Transforming Heartbreak
A piercing word.
A stab of betrayal.
The boundary crossed.
A trust broken.
In this lacerating moment,
Pain is all you know.
Life is tattooing scripture into your flesh,
Scribing incandescence in your nerves.
Right here,
In this single searing point
Of intolerable concentration,
Wound becomes portal.
Brokenness surrenders to
Crystalline brilliance of Being.
LORIN ROCHE, The Radiance Sutras
Recognizing that we abide within and are part of the deepest Grace imaginable is truly a cause for joy, but it does not mean we can skirt around the grit of being human. Getting close to anyone who is not fully enlightened inevitably brings the risk of some shrapnel lodging itself in our tender heart. Any unconscious conflicts that have not been resolved inside will inevitably seep out in difficult ways for others. The Grace of forgiveness helps us harness our relational hurts so we can shift into a whole other dimension of consciousness.
All wisdom traditions agree that forgiveness is crucial for bringing us back into right relationship with ourselves and one another. Forgiveness restores inner peace by cleansing our minds of blame. It heals the wounds of the heart—both those we have given and those we have received. Most importantly, forgiveness helps us deal with the taboo emotions of rage, envy, and hatred that few of us want to admit to, yet tumble out of us when we are caught in some untenable pain. Given the destruction born of unresolved grievances in our world, we need the medicine of true forgiveness now more than ever.
Try as you might, you cannot force forgiveness. I was eighteen years old when a friend persuaded me to take the Forum, the latest version of Werner Erhard’s infamous Erhard Seminars Training. I was the youngest of sixty people locked in a room for two weekends, listening to a trainer confronting us on our “bullshit.” This macho approach to transformation was so energetically jarring I struggled to stay awake. However, I do remember the insistence that to attain inner freedom, you had to forgive your parents.
I could barely stay in my body when an overzealous assistant handed me the telephone, pressuring me then and there to tell my mother and father that I loved them. I wiggled out of it with some excuse but agreed to call home and communicate my forgiveness before the next weekend. Two days later, I totaled my already beat-up car in a head-on collision. Unconsciously, I would rather kill myself than enter what felt like an impossible conversation with the two people who had given me life. At that time, I had many complex feelings that I had no idea how to address. I learned at a young age that there is way more to forgiveness than glossing over a hurt and playing nice.
BEWARE OF PHONY FORGIVENESS
Forgiveness is a powerfully transformative spiritual technology, but it is wildly misunderstood. Consider how you feel when someone shares their judgment of something you said or did, presumes their perception is objective, and then says, “I forgive you.” You would not be alone if such a declaration trigged intense irritation. When you hold a grievance and then take the spiritually noble position of “rising above it,” not only is it nauseating, it is not forgiveness.
Neither is forgiveness righting a wrong. Liberation does not come by insisting another admit their “sin,” agreeing with your condemnation of them as “guilty” and submitting to some “penance” for their error. The late theological scholar Kenneth Wapnick called this vicious circle of sin-guilt-punishment the “unholy trinity of the ego.” Sadly, this punitive consciousness pervades our world’s justice system. Allegiance to this kind of thinking keeps us all enslaved in ego, the result of which is succinctly explained in the familiar aphorism often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
We tend to confuse forgiveness with ego attempts at reconciliation—trying to get another to understand our position, accept our view, and agree to change. I have often wondered whether our collective attempts at reconciliation and social justice might be more successful if we walked through the gate of true forgiveness first.
TRULY TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK
The liberating breeze of forgiveness comes mysteriously by Grace, and it calls for a particular kind of surrender. It challenges us to “turn the other cheek,” which understood from a mystical lens is not being a martyr and letting an aggressor sock it to you once more; it is a turning away from the external orientation of ego that seeks to correct errors “out there” and instead taking the log out of your own eye first.
Forgiveness means tilling the soil of your own consciousness more thoroughly. It will ask you to question your perceptions of who did what and why, suspending all projection of guilt and blame. It will ask you to let go of all positions. Most of all, it will call you to surrender everything that feels so impossible on the inner altar of the unified heart. You cannot “do” forgiveness. Essentially, it calls for a shift out of identifying with ego altogether—yours or another’s.
Forgiveness begins when you want true peace more than you want to be right, to be in control, or to hold the moral high ground. While choosing peace sounds simple enough, consider the last argument you had with a family member or spouse, and you might recognize how hard it can be to let go of the insistence that “if you change, I can be at peace.” Yet true forgiveness does not ask you to pour pink paint over a cracked wall.
