05 - Emotions & Ethics ; The Intellect by Paul Brunton

Author:Paul Brunton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-10-03T19:20:27.896000+00:00

5.6 Forgiveness

314

The necessity of forgiving others what they have done to us is paramount. Nay, it is a duty to be constantly and unbrokenly practised, no matter what provocation to disobey it we may receive. Our contact with others, or our relation to them, must bring them only good! never bad.

315

To the degree you keep ego out of your reaction to an enemy, to that degree you will be protected from him. His antagonism must be met not only with calmness, indifference, but also with a positive forgiveness and active love. These alone are fitting to a high present stage of understanding. Be sure that if you do so, good will ultimately emerge from it. Even if this good were only the unfoldment of latent power to master negative emotion which you show by such an attitude, it would be enough reward. But it will be more.

316

Noble indignation and just resentment are on an immensely higher level than grossly selfish indignation and greedy resentment. But in the case of the disciple, for whom the scale of moral values extends farther than for the "good" man, even they must be abandoned for unruffled serenity and universal goodwill. To the definitely wicked and the evilly obsessed he need not give his love. But he must give them and all others who wrong him his forgiveness, for his own sake as well as theirs. Every thought of resentment at another's action against him, every mood of bitterness at the other's refusal to do something he wishes him to do, is a crude manifestation of egoism in which, as disciple, he cannot indulge without harming his own self and hindering a favourable change in the other person's attitude towards him. The man who burns with hate against an enemy is, by the fuel of his own thoughts, keeping the fire of the other man's mutual hate alive. Let him remember instead those glorious moments when the higher self touched his heart. In these moments all that was noble in him overflowed. Enemies were forgiven, grievances let go and the human scene viewed through the spectacle of tenderness and generosity. Only by such a psychological about-turn towards goodwill and forgiveness will he open the first door to abatement of his enemy's feeling.

317

Ordinarily it is not easy, not natural, to forgive anyone who has wronged us. The capacity to do so will come to us as understanding grows large enough or as meditation penetrates deep enough or as grace blesses us.

318

If an enemy who is guilty of doing wrong toward him comes to him, whether out of personal need or by the accident of social life, there will be no hard feeling, no bitter thought, no angry word. For the other man, he sees, acted out of what was truth for him, what was valid by his own understanding. Even if his enemy had sought to gain something through injury to himself, then it must have seemed right to the greed in his enemy's ego, which could not then have acted otherwise.

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