Radical Forgiveness

by Colin Tipping

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I saw it going on a lot, just as Jill says. I thought it was pretty strange and, quite honestly, much of the time I felt awkward being there.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “Anyway, Jill, I want you to know that nothing I am going to say negates what you have said or invalidates your story. I believe that it happened the way you said it happened. Let me, however, give you a hint of what might be going on underneath this situation.”

  “What do you mean, underneath the situation?” Jill asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “It’s perfectly natural to think that everything ‘out there’ is all there is to reality,” I explained. “But maybe there’s a whole lot more happening beneath that reality. We don’t perceive anything else going on because our five senses are inadequate to the task. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t occurring.

  “Take your situation. You and Jeff have this drama going on. That much is clear. What if, beneath the drama, something of a more spiritual nature was happening—same people and same events, but a totally different meaning? What if your two souls were doing the same dance but to a wholly different tune? What if the dance was about you healing? What if you could see this as an opportunity to heal and grow? That would be a very different interpretation, would it not?”

  Both she and John looked at me as if I were now speaking a foreign language. I decided to back off from the explanation and go directly for the experience.

  “Looking back over the last three months or so, Jill,” I went on, “what did you mostly feel when you saw Jeff behaving so lovingly toward his daughter Lorraine?”

  “Anger mostly,” she said, but continued thinking about it. “Frustration,” she added. Then, after a long pause, “And sadness. I really feel sad.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I feel so alone and unloved,” she said and began sobbing quietly. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I thought he couldn’t show love, but he can and he does—with her!”

  She spat the last few words out with vehemence and rage and began to sob uncontrollably for the first time since her arrival. She’d shed a few tears prior to this, but she hadn’t really let herself cry. Now, at last, she was letting go. I was pleased that Jill had been able to get in touch with her emotions that quickly.

  A full ten minutes went by before her crying subsided and I felt she could talk. At that point I asked, “Jill, can you ever remember feeling this same way when you were a little girl?” Without the slightest hesitation, she said, “Yes.” She was not immediately forthcoming about when, so I asked her to explain. It took her a while to respond.

  “Dad wouldn’t love me either!” she finally blurted out, and she began to sob again. “I wanted him to love me, but he wouldn’t. I thought he couldn’t love anyone! Then your daughter came along, Colin. He loved her, all right. So why couldn’t he love me, goddammit?” She banged her fist hard on the table as she shouted the words and dissolved into more uncontrollable tears.

  Jill’s reference was to my eldest daughter, Lorraine. Coincidentally, or rather, synchronistically, she and Jeff’s eldest daughter have the same name.

  Crying felt really good to Jill. Her tears served as a powerful release and possibly a turning point for her. A real breakthrough might not be far away, I thought. I needed to keep nudging her forward.

  “Tell me about the incident with my daughter Lorraine, and Dad,” I said.

  “Well,” Jill said, while composing herself. “I always felt unloved by Dad and really craved his love. He didn’t hold my hand or sit me on his lap much. I always felt there must be something wrong with me. When I was older, Mum told me she didn’t think Dad was capable of loving anyone, not even her. At that time I had more or less made peace with that. I rationalized that if he wasn’t really capable of loving anyone, it wasn’t my fault that he didn’t love me. He really didn’t love anyone. He hardly ever made a fuss about my kids—his own grandchildren—much less people or kids not his own. He was not a bad father. He just couldn’t love. I felt sorry for him.”

  She cried some more, taking her time now. I knew what she meant about our father. He was a kind and gentle man but very quiet and withdrawn. For the most part, he certainly had seemed emotionally unavailable to anyone.

  As Jill became more composed once again, she continued, “I remember a particular day at your house. Lorraine was probably about four or five years old. Mum and Dad were visiting from Leicester, and we all came to your house. I saw your Lorraine take Dad’s hand.” She said, “Come on, Granddad. Let me show you the garden and all my flowers.” He was like putty in her hands. She led him everywhere and talked and talked and talked, showing him all the flowers. She enchanted him. I watched them through the window the whole time. When they came back in, he put her on his lap and was as playful and joyful as I had ever seen him.

  “I was devastated. So he is able to love after all, I thought. If he can love Lorraine, then why not me?” The last few words came out as a whisper followed by deep tears of grief and sadness, tears held in for all those years.

  I figured we had done enough for the time being and suggested we make tea. (Well, we’re English! We always make tea, no matter what.)

  Interpreting Jill’s story from a Radical Forgiveness standpoint, I easily saw that Jeff’s outwardly strange behavior was unconsciously designed to support Jill in healing her unresolved relationship with her father. If she could see this and recognize the perfection in Jeff’s behavior, she could heal her pain and Jeff’s behavior would almost certainly stop. However, I wasn’t sure how to explain this to Jill in a way she could understand at that point in time. Luckily, I didn’t have to try. She stumbled on the obvious connection by herself.

