandoned and abused, and am working on the emotional pain as it presents itself.
Here is the BIG one: I feel so terrible and unworthy as a human, for the tragic accident that took a man’s life. I sill hear the little girl’s voice saying, “Mommy, is that the lady who killed my Daddy?”
I feel horrible, Neale. Can you please teach me forgiving myself, so I can be in both worlds whole, fully connected, mind, body, and soul? I just bought your book Home with God so I won’t feel so afraid. My mind likes to scare me sometimes.
Sincerely, Your Friend.
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NOTE: I am sharing my reply because I believe that Self Forgiveness is one of the most critical issues facing many, many human beings, and I hope that the understandings here will be shared with people everywhere…
My dear Friend…I have received your heartfelt note, and I am pleased that you have written to me, because reaching out is the best thing we can do when we are besieged by negative thoughts from within — as you are by this idea that you have done something unforgivable.
I should like to begin my response to you by quoting you something that humanity was given in the text, HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends. In that book we are told that “no one dies at a time or in a way that is not of their choosing.” Such a thing would be impossible, given Who and What We Are.
You should know, then, that the Soul of the gentleman who died in the incident that you have confessed was not somehow the “victim” of you, but rather, the “co-creator” with you of the perfect circumstances of his own departure from his then-current physical manifestation. CWG-Book One made something very clear: “There are no victims and no villains in the world.”
What reason this gentleman had, in his own personal experience, to choose the moment of this accident for his transformation we cannot know — but this we can know: It was not something that occurred against his will. That is impossible because of who he is.
This brings us, my dear friend, to a much larger question: Who and What are we?
SOONER OR LATER IN our lives we have to make a major decision about the most important question in life: What is our actual identity? Are we the physical manifestation of a biological incident, or are we something greater, something more, something other than a mere mammal?
As I observe it, I have a couple of choices when it comes to how I think of myself. I also observe that there is no “right way” to answer this question.
Choice #1: I could conceive of myself as a Chemical Creature, a “Logical Biological Incident.” That is, the logical outcome of a biological process engaged in by two older biological processes called my mother and my father.
If I see myself as a Chemical Creature, I would see myself as having no more connection to the Larger Processes of Life than any other chemical or biological life form.
Like all the others, I would be impacted by life, but could have very little impact on life. I certainly couldn’t create events, except in the most remote, indirect sense. I could create more life (all chemical creatures carry the biological capacity to re-create more of themselves), but I could not create what life does, or how it “shows up” in any given moment.
Further, as a Chemical Creature I would see myself as having a very limited ability to create an intentioned response to the events and conditions of life. I would see myself as a creature of habit and instinct, with only those resources that my biology brings me.
I would see myself as having more resources than a turtle, because my biology has gifted me with more. I would see myself as having more resources than a butterfly, because my biology has gifted me with more.
I would see myself as having more resources than an ape or a dolphin (but, in those cases, perhaps not all that many more), because my biology has gifted me with more. Yet that is all I would see myself as having in terms of resources.
I would see myself as having to deal with life day-by-day pretty much as it comes, with perhaps a tiny bit of what seems like “control” based on advance planning, etc., but I would know that at any minute anything could go wrong—and often would.
Choice #2: I could conceive of myself as a Spiritual Being inhabiting a biological mass—what I call a “body.”
If I saw myself as a Spiritual Being, I would see myself as having powers and abilities far beyond those of a simple Chemical Creature—powers that transcend basic physicality and its laws.
I would understand that these powers and abilities give me collaborative control over the exterior elements of my Individual and Collective Life and complete control over the interior elements—which means that I have total ability to create my own reality, because my reality has nothing to do with producing the exterior elements of my life and everything to do with how I respond to the elements that have been produced.
Also, as a Spiritual Being, I would know that I am here (on the earth, that is) for a spiritual reason. This is a highly focused purpose and has little to do directly with my occupation or career, my income or possessions or achievements or place in society, or any of the exterior conditions or circumstances of my life.
I would know that my purpose has to do with my interior life—and that how well I do in achieving my purpose may very often have an effect on my exterior life.
(For the interior life of each individual cumulatively produces the exterior life of the collective. That is, those people around you, and those people who are around those people who are around you. It is in this way that you, as a Spiritual Being, participate in the evolution of your species.)
