goldenboy

As a young Christian, one of the most integral tenets of the faith, that of Forgiving, was the most difficult for an adolescent to come to terms with.

I said the most important prayer, Our Father, and when it came to the line, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”, I felt knotted inside. I was not really sure if I could do that. And I perhaps never did.

We all feel scared of other people who “trespass” against others, or who bring harm to others. We are always watchful, and that can lead to much fear, and in my case it had led to fear to the extent of paranoia, a lack of general trust.

Somehow, we have all come to share the same universal fear, of the nature of mankind himself.

History is rife with the cruelty inflicted on man by man himself- The Holocaust being the epitome of one such horrific reminder.

Can we ever feel safe around a person who confesses to believing in Nazi ideology? Would we trust our children around a person who confesses to have paedophilic feelings?

Can we share a house with a murderer? Can we trust our possessions in the hands of a thief?

Perhaps no is the answer. Common sense would say self-defence is the best mechanism -And I agree that there is no two opinion about it.

However, when it comes to a Hitler within you, a person who has the same anger or hatred against a certain section of the people, or paedophilic feelings, or guilt – as much as a murderer will possess, or perhaps indulging in practises that you know society won’t accept? … how far would you go to accept it?

When it comes to the above within us, we live scared to acknowledge it, to see it in the eyes and say yes you exist. We would rather believe that all the terrorists are out there in the hiding, when the truth is that the most vicious terrorist could be in our mind itself.

For where are all the sins of mankind born, in the mind right? And as fellow-human beings, we all feel hate, anger, rage, fear… and they seem to have a life of their own in our hearts.

When I saw the movie, “A Dead man walking”, all I could say to myself was – there is something so wonderfully graceful about the nun, yet her character is so much out of my reach. Can I forgive a murderer of two teenagers, when one of the teenager was raped by him before being killed? Can I lobby for forgiveness on his behalf, let alone forgive him myself? Won’t I want him dead, like the parents of the victims?

Yet today, I think I have started understanding one fundamental thing about forgiveness. To be true to my own self, I need to accept that Hitlers and terrorists who execute the most horrific crimes are not all out there, but within ourselves. We have the potential of all that which these misguided youths out there execute in the world believing in some holy command called Jihad, a command by God himself.

I can hate, perhaps my heart is full of hatred. My heart can fear, fear so much that I can kill somebody. My heart is full of anger; so much fury lies within that I can silently kill a person with my emotional poison being around him.

It is when I accept this basic nature that belongs to a part of my psyche, a part that has been inherited in humans perhaps from our wild past in the jungle, that we may be able to see what Bible means when it calls each one of us “sinners”.

Each one of us, who believe Saddam paid for his sins when he was persecuted, should be able to accept the fact that we as men are equal sinners.

When we accept that the feelings that could lead a leader to genocide thousands, are all within our own psyche too (only that we don’t look at it, or think of acting on it), when we are aware that there is -at the level of feeling- nothing much different between the worst of criminals and our own unenlightened minds, we have reached a very pivotal point in our lives – that of non-discrimination, of true understanding, of not sitting in judgment of other people, of truly accepting our own selves for however we are, however we might feel.

This is a sacred and vital point of Self-Awareness, for there is no place for lies but only truth when it comes to being aware about my self.

And from this point of acceptance of my own self, comes love, unconditional love for ourselves and others – just like we are supposed to feel naturally, since we are made “in the image of God”, a god who is all-forgiving and all-loving and whose love is unconditional.

And herein we see what was supposed to be so central to what Jesus said, “Love your neighbours as thy self”. The fundamental thing he said was, first accept yourself and love yourself (for however you are), and then you will be able to love others, even sinners, being able to forgive them as you forgive yourself.

When we are ready to live with our self, no matter how we feel, and not kill ourselves for how we feel, and if we can reconcile with the fact that it is the lack of true awareness that leads people like Hitler etc to do the carnage that they indulged in, we can truly forgive these misguided souls.

And the moment you can say, “Hey Hitler, whatever you did was gross, but hey what the heck! I forgive you!” we are following the command of God to forgive, the true way towards total freedom from the Vrittis (for Hindus)…

“For there is no man in the crowd who has not sinned in his heart, or in his life, who can pick the first stone to throw at Magdalene”!

If we can accept that, and forgive ourselves knowing that in the head in which Hitler lived the poor soul had no choice but to follow his animal instinct, if we can do that, we can forgive him and thus save ourselves from turning into another Hitler.

Awareness burns all the garbage. Yet to start we need to start acknowledging the garbage within us.

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I think that beneath the question of should Hitler be allowed to have his thoughts and not immediately be sedated in the modern day with psychiatric drugs, lies our fundamental fear of “our perception” of the true nature of humankind.

Do you believe that beneath all those thoughts of hatred, with self-awareness, he could come out as a gentle being? Is our fundamental nature good, or bad – to be tamed?

For if you believe it is to be tamed, then you will sedate the Hitler in you, never seeing him in the eye. Yet if you know he is just a dirt of your psyche, on the pristine clear crystal of your true spirit, a spirit that is inherently and universally benevolent under the tarnish of thoughts and emotions, if you can see that, then you will understand why Jesus wanted us to forgive sinners. Jesus perhaps would have advocated us to forgive Hitler too, forty times seventy.

Can you let the Hitler in you be, with its hatred and strong passions, without acting on them but accepting them as a part of your psyche, but still loving yourself.

Accepting will mean that you acknowledge that there is more hate in you than love, but that you choose never to act out of that hate. Accepting that you have more anger than compassion within your heart, but that you choose never to act out of that fury. Accepting that you have a lot of guilt within, yet choosing to forgive yourself.

Because I believe that in the fire of Awareness, being completely honest and true to oneself is completely important. This unconditional acceptance of your self, will give way to Forgiveness, and in time will lead to the birth of a real all-loving you, which does not sit on judgement of other people, who knows compassion, who is not discriminatory in the truest sense of the word, which is your intrinsic basic nature.