When I think sometimes of how much it hurt me. I have choices between anger, resentment and forgiveness. They don’t feel like choices when I am not the very best of myself. The very best of me . . . loves. The very best of me . . . wants, in a way that is indescribable. Almost indescribable. It wants in a way that isn’t just for me. It wants the perfection of atonement. The perfection of the unity I know is in me, and in you, and in all. I know it to be there. It is the only thing I know – the only thing that can be known 

Though masked as perception when looking from only one angle, it stands with all the others like a single sided movie set . . . looking so real. Yet when I walk to the other side, it is solid among the false fronts and painted on views of daily illusion. There I see the realness,  the dimension and the magnitude of knowing.

Something calls from down a long hallway to which it seems I cannot see the end. The injured part of me is there, with the one who hurt me. I keep them both at such a distance that I might have moments when I can’t feel the pain. I am only able to be at this distance while I am not my very best self, however. Because I am at a distance at which I cannot heal all. When I am as close as I can come to the very best me – the pain is near enough to touch, and there is no long hallway anymore. It is only a long walk when we contemplate the distance we perceive. I discovered I was wrong about space and time and miracles. The illusion is how far I thought I had distanced myself. There were no echoes as I walked toward the pain or the perpetrator, because there no longer was a hallway to channel the sound. The distance was just one footstep, and the healing was not just my own. A miracle is the collapse of an illusion of time. Distance folds underneath just one step. Space requires time to exist. The corridor, however long, disappears with the time the miracle won’t indulge.

I suffered needlessly and so did all – offender, counterpart and spectator. We are one, I came to understand. I learned that to forgive others is to forgive myself. This statement is so often extended in seeming platitudes. I don’t know if the words were empty or just misunderstood. But what I learned about forgiveness today, is that we lift a burden our brother or sister may not even acknowledge they carry. Perhaps more so true if they perceivably did the harm – or if they perceivably gained from it. 

We can never harm another without harming ourselves, but we can lift the burden for both with one step down a corridor that isn’t really there. When I discovered this power that asks nothing and gives all – I hesitated for fear of seeing my weakness as though I may be shamed by setting down my burden, should I not be strong enough to carry it. But when I took that one step, I finally discovered strength. Strength is effortless. There is no grunting or wincing to make the strain. Just peace and a smile that I know I will see again. I carry it with me for all – shining back at me. I thought the miracle stood behind me, beside me or just ahead. I was wrong. The miracle is in me. And when extended through forgiveness it is within all that I touch and see. The illusory disbanded of the armed and armament I only thought was there. 

I laid down my sword and every shield was laid down among the others. I laid down my shield and every sword fell with it. This was my power all along. I might have wished that it had happened sooner, or that I had seen so long before the suffering. But the miracle doesn’t honor that time either. It honors the atonement and is swept aside like a dream in the light of a new dawn. When we finally awaken, we don’t wish it had happened sooner. It is far too glorious for the smallness of wishes.

It seems we can only forgive when we are no longer hurting. I question if that is the illusion. That perhaps we no longer hurt once we are able to forgive.