Forgiveness: The Final Frontier

I was nearing the climax of another “Deeply Disappointing Drama” when I decided to simply surrender, just let go. I had examined every scene and every actor from every conceivable angle, and I couldn’t make any sense of it. None!

Like all No-Drama Queens, I take full responsibility for scripting every life drama I experience. We queens don’t shrivel into victimhood where we’re certain to attract more bullies.

In this particular drama, I had cast some business people onto my stage, and they had performed a series of inexplicably disrespectful and financially painful acts. I was risking irreversible brain cramp trying to figure out why I wrote this script, and how it served my Highest Good.

“What is the lesson?” I cried. “Where is the blessing?” I knew it was in there, somewhere. Here? No. There? No.

I became still and asked God to join my search. Almost immediately, I was led to the bookcase that holds my treasured spirituality library. Days earlier, while in a full-blown Virgo snit, I had lovingly alphabetized the entire collection. I was a proud mama, looking at my babies neatly organized on the shelves.

I saw my arm reaching into the “R” section. It pulled out a book that I had rushed to order months earlier: The Disappearance of the Universe by Gary Renard. It had been recommended to me by a scholarly young minister at my church.

Once the book arrived, it traveled from my office desk to my bedside table. Then it inched farther away to the bedroom loveseat. Finally, it found a resting place in the coveted “R” section of the spirituality bookcase. The title hardly sounded as if my answer would be within its pages; but hey, it was practically the only place I hadn’t looked, so I turned back the cover.

Eight hours later, more than a quarter of the way through the 400-page book, I detected that I was edging closer to my answer, beginning to see light in the distance.

There were a lot of “uh huh” moments as I recognized some of the same spiritual principles and insights I’d been given while writing EARTH Is the MOTHER of All Drama Queens. Dramas in my book were called Dreams in Renard’s. While I had unmasked a whole new world to my readers, he was unveiling an entire new universe.

It was mind-stretching stuff based on A Course in Miracles, another book I had rushed to buy years ago, but didn’t get too far because I didn’t really understand it. Jesus was trying to tell me something vitally important; but when he expressed it in iambic pentameter, this English major’s eyes quickly glazed over.

Renard’s book is a great primer for that meticulous piece of work. But, like the Course, his book is not for everyone, particularly if your view of God is a bit limited. In other words, if in your favorite book, God acts angry, vengeful, and sadistic, and His eternal punishment grossly exceeds any finite human crime, Renard’s book will literally rock your world. It even made mine shimmy a bit; and I think God’s conflict resolution skills, if needed, are infinitely more divine than have been holy recorded.

Not everyone is open to the possibility that the invisible, unchanging spirit of God is real, and that the entire visible, constantly changing physical universe is not. Few can allow themselves to imagine that this physical universe and the dysfunction within it were created by the ego, who tricked us into believing that we’re separate from, rather than united with the Loving Allness that is God. Renard and the Course say we are currently living in an illusion, a dream. Our physical bodies are here, but we are Home with God. Always were, always will be.

If you found it difficult to swallow that morsel, try washing it down with this: What if the ego–the idea of separation from God–keeps us imprisoned in the limited physical world by making us hurt, judge and condemn each other? That way, our belief in separation looks and feels real, and it is constantly reinforced.

Welcome to Hell, dear friends. Now we know why it feels that way.

As Renard explained, in the unchanging world–the real world–everything is absolute. Not so, here in the illusion, the world of drama. Over here, we have things such as “right” or “wrong”. Make no mistake: These are not absolutes; they’re judgments. Judgments are totally subjective.

Pop quiz: Is homicide right or wrong? “Wrong!” you say. Really? Ever heard the term “justifiable homicide”? That just made it right. The truth is, under certain circumstances, we have always justified, supported, and even voted to intentionally kill other human beings–in other words, commit homicide.

So let’s eliminate judgment as a criterion if we’re seeking absolute answers. Instead, visualize someone in an absolutely non-judgmental environment. Almost every minute of the day, she has a choice to make. At this moment, her choice is whether to be honorable or untrustworthy. If she believes that each of us is an individual, she could easily think that betraying someone else’s trust has no real impact on her. After all, in a world of absolutes, there’s no right or wrong; no one is going to judge or condemn her.

If, on the other hand, she believes that she and others are a collective One—part of the Loving Allness that is God—she’s now aware that it’s impossible to hurt someone else without hurting herself. So she bases her chosen actions on whether she wants to hurt herself.

According to Renard and A Course in Miracles, it’s the ego’s illusion of individuality that causes us to make decisions that are not in our true best interest. We unwittingly and repeatedly make decisions that cause pain and chaos–our own.

I frequently nodded my head as I read. Drama Queen Workshops also teach that we are not our bodies, and that whatever you do comes back to you. But I realized that I hadn’t connected that truth to the We-Are-One dot. In the “real” world, whatever we do is literally being done to us in “real time”. Duh.

My heart raced as I tried to figure out what to do with this revelation: If I believe that nothing is outside of God, that everything IS the omnipresent God, I must connect the dots that lead to the inevitable conclusion that we are ONE. There is no “us” and “them”. There is no “other”. The people who anger us, disrespect us, betray us, lead us to war, bankrupt our pension systems, pollute our environment, and play starring roles in our deeply disappointing dramas are US! Yikes!

“Is this my answer ?” I screamed. “The ego has duped, hoodwinked, and bamboozled me into pointing the finger away from myself. I’ve been judging and condemning others for one thing or another, only to find out now that they are ME?” What was I supposed to do with that?

Set yourself free. Let it go. Stop judging. It’s just an illusion. None of it happened in the real world, anyway. So forgive. Forgive yourself.

Forgive. The word leaped off page after page of Renard’s utterly profound book.

I didn’t resist. Hey, I’m a huge fan of forgiveness. It’s one of the four DQWorkshop principles. There are Forgiveness Coupons available for download on the workshop website. But I had thought that we were forgiving individuals: ourselves first, then the “other” person. Renard was insisting that there’s only one of us.

Jiminy Christmas! I tried to squeeze myself into this one-size-fits-all garment. I closed my eyes and “called” in the last two actors who threw all the props on my stage into disarray. As a card carrying No-Drama Queen, I had already forgiven them. But now I was being called to take my forgiveness to a celestial level. I not only had to see God in them and see no wrong in them, I had to BE them.

I resisted the urge to hold my nose. (These actors really did stink up the place). I tried to fully focus on the truth that forgiveness is the miracle that paves my path back Home.

“You’re choosing to stay asleep in the illusion or awaken to reality. Choose the ego or God,” I coached myself, citing the only two choices Renard and the Course offered.

Next step: dress rehearsal. I must practice miraculous forgiveness with every actor and every act in the illusion that gets on my nerves. I’m sure I’m going to script plenty of opportunities to get this required practice, until I evolve from conscious forgiveness incompetence to unconscious competence.

It’s like the first time behind the wheel of that bright red Comet Caliente with the three-speed gear shift on the column, my Dad’s present to me during my senior year in high school.

Now my Father has given me another gift. This time, I’m taking it on the road to Forgiveness: The Final Frontier.