My answer to the question: I’ve decided that I am a Spiritual Being, a three-part being made up of Body, Mind, and Soul. Each part of my tri-part being has a function and a purpose. As I come to understand each of those functions, each aspect of me begins to more efficiently serve its purpose in my life.
I am an individuation of Divinity, an expression of God, a singularization of The Singularity. There is no separation between me and God, nor is there any difference, except as to proportion. Put simply, God and I are one.
This brings up an interesting question. Am I rightly accused of heresy? Are people who believe that they are divine nothing but raving lunatics? Are they, worse yet, apostates?
I wondered. So I did a little research. I wanted to find out what religious and spiritual sources had to say on the subject. Here’s some of what I found…
Isaiah 41:23—Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold together.
Psalm 82:6—I have said, ‘Gods ye are, And sons of the Most High—all of you.’
John 10:34—Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
The Indian philosopher Adi Shankara (788 CE—820 CE), the one largely responsible for the initial expounding and consolidation of Advaita Vedanta, wrote in his famous work, Vivekachudamant: “Brahman is the only Truth, the spatio-temporal world is an illusion, and there is ultimately Brahman and individual self.”
Sri Swami Krishnananda Saraswati Maharaj (April 25, 1922—November 23, 2001), a Hindu saint: “God exists; there is only one God; the essence of man is God.”
According to Buddhism, there ultimately is no such thing as a self independent from the rest of the universe (the doctrine of anatta). Also, if I understand certain Buddhist schools of thought correctly, humans return to Earth in subsequent lifetimes in one of six forms, the last of which are called Devas…which is variously translated as Gods or Deities.
Meanwhile, the ancient Chinese discipline of Taoism speaks of embodiment and pragmatism, engaging practice to actualize the Natural Order within themselves. Taoists believe that man is a microcosm for the universe.
Hermeticism is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs or gnosis based primarily upon the Hellenistic Egyptian pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Hermeticism teaches that there is a transcendent God, !e All, or one “Cause,” of which we, and the entire universe, participate.
The concept was first laid out in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, in the famous words: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One thing.”
And in Sufism, an esoteric form of Islam, the teaching “there is no God but God” was long ago changed to there is nothing but God. Which would make me…well…God.
Enough? Do you wish or need more? You might find it instructive and fascinating to go to Wikipedia, the source to which I owe my appreciation for much of the above information.
As well, read the remarkable books of Huston Smith, 91 years of age at this writing and a globally honored professor of religion. Among titles of his that I most often recommend: The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions, 1958, rev. ed. 1991, HarperOne; and Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions, 1976, reprint ed. 1992, HarperOne
So…that is my answer to Life’s Most Important Question: Who Am I? I am an out-picturing of the Divine. I am God in human form. So, too, of course, are we all.
MY POINT IN TELLING YOU ALL THIS: The gentleman in the incident you describe was not a mere biological expression of life, like an ant or a bee or a tree. He was a spiritual entity, having a Soul, a Mind, and a Body—and having, most of all, total and complete Free Will and Co-Creative Power. He was not the victim of the circumstance you describe, he was the co-creator of it, the active and willing participant in it.
Now, my dear friend, your purpose in life is to recreate yourself anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are. You do this by creating, in very powerful ways, your interior experience of the exterior events that are collaboratively created by all the Souls affected by them. Nobody is the victim of anything, and nobody is the perpetrator. We are all simply co-creators of a Collective Reality, from which each of us are invited to draw our individual experience of Self, through which we produce our present expression of Divinity.
You, my wonderful friend, have chosen to produce, from your experience of the accident, a portrait of yourself as a person who deserves to feel unending shame and guilt. Yet it is as God has told us through the words of His messenger Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: “Guilt and Shame are the only enemies of man.”
I come now to tell you that forgiveness is not necessary. Neither is guilt or shame. God never forgives anyone for anything. God never has, and God never will.
Conversations with God makes this bold statement, and does it so unequivocally that even those who agree with CWG’s other spiritually revolutionary revelations find themselves raising their eyebrows—until they look behind the statement to the explanation that is given.
God does not and will not offer forgiveness to anyone for anything because forgiveness is not necessary. It is replaced in the process of Divine Balance with a more searingly powerful energy: Understanding.
