What 'forgiveness' really means…and other further adventures…
A few nights ago I slept on soft pine-needle tuft ground in a towering Douglas Fir forest next to a pristine and cataracting stream finding its way down the sides of Oregon's Cascade Mountains. As I sleepily watched the coals of my campfire cool a few feet from my head, my body breathed-in the unrestricted just-created oxygen released by the surrounding multi-storied layers of forest growth. I slept deeply. The next morning dawn arrived silently, and was matched by a serene inner quietness within me. I sat for a good time in this quietness, recognizing the simple but mighty gift of it… the gift of the templeness I was a visitor in.
I sense all things of Nature that exist undisturbed carry this templeness. Even we… especially we… when we are undisturbed….when we are still enough. Deep forest is a great teacher of such beingness, for that is what it 'does'. I share this glimpse in hopes it will not be long before you too find your spot to sleep on the forest floor….
The forest that night had another gift for me also. Another man was camping nearby, and he and I shared several hours around my campfire, talking with each other as well-educated men with a similar love and passion for nature, fairness, and justice. Our conversation was a wide-ranging and deep discussion… exploring each other's mind's for the others knowledge of the mysteries of life…mysteries that would assist each of us to better know and trust in our personal inner sanity. As it often does these days, it felt like a fated meeting, a divinely orchestrated setup… that the two of us would somehow be led to choosing camping sites a few hundred yards from each other… and though hidden from each others view, that we would still discover each other, and then share into the evening and again the next morning. Inthralled, I listen to ____ (who turned out to be a bonafided wildlife expert) teach me (for example) how to behave should I meet a grizzly in the wild (something that HAS happened in my life once before), as well as share from his knowledge of where 'old growth' nature is still available. For me, it was a perfect example of the 'Law of Attraction'… that miles from nowhere, two like-minds should thus meet. God is good to us, yes?
Most of society appears to function that when they suffer a wrongness, they earn the right to pass a similar wrongness on to somebody else…ie, to treat another as they feel they were treated. My thinking is that this is what the current concept of 'justice' is based on. Somehow this thinking believes that this is going to heal them…take away the pain that has been being carried within them. Yes? Is it not fairly easy to see that this does not work? Is it not easy to see that to treat others badly creates a circle that returns directly to us?
Since forgiveness is one of the fundamental human challenges, life usually gives all of us plenty of opportunities to learn the lessons of it. My life certainly is no exception to this. So as I was meditating on some of my personal forgiveness work, I received a download that opened some things up for me… It went like this:
Forgiveness simply means 'to not pass it on', as in 'to not perpetuate'. It means I/we give up the right to be right or righteous about something…even when we are 100% certain that we are right (or 'in the right'). Thus applied, forgiveness becomes one of the very highest expressions of human Love, for by its action it recognizes that because the other actually is another ourself, it is not 'them'… it is really only ourself that we are forgiving. Thus, it places no blame, and thus neither perpetuates nor creates additional guilt (the great impostor and antithesis of God's non-discriminating Love).
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I am now visiting my 22 year old son Ambrose at his roommate-shared duplex in Eugene, Oregon, which is the home of the University of Oregon (which I attended 40-some years ago). So I have been getting a re-dose of collegiate culture, as well as being of assistance to and enjoying loving and being loved by my son. He is currently employed as the assistant manager of a popular cafe--- the other night as I ate there, I was a proud dad, watching him responsibly run his shift, obviously appreciated and respected by his co-employees. As he has had the last two days off, we have just returned from a two day/one night camping trip to the Oregon coast…a wonderful Dad & Son adventure.
There was never a firm plan, and that was the way we both wished it…. so that we could just be father and son hanging out together as equals, and having time to share with each other. There is a main highway-speed route between Eugene and the Pacific, but we chose to follow our nose along slow-speed backroads, and thus had many unplanned and sweetly surprising adventures…. finding little backcountry parks that only locals knew about, several with beautiful waterfalls. We camped in an Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area campground next to a wilderness of leg-muscle challenging sand-dunes alongside the ocean, we thoroughly enjoy the ritual of evening and morning campfires, and we spent most of our second day appreciating the headlands and beaches that comprise the coastal geography north of the dunes. Of note was our shared enthusiasm for the world famous Sea Lion Caves. Ambrose became my teacher in this, as the price was a challenge for me, and alone I would not had bought the ticket. With his encouragement I did, and once that barrier was past, I happily enjoyed the experience (involving descending an elevator built through several hundred feet of solid rock before opening into a direct view of an underground cavern full of huge wild sea lions barking and frolicking next to the sea. Later, we had several good conversations about how we each viewed money and it's appropriate uses, and I appreciated the good work his mother had done in raising him to view money with more freedom than my parents were able to instill in me. Again, the theme of 'to not perpetuate' returning to be contemplated...
On a different 'bucket list' line of thought, being here in Eugene has also given me the opportunity to revisit my own past here… and to realize (as I was wandering on campus one night reviewing old memories of my time here as a student) that it was time to complete my UO educational experience and apply for my degree… 40 some years after I left school in 1972 as a disgruntled student activist, even though 99% of my graduation requirements were by then completed. So I have initiated that inquiry…getting into contact with various university officials to create a path to that completion. It should be an interesting process, to acknowledge that in its own way, my 'irrelevant' formal education experience was always 'part of the plan', ie, also totally non-accidental. Yes?
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