Healing is Forgiveness

Healing is Forgiveness… Moment by Moment
A Review of Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice by the Foundation for Inner Peace

A note on the terms used:
The theistic concept of God and Holy Spirit as creator and dynamic manifestation of the creative Source of all, isn’t presented as religious belief but as a living reality that we simply enter and experience first-hand. This is simply the process of being who we are.

“The will of God” here points to the same essential spiritual Source that humans of all religions and spiritual traditions have experienced directly. It’s not about conceptual beliefs or philosophies, but the direct, empirical experience that is the essence of the healing being discussed here. So the theistic terms are just words that point to the living reality beyond them, which is not limited by them.

Now to the heart of the book and the central insight it brings to light:

All illness is mental illness — not pathology in the way we have conceptualized that, but simply a misperception that has led to mistaken strategies, which can be corrected.

And it follows that all therapy is psychotherapy, whether it takes that particular form or another, and that a true therapist/healer would help the person to change his mind about the ‘reality’ of illusions.

Then the rest of the book fleshes out the understanding that healing is simply forgiveness. Only unforgiveness can possibly give rise to sickness of any kind, and only forgiveness - opening the real heart of forgiveness — heals unforgiveness.

Who is the one who has the power to bestow this forgiveness? We are, when we wake up to who we are at the causative level of our experience, and who we are is the open heart of forgiveness.

Now, these can be mere words that an unforgiving mind can try to apply in its limited, fearful ways.. and to apply forgiveness in an unforgiving way is a common recipe for confusion and frustration that most of us are all too familiar with. We can see this everywhere - violence in the name of peace, judgment in the name of critical thinking.. the list is long.

So we want to be sure we enter into a deeper understanding of forgiveness and healing beyond the confused concepts.

Healing takes place when people come together and enter into sacred space. And sacred space is like a virtual healing temple that we can access within ourselves. Then healing really means prayer. What makes the space sacred is that it is the ground of absolute forgiveness and defenselessness, and nothing but true prayer is expressed from there.

But what can we gain from these words alone? The words can be taken into contemplation where the process of self-discovery begins. We take this experiment into the laboratory of our own being, and then we begin to understand the real meaning of forgiveness from our own very personal inner experience. We just know it, beyond belief.

To help in this process, the therapist/healer is one who sees the light of forgiveness in the other, sees it as the pure light of the divine, and understands that it is also his own inner light. Then healing is a meditation, which can be entered into alone or in the presence of another, at different times, but always it is a matter of standing in the will of God.

Now there is really nothing to be healed, because there is no illness; there is nothing to be forgiven, because there is no sin. Here the therapeutic relationship is no longer one-to-one, but together, resting in the One.

It is the one space, the Source that generates all the techniques and strategies, all the content of all the material that the therapist brings to the task of helping. (It’s the same essential relationship between therapist/client as between healer/patient or teacher/student, and those labels can be used interchangeably in this sense.)

The “Problem” The “problem” that the client presents, in essence, is that he or she sees reality through a delusional system in which he is helpless in the midst of external forces.

From this position of helplesslness, the person relates to life as a slave but mistakes slavery for freedom. He defends his self-concept, believing it to be himself. So anything that would challenge this false self-concept is seen as a threat to himself.

So the false self is continually maintained, believing it is subject to and buffeted by the winds and whims of external forces. And if the false self = me, then I’m in for a pretty rough ride through life.
All “problems” in life are rooted in this belief that I am separate from the Oneness; and this belief in separateness is the essence of fear. From there a whole worldview of beliefs rooted in fear develops, like a scaffolding structure to keep the false self supported.

This is the rigid condition of a person who clutches pennies in her hands, believing she needs them because she is poor. But her fear-based clutching prevents her from softly opening her hands to receive the real wealth of her spirit.

Her self-concept keeps her engaged in this slave-like activity, in which there is no real relief from suffering no matter how many more pennies she grabs.

The delusion prevents her from trusting in the utter safety of softening to release what is not needed. The only real mistake any person can make is to believe in the need of pennies, while one is basking in an infinite outpouring of mercy and blessings beyond imagining. So much energy could be poured into approaching the problem as a lack of pennies or lack of particular kinds of pennies. The possible false remedies are endless, when the underlying assumption is that False self = me, and the best I can do is to shore up this false penny self, repair the scaffolding, etc. This is the essential hypnotic trance we live in.

How Illness is created.

All illness is of the mind (hence, all therapy is psychotherapy).
Illness is a judgment, and judgment is nothing but a mental activity performed over and over, a decision to perceive the universe through this delusional system of one’s own creation.

