To put this whole discussion in perspective, we must also keep in mind that, since the physical world is actually an illusion, what we experience as earth changes will be illusionary too. This explains why a change in human consciousness can change the situation immediately. The way we experience earth changes depends upon our perception of what is happening. If we see them as a purification of consciousness and a healing crisis that will result in a spiritual transformation, our experience of them will be in stark contrast to what we will feel if we take the victim position and think of them as real, as things to be feared, and as a punishment for our rank stupidity. A Radical Forgiveness perspective will enable us to stay focused on the perfection of what is happening in the moment and will carry us through to the joy and peace on the other side of the experience.
The Gift
The adage “as above, so below” is meaningful, too, in terms of how we respond to both the cancer in our bodies and the cancer on the planet. Waging “war” on cancer with toxic drugs and other violent treatment will never bring about a cure for cancer. Violent, high-tech, politically motivated solutions to the earth’s problems won’t work either. The only thing that will work, in both cases, is love. When we really comprehend this, we will have understood the gift of both earth changes and cancer.
No lesson is more crucial than this one. People with cancer are brave souls who have come to the physical plane with a mission to demonstrate the futility of projecting anger and war on the body and on ourselves. Their mission is to help us understand that the only answer to any situation is love. Our gift in return is to hear their loving message.
Visions of Joy, Harmony, and Peace
Whether or not we raise our vibration sufficiently to prevent trauma and come into loving resonance with all of life voluntarily, the end result will ultimately be the same. All the predictions about earth changes speak of a breakthrough in consciousness happening in the wake of the earth cleansing itself and balancing the karma we have created.
A vision of life after the earth changes as wonderfully harmonious, peaceful, and idyllic, in stark contrast to the way it is today, is a common theme running through many of the predictions. As in all healing opportunities, we can heal our soul pain at the first sign of the repressed pain occurring, or we can wait until a disaster wakes us. However the earth changes occur and at whatever level of destruction the planetary karma plays out, the changes will constitute the ultimate healing crisis for the planet and for all of us. That will certainly be in divine order.
Raising our vibration enough to change the predictions must include living our lives based on love and gentle acceptance of ourselves and others and forgiving ourselves for abusing the planet. It must include joining in prayer for peace, with as many people as possible from around the world involved, and embracing Radical Forgiveness as nothing less than a permanent way of life.
part three
Assumptions Expanded
15
Articles of Faith
The assumptions listed in Chapter 2 were made briefly, to give you just enough of an understanding of them to comprehend the theory of Radical Forgiveness. Now I would like to discuss in greater depth the assumptions underlying Radical Forgiveness that have not yet been comprehensively discussed. I hope this will help you find a level of comfort with them, even if you cannot entirely accept them.
Remember, all theories are based upon assumptions, but not all assumptions are proven with evidence of their validity. This holds especially true for theories and assumptions pertaining to the nature of reality and spiritual issues.
Interestingly, science and mysticism have come to a new level of agreement about the nature of reality and other spiritual questions that until now have seemed beyond the reach of science. For centuries, Hindu mystics have claimed to possess a “direct knowing” of these universal truths, which they assert they have arrived at as a result of forty years of meditating in Himalayan caves. By using rigorous scientific methods and theoretical constructs, scientists have recently arrived at the same truths—or, should we say, have made similar assumptions. It is now safe to say that quantum physics actually demonstrates the truth of what the mystics have known for centuries. How exciting it is to see a joining of these two distinct ways of approaching and arriving at truth. Science and spirituality have come together at last, with scientists becoming modern-day mystics!
Yet in spite of the progress we have made, in all humility we must continue to keep in mind that these assumptions, by their very nature, do not represent the whole truth. The great mysteries of how the universe works and of the higher purpose of human life still lie beyond mere mortal understanding, and the assumptions we make are mere approximations of what might be the truth. On this basis, therefore, the following assumptions are given as the foundation for Radical Forgiveness.
Assumption: Contrary to most Western religious thought, we are not human beings having an occasional spiritual experience. Rather, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
This is not just a play on words. It represents a fundamental shift in our thinking about who we are and our relationship with God. Instead of thinking of ourselves as fallen and separated from God, it suggests that we are still very much connected to the All That Is, and that life in a physical body is just a temporary interlude taken for the purpose of learning and balancing energy. It also suggests that God lives within each of us rather than “up there”, highlighting our dual man/spirit nature. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ernst Becker explained this vividly by saying, “Man is a God who shits.”[2]
Assumption: We have physical bodies that die, but we are immortal.
For centuries philosophers have debated the makeup of the “soul.” This discussion predates even Plato and Socrates, both of whom had much to say about the soul but remained very much at odds on the subject. Today, the debate continues, with little agreement on what constitutes the soul.
