People say there is a veil between two worlds; the eternal and the mortal. They call dying “crossing over” to “the other side.” But to me, that would mean that I’m only able to occupy one of those places at a time, and to enter one, I am required to leave the other. That line of thinking says there are two isolated locations separated by a veil or a boundary of some kind. That line of thinking assumes that in order to experience the eternal self, I must first die so I can travel from one place to the other, because I can’t be in both places at once.

I don’t see it that way.

All the World’s a Stage, and All Men and Women Merely Players

In my view, an actor and the character he plays are the same person while on stage–occupying the same time and space simultaneously. But a talented actor sort of “forgets” his true identity while he embodies his character. Like us, we’ve “forgotten” our true eternal identities while dealing with the stressors of our mortal characters’ temporary lives.

Shakespear said “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…” I take that more literally than poetically. When I consider how my eternal self exists with my mortal self, I see the mortal world as a stage. My eternal self is the actor. My mortal self is the character I’m playing.

When Dustin Hoffman was playing Captain Hook in the movie Hook, was he Hoffman, or Captain Hook?  The answer: Both. He was both Hoffman and Hook simultaneously. There was no “veil” between Hoffman and Hook. It was only his focus that differentiated the actor from the character during the filming. At the end of the movie, Hook, the character, didn’t know he was going to die under an alligator clock, but Hoffman, the actor, did. Hoffman wasn’t afraid of the clock, because Hoffman knew his life was going to continue on after the play was finished.  

Imagine the power we’ll have over our troubled mortal lives when we can feel the experience of being eternal and safe while we’re also experiencing our mortal stressors and disappointments.

Knowing is Not Experiencing

Why do people yearn to travel to places they’ve already seen on TV or in photographs? I’ve never been to Norway’s Fjords, but I’ve seen pictures of them. So, what would compel me to spend thousands of dollars and go through all the trouble of booking flights and hotels to go see something I’ve already seen in inexpensive travel magazines? Answer: Because experiencing a place is not the same as knowing about it. To travel to the Fjords, my entire body would experience the culture, the smells, sounds, sensations of being so far north, surrounded by mountains and waterways. I’d feel the sensations of the trains I’d ride in, and would forever recall the voices of the residents, and the tastes of their meals. The experience of being there in person would change me in ways so much more profoundly than reading about it ever could. I’d live the rest of my life with those experiantial body-memories attached to the knowledge of where I’d been.

After reading this blog post, you will know that I believe there is an eternal you living in the same space as your mortal you. But you won’t have experienced that eternal you until you lay quietly somewhere and feel that eternal peace for yourself, if even for a few precious seconds.

I discovered my eternal self quite by accident during my middle fifties after a stressful day at work. I laid down on the lawn in front of my house and just stopped thinking about my job. The clouds were drifting overhead. They looked like the same clouds that had drifted overhead when I was seven years old. At that moment I realized that as I thought about nothing, I was, again, the exact same person I was when I, the child, lay on the lawn at my parents’ house. At that moment I was not a fifty-something-year-old man with bad knees and graying hair. At that moment, the forty years that had passed since I was a small schoolboy were the blink of an eye, and it didn’t matter that I now had a job and a mortgage and responsibilities. As I lay there beneath the same eternal sky, I understood that I was the very same soul I had been as a boy. It seems I’d taken a short break from playing my character on this temporary mortal stage I’m acting on. For a few moments, I was the eternal actor whose life is always transcending the mortal character I currently play as James Johnson.

For those few moments, watching those clouds, I had no fears or stressors or disappointments. For those few moments I just “was.” I wasn’t reading about my eternal self, nor simply “believing in” my eternal self. For a few moments I was experiencing my eternal self. Experiencing the peace. Feeling the release of stress in my body. The calmness in my chest. A gentle smile graced my face. I was my essence. I was experiencing the eternal actor, who’d taken a much needed break from being my mortal character.

Since then, I’ve learned that I can freely access that eternal self almost any time I want to. As I’ve learned to spend more and more time experiencing the peace and safety of our eternal place, my mortal character loses more and more fear of my mortal concerns.

