Apologies

Today the post will be quite short and more of a thought piece and a call for your comments and ideas.

I had an interesting exchange with a friend today on the subject of apologies. I was reminded of the Course in Miracles' take on forgiveness and I want to share that here.

For anyone who has not read the Course (as it is often called) you should know that it not very intuitive and trying to read it makes the Bible (Old Testament) feel like easy reading. It is one of those books that needs to be reread a few times to understand it (or rather each time you read it you will probably understand it differently). I will give you an example, in regards to how it speaks about forgiveness (page 638 from the blue edition):

Unjustified forgiveness is attack. And this is all the world can ever give. It pardons "sinners" sometimes, but remains aware that they have sinned. [...] This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to keep the sense of sin alive.[...]Thus is the fear of God the sure result of seeing pardon as unmerited. No one who sees himself as guilty can avoid the fear of God.

You see what I mean?

By the way, this passage reminds me (and my crazy associative mind) of the Grand Inquisitor section of Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov (which you can find online without a problem) in which the Grand Inquisitor rebukes a Christ-like Messiah figure that comes to Earth and tells the Messiah (here I am paraphrasing very liberally) we are not going to let you ruin the work we have done to repair the wrongs you have done to humanity putting ideas about freedom and forgiveness into their weak minds...

Anyway, back to the Course's take on forgiveness. My (probably superficial) understanding of it goes something like this: accepting an apology is a terrible thing to do! it means you are putting yourself in a position of superiority vis-a-vis the person who is asking for your forgiveness, and if you accept the apology, i.e. accept to forgive, well then you are accepting to place yourself in a position of (moral) superiority. Exaggerating slightly it would be like the apologizer saying, 'Oh superior one, please show your superior grace and accept your lowly subject's apology'. Now from what I understood from the Course, and it makes sense to me is that the only way to truly accept an apology, is to realize and share that realization with the person asking to apologize that there is nothing to forgive. This way both are again in a position of equality.

The lead up to this chapter is quite long, and to understand it properly you probably need to read and understand everything that precedes it (not sure I did). The basic idea, once again if I have understood it as intended is that 1/ only things that are done out of love are real and lasting which means that 2/ nothing that is done otherwise really exists and 3/ even if you believe that bad things happen to you in actuality they happened and you were there, they were not done to you.

For example, if you get sick, it wasn't done to you, it is just happening to you. Why you? Well, why not you? As the saying goes, shit happens, and sometimes it happens to you. You can decide to take it personally or understand that it happens and is part of life. Same event, but a different attitude. The same thing when you are hurt in one form or another by another. You can feel terribly insulted (i.e. need to forgive) or have compassion and wonder what happened to the other person to make them want to do what they did. Same event, two different reactions. One requires an apology, the other is an expression of compassion.

I wish I could say that I have integrated this into my life, but please forgive me if I don't always show that wisdom ; )

In any case, the answer my friend gave me was quite interesting and wise too. I won't quote it because 1/I haven't asked for permission and 2/I don't want friends to have the feeling that their private e-mails could show up on my public blog but suffice it to say the idea was that apologies are, more than anything, about accepting our mistakes in order to learn from them and move on. That a true apology is difficult, humbling and a very generous act.

My only comment to that would be that maybe wisdom is recognizing instances in which we may have hurt someone and to apologize sincerely for it - not because we are looking for forgiveness but out of compassion for making someone feel uncomfortable. On the flip side, when apologized too, it is about helping ourselves and the other to realize that there is really nothing to forgive. It would seem that the two are not incompatible.

A final word, I read the Course in Miracles while my father was dying of cancer and I was literally reading the book to try and work a miracle. That is NOT what the book is about. It is more about the miracle of daily life, of seeing life as it is, not as it is not, and seeing the miraculous everywhere. But I tried...