  Later that day she asked me, “Colin, don’t you think it’s odd that Jeff’s daughter and your daughter both have the same name? Come to think of it, both of them are blonde and firstborn. Isn’t that a strange coincidence! Do you think there’s a connection?”

  I laughed and replied, “Absolutely. It’s the key to understanding this whole situation.”

  She looked at me long and hard. “What do you mean?”

  “Work it out for yourself,” I replied. “What other similarities do you see between that situation with Dad and my Lorraine and your current situation?”

  “Well, let’s see. Both girls have the same name. Both of them were getting what I don’t seem to be able to get from the men in my life.”

  “And what is that?” I inquired.

  “Love,” she said in a whisper.

  “Go on,” I urged gently.

  “It seems that your Lorraine was able to get the love from Dad that I couldn’t. And Jeff’s daughter Lorraine gets all the love she wants from her dad, but at my expense. Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. She really was beginning to understand now.

  “But why?” she asked in a panic. “I don’t understand why. It’s a bit frightening! What the heck’s going on?”

  It was time to put the pieces together for her. “Look, Jill,” I said. “Let me explain how this works. This happens to be a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier when I said that beneath the drama we call life lies a whole different reality. Believe me, there’s nothing to be frightened about. When you see how this works, you will feel more trust, more security, and more peace than you ever thought possible. You’ll realize how well we are being supported by the Universe or God, whatever you want to call it, every moment of every day no matter how bad any given situation seems at the time.” I tried to be as reassuring as I could.

  “Looked at from a spiritual standpoint, our discomfort in any given situation provides a signal that we are out of alignment with spiritual law and are being given an opportunity to heal something. It may be some original pain or perhaps a toxic belief that stops us from becoming our true selves. We don’t often see it from this perspective, however. Rather, we judge the situation and blame others for what is happening, which prevents us from seeing the message or understanding the lesson. This pre
vents us from healing. If we don’t heal whatever needs to be healed, we must create more discomfort until we are literally forced to ask, ‘What is going on here?’ Sometimes the message has to become very loud, or the pain extremely intense, before we pay attention. A life-threatening illness, for example, provides a loud message. Yet, even when facing death, some people don’t get the connection between what is happening in their lives and the opportunity for healing that it provides.

  “In your case, what has come up to be healed this time is your original pain around your father and the fact that he never showed you love. That is what all your current pain and discomfort are about. This particular pain has arisen many times before in different situations, but, because you didn’t recognize the opportunity before, it never got healed. That’s why having yet another opportunity to look at and heal this issue is a gift!”

  “A gift?” Jill questioned. “You mean it’s a gift because there’s a message in it for me? One that I might have gotten a long time ago if I’d been able to see it?”

  “Yes. Had you seen it then, you would have had less discomfort and you wouldn’t be going through this now. But no matter—now is fine too. This is perfect, and now you won’t have to produce a life-threatening illness to understand this, like so many people do. You’re getting it now—you’re beginning to understand and to heal.

  “Let me explain to you exactly what happened and how it has affected your life up until now,” I said, wanting her to understand clearly the dynamics of her current situation.

  “As a little girl, you felt abandoned and unloved by Dad. For a girl, this is devastating. From a developmental standpoint, it is necessary for a young girl to feel loved by her father. Since you didn’t feel that love, you concluded that there must something wrong with you. You began to really believe you were unlovable and inherently ‘not enough.’ That belief anchored itself deeply in your subconscious mind and, later, when it came to relationships, began to run your life. In other words, as a way of mirroring your subconscious belief that you were not enough, your life has always included actual situations that exhibit to you the fact that you were, indeed, not enough. Life will always prove your beliefs right.

  “When you were a child, the pain of not getting Dad’s love was more than you could bear, so you suppressed some of it and repressed a whole lot more. When you suppress emotion, you know it’s there, but you stuff it down. Repressed emotion, on the other hand, gets buried so deeply in the subconscious mind that you lose awareness of it.

  “Later, when you began to realize that your father was not a naturally loving man and probably couldn’t love anyone, you began to somewhat rehabilitate or heal yourself from the effects of feeling unloved by him. You probably released some of the suppressed pain and maybe began to give up some part of the belief that you were unlovable. After all, if he couldn’t love anyone, maybe it wasn’t your fault that he didn’t love you.

  “Then along came the bombshell that knocked you right back to square one. When you observed him loving my Lorraine, that triggered your original belief. You said to yourself, ‘My father can love after all, but he doesn’t love me. It is obviously my fault. I am not enough for my father, and I will never be enough for any man.’ From that point on, you continually created situations in your life to support your belief that you are not enough.”

  “How have I done that?” Jill interrupted. “I don’t see how I have created myself not being enough in my life.”

  “How was your relationship with Henry?” She had been married to Henry, her first husband and the father of her four children, for fifteen years.

  “Not bad in many respects, but he was such a womanizer. Always looking for opportunities to make out with other women. I hated that.”

  “Exactly. And you saw him as the villain and you as the victim in that situation. But the truth is, you attracted him into your life precisely because, at some level, you knew he would prove your belief about not being enough. By being unfaithful, he would support you in being right about yourself.”