First, Divinity understands Who and What It Is, and so It is Aware that It cannot possibly be hurt or damaged, injured or diminished in any way. This means that Divinity would not be disappointed or frustrated or annoyed or angry or vengeful for any reason. It simply has no reason. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” is the biggest spiritual untruth of all time.
Second, God understands that humans do not understand who and what they are, and so imagine that they, or others, can be hurt and damaged, injured and diminished—and that it is from this experience, or fear, of being hurt that all thoughts, words, and actions seemingly requiring Forgiveness flow.
Knowing this, God has no need to forgive you (even if God could somehow be “hurt”), any more than you have a need to “forgive” a two-year-old child for saying or doing something that doesn’t make sense, or for something that happened by accident, like spilling a glass of milk at the dinner table.
The idea that you need to forgive yourself for something you have done is clearly based on the fact that you feel that another Soul, at the level of Soul, has been offended, damaged, or hurt by you. Such a thought denies the reality of their own sovereignty; of who they really are. I do not mean here to diminish or dismiss the impact in our present physical reality of what has occurred. A man has died, and in our present physical reality and limited understanding, that is surely viewed as a tragedy. Only from the standpoint of a larger spiritual awareness can this incident be held in Consciousness any other way.
From a spiritual perspective, however, we see very differently, with no place for “fault” or “guilt,” for we know that all that has happened is the playing out of the evolutionary process of all the Souls involved — a process that is mysterious and seldom fully grasped within the limited perspective of the human mind.
Yet even the mind understands the innocence of a child whose presumed immaturity and confusion led to his actions. And so, too, will we eventually see, when we come from the place of Deepest Understanding, that the exact same thing is true of the adults who behave in ways that some might call hurtful or damaging.
It is also important to understand this complexity: There is no such thing, in Ultimate Reality, as an “accident.” Even the apparent “accident” of the child spilling milk is not, ultimately, an “accident” at all, but an action that appears to emerge from the mind’s immaturity and confusion, but which is actually the perfect playing out of what is in that moment ideally suited to move forward the agenda of all the Souls involved in and witnessing the event.
In short, nothing happens “by chance” in the Mind of God.
And you are an expression of the Mind of God. That is, you are God, individuated in physicality, for the purpose of experiencing your own Divinity. This is what Jesus Christ was. This is what Lao Tzu was. This is what Muhammad was. This is what Buddha was. This is what Abraham was. This is what Bahá’u’lláh was. This is what everyone is.
This is why Moses was able to part the Red Sea. This is why Jesus was able to heal the sick. This is why Muhammad was able to recite the Quran. And, as Jesus said: “Why are you so amazed? These things, and more, shall you do also.”
Understanding thus replaces Forgiveness in the Mind of those who have expanded their Consciousness to include the Awareness of the Soul. The Soul knows its True Identity.
A wonderful effort of your Mind, then, each time you begin to feel that another person has been hurt or damaged in any way by you, would be to open itself to the wisdom of Heaven.
Stop. Breathe. And then listen.
Listen to the insight and the understanding and the compassion and the wisdom of the Soul. You will know, then, that self-forgiveness is not necessary, but that what serves the Mind is simple and real and pure and compassionate understanding of what occurred, why it occurred, and how its having happened has moved forward the larger evolutionary agenda of all the Souls involved in, and affected by, the occurrence itself.
Go, then, and bless all the world that you touch with all the love that you have, and do not weep because you cannot “forgive” yourself for the incident in which a man’s life was ended, but embrace your own Soul’s understanding — and God’s awareness — that you did nothing “wrong,” that such a thing is impossible given Who You Are, that the highest agenda of every person who has been touched by the experience you describe has been served, that imperfection is impossible in the Kingdom of God, and that you are absolved of any “guilt” or “shame” for an event which was collaboratively created by all the Souls involved, each to serve their own sacred and holy agenda.
Use every moment of the remainder of your life to bless the world, my dear friend, for that is what you came here to do. Indeed, that is Who You Are: a blessing in our world. Bring understanding to those who weep for themselves in their own misunderstanding of their own lives and the experiences within them. Heal others, my friend, of any sadness they may have, and you shall heal your own.
I send you love and blessings, my friend, now and even all the days of your life.
Yours in humble service,
Neale.