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I am often reminded to remember who I am and why I'm here. I read it in books, see it on TV shows, and find it on web pages everywhere. What does it really mean? We are in the throes of a spiritual revolution right now that promises to bring a whole new energy to our human experience. Astrologers refer to this time now as the Age of Aquarius. New Age thought says we are entering an era of Feminine Energy. The prophesizers and philoshophers abound with these pronouncements. But when all is said and done, it still comes down to one - you. Or in this case, me. As I travel on this journey I know what I am seeking. I am seeking the truth. So does that define me? Who am I, a seeker? Does that mean that whenever I lie or someone lies to me, I am forgetting who I am? These are the questions I ask myself in order to be the very best I can be as often as I can. And as I go through this human experience, it becomes more and more apparent to me that the very foundation of our existence rests on forgiveness. If we forgive one another for our mistakes, if we refuse to hold others hostage to our expectations and their failure to meet them, if we accept the differences in one another and celebrate our diversity, if we focus on what we have in common rather than what seperates us, if we come to understand that it is our perceptions that create our reality and that this "reality" causes us to judge others and mete out "punishment" for those judgements, then and only then can truth and joy exists in our lives. Now, not only is that a very long sentence, but it's a mouthful! Yet is does answer who we are and why we're here. We are reflections of our Creator, whoever we define that to be. When we accuse or attack another for a perceived wrong, what we're really doing is mirroring back to ourselves those very things we are accusing another of. I had a friend who was totally convinced that her mother was a master manipulator and that she used that manipulation to cause my friend great harm. After getting to know this person, I noticed that she attributed manipulation to just about every person she ever got close to. She was assigning this attribute to those she cared about and then expected them to stop being manipulative in order to remain in her life. Since most, if not all, of the people she assigned this characteristic to never really had it (she just perceived they did), they couldn't get rid of it. Sounds like a Catch-22, doesn't it? Well, it was. It became apparent that she was giving her fear of manipulation to another to get rid of. If that person failed to get rid of the manipulation, she got rid of them. But guess what? Manipulation just kept rearing its ugly head, no matter who was in her life. And if there was one thing she just could not forgive, it was being manipulative! Have you ever done anything like that? If you're really honest with yourself you may find that you have. It's not a bad thing. It's simply an error you keep making because you will not forgive. Once you truly and honestly forgive someone for their errors, you instantly forgive yourself as well. Where the problem lies is in the way we "forgive". I find that in this human experience there are universal truths. These are beliefs that show up everywhere over long periods of time, sometimes thousands of years! They show up in most religious and spiritual disciplines, they show up as the moral of a story or movie, they show up in a wide variety of philosophies - in other words, they are universal. The universal truths I have learned about forgiveness are: You cannot forgive yourself until you forgive others and you cannot forgive others until you forgive yourself. Life is a circle. Everything happens in an instant. To withhold forgiveness from another "until you can forgive yourself" is to withhold it from yourself, so stop using that as an excuse. Withholding forgiveness is founded in fear. For many of us, standing in righteous indignation masks our fear of knowing who we really are and what we are here for. If we were forgiving and open to others, we would have to stop putting our illusionary perceptions onto others. This means we would have to give up those illusions and then where would we be? We're afraid to find out. You cannot have what you will not give. If you made a mistake, big or small, how would you want to be treated? For most of us, we would want to be forgiven. We would want others to forget about our mistakes and we would try hard not to make them again. We certainly would not want to be defined by our mistakes, would we? Well, don't you think the people you have not forgiven or have only partially forgiven (if this is even possible) want the same thing? You cannot expect to be forgiven in the true sense, which is unconditionally, if you will not give that to others. "Judge not". If we stop judging ourselves and others, there would be no need for forgiveness, would there? Judging others makes it necessary for you to punish them. For adults, this usually means you don't associate with whomever you judged, either for long periods or short periods. Judgement always creates a seperation. Who am I? I am a spiritual being having a human experience, as is every other person on this planet. No one, in their purest sense, is better or worse than me. What is my purpose? To end seperations, not create them. To avoid creating seperations, I have to avoid judgement. To end seperations I have to forgive, in the way I want to be forgiven. Carol Cwondolk@aol.com

`Forgiveness Is The Foundation Of The Human Experience`

`-by Carol`