The reward for being a unique,
individual self is that you are special and apart from everyone else. The cost
is that you are apart from everyone else, and confined to your own special, blinkered
point of view. You have sentenced yourself to a life of solitary confinement and
thrown away the key.
'Hell is other people,' Sartre said.
Other people show us ourselves in a shameful light, and we return the favour. We
long for relationships to bring us fulfillment and happiness, yet nothing causes
us so much complicated pain, guilt and grief. How can we bridge our differences?
How much do we want to?
Forgiveness is the closest we can
get to love in this world, the Course tells us. But we cannot understand what it is talking about until we change our minds about what our relationships are for, and who we are relating with; and what forgiveness really means. We have made an ugly and meaningless thing of the most true and loving interchange with another person that we are capable of experiencing.
What is the world's idea of forgiveness? To
cast your sin in stone and then 'say no more about it'...only to throw it at
you if you offend again. The world says 'I forgive you, because I am a morally
superior person, but you don't
deserve it.' Or, 'I forgive you, but I
never want to see you again.' Or, 'I forgive you, but God or karma will get you in the end, and serve you right.' This
is not forgiveness, but only a convoluted form of revenge.
You
stand beside your brother, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other,
uncertain which to give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering
the lilies to replace them (T20 I 2).
The person you love, and the
person you love to hate, and all those people you do not think about at all until they
intrude on your personal space, hold the key to your happiness in their
oblivious hands. The ark of peace is
entered two by two (T20 IV 6.5). Peace of mind is not achieved by any one
alone, but by any one in true relationship with any other. And that means changing your mind about how you think of him, her, all of them. Including yourself.
Saturday 13th December: Thorns and Lilies
Workshop 3 in the series The Two Uses of Time
10.30 am to 2.30 pm
31 Harrow Way, Andover SP10 3RQ
£35
See you soon.