Imagine being so connected to the experience of being our eternal selves, that we no longer feel the fear of our impending mortal death or suffrage.

The Unexamined Life is Doomed to Repeat its Struggles Until we Face Them

The more often we choose to experience our true, eternal selves, the more we integrate that eternal peace into daily mortal life. Even more importantly: The more connected we are to eternal peace, the less control we give to our repeating cycles of mortal abuse and stress. This is why I believe that the unexamined life is doomed to repeat its struggles until we face them. And now I think we face our mortal struggles each time we spend a few minutes as our eternal selves, remembering that our character is not all that we are.

We are not just our characters. We are also our eternal, quiet, peace-filled selves who lay on the grass watching clouds float by exactly as we’ve done since the day we were born.

If there is any such thing as reincarnation, it will mean that our eternal selves will one day simply accept a new role in a new mortal play for another short moment in eternal time. I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation or not. I don’t really care. If it happens it happens. If it doesn’t it doesn’t. And my belief either way doesn’t change whatever is going to happen.

The more we embody that eternal self, rather than focus only on the character we’re playing for a few short decades, the more eternal peace we’ll bring into our mortal lives of strife and stress.

My commitment to myself is, I want to move farther away from simply knowing (believing) that I’m an eternal being, to living every moment with a greater sense of experiencing that eternal peace within my body and soul, every moment of every day and every night.

Healing Trauma Through Spiritual Connection

I’m a trauma survivor who lives with the residual struggles of Complex-PTSD. All my life I’ve suffered from the abuse I took as a child, and since the year 2000, I have been in healthy treatment for the PTSD that the abuse caused. I’ve come a long way in my healing, but I’ve learned that being a trauma survivor is a permanent condition. Over the past two decades I have benefitted from nearly all the tools available to us as mortal humans to overcome the physiological symptoms of trauma, and yet occasionally I still feel somewhat controlled by Emotional Flashbacks as well as most all other trauma symptoms. Physical treatment has given me great power over PTSD and I’m in pretty good shape these days because of the treatments. Yet I still battle some residual sleeplessness, depression, anxiety, addictive tendencies, and more. I no longer require permanent medications, but every couple of years I do need a little medical help to get through certain bouts with relapse.

I’ve come to believe that the only way for me to accept a deeper level of healing than the mortal world has to offer, is to transcend my shortsighted experience that this mortal world is all there is. I believe that I’ve used all the mortal tools and I still struggle, so I’m advancing my focus to the spiritual. Not to the foolishness of human religion, but to actively experience the quiet reality that my eternal self is, and always has been, and always will be at perfect peace. I focus less on daily trauma-drama and more on that eternal peace. I think I’m on the right track. Each day I feel a bit more changed by my experiences of spending quality time as the eternal me, which is progressively helping me to deal with mortal stressors, including the less curable aspects of PTSD.

Peace is at Hand Now

Peace is not hidden from us behind a veil. Eternity is not lost in a different location that we must have someone help us find. Eternal Peace is at hand, accessible during the quiet moments when we take a conscious break from believing we are trapped in the lives of our mortal characters. We experience our own immortal strength whenever we take a moment to sit off stage, stare up at the clouds that have always floated overhead, and remember that we are not only this mortal character, but we are also the eternal actor who showed up to the stage on the day we were born, and will continue to live on after the play ends. The trick to making this work is to go beyond just knowing about our eternal selves, and to spend a few minutes here and there experiencing our very real eternal nature, which is who we truly are. And doing this as often as we can only brings us progressively closer to the peace that has always been there, always waiting for us to simply focus on it.

As a nation, why do some of us feel so much pain these days?

Some of us can’t ignore the problems facing our fellow human beings. We see and feel the problems that affect not only ourselves, but the people we share this planet with. It’s been said that wisdom brings worry. Wisdom is burdensome. By looking directly at the problems around us we feel the weight of those problems. By contrast, it’s also said that ignorance is bliss, which means that if you don’t want to feel the burdens of others, just don’t look at them. Ignore the problems of the world. It’s blissful and it releases you from believing that you might have to step up and help.

