CHAPTER 4
Choosing Love over Fear
“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here…. The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.”
—MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, A Return to Love
“‘Complete forgiveness’ is different from what is usually called forgiveness in the world. Complete forgiveness starts by our realizing that whatever is happening we have asked for. We then offer our perceptions and thoughts about the reality of the grievance to the Holy Spirit and ask for a new perception to be given us. Once the Holy Spirit gives us this new perception we must choose it as ours. This is how grievances are let go. Since our brothers and sisters bring us those forgiveness lessons, our relationships are actually our salvation.”
—REV. TONY PONTICELLO, After Enlightenment
“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
—MARK TWAIN
ONE OF THE FIRST times Jerry [Jampolsky] and I lectured together was at the opera house in Seattle. We were backstage waiting to be announced, and Jerry looked through a peephole in the curtain. “Wow,” he commented, “the house is packed.”
This must have made him nervous because suddenly he expressed an overwhelming desire to urinate! Even though we knew that they were going to introduce us in a few minutes, he had to go, so he asked the stagehand where the bathroom was and raced toward it. Later, he told me that he ran as fast as he could, but as he started back, he realized that he'd exited from a different door into an adjoining building. He had to find his way back to the restroom and go out the correct door before he could locate me. He arrived just as we were being announced.
Meanwhile I was having my own anxieties. We'd only lectured together a few times, and I knew that people really came to hear Jerry. My anxiety quickly turned to anger. I said to myself, I will never forgive Jerry for this. Then I began fantasizing about what would happen if he didn't get back in time and the curtain rose and I was standing onstage alone. I decided that I'd tell the truth and say, “Sorry, Jerry went to the bathroom and he'll be right back.”
We were out of the sight of the master of ceremonies as he began to introduce us. Just as he finished, Jerry came tearing across the stage with literally a second to spare. The curtain went up and we opened our lecture with the title of our talk, “Forgiveness Is the Key to Happiness!”
While onstage, I actually shared the fact that we were giving a talk on forgiveness, yet here I'd been just moments before thinking I'd “never” forgive Jerry, who was full of his own self-condemnation! Never more than that night did we recognize the truth of the old saying: “You teach what you need to learn.”
Awareness of the ego is essential if we're to attain a peaceful mind and a happy heart. Forgiveness requires us to look honestly at our thoughts and emotions and see how destructive judgment and anger are: before we turn on the light, we have to see that it's dark.
—from GERALD JAMPOLSKY and DIANE V. CIRINCIONE, Finding Our Way Home: Heartwarming Stories That Ignite Our Spiritual Core
Forgiveness Is a Bridge
Forgiveness can be likened to a bridge that connects one path that you can travel in life to a second.1 At any given time, you and I are traveling down one of these two paths. Very few people travel exclusively down one path all the time. The first path is a path of low vibrational frequency or energy. This path can be thought of as the fearful path.2, 3, 4 The second path is a path of high vibrational frequency or energy sometimes thought of as the positive path—the path of light or the path of the Self.5, 6 It is not bad or wrong to be on any path at any given time. The positive path is, however, the Truth of who we are, that which we all, consciously or subconsciously, strive for. Please be kind to yourself when you read these words. The purpose of this book is to help you travel across the bridge of forgiveness—from the lower path to the higher one—using the most effective tools that have been developed.
The bridge of forgiveness crosses from the path of fear, negativity, guilt, blame, unhappiness, hate, and weapons of self-destruction (i.e., the path of the ego-mind) to the positive path of light, love, peace, happiness, joy, and well-being. Forgiveness allows you to release the past and to cross the bridge from the path of fear and negativity to the positive path of light and love.7 In the process, a shift will take place in your attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, choices, decisions, habits, relationship patterns, and energy.
What you and I experience in life is the result of which path we choose to travel. When you or I are traveling the fearful path, we are separated from our sense of oneness with our true Self, the Truth of who we are. When we are traveling the path of happiness, love, and light, we are united, aligned, or connected with our true Self, the Truth of our Being. As you can see in the diagram, a line connects the two paths. At any moment you and I are somewhere along that line. Most people move back and forth across the line at different moments in their life, and at any given moment our attitudes, beliefs, choices, and energy level determine how far we are on either side of the line.
The more forgiving you are, the more likely you will be on the positive path.
Diagram 2. The Two Paths
Diagram 2 contrasts the extremes of the two paths. In actuality, there are plenty of shades of gray between the two contrasting points of view, and we all move back and forth between them. As you work your way through this book, you will find yourself spending more of your time aligned with the path of love, peace, happiness, contentment, and joy, which is ultimately your true or core nature.
Happiness Is Found in the Present
One of the most pernicious obstacles in our path to happiness is a tendency to dwell in regrets over the past or anxieties about the future. In actuality, “now” is the only time there is. You can think about the past or the future, but this very moment is the only moment that exists. When the future arrives it will be the present moment. It will be the “now.” So if you or I spend too much time focusing on the past or focusing on the future, we are not going to be happy, because life does take place right now, right now, right now.
At any given moment in time, life is a choice between happiness and unhappiness, between negative and positive, between love and fear, and therefore between the “ego-mind” and the “Self/Truth/Being.” At any moment in time, you and I can choose which path we are going to travel. The process of forgiveness lets us stay centered in the present most of the time rather than dwelling on the distressing past or projecting our fears and worries into the imagined future. It is only in the present that happiness can be found.
Shoulding on Ourselves
In the previous exercise, you wrote down your grievances, judgments, shoulds,