The Wisdom of Epinoia is Forgiveness.

The most important notion in my book, The Wisdom of Epinoia, is forgiveness. What I tried to do was offer examples of how to forgive the unforgivable. We often get stuck in our egos on the idea of forgiveness. We tell ourselves and others that what was done is unforgivable. “I can never forgive you for what you’ve done” is an all too common statement. That or: “I’ll forgive you, but I’m not going to forget what you’ve done.”

Our courts, families, friendships and acquaintances are filled with people pointing a finger and doing everything they can to hold someone else accountable for their actions. The problem with this is, when we hold someone else accountable for their actions, we are building a cage to hold our own grief. To put someone in prison is to hold ourselves in prison as well.

As an example, there is a person who has gone to every parole hearing to keep every member of the Manson family in prison. During the last hearing, he is quoted as saying: “I had no one to speak for me,” claimed Martley, 81, whose cousin Gary Hinman was tortured and killed by Manson followers on July 27, 1969. “I felt like no one cares about the victim’s families anymore. We are totally forgotten.”

And it’s easy to say: “Yeah, I get it! He should be angry. He should hold on to that grief in honor of his cousin who was killed needlessly by this crazy group of people. 

But Epinoia would ask: “To what end? Where does holding this grief for more than 44 years get you? Will that recover your cousin Gary? Will that recover your years? Will it heal you in the end knowing that a murderer died in prison? And what of all those years you spent going back and forth to the hearings? Can that time be recovered and better spent? Holding this grief has not held your family or loved one in honor, but has forfeited your life to hold onto grief that could have been left aside long ago.”

For The Ego, Forgiveness Creates Sin

The way an ego mind set offers forgiveness is to first acknowledge the crime and make it real. Next is to project out that the victim of the crime would never do the thing that was done to them to anyone else. In this proclamation, they are presented as completely innocent, and the criminal is guilty and should be ashamed. And finally, the ego wants to be a better person by offering a gift of forgiveness, even and especially where it isn’t deserved.

It’s the ego’s way of thinking that as the victim, I have a place in heaven because I’m better than the person who stole from me, or raped me, or murdered me or a loved one.

What this thinking does is, it makes the crime into a sin, which makes the crime unforgivable. It makes the crime real, and tarnishes the very soul of the person who committed the crime. It also offers the victim what the ego thinks of as a clear pass into heaven. It states: “God, you see what they did to me, right? By any comparison, I have done nothing that even comes close to that terrible, terrible act.” And Charles Manson and his followers are an excellent and unequivocal clear example of sin in its most obvious form.

Hitler is another perfect example of human sin. It’s easy to see how tarnished people like that can be. Those others who would commit crimes against humanity in a way that can never be forgotten are held onto to make the ego feel better by comparison. It becomes something that God will hold up on judgment day and say: “Here, these are people who belong in hell for all eternity. I hate them, and you have been correct to compare yourself to them.”

What the ego calls sin is simply a mistake (and a cry for love).

The only problem with the line of egotistical thinking is that it makes sin real, and sin isn’t real. It also makes forgiveness impossible because it creates an imbalance in the mind of God. If God created Hitler and Manson and others like them, God would need to take responsibility for creating creatures capable of being sinful. God, then, would not be perfect love. God would be flawed.

And before you go off on free will, think for a moment, you have free will. And if you discovered there was no god in heaven looking down on you, would you change your behavior knowing that you could not rot in hell? If not, why not? Did God make you different from those others? If so, why? Why would God make someone good and others evil? Why would god create a being only to hate them?  Or are they the same but just not as strong willed as you are?

To hold up the free will card in this instance is a way for our ego-style thinking to keep us in fear, and to make God irresponsible for Its creation. The fact is, the Universal Creator didn’t change Its mind about anything. We are all still as God created us. Forgiveness without sin is the way to accept that fact and heal our mind from the ego hold over us.

True Forgiveness Without Sin

If you’re reading this in a body with human eyes (and if you’re not, reach out to me, I’d love to talk to you), then you might be thinking how can this be? We see crimes all the time. If it bleeds it leads, right? Murder, rape, bombings, stealing and beatings are constantly taking place. If you don’t see that stuff happening, you’re simply not paying attention. That shit is real. I see it with my own eyes.

But let’s think for a moment about The Wisdom of Epinoia on Forgiveness. From the perspective of sinlessness, forgiveness is not imbalanced. Forgiveness doesn’t make one person better than another. What it does instead is to see the insanity that is being projected, and allows the Holy Spirit to correct the mistake. To simply ask the Holy Spirit to show you how to see this differently, for what it is is enough to change your mind about all the bullshit you see in the world.

The best way I can put this is: Don’t make any of this crap real. When we make attacks and crimes real and cling to them like a sinking boat in a tarpit, we make up sin. I would say create sin, but the only creation in the Universal Awareness is what God has created. We’re just making all this stuff up. And sin isn’t real. Sin does not exist in the mind of God.

Attack Is Never Warranted

The ego justifies attack with more attack. When someone punches you, punch back. When someone steals from you, put them in jail and get your stuff back. If someone rapes you, punish them. This is how the ego mind thinks. Attack attack with attack. An eye for an eye.

Sure, forgive as the better person, but never forget the criminal in our eyes, and never, ever allow them to recover. That’s why the ego loves hell. It’s eternal punishment for those bastards who did us wrong. And the ego mind has long lists of people it hates and can’t wait for judgment day to have God look down on them and cast them aside like the trash we know them to be.

But to the eyes of God, nothing has happened. Nothing has changed. God created only the extension of Love, and each of those so-called criminals (each of us included) are no exception. To God, there are no levels to insanity. You can’t be just a little crazy. If you wake up in the morning and see yourself in the mirror, you’ve bought into the entire madness.

Three Steps To God’s Own Forgiveness

Step One – Ask yourself: Why did I lose my peace over this?

Your inner peace belongs to you.  If you find yourself feeling anything other than love, you have made the mistake of allowing your mind to wander off into insanity.

Step Two – Take responsibility.

If you see it and think it is real, you have to own what you see. We are all a part of the craziness in the world. It is really that simple. No matter what happens, remind yourself: I cannot blame a brother or sister for something I would not blame myself for.

Step Three – Realize forgiveness is for yourself.

When we forgive, we are forgiving ourselves. It’s not the other person we are forgiving. Once we take responsibility for what enters our minds, it’s a relief from the insanity that we bear witness. When this happens, ask the Holy Spirit a simple question: Show me how to see this differently.

For more examples of forgiving the unforgivable, read The Wisdom of Epinoia. In my book, I pull on the absolute worst things in the ego mind and show how they can be forgiven.