  “Are you trying to say he was doing me a favor? I sure as heck don’t buy that!” she said, laughing, but also with some not-too-well-disguised anger.

  “Well, he certainly supported your belief, didn’t he?” I replied. “You were so ‘not enough’ that he always was on the lookout for other women, for ‘something more.’ If he had done the opposite and consistently treated you as if you were totally enough by being faithful, you would have created some other drama in your life to prove your belief. Your belief about yourself, albeit a totally false one, made it impossible for you to be enough.

  “By the same token, had you at that time healed your original pain around your father and changed your belief to ‘I am enough,’ Henry would have immediately stopped propositioning your friends. If he hadn’t, you would have felt perfectly happy to leave him and find someone else who would treat you as though you were enough. We always create our reality according to our beliefs. If you want to know what your beliefs are, look at what you have in your life. Life always reflects our beliefs.”

  Jill seemed a bit perplexed, so I decided to reiterate some of the points I had made. “Each time Henry cheated on you, he gave you the opportunity to heal your original pain around being unloved by Dad. He demonstrated and acted out for you your belief that you were never going to be enough for any man. The first few times it happened, you may have gotten so mad and upset that you could have gotten in touch with the original pain and become acquainted with your belief system about yourself. In fact, his first acts of unfaithfulness represented your first opportunities to practice Radical Forgiveness and to heal your original pain, but you missed them. You made him wrong each time and created yourself as a victim instead, which made healing impossible.”

  “What do you mean, forgiveness?” Jill asked, still looking troubled. “Are you saying I should have forgiven him for seducing my best friend and anyone else he could find who was willing?”

  “I am saying that, at that time, he provided you with an opportunity to get in touch with your original pain and to see how a certain belief about yourself was running your life. In so doing, he gave you the opportunity to understand and change your belief, thus healing your original pain. That’s what I mean by forgiveness. Can you see why he deserves your forgiveness, Jill?”

  “Yes, I think so,” she said. “He was reflecting my belief—the one I had formed because I felt so unloved by Dad. He was making me right about not being enough. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, and to the extent that he provided you with that opportunity, he deserves credit—actually, more than you realize right now. We have no way of knowing whether he would have stopped his behavior had you healed your issue around Dad at that time—or whether you would have left him. Either way, he would have served you powerfully well. So in that sense, he deserves not only your forgiveness but your deep gratitude as well. And you know what? It wasn’t his fault that you didn’t understand the true message behind his behavior.

  “I know it was hard for you to see that he was trying to give you a great gift. That’s not how we are taught to think. We’re not taught to look at what is going on and say, ‘Look what I have created in my life. Isn’t that interesting?’ Instead, we are taught to judge, lay blame, accuse, play victim, and seek revenge. Neither are we taught to think that our lives are directed by forces other than our own conscious mind—but, in truth, they are.

  “In fact, it was Henry’s soul that tried to help you heal. On the surface, he just acted out his sexual addiction, but his soul—working with your soul—chose to use the addiction for your spiritual growth. Recognizing this fact is what Radical Forgiveness is all about. Its purpose lies in seeing the truth behind the apparent circumstances of a situation and recognizing the love that always exists there.”

  I felt that talking about her current situation would help Jill fully understand the principles I had described, so I said, “Let’s take another look at Jeff and
see how these principles are operating in your current relationship. In the beginning, Jeff was extremely loving toward you. He really doted on you, did things for you, communicated with you. On the surface, life with Jeff seemed pretty good.

  “Remember, though, this didn’t fit your picture of yourself—your belief about yourself. According to your belief, you shouldn’t have a man who shows you this much love. You are not enough, remember?”

  Jill nodded but still looked uncertain and rather perplexed.

  “Your soul knows you must heal that belief, so it colludes with Jeff’s soul somehow to bring it to your awareness. On the surface it seems that Jeff begins to act strangely and totally out of character. He then taunts you by loving another Lorraine, thus acting out with you the very same scenario you had with your father many years ago. He appears to be persecuting you mercilessly, and you feel totally helpless and victimized.

  “Does this describe, more or less, your current situation?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” Jill said quietly. She wrinkled her brow as she tried to hold on to the new picture of her situation slowly forming in her mind.

  “Well, here you are again, Jill, about to make a choice. You must choose whether to heal and grow—or to be right,” I said and smiled. “If you make the choice people normally make, you will choose to be the victim and make Jeff wrong, which in turn will allow you to be right. After all, his behavior seems quite cruel and unreasonable, and I don’t doubt there are many women who would support you in taking some drastic action in response to it. Haven’t most of your friends been saying you should leave him?”

  “Yes. Everyone says I should get out of the marriage if he doesn’t change. I actually thought you would say that too,” she added with a tinge of disappointment.

  “A few years ago, I probably would have. But since my introduction to these spiritual principles, my whole way of looking at such situations has changed, as you can see,” I said with a wry smile, looking across at John. He grinned but said nothing.