FORGIVENESS IS A PROCESS
In my first book, Boundless Love, I wrote about the stages of forgiveness gleaned from working through a difficult dynamic with my father. It took great dedication to turn more substantially within and address my grievances. First, I had to harness all my strength to cease feeding any story of blame. Then, I had to stay present in my body and honestly meet the hurt and rage lodged deep in my cells, while sincerely wanting to find another way. This meant contacting the forces that kept me bound in such unworthiness, not bypassing the traumatic history with some spiritual platitude.
Practicing ego relaxation with it all, I discovered there was a living presence independent of my personality that I could lean into with this complex web of suffering. At this inner altar, the holy of holies within the heart, I could take down my defensive armor. I could also admit the hurts I had dished out in the mix. Only then could I engage the heart of true forgiveness, which was to join with my father, not from my ego to his, but essence to essence. I landed in the inviolable truth of ever-present love that embraces us all.
The day I was able to genuinely see my father minus the thick lens of blame was an inner revolution. My distorted projection gave way to clear undivided vision. It brought peace to my mind and a new depth to my heart but also a sweet acceptance of my father without the need for a hashing out of the history. The cleansing Grace of forgiveness brought not only love but also discriminating wisdom in how to navigate the differences in our relating more skillfully.
Forgiveness requires you to let go of trying to sort out any ruptures ego to ego. Instead, you come to the unified ground of your consciousness, where you are restored to a love that is not just fluffy and sweet—it is objective vision. It comes by Grace, and it resolves conflict at the root.
Forgiveness contains a curious paradox: that we are innocent in eternity but not in time. Thus to engage this transforming Grace, we need to approach it from an integrated nondual perspective.
As we have seen, our true nature is not only changeless infinite consciousness, it is pristine, stainless, indestructible innocence. Who we truly are remains untarnished by any mistake and can never be violated. This is good news for us all, for it means we can thrive even after unspeakable injustice and cruelty.
However, on the relative level, even when it is not our intention to stumble in ignorance, it happens all too easily. Mature spiritual practice requires that we acknowledge not just our good intentions but also our difficult impact on one another. At the same time, remember that none of us is defined by our mistakes.
I do not believe that it is a matter of asking God for forgiveness, since there is no condemnation possible in the mind of infinite love and unity. However, given the pain we tend to cause one another and the ways we so often hurt ourselves, we need Grace to help us forgive our common humanity. Since at the deepest level we are not separate but individual waves arising out of the one sea of consciousness, to forgive another is to forgive yourself.
ADDRESSING THE FEARS OF FORGIVENESS
We all long for liberation, but forgiveness can feel so outrageous in the face of the tough terrain we all traverse at times: a rupturing divorce, a betrayal of a best friend, a crushing conflict with our parent or child. Whenever we perceive ourselves to be unfairly treated, it can feel like an impossible task to join in that deeper ground where we are not our mistakes.
When caught in deep hurt, our ego will counsel that forgiveness is just not smart. Perhaps you fear that forgiveness will make you into a passive doormat, allowing no protection for your vulnerable heart. Perhaps you fear that forgiveness means you cannot say no when something does not feel respectful, either for yourself or for another.
Susan, a dedicated student who had a painfully explosive history with her sister, shared her fear: “If I question my perception of who she is, that means I have to question all of my perceptions, all that I have presumed to be real, including my sense of who I am.” Forgiveness can feel very edgy to our familiar identity, which wants to receive transforming Grace while maintaining the status quo.
Perhaps you fear that forgiveness condones injustice, believing that hard-hearted condemnation is necessary to hold a boundary on workable behavior. There are times when it may be wise to step back from a situation that has become too emotionally charged to be healthy. However, there is a vast difference between taking time out to cool down so you can inquire into the roots of your own reactivity and icing someone out of your heart.
Whenever you condemn another, write them off, or annihilate them with your mind, you are caught in the grip of hatred. It is for this reason that forgiveness is the great need of our world.
UNDERSTANDING OUR TABOO EMOTIONS
Hatred, rage, and envy are not pretty, but they are part of the human condition. Since the pernicious problems on our planet revolve around some untenable heartbreak that turns to hard hatred, explodes in rage, or festers in envy, we must understand these shadow features of our humanity, which need our forgiveness rather than our condemnation.
