The Only Thing That Matters (29 page)

And while you are using this wonderful tool, please be sure to direct it to others as well. They, too, are just now remembering. And some of them have not yet remembered as much as you.

One of the highest uses of Compassion you could ever devise will be your employment of it with everyone whose life touches yours.

Many will come to you with their anger, their upset, their injury, their neediness. Many will call on you in their moments of dysfunction and their “cloud of unknowing.” In their confusion, some of them will actually imagine that they need you, you, and
only you
to heal their wounds and to bring them what they have not yet learned how to give to themselves: Love and understanding.

And acceptance. And patience. And forgiveness.

The more often you use Compassion to offer others these gifts, the greater will be your familiarity with this remarkably healing tool—and you will then find it easier to use on
yourself
.

Compassion is not always easy to give to oneself. Many people find they are not comfortable receiving this from themselves. It interrupts their “story” of “never doing it right” or “being at fault” or “falling short” or “not being good enough.” They feel that by being compassionate with themselves they are letting themselves “off the hook,” or giving themselves “a pass” regarding something they should continue to feel bad about.

So to be tough on themselves, they decline to offer themselves Compassion.

This allows many people who have felt bad about themselves for “not doing it right” since childhood to continue to do so. In this, they are their own hardest taskmaster. Or, as the late Walt Kelly famously said through the voice of his beloved comic strip character
Pogo:
“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Finally, after treating themselves this way for years, the only way many people can
ever
feel comfortable using the tool of Compassion is to use it on others. Often it's hard for them to even find the tool … it's been so long since they've used it. Yet the miracle of Compassion is that if you even find the edge of it, if you even touch the tip of it, the iceberg melts. The effect is instant.

The heart opens.

And suddenly, when the heart opens, the Mind opens. It can hear things it could not hear before. Like the soft voice of the Soul, gently offering a larger view, a deeper understanding, a grander perspective—and quietly engaging a different agenda, a new priority, an altered purpose. Immediately, in the space of Compassion, what really
matters
becomes clear.­

Nobody who sits in the seat of Compassion finds themselves focused on irrelevant things.
Compassion generates clarity
.

So use this gifting tool often. You will find that its effect is circular. As you give more to yourself, you will have more to give to others. As you give more to others, you will have more to give yourself. You can start at either place.

It is, as all of Life … simply another form of Love.

34
A Final Tool

T
HERE IS ONE MORE TOOL
you'll want to know about. It is the final tool that will be described for you here, and it was saved for last because its effect can be perhaps the most profound impact produced by any tool, creating a truly extraordinary effect.

This is a tool that you will use on everyone in your life who has ever done anything in any way negative to you—and you will use it
not
by using it, but by throwing it away.

The tool in question is …

F
ORGIVENESS

Let's begin our description of this tool by looking at what it has in common with all of the others. Every one of the tools that you have been offered here is designed to produce one basic experience: freedom. That is because freedom is the essence of Divinity.

There are a lot of words used to describe the fundamental quality of Divinity in human terms—love, peace, joy, etc.—but the word “freedom” comes closest, perhaps, to capturing the primary quality from which all others flow.

A person who is absolutely and totally free … and this does not mean merely being free to do anything he wants anytime, anywhere he wants, but it also means being free of any sorrow or sadness, any struggle or suffering, any wounds or injuries, any tragedy or torment—anything whatsoever in the past that could cloud or diminish or impact in any unpleasant way the Moment that is Present … a person who is
this
kind of free would love everybody and everything, always be at peace, inevitably experience joy, be forever captivated by Life's wonder, and feel, from one Moment to the next, simply Divine.

So if the experience of Divinity is your goal—(and it is, whether you have known it or not), then that which produces freedom would be the tools you try to find, so that you might construct your reality (which is totally an inner creation and experience that essentially
determines
what outer events and circumstances mean) in such a way that you would never be unhappy for any reason ever again.

Such a state of being would then allow you to move forward with the Agenda of the Soul, advancing rapidly and reaching Completion on your Sacred Journey, thus using virtually every Moment of your Life to serve the Divine Purpose.

This is the way Lao-tzu lived. This is the way Buddha lived. This is the way Jesus lived. This is the way that all spiritual masters have walked the earth. All of these masters, and many more, have said quite directly, each in their own way, that an achievable goal for all human beings was freedom from suffering—which produced everything else that a holy and good life would allow.

The tools you have been given here do just that. Gratitude will give you freedom from struggle and suffering,
in an instant.
Recontextualization will give you freedom from anger and resentment,
in an instant.
Compassion will give you freedom from self-blame and lack of self-worth, and from frustration with others,
in an instant.
And now your final gift, Forgiveness, will give you freedom from all hurt, damage, or injury in any way from any source.

Forgiveness will give you this on the day that you decide you never have to use it again—on the day that you throw it away. It is the discarding of the tool, not the using of it, wherein which its tremendous power is unleashed—like a coiled spring let out of a box. So perhaps the tool should really be called Forgiveness Forgone.

On the day that you understand that you don't have anyone to forgive­—and you
never
had anyone to forgive for anything at all, because all human expressions are ultimately an expression of love, if only in a distorted form, as we discussed in
Chapter 16
—you will be free, no matter what has occurred in your life. Free from struggle, free from suffering, at last.

This is the kind of freedom that Nelson Mandela felt, allowing him to love the jailers who keep him imprisoned for over 20 years, to use one recent, and striking, human example. This is the kind of freedom that Pope John Paul II felt when he went to the jail cell of the man who shot and nearly killed him, giving the gunman his papal blessing.

What is the secret behind this kind of freedom—a level of freedom which allows its holder to completely set aside Forgiveness as a tool for living?

It is the same secret that allows it to be said that God never forgives anyone for anything. God never has, and God never will.

Conversations with God
makes this bold statement, and does it so unequivocally that even those who agree with CWG's other spiritually revolutionary revelations find themselves raising their eyebrows—until they look behind the statement to the explanation that is given.

As we've noted before, God does not and will not offer forgiveness to anyone for anything because
forgiveness is not necessary.
It is replaced in the process of Divine Balance with a more searingly powerful energy: Understanding.

It is because this is such a radical idea, different from just about anything and everything you have ever been taught, that we are revisiting this principle here again, announcing Forgiveness Forgone as one of the powerful tools that you may use to reach Completion on your Sacred Journey. And, the reason, once again …

First, Divinity understands Who and What It Is, and so It is Aware that It cannot possibly be hurt or damaged, injured or diminished in any way. This means that Divinity would not be disappointed or frustrated or annoyed or angry or vengeful for any reason. It simply
has
no reason. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” is the biggest spiritual untruth of all time.

That needs to be repeated: “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” is the biggest spiritual untruth of all time.

Second, God understands that humans do
not
understand who and what
they
are, and so imagine that they
can
be hurt and damaged, injured and diminished—and that it is from this experience, or fear, of being hurt that all thoughts, words, and actions seemingly requiring Forgiveness flow. Knowing this, God has no need to
forgive
you (even if God could somehow be “hurt”), any more than you have a need to “forgive” a two-year-old child for saying or doing something that doesn't make sense.