For the purposes of this discussion, however, the soul is defined as the part of us that is pure consciousness connected to the greater ocean of consciousness that forms the All That Is. For the purposes of our incarnation, the soul takes on an individual characteristic that can be likened to a single droplet of that same ocean or a little bit of God Stuff. Since we are a part of the ocean of the All That Is, we have always existed as a soul. The soul has no beginning and no end, exists outside of both time and space, and is immortal. During our incarnation, the soul keeps us connected to the World of Divine Truth and the All That Is and is responsible for our spiritual evolution.
Once the soul incarnates, it becomes attached to both a body and a personality, which together represent a “persona” or identity. This we create for ourselves based on our own self-concept, which we present to the world at large. Thus our soul becomes subject to the stresses of human existence and can even become sick. A great many of the sicknesses of today, such as cancer, begin as a deep sickness of the soul. Shamans speak of the soul becoming fractured and splintered, parts of it actually being left behind and lost in past events, especially traumas. A great deal of a shaman’s healing work revolves around the idea of soul retrieval.
Whether a soul incarnates just once or does so over and over again has been an issue of contention through the ages, and many churches and religions will not consider this idea even today. Yet Eastern religions have always included reincarnation among their spiritual beliefs. I do not regard reincarnation as central to Radical Forgiveness, and it is of no consequence whether one believes it or not. It has no effect on the efficacy of Radical Forgiveness and is simply a matter of personal choice. (If the idea of reincarnation offends you, skip the next couple of pages.)
For myself, I am not attached either way, although there does seem to be evidence to support the idea, especially through the vast amount of writing about near-death experiences. These accounts are so similar in their content and quality they can hardly be refuted. Thousands of people have reported similar kinds of experiences and
exhibit the same degree of certainty that what they saw was real. The effects near-death experiences have on people’s lives are more or less identical as well.
From this same source, it appears that not only do our souls incarnate numerous times but that they do not come into this physical life experience alone. Past life research seems to suggest that our souls keep coming back time and time again with others from our soul group to resolve particular karmic imbalances.
During our journey toward wholeness, we create energy imbalances that have to be resolved. These imbalances are referred to as our karma. For example, if we take advantage of people and cheat them, we must at some time have the experience of being cheated to equalize the energy. This is not a moral exercise; it has nothing to do with right or wrong. As I have already noted, the Universe is neutral. This happens simply as a balancing of energy and is dictated by the Law of Cause and Effect, which states that for every action there must be an equal reaction. (See Chapter 9.)
The people with whom we play and the games we play with them are all about balancing energy in this manner. Our soul heals and becomes whole again each time we rebalance the karmic energies. Thus, each incarnation contributes to the healing of the soul.
Incidentally, since time does not exist in the World of Divine Truth, all our incarnations happen simultaneously. As we heal in one lifetime, we heal all the other incarnations as well. Using Radical Forgiveness in one lifetime, therefore, provides incredible value to a soul because it heals all the other incarnations at the same time as it heals the current one. Imagine the collective karma that was balanced by Nelson Mandela forgiving a whole generation of whites in South Africa for their treatment of blacks. By the same token, imagine the collective karma that remains to be balanced in the United States for the treatment of slaves and Native Americans.
Our soul always moves us in the direction of healing and keeps creating situations that offer us the opportunity to balance karmic energy. But if this healing is not accomplished at the level of Divine Truth, we tend to recreate the imbalance through the resentment and revenge cycle and the maintenance of victim consciousness. This keeps the wheel of karma spinning round and round and round. Radical Forgiveness provides one of the best ways to stop the wheel from turning, because it breaks the cycle.
Having said all that, if you have a problem with the concept of reincarnation, simply ignore it. It makes no difference.
Assumption: While our bodies and our senses tell us we are separate individuals, in truth we are all one. We all individually vibrate as part of a single whole.
We are not our bodies. We are not our personality selves or the roles we play each day. Believing we are these things serves to further reinforce our belief in separation. Upholding this belief prevents us—until we awaken, that is—from remembering who we really are: individual souls created as part of God and existing in oneness with God.
Assumption: When we were all one with God, we experimented with a thought that separation was possible. We became trapped in that thought, which became the dream that we now live. It is a dream because the separation did not actually happen. We only think it did—and that thought gave birth to the belief system we call the ego (the “as enemy” version).
Once we were completely enfolded in the All That Is—God. We were formless, unchanging, and immortal, and knew only love. Then we had a thought. What would it be like, we wondered, if we were to descend into physical reality and experience the opposite energies—such as form, change, separation, fear, death, limitation, and duality? We played with the idea for a while, always thinking we could withdraw from the experiment any time we wished, should we indeed decide to put the thought into action. We saw no danger. Thus, the decision was made, and we lowered our energetic vibration to condense our energy into physical form. In the process, we forgot our connection to God and imagined we had actually separated from God and that we had no way back to the All That Is.