So I guess, in summary, we can say that if you’re feeling burdened, then you’re expressing wisdom and a desire to help. And if you’re not feeling burdened, then you’re expressing the opposite of wisdom—which is foolishness. The fool’s head is buried blissfully in the sand where no urgency is driving a need to help, while the heads and hearts of the wise are alert and are looking directly at the problems that need fixing. The pain is from wanting to help but not knowing how.

This world is undeniably in trouble. Collectively we are suffering the opiate epidemic, social injustice, political infighting, the disgusting greed of billionaires, the rising instances of wildfires, bigger hurricanes, more frequent tornadoes, larger floating continents of garbage, and a host of other unresolvable problems. Because of these overwhelming issues, many of us are hurting in ways we had hoped we would never have to hurt. The pain of hopelessness is manifesting its mayhem through a rise of suicides, mass shootings, and through unprecedented numbers of citizens on antianxiety medications. Even if we ourselves are not hit with any major troubles, we still feel pain as we helplessly witness these troubles impact our loved ones, friends, and fellow human beings. For those of us who are wise, we feel our human connection with those who suffer. We know the threats are real, even if those threats haven’t yet struck our own homes. But for those of us who are fools, well…we choose not to feel anything, and we don’t care about those who do.

Pain is a biological mechanism meant to bring about change. My fingers hurt when I need to let go of something hot. My foot hurts when I need to shake out a pebble. If my chest hurts, I may need to see a physician and navigate some changes in my stress, diet, or exercise. When my heart hurts for fellow human beings who are being treated unfairly because of their gender, or their color, or their mental health, or an addiction to a drug, or their financial misfortunes, it hurts me also. Why? because I’m a good person who excels in wisdom and emotional intelligence. It means I understand that we’re all connected and I carry with me a strong conscience that I can use to make a change that will help someone. As a person with conscience, I want for you the same things I want for myself; Happiness, Health, Comfort, Safety, Peace. My anxiety rises not because I’m broken, but because I feel as if the problems before me are too big for me to change. I feel impotent. Helpless. The wisdom of who I am drives pain which is supposed to drive change, but since I can’t fix the problem from my limited circle of control, the pain becomes anxiety and ultimately depression.

Even though it hurts, I am not sorry that I feel the pain. It’s proof that I’m not ignorant. I’m not a sociopath. It’s proof that I am maturing into wisdom. It proves I’m not a fool.

If you, like me, are feeling pain and anxiety because of these huge, unresolvable issues, don’t let it defeat you. You feel the pain because you are a good, wise person. If pain’s purpose is to promote change, then relieve your pain by finding some small way to become part of the cure. Even if you feel it’s a tiny contribution to a huge problem, something is better than nothing.

“Love not put into action is only a word.” —Mother Theresa.

Your contribution doesn’t have to be big enough to fix the world. You alone cannot change the leadership of your country. You alone cannot stop global climate change. But you alone can influence your community. Your neighborhood. Your office space. If pain is telling you to change something, then change something. Relieve the anxiety of feeling helpless by becoming helpful. By knowing you’ve done what you can to help bring about a positive change within your own small circle of influence, your body will respond positively. You can relieve some of the anxiety in your own chest. You can’t fix the world but you can do small things that improve the lives of one person or one family within arm’s reach of you. You can strike up a conversation with someone who feels utterly alone. You can donate $25 to a charity that feeds kids on the weekends in your own neighborhood’s public school. Feeding one hungry person is a huge gift to them even though it’s a small act to you. If you really need a boost, join a community group that does good in an area that you feel personally drawn to. Spend an hour helping clean a park. Donate the shoes you don’t wear anymore. Donate a can or box of food in a drop box. Work in the food bank one day a week. The opportunities to help, large and small, are endless.

