David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this blog post with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2021 by David Spangler.
This month, I feel a desire to share an exercise that I first presented in a recent online forum for people who subscribe to my journal, Views from the Borderland. The topic under discussion was forgiveness, and one of my non-physical, “subtle” colleagues suggested this exercise.
What has prompted me to share it was a news report stating that airlines had reported nearly 3500 incidents of “air-rage” and “unruly passengers” since the beginning of this year. I have certainly watched with incredulity on evening news television shows recent episodes of passengers assaulting each other and attacking flight attendants. One segment showed flight attendants receiving martial arts training for their own protection and for subduing violent passengers. The “Friendly Skies” have definitely become unfriendly.
Much of this air-rage violence has escalated since the pandemic hit and has focused around mask-wearing protocols. At the same time, on the ground, road rage incidents have increased as well. “The number of people shot and killed or wounded in road rage shootings nearly doubled…from a monthly average of 22 deaths and injuries from June 2016 through May 2020 to a monthly average of 42 deaths and injuries between June 2020 and May 2021,” according to the organization, Everytown For Gun Safety.
Obviously, we are living in angry times, which is evidenced daily on the news in many other ways than simply incidents of rage in airplanes or on the highways. It’s as if people are living with hair-trigger emotions that are easily upset, leading to one kind of confrontation or another. What is striking is that in so many cases, the cause of the angry flair-up was something relatively trivial, something that might have easily been overlooked or forgiven in pre-pandemic times. But now, forgiveness seems to be becoming a forgotten tool in our civil and social toolkit.
The following exercise may not solve the problem of a pandemic of rage moving through society, but it can remind us of what we are capable of. It can remind us of the tool of forgiveness, which can be used for ourselves, for others, and for humanity as a whole. This exercise, as well as any others we may practice, can strengthen our “forgiveness-muscles.” This helps the calming energy of forgiveness to be our first response, rather than the heat of anger.
Here it is:
–Stand in your Sovereignty, honoring your sacredness.
–Forgive yourself. For actions done or left undone; for any thoughts and feelings and the subtle energies they create, for anything that may have left wholeness less manifest in the world, forgive yourself. Forgive yourself so that you may move forward in the wholeness and freedom that allows your sacredness to manifest.
–Forgive others. For any actions done or left undone; for any thoughts, feelings, and the subtle energies they create, that has impacted you and left you feeling less whole, forgive others. Forgive others so that you and they may move forward in the wholeness and freedom that allows sacredness to manifest.
–Forgive humanity. For all actions done or left undone, and for the motivations, thoughts, feelings, and subtle energies that have impacted the world that all humans and all life share and left the world less whole, forgive humanity. Forgive humanity so that you and all human beings may move forward in the wholeness and freedom that allows sacredness and life to manifest.
–May Grace and Forgiveness open the hearts of all, that love may heal and wholeness be restored in all beings upon all the world.
–In the spirit of this forgiveness and love, stand in your Sovereignty, and then move out into your world as a presence of wholeness.
During that same Subscribers’ Forum for my journal, some of the participants offered links to websites on forgiveness that they had found helpful. I’d like to share them here as well, as they offer other exercises and practices working towards the same end. It’s good to have choices to find what works best for you.
The first is to the Midwest Institute for Forgiveness Training: https://www.forgivenesstraining.com/
The second is to the International Forgiveness Institute: https://internationalforgiveness.com/
Certainly, you can find your own sources on the Internet and elsewhere that can give good advice about forgiveness and how to achieve it. The best source always, though, is in your own heart and in the love you bring into the world.
People are hurting right now, and this hurt often turns into anger that can lash out at others for the most minor of reasons. You may be hurting, too. But it doesn’t have to be this way. However we do so, it’s time to make use of our inner tools to bring calm and healing to our world, and among these, the spirit of forgiveness is perhaps the most needed. It can keep momentary, tiny embers of irritation from flaring up into hurtful fires of rage.