When we identify with this false self, then we begin to collect and string together ideas about ourselves, that we are weak, vulnerable, in danger, maybe even evil, and especially that we are shameful. And that self-concept generates and colors all of our thoughts about what is real, in our daily experience. That’s how this all-pervading color of fear is maintained, with each thought being generated out of the same patterned belief system of fear. Illness takes root in this medium of fear.

How Illness is Maintained

If illness is a process, it must be maintained in an active way.. and the action is refusal to forgive, with each unforgiving thought. If we would ponder this deeply, we would find an opportunity with every single thought, for going into trance of unforgiveness, or waking up to forgiveness.

Forgiveness in this sense is not forgiveness for any wrongdoing, but the forgiveness that is pure mercy, grace, the absolue pure innocence that we are. The songs of woe that we sing are then just the notes of unforgiving thoughts, strung together into patterns.

Illness grows where a person has taken a sad unforgiving song to heart. Then any attempt to remove the song of illusions is seen as a personal attack, since the person is so identified with it.

As uncomfortable a condition as this is, we always defend ourselves, even when the “self” we’re defending is the wrong one.

The purpose and task of therapy/healing If any “problem” no matter what form it takes, reduces to simply a misperception, then the one who heals would simply help the person to reverse their twisted way of looking at the world, to “change their tune.”

This is essentially different from the usual practice of cajoling the false self into mending its ways. But the true healer/therapist would reveal the false nature of the whole pattern of attack and defense, by demonstrating that defenselessness is real strength, sanity, health.

So, healing is a teaching, and the true teaching is that defenselessness is strength; the lesson is that sanity is safe. This teaching allows the person to relieve their mind, release from their mind the insane burden of guilt and shame, and so the artificial structure of fear-based beliefs dissolves. And the light of forgiveness that was always shining from under that veil of illusion, is revealed.

And in the same way, we could say the true sound of God that was ringing from within, although we couldn’t hear above the din of our unforgiving songs, begins to be heard. This is the essence of healing.

“Given this single shift, all else will follow. There is no need for complicated change. There is no need for long analyses and wearying discussion and pursuits. The truth is simple, being one for all.”

“Healing occurs as a patient begins to hear the dirge he sings, and questions its validity.” To question it becomes his choice, his self-empowerment.

Then healing is to “change our tune.” And the tune that is really “in tune” is the Word of God.

The healing relationship The true therapist/healer/teacher, then, is one who is capable of joining with the other person in a holy relationship in which all sense of separation finally is overcome.

In the work that develops from that, the therapist knows that he is not in charge of the therapeutic process nor responsible for its outcome. The will of God works through him.

Now, a very interesting point is made about the nature of the relationship between therapist and patient:

“A one-to-one relationship is not One Relationship. Yet it is the means of return: the way God chose for the return of His Son. In that strange dream a strange correction must enter, for only that is the call to awake. And what else should therapy be? Awake and be glad, for all your sins have been forgiven you. This is the only message that any two should ever give each other.”

Here the author says that the “strange dream” is entered, and the remedy enters there. The coming together of the two people for healing is by nature artificial, in the sense that there is really nothing that needs healing, no sin that needs forgiving. So, the artificiality, the therapeutic drama, the “dream” is entered, but as a means of return, not as a means of mistaking the dream for reality.

From that persepctive, all of the techniques and strategies of the art of therapy comprise the dream that is entered into with awareness, awareness that we are all awake already. The remedy for the dream of “original sin” is then not to struggle with the elements of that dream, but to enter this other dream so that we can be “awake and glad.”

The therapy is then simply the ritual of entering into a dream in order to awaken. The ritual uses dream-like elements that allow the dreamer to realize the dream.

Then there is no notion of difficulty, because “he has learned that it is no harder to wake a brother from one dream than from another.” And to understand this, the healer must recognize that he and the patient are equals before God. This is the real meaning of “defenselessness” that he embodies.

And this is the real service, beyond concepts of service and beyond self-concepts of being the one who serves. The real service is performed only through God’s will, in complete forgiveness, when all judgment ceases.

“All the laws of healing can be theirs in just an instant. The journey is not long except in dreams.” In one sense the process of healing seems to take time, but time is thought and has no real substance, so healing happens “in an instant” because it is already present.

Ultimately, the healer and patient come together simply because they take their places in the unfolding of the divine plan. And even the therapist who is himself unhealed, who still does not see and hear the truth, does not in any way limit the dynamic manifestation of the divine.. except in time. “In time there can be a great lag between the offering and the acceptance of healing. This is the veil.”

Yet the veil, and time, are illusions that we keep forgiving, moment by moment, in the space beyond space and time, beyond suffering, where there is nothing ever to forgive.

Karen Robinson