The pain you’re feeling for others sets you above those who don’t feel it. Narcissists and sociopaths who feel no connection to others fake joy for you to see, but don’t be tricked into believing they are happy on the inside. They feel no connection to others and therefor they live a life alone with a dry and dark heart. Anything they do for another is nothing but a momentary transaction usually meant to get something in return. They feel absolutely no connection to any person–unless they want something from that person. As soon as they get what they want, the connection is broken. You are the lucky one who feels pain because you feel your permanent, soulful connection to other human souls–whether you want something from them or not. You’re better than the average person and your body is calling on you to make a small change somewhere. Don’t ignore the calling, and above all, don’t let your pain become a point of empty suffering. It’s a calling from your biology, from your inner wisdom, to become a tiny voice for a small change that is needed for someone near you. It’s something for you to be proud of. Use it to contribute, in any small way, to making this a better world for the people you love, even if those people are strangers. Even if the pain doesn’t completely subside, it will improve. It will be worth it when you see that someone benefitted from your willingness to respond to your body’s calling.

~ James F Johnson

Empathy is the modern-technical term for what our ancestors called “walking in the shoes of another.”

Some experts believe empathy is only possible when a person has experienced what another is going through now. Empathy cannot happen in a person who has never experienced what another is experiencing.

Sympathy can happen though. I can sympathize with a hungry child, but I’ve never been a hungry child, so I can’t feel it, but I can still give money. I can still be a good person.

Empathy happens when we’ve already experienced what another is experiencing now. A person who has been hungry as a child can do even more for hungry children than I can. I can send them money or food, but the empathic person has a super-power to truly speak to that child in ways that can bring deeper comfort to the fears and anger and hopelessness that I can only imagine might be present in a child who doesn’t know if he or she is going to live through the week.

Empathy is why recovering addicts are also the best recovery councilors. They not only know the science behind addiction, they know what the addict is thinking and feeling.

PTSD survivors should stick together

People with PTSD really need to connect with other people who have PTSD. No one else can really share in the experience in ways that can help the survivor feel connected to someone of like-mind. People who don’t have it, may truly want to help, but really only know that PTSD is a condition that makes people react to things. Their ability to help is there–but its limited. Those who have PTSD may personally know the ghosts who are now attacking another PTSD survivor, and therefor can share in the experience and can work with those ghosts in helpful ways. PTSD survivors have experienced the fears of PTSD, and know first-hand what the sleepless nights feel like, and how the triggers come from nowhere—even years or decades after the trauma. Only PTSD survivors have ridden the PTSD-Bi-Polar-Coaster and know the inner workings of the out-of-control mood swings that people who don’t have it absolutely can’t grasp.

How to be a good person

In my world, good is defined as anything we do to connect people with the social fabric of all God’s souls, while bad is defined as anything we do to hurt, humiliate or isolate people from the social fabric of all God’s souls.

Mother Theresa used say “Love not put into action is only a word.” Either way, empathy and sympathy are both good, as long as they produce in us a desire to do something helpful for someone else.

So challenge yourself to love someone today. Go on line and donate a few bucks to a reputable charity that feeds kids in your town. Smile and say hi to someone in a store today just so that person knows he or she is not invisible today. And if you have a heart for any specific issues, maybe because you are a survivor of some undesirable event, then consider using your empathy as a tool for individual or social healing. Consider giving of yourself to others who need to know that you know what they are feeling.

Every day brings another opportunity to give something simple to someone in need. So each of us can do something good every day. Whether its rooted in empathy or in sympathy, connecting with others is the root definition of how to be a truly good person.

True happiness is said to be found in people who feel equal to their peers. True happiness is seldom found in people who are rich. If you know many wealthy people, you probably know them to be suspicious and competitive, or perhaps even condescending and cruel. Same with overly attractive people. The wealthy and the beautiful have a lot more to lose than normal people do, which causes them more stress and fear. For most of us, equality and the ability to trust the motives of our equal peers makes true inner-happiness much more achievable.

As my 40th high school graduation approaches, Facebook is lighting up with posts from people I haven’t heard from in forty years. By their Facebook posts, many of them appear happier than me. Wealthier than me. More active than me. It makes me feel smaller, (or maybe I should say “fatter”) than I really am. But then I take a look at my own Facebook posts of the past several years, and I realize that even I myself, appear to be a lot happier, and wealthier, and more active than me also.