If you are a parent, I am sure you have heard your children say, “I hate you, Mommy (or Daddy)” when you will not allow them to do something they want. A. H. Almaas has an important perspective on the root of these taboo emotions. In essence, he says that hatred is our ego’s reaction to an untenable heartbreak and feeling oppressed and powerless in our situation. I am sure you know all too well the searing pain when another’s behavior feels too violating to bear. It can feel like the only solution is to cut yourself off, harden your heart, or strike back in revenge. Energetically in our body, hatred feels icy, cold, and hard, like we don’t care. While hate is our ego’s attempt to deal with an untenable hurt, cutting anyone out of your heart will disconnect you from your loving heart. We see this in the heartless behavior of so many tyrants on our world stage. Terrorism, for example, is a palpable symbol of the ego’s attempt to offset heartbreak through revenge. Hatred is a distortion of our true essential power.
Rage is an instinctive reaction to feeling disrespected, mistreated, or neglected. The turn of phrase, “He made my blood boil,” expresses how hot, fiery, and explosive rage feels. Perhaps you recall a moment when another’s actions felt so outrageous and so violating that you had to “go big” energetically, attempting to push the seeming source of the offense out or attack back to let them know how much they have hurt you. Again, rage is not wrong, but it is a distortion of our true strength, which guides us to instead clearly but calmly draw a boundary, speak up, or take a different action where necessary.
Envy is a reaction to our ego’s felt sense of impoverishment. It emerges when we feel deprived of something we so want but believe we have no access to. Perhaps you have found yourself fixating on someone who has what you desire—be it a wonderful new relationship, good fortune with finances or their career, or the ability to easefully express a luminous gift. When we are “green with envy,” it usually feels very shameful. Secretly hating another for daring to have what we believe we cannot is the root cause of theft, rampant materialism, and unhealthy competition.
Acting upon any form of hatred, rage, or envy will destroy any possibility of inner peace because our true nature is not separate: to attack another, even with your mind, is to attack yourself. Yet it can be hard—when you feel so mistreated or slighted, and things feel so unfair—not to give in to the dark side.
UNWINDING PROJECTION AND SPLITTING
Forgiveness unwinds our projections, and specifically, our perception that someone is guilty and needs to be punished. Forgiveness asks us to suspend trying to spiritually police the universe for a moment and instead focus on addressing our inner violence, which we often deny exists or else project onto some “other.”
True forgiveness brings its heavenly breeze down to earth and into our human hearts by unwinding what the late Scottish psychiatrist Dr. Ronald Fairbairn coined the “splitting of the ego.” This mechanism gets laid down in early childhood, when we do not yet have the capacity to understand how the same person (our mother or father) can contain many different qualities, some beautiful and some difficult. Internally, we learn to separate out the “bad” unfulfilling aspects to protect the “good” satisfying parts of our primary caregivers. We project this splitting mechanism onto everything and everyone—rejecting the bad in others and in ourselves to protect the good. This is how duality starts to feel normal.
While this might sound abstract, recall the last argument you had with your spouse or someone you truly love. It is humbling to find how deeply entrenched we can get in the belief that our position is the good one, the right one. Most writings on forgiveness focus on getting past the sense of being violated in some way by another. Reflecting on the most challenging heartbreaks of my own life, the nucleus of the transformation has always involved taking back my projection of the other as “all bad” and forgiving myself for the undigested divisions within my own consciousness.
We do not need to look far to see how destructive justifying our position as “all good” can be. All wars start from projecting the bad out there and then justifying the need for revenge. We need Grace to restore our split minds, heal our hearts, and show us another way. Forgiveness calls us to surrender—not to another’s ego but to a deeper truth.
TRUE CORRECTION OF ERROR
It’s obvious that we all need a course correction from time to time. Yet our ego cannot be in charge of the process. Atonement happens entirely through love, in a chamber of our heart that has no owner.
The word atonement, truly understood, captures the very essence of forgiveness. It is a purification that corrects our distortion at the root and at the same time brings us into “at-one-ment,” the unified condition. Forgiveness thus bridges the relative and the absolute levels of our being, lifting us to a whole new ground where we gain liberation and objective clarity. This gives us true discrimination to see through the eyes of love, while simultaneously recognizing where someone is in their consciousness and acting appropriately given the situation.
Yet guilt, blame, and the need for any kind of punishment or revenge are completely removed. Since the word sin literally means “missed the mark,” there need not be any heavy condemnation to seeing our own distortions and receiving correction. Only we must remember that it is not our role to lead the correction. Grace is the purifier.
THE HEART-CAVE OF ABSOLUTE LOVE
True forgiveness happens in what Ramana Maharshi called the “interior of the heart-cave, where the one reality shines as I-I.”1 If you do not limit your heart to merely being the seat of emotions but journey deeper and further back into the cavity in your chest, at some point you will begin to feel a vast, loving space that has no beginning or end. It can feel as if your heart opens to the infinite galaxy. Some report experiencing it as being within an infinite field of dark velvety presence or pervaded by luminous light. While the way it comes alive for each of us is very personal, we recognize this as the holy of holies—the inner sanctuary deeper than “your” heart or “mine.” Here, we breathe the clean air of our shared identity, the affect of which is Absolute Love.
