Image from Birmingham Museums Trust
How can it be even remotely possible for world peace when we hold personal grievance and unforgiving?
Listen to my song: For the sake of our Children
Friends, we fool ourselves if we think that we can have a peaceful world if we refuse to give up the personal grievances we hold in our minds. If, in other words, we refuse to forgive.
Forgiveness, is a recurring and persistent theme and practice for me because I’ve come to realize how critical it is for peace in this world. If we believe – and many of us actually sense it on some level – that we are all interconnected, that we all belong to each other, just as the parts of the body belong to each other thus forming the one body, then how can it be even remotely possible for world peace when we hold personal grievance and unforgiving?
How can we gift our children with a peaceful world if we ourselves refuse to forgive and heal?
None of us are ‘bad’ people. We are all children of Love, of God, of Truth. But, we have been conditioned by a world of fear driven by the primal technology of survival which has ‘evolved’ into an Egoic thought system that plays out in our personal and collective lives.
As long as we remain asleep, in the torpor of conditioning, we will unwittingly and sometimes intentionally, keep ourselves and our world at war. And that is the world that we bequeath to our children. At least until we choose not to. Until we choose to gift them a better world.
This is not something that is ‘out of our hands’ and the responsibility of our governments and leaders. For too long, I believed this to be the case. It was part of my programming and I dare say yours too. We were told, explicitly and implicitly, that world peace is contested and settled in the domain of the ‘important and powerful’ people and institutions of the world.
Well, I think many of us are waking up to this falsehood, this pernicious myth that has been woven into the very fabric of our society, indeed our humanity, our mindset.
No more. Let us re-cognize that it is the response-ability of each one of us to make this world a peaceful one for all of life, including human life. And it begins with each one of us refusing to drink the poison of unforgiving by which we self harm, individually and collectively. Surely, that is the world we want our children and their children and their children henceforth to inherit from us?
EACH MONTH, I work with a small number of people (about 6) in a mentoring capacity. It is highly personalized and uses a body-centred phenomenological (lived experience rather than theoretical) approach and draws on mindfulness and reflective practices. If this sounds interesting to you, you can find out more here.
REFLECTION
Where in your life are you refusing to forgive? Or willing to but finding it difficult?
CALL TO ACTION
Take the time to read or listen to stories of forgiveness. Use the internet or talk to your friends. What can you learn from their experiences?
HEALING STATEMENT
It is never about whether I can. It is always about whether I am willing. I give myself permission to be willing to forgive knowing that it offers me peace which I can offer the world.
Join Lucy’s 6 Day Walk in the Garden of Frogiveness mentoring program.
Interested in Mentoring?
EACH MONTH, I work with a small number of people (about 6) in a mentoring capacity. It is highly personalized and uses a body-centred phenomenological (lived experience rather than theoretical) approach and draws on mindfulness and reflective practices. If this sounds interesting to you, you can find out more here.
Interested in Meditation or Workshops? Get in touch!