I guess it’s because we post what we want people to see, and we see what people want to post. So now I need to remind myself not to compare my real, daily life to others’ photographs of exotic vacations. When the cameras are put away, we’re all a lot more alike than we are different. We all have bills.

I know it is appropriate for all of us to post the pictures of our happy times, like our travels and bicycle trips, and our sailboats, and our parties. Those times aren’t fake. They really happened. I post those pics just like everyone else does. I post photos of my grandsons climbing on me, laughing. That’s what I want to show people so I can share the fact that my grandsons love me. I don’t show the pictures of me pulling my hair out an hour later when they wont’ stop fighting with each other. But know that it’s a part of my life that is also true.

For all of us, these great photographed moments of joy are spattered amid the vast playing field of real life. Normal life. The life that makes us all equal with each other. The struggles of loving our jobs on some days and hating them the next. I myself am known around my circles as a particularly happy person. I smile a lot. I inherited a sense of humor from my mother’s bloodline. I tend to find a lot of humor in daily life. It’s part of the reason I’ve survived real life for this long. But I don’t smile all the time. None of us smile all the time. When I drive in Seattle traffic I seem to show signs that I have Turret’s Syndrome. I love driving. I hate traffic. I think I’m pretty normal in that affliction. I’m not proud of it. And I won’t post pics of myself cursing another driver. But I still do it. Pretty much all of us deal with a myriad of things we aren’t proud enough of to take pictures of so we can share the entire story of who we really are.

People post photos of their bicycle trips in fancy-colored stretched Lycra, but they don’t show which complicated relationship they were ignoring, or avoiding, that day by going off on a bike trip by themselves. People show selfies at the Washington Monument but don’t post the credit card debt that they ran up for the trip. People show pictures taken by waitresses, of themselves and some friends laughing and toasting at a dinner table, but neglect to point to which friends or family should have been in rehab that night instead of at the bar drinking.

I guess my point is that it’s fun to show the party pics, and it’s fun to view them, but it is also wise to keep in mind that when we view each other’s happy posts, we are not seeing someone who is intrinsically happier than ourselves. The fun times and the hard times are as real for each of us as they are for each of the rest of us.  We are all more alike than we are different. Don’t anyone be fooled by a stacked deck of joy-photos, into thinking your peers are all having better lives than you are.

As for me, I am generally happy. But I cringe whenever I discover that my peers think it’s because I’m luckier than they are. I never want my own life to make another person’s life seem small. Six years ago, when I began writing Disaster Island, a novel in which I disclose a lot of the truth about my past and the pasts of some of my peers, and about the lasting effects of hidden trauma on many otherwise normal-looking people, I also began sharing in conversation with peers, the true story of my upbringing. I was shocked when I discovered they were shocked. All those years of my trying to look happier than I was worked. It turns out I’d fooled a lot of people who, frankly, didn’t deserve to be lied to by my façade. People that I liked would hear my stories of abuse and say “I never, ever, would have expected to hear that happened to you.” Then, to my even greater surprise, many of them then went on, “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone before?” Then, as they shared their own stories of struggle and trauma, I learned that it is a very blessed thing to feel the great honor of being someone they can finally open up to.

My Facebook posts of smiles and boat trips, and my humorous personality, and my tendency to look for the joy in each day fools people into believing that I’m luckier and happier than they are. For that I apologize. In some cases, because they think I’m luckier than them, some good people don’t believe they have a chance at being happy also. But when I share the rest of the story, about the horrific abuse I took as a mob-bullied, suicidal child at Catholic School in the 1970s, or about the elder sibling/narcissist that tormented me for fifty years, people stop feeling separated from me, and begin to bond closer with me. They say things like, “Oh my gosh. My family had one of those in it too.” or “I was treated just like that when I was young too.” While they  come to realize that they were not alone in their struggles, I come to the same realization that I wasn’t alone either. That moment of breaking down the wall, and of sharing a real trauma that was previously locked up and festering inside someone, is a moment of healing. The healing sends a wave of true happiness through me.