This dream became very real for us, and we then became extremely guilt-ridden for committing this “original” sin of separating from God. We became fearful that God would bring His wrath down upon us for having done so. This powerful belief in sin, guilt, and fear became the ego, and it became such a powerful force in our lives that it created in our minds a world dominated by fear. Our world is still one where fear, rather than love, is the driving force.
Though we tend to personify it, the ego is not an entity in and of itself. Neither does it represent our personality. The ego represents a set of deeply held beliefs that keep us utterly convinced of our separateness from God. The extreme power exerted by these subconscious beliefs through the dynamics of guilt, fear, repression, and projection creates the appearance that the ego “lives” in us. The ego keeps us stuck in the World of Humanity and asleep (unconscious), dreaming that we have separated from God.
Assumption: When we decided to experiment with physical incarnation, God gave us total free will to live this experiment in any way we chose and to find for ourselves the way home to the All That Is.
Free will is honored at the highest level. Contrary to what some would have us believe, God is not mad at us for playing with the idea of separation. God gives us anything we want, whatever we choose, and makes no judgment about it. Whenever we ask for help through prayer and Radical Forgiveness, the call is always answered.
Assumption: Life is not a random event. It has purpose and provides for the unfolding of a divine plan, with opportunities to make choices and decisions in every moment.
Seen from the World of Humanity, it might appear that we arrive on this planet by biological accident. Our only significance lies in the fact that our parents made love and started a chain of biological events called pregnancy and birth.
It also might appear as if the only ways to master the experience of life are to learn a lot about how the world works and develop skills that enable us to control, as much as possible, the seemingly random circumstances of our lives. The more mastery we achieve over the physical circumstances of our lives, the better our lives appear to become.
The opposite is true when viewed from the World of Divine Truth. From this perspective, our arrival on the planet represents a deliberate, planned, and conscious choice. The plan includes the selection of the people who will serve as our parents.
Also, the seemingly haphazard events of our lives are attributed to the unfolding of a divine plan, decided upon in advance, and completely purposeful in terms of our spiritual growth. The more we surrender to this unfoldment without trying to control it, the more peaceful we become.
At first blush, this seems a fatalistic viewpoint, but this is not just fate. In truth, the divine plan allows for a great deal of creativity and flexibility and continues to honor the principle of free will. We continue to co-create with Spirit the circumstances of our lives and, without exception, to get precisely what we want. The extent to which we resist (judge) what we get determines whether we experience life as painful or joyful.
Mastery of the life experience, then, relies on our entering life fully and trusting that we are taken care of and supported all the time, no matter what. Radical Forgiveness moves us in that direction.
Assumption: Physical reality is an illusion created by our five senses. Matter consists of interrelating energy fields vibrating at different frequencies.
Most people have a difficult time coming to grips with the idea that our physical reality is an illusion created by our senses. Ken Carey confirms the difficulty we have grasping this concept. In his book The Starseed Transmissions, which was a channeled work, the souls “talking through him” made an interesting observation.[3] They said that when they got inside Carey’s body and experienced all his senses, they were simply amazed. Only then did they understand why human beings felt the physical world was real. Our senses make the illusion so convincing that even these disincarnate souls appreciated why we would have great difficulty getting beyond it. Indeed, it is difficult to remember that the physical
world is simply an illusion.
However, we are beginning to move in a direction that fosters that memory. Recently, scientists have begun talking about the human body in terms of a mind/body continuum. Such terminology gives us the sense that our bodies are, indeed, more than cells, molecules, and atoms. Energy science tells us that, in reality, our bodies are dense condensations of interrelating energy fields and that, just like a hologram, all matter consists of energy vibrating in certain patterns. Holograms are those seemingly real, three-dimensional images created by laser beams. Quantum physicists have theorized that the entire universe is a hologram and everything in it, including each one of us, is a hologram as well.
Some energy fields vibrate at frequencies that enable them to be observed and measured. They can be given physical qualities like weight, volume, hardness, and fluidity. We give such energy patterns names like wood, steel, leather, or whisky. Everything physical simply represents energy vibrating at a rate we can detect with our five senses.
Yet this concept seems strange to us. We have developed such faith in our five senses to detect the physical world around us that we have difficulty imagining that our bodies consist of more than just what we can see and feel. But in a very real sense, the physical world is an illusion created by our senses.
Consider for a moment one of the metal beams holding up a building. It looks solid enough, and our senses of touch and sight tell us that it is solid, as well as strong and heavy. But we also know that this beam is composed entirely of atoms and, furthermore, that each atom is composed of a nucleus of protons and neutrons around which orbits, at ultra-high speed, one or more electrons.
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