This depth of heart will melt the fundamental activity of your ego to split the good and the bad, for all angels and all demons are welcome to come home. Here, all projections can unwind. You naturally start recognizing that whatever you do, you do to yourself. You see the distortion of your own ego and recognize that you are not the corrector; Grace is.
In this depth of the heart, you can surrender all that you do not know how to resolve—be that a conflict with your sister or spouse, outrage at a collective group of people, or some grievance you hold about yourself—on the nonconceptual altar of Absolute Love. Forgiveness invites us not to bypass but rather to bring the complexity of our humanity to an inner altar. Here, the eyes of the heart open to an undivided vision, where the distortions of good and bad are miraculously cleansed, and we are returned to love.
The following exercise is a powerful practice that blends reflective inquiry with a meditation designed to open you to the Grace of forgiveness.
INQUIRY AND MEDITATION The Grace of Forgiveness
There are two ways you can engage in this practice. The first is to practice it when you find yourself getting caught in anger, resentment, or envy. Anytime you become aware of an irritation with someone, including yourself, it is a sign that a grievance is active in your consciousness, and thus doing this practice for a handful of days in a row will be extremely beneficial.
Alternately, you could work with this practice once a week, as a way to “clean house,” continuing to bring any shadow material into the light. Trust your intuition as to what feels best for you.
Since true forgiveness requires you to honestly meet your grievances—the hurts that keep you looping back into a pattern of conflict—it is important that you do not push past the hurt. Rather, just name it without commentating on whether or not it should be there. Also it is especially important that you stay connected with the sensations and energy in your body, as this particular terrain of your grievances is likely to bring up the suppressed energy of anger, hurt, and hate. This might feel like a fiery heat or icy coldness flashing through your body, or parts may feel cut off. Just name this and feel it in the spirit of ego relaxation.
1. Sit in a sacred space, where you will not be disturbed, with your journal or a friend.
2. For ten minutes or more, explore the following question: What grievance do you wish to place on the altar of the heart-cave? (Consider hurts you have given and the ones you have received, including those that feel “minor” as they are equally disruptive to your peace of mind.)
3. Close your eyes, turning your attention within for the meditation. Bring your awareness to the breath, letting each inhale and exhale guide you to melt in and down.
4. Bring your awareness to the heart. With each inhale, feel your desire for true peace and liberation in this process, yet without concern about how to get there. Just breathe into your heart and cultivate your true desire. Stay with this awhile.
5. Feel yourself being drawn to the back of the heart, to a place that is deep, dark, and quiet. It might feel as if your heart backs onto the infinite galaxy, but be open to however the heart-cave shows itself to you. Here you find an empty altar that welcomes everything without exception. Above the altar is a spotlight.
6. In your own way, lay on the altar your grievances, the impossible conflicts, and the hurts you do not know how to get past or forgive, asking for liberating Grace to restore you to the truth behind all appearances.
7. Lay down your judgments, anything you have rejected as “bad.”
8. Lay your most significant relationships on this inner altar.
9. Lay whatever you find heartbreaking in our world on this inner altar.
10. Lay yourself down on the altar. Ask to be cleansed of all error, all misperception, all distortion.
11. See, feel, or sense a transparent, cleansing aqua mist pervading everything and everyone that has been placed on the altar. It might feel like soft healing vapor. Let this presence of forgiveness cleanse all errors at the Source, unwind distortion, and remove all veils. It restores everyone to indestructible innocence and complete unity, our original pristine condition.
12. Be open to any additional insight that comes, and then when you are ready, return to the inquiry with the following question for ten minutes or more: What’s it like in the heart-cave of Absolute Love? ~
In the depth of the heart, all duality falls away. All distortion falls away. The need to reject anything falls away. Giving up your position and your attachment to what you thought would bring correction allows the Grace of forgiveness to arrive. All errors are corrected by the ultimate purifier. The slate is wiped clean. Everyone the Grace of forgiveness touches is restored to primordial innocence. Now you can see all things clearly. You are capable of wise action and clean communication, which can include holding your teenager to a standard of behavior or letting go of an employee who has crossed the line. Yet sweet love for others pervades your consciousness as you recognize them as yourself. A heavenly stream has found its way down to earth in your heart.