All the hell I went through with churches and family becomes the road that was worth traveling. Not ignoring the difficulties of my past is liberating. I wouldn’t want to relive Catholic school, or my own family, but I am proud to have survived them and I’m proud to share my life with those who need to know they are not isolated by their own past traumas.

Ultimately, we are all connected in this human experience. To think we need to compete with each other is thinking that perverts our connection and isolates us. Then it undermines our own happiness while it tries to undermine the happiness of the people we are actually connected to. The truth is, being vulnerable isn’t so bad. Being open begins the road to true, honest happiness.

Forgiveness, if done right, summons miracles that transcend human understanding. With it, people have broken life-long curses, have washed themselves with inner peace, have gained better careers, have secured quieter homes, and have been party to countless other solutions to otherwise unfixable life problems. The results of practicing Unconditional Forgiveness are three-fold; psychological healing, physical healing and miraculous changes.

Psychological Healing
Beginning with the obvious, holding grudges or fear brings the opposite of mental peace. Non-forgiveness becomes judgment when we believe someone is bad. Judgment then becomes a grudge. In more extreme cases, grudges become hatred. Hatred morphs into obsessive thoughts that haunt. The person you can’t forgive does not haunt you, but your own obsessive thoughts about that person haunt you through sleeplessness and bad dreams. If you could bring yourself to accept complete forgiveness for whomever is haunting your psychological mind, you will lose those obsessive thoughts. You will become free to focus more time and thought onto happier things. Life inside your mind will improve.

Physical Healing
Hate, which is the opposite of forgiveness, can feel like a burning acid in your heart or gut. And as it turns out, the reason it feels like burning acid is because that’s exactly what it is. Years of churning the bile of non-forgiveness in the esophagus, the heart, throat, lungs, adrenals and immune system bring diminished quality of physical health and in the worst of case, premature death—not to the person you chose not to forgive, but to you, the one who didn’t practice forgiveness.

NEWSFLASH! Miracle Making
Mystical benefits transcend understanding when practicing the art of Unconditional Forgiveness launches inexplicable miracles. I can find no better way to explain it than to list a few of my own experiences.

First Example: Forgiving myself brought companionship

• At twenty-three, and after two years of mind-numbing loneliness, I forgave myself for being unable to trust a loving relationship and I stopped looking for a woman to keep me company. Every frustrated molecule of my body found release from the new belief that I could be very, very happy to live alone as a single man. One week later I met Colette. Four weeks later we married. We’ve been married now for thirty-three years and are both hoping for many more to come.

Second Example: Forgiving an obnoxious neighbor quieted the neighborhood

• Two months ago, I stopped hating the noisy, arrogant neighbor who had lived across the street from me for eleven years. “City life is city life” I said. It worked. I began to feel the relief of release around no longer obsessing about his behaviors. I could sense that my forgiveness of him actually took hold in my inner life, and I had come to finally accept him for everything he just was. I never spoke to him. I changed nothing except my inner feelings. To my utter amazement…One week later…he moved!

Third Example: Forgiving a childhood enemy broke a curse and stopped a repeating story

• At fifty, I forgave my childhood best-friend-turned-arch-nemesis, after he had lived in my nightmares for forty years. In 1970, after establishing himself as my closest friend, Anthony surprised me with an overnight switch. From that day forward he used everything he knew about me from our years as best-friends to turn me into a target for several years of atrocious mob-bullying, separating me from my entire class at Catholic school, and leaving me suicidal and unable to trust anyone I loved. Like a curse over my life, I spent the next forty years being attacked again at least four more times by other friends-or-family-turned-enemy, almost as if it was the theme of my life.
• At fifty, I asked a friend, “What is it about me that keeps attracting this same kind of villain over and over and over?” That friend asked me to share the entire story of how the original betrayal went down. She saw, with amazing clarity, that Anthony did what he did because of his own pain and shame. She helped me to understand why he became the monster he became. I immediately began to love myself and him again just as I had before the betrayal. Forgiveness washed through me like warm milk.
• Then life-changing miracles began to fall like dominoes. First, psychological relief released me from the lifelong nightmares. What happened next was impossible to explain in any way other than as a miracle from above. Within only months of my unconditional acceptance of Anthony, all the friends and family who were behaving as badly as he had done, left my life. All for different reasons, all at once, and all permanently—as if by magic. For the first time ever, I can honestly say that I can trust and love everyone who is in my life right now. I had apparently learned my lesson and was myself forgiven from having to endure any repeats of that betrayal ever again. I forgave Anthony, and then somehow enjoyed a new peace when other people like him stopped repeating the betrayal.

How to Bring Miracles through Unconditional Forgiveness
To use forgiveness correctly is more of an art than a science. Simple forgiveness is just a word. It becomes a superpower when it is practiced as Unconditional Forgiveness. Its lesser version, Conditional Forgiveness, is little more than the act of saying “I’ve judged you as bad  and now I’m giving you my grace and tolerance because I’m better than you.” Unconditional Forgiveness blows the doors off of that by reaching a place of absolute, pure acceptance of another person for being who that person has always been, already is, and will probably always be, whether I like it or not.

In the amazing movie, “Ender’s Game,” Orson Scott Card writes;

• “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them…. I destroy them.”

― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

To me, to destroy an enemy is not necessarily to hurt that person, but to destroy the role they play as an enemy in your life. By converting a person to a friend, you have essentially destroyed them as an enemy. I have lived this quote and that’s why it spoke so loudly to me as I watched the movie.

True, Unconditional Forgiveness is an art that requires practice. I tried to forgive the three people I mentioned above many times before it finally took hold. Whenever I try to force forgiveness, especially when I misinterpret it as little more than bestowing the grace of my tolerance onto a person that I have judged as being bad, it doesn’t physically change anything. It doesn’t produce a positive result. It’s just a noisy string of words. It doesn’t actually work. I could say “I forgave him/her” but obviously by the fact that I still haven’t seen a miracle, the evidence says that I have not completely accepted who they are. It says that I have not yet decided to live my life my way and let them live theirs their way. For me, once I can successfully reach a point of complete acceptance, that is when the miracles fall like refreshing spring rain upon my life.

This blog post isn’t meant to teach the art of forgiveness. Others have already written those books. My message is simply that Unconditional Forgiveness is worth practicing because it brings miracles. Books and articles teaching the art of forgiveness are all over the bookstores and the internet, but be cautious of who you learn it from. Scores of religious sources teach as if it is nothing more than gracing a bad person with your righteous tolerance. These religious zealots forget that their God calls us equal and that none of us are qualified to judge another as bad. So how can we grace them with our Godly forgiveness if we’re no better or worse than them? For these religious teachers, forgiveness is little more than a kind word that brings no physical miracles to life. They’ll tell you it does, but in practice you’ll be able to judge your own results.

The reason Unconditional Forgiveness launches miracles is because Unconditional Forgiveness is the practice of Unconditional Love. It is the physical act of reuniting and bonding souls. Hate and judgment are the act of separating. Isolating. Anthony isolated me from my peers. I connected myself back in when I unconditionally forgave who he and I both are. Miracles respond to love (connection), not to judgment (disconnection). Divine connection happens to be the reason we’re here in this life at all. We’re not six billion isolated souls. We are six billion connected fragments of one soul.

Ultimately, I happen to know that I am as bad and as good as anyone I’ve ever needed to forgive. If I can love myself, I can love you. If I hate you, I hate myself. I recommend learning Unconditional Forgiveness from the perspective of learning to accept all life as equal life.

The word itself is called for-giveness, not aft-giveness. To for-give is to accept equality first, and deal with offenses later. Aft-giveness better describes the act of first believing a person is bad, and then gracing them with your benevolent tolerance because you believe you’re better than them.

Once you for-give unconditionally, you will give yourself the amazing gift of living a life connected with the very love that you’ve helped create.