By Jach

A Grouping of Questions with Jach’s Replies from the Online Conferences

Jach answers a collection of questions on unique issues on forgiveness — from a discussion about 9/11 to why forgiveness is the ‘mystical something’ that allows magic to work.

Q: Why is the Year of Union starting with an event about forgiveness?

JACH:

I don’t fully know the answer to that, but I suspect it is because the lack of forgiveness is so often what fosters separation. The lack of forgiveness is what cements the discord that prevents so much happiness and success in our individual realities and cements the discord that keeps nations in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East in perpetual states of violence. The Croats and Serbs, for example, have little or no potential for coming together because they each have inflicted so much violence on each other for over 1,000 years and no one is willing to forgive. Separation is fostered, discord is cemented, and there is little or no chance of union. In the Middle East, each side thinks God is on their side. And he is. [s] But no one is willing to forgive.

Now, I am not so naive or so sophomoric as to think they should just sit atop that wall and forgive each other, but my point is that forgiveness is at the root of the discord that prevents union in that region. Now, there are a zillion reasons why. … But I wonder how many of those reasons were spawned by the refusal to forgive so long ago?

In our personal lives, isn’t it similar? And within ourselves, isn’t it just as similar? The discord we feel within ourselves … how much of that could be healed if we would forgive ourselves? How much of it is never fully healed because we refuse to forgive ourselves? So, I think that is a big reason why the Year of Union begins with working with forgiveness.

Another thought: Many of us remember working with Lazaris and forgiveness many years ago … decades ago. We remember crossing those fields and gathering those flowers to present at the altar of forgiveness. And we were successful. Ha! We were mightily successful. [vbg] But, you know, we have changed and grown. We have evolved our perspective and our perception. We see through different eyes now, and we also see with other than our eyes. Likewise, we hear with different ears and with other than our ears. The observing and measuring devices are different now; the reality we observe and measure is different now. And with our different perspective and perception, there are things to forgive that we couldn’t have even seen or heard so many years ago when forgiveness was so fresh at hand.

So a new us, well-seasoned and matured, returns to forgiveness in our search for union. The enlightened us who can hear the music, a metaphor that Lazaris uses, and who has matured with a sense of justice and compassion, comes to revisit forgiveness. That’s another reason why the Year of Union [2004] begins so. Also, as the title of the workshop suggests, forgiveness is the miracle of magic. To me that means that no matter how proficient we are with technique, no matter how much magic we know, choice is at its core, its heart, but it is forgiveness that is the mystical something that ‘allows’ or ‘makes’ magic work. Choice is the active agent, the yeast, of change, but forgiveness is the active agent, the yeast, of magic. And that’s another reason why, I think. [s]

Q: I wondered if you could talk about forgiveness around the events of 9/11; I found myself feeling that even with the recent success, there is still a sense of failure for creating this in the first place, and forgiveness seems like a key to preventing future attacks, but I know it isn’t a guarantee. Do you have any thoughts about this?

JACH:

Well, if we view ourselves as failures, then the potentials of punishment are not too far behind, are they? I mean, we have been conditioned to believe that punishment should be meted out for failure, right? So I see what you mean about forgiveness being so important. But more than to avoid punishment, it seems that forgiveness is a critical antidote for judgment.

Did we fail? Frankly, I don’t think so. I think we created incredible and miraculous success around the horror of September 11. There are people who are going to create the nightmare. And there are those who will come close to the edge of that nightmare. Was September 11 a part of the nightmare? Well, for some, I suppose it was. For others it may be an ingredient or the beginning of a chain of events that will become their nightmare, I don’t know. But I do know that there will be a nightmare for those who create it. And I know that the genuine threat of negativity will, in fact, be genuine.

We are magicians; we are not perfectionists. Ours is to change the reality in compliance and in accordance to our will, love, and imagination. Sometimes … more often, that is anticipatory magic. Sometimes it is reactionary magic. And when the events of September 11 happened, we went to work to change the reality in compliance and accordance to our wills, our loves, and our imaginations. I think we were incredibly successful.

That said, I do have the space to understand that others feel as if they failed. [s] Okay. And forgiveness is critical to assuage or dissolve the judgments that we would make around and about failure. See, it’s not that failure really breeds punishment or that failure really deserves punishment. We have been conditioned to expect or believe or even to want punishment when it comes to failure, but I think that’s more associated with avoiding responsibility.

I mean, if we are punished for our failures, we call that taking responsibility. Maybe it is, but often such punishment is avoiding genuine responsibility. Well, my point is that punishment is not inherent in failure. But punishment is inherent in negative or constricting judgments. To quote Lazaris from so many years ago, ‘Judgments hurt.’

So I think the forgiveness is necessary to dissolve judgments made about September 11. Without it, yes, we could punish ourselves with future acts that come closer to our own world. Or we could create realities that involve our personal terrorists or our personal nemesis. So forgiveness is critical.

For some, it may be related to a sense of failure, as you point out. For others, it may be related to fear. For me, I don’t feel as though I failed, but I do feel fear. Or I have felt it. Fear about the future … fear about the chain reaction … fear about the negative alchemy that can attend terror and can build within the field of terror. So I have felt fear and I have worked to forgive myself for giving sway to it.

I suppose this ties into the question about lifting resonance. I forgave myself for slipping into the fear resonance. My response was not to become brazen or cavalier. My response was to forgive myself. See what I mean? [s]

Q: Hi there, Jach [s]. From time to time Lazaris has mentioned forgiving the unforgivable and mending the unmendable. Would you mind talking a bit about that? Thanks for this conference!

JACH:

Lazaris first talked of the unforgivable when he talked of abundance. One of the reasons why we do not create abundance even when we know how and when we have every opportunity to do so is because there is that something that is unforgivable within us. It’s not true for everyone, but for some of us, it is what stops us from being truly abundant.

What I found interesting in all that was that the unforgivable doesn’t necessarily stop us from being successful, but it can stop us from being abundant. It was then that I really began looking at the difference between being successful and being abundant. And I can see how a person can create success and how a person could work magic and still hold on to the unforgivable in them. But to turn success into abundance and to turn magic into a confident magician’s life could be severely hampered by the unforgivable. I began looking for it in myself.

Lazaris next talked of the unforgivable during the November Culminating Weekends last year. Part of the New Magic from beyond the threshold involves healing what needs to be healed. For some, that is healing the delusions that they still carry with them; for others, it involves healing the broken alliances. The broken alliances are what account for the unforgivable within us.

Lazaris pointed out that the unforgivable often is *not* some hideous thing that would shock the world. Often it is something that others would and could readily forgive. But it is unforgivable in us because in the event or the deed, an alliance was broken. Or maybe several alliances were broken. Obviously, Lazaris was referring to spiritual alliances. He has talked of these broken alliances and of forgiving the unforgivable more recently when he spoke of finding lost dreams – an evening discussion.

For me, the key is in the concept of broken alliances. I knew that there was that sense of the unforgivable in me but I couldn’t find anything that would warrant such a strong and imprisoning decision. But when I looked for broken alliances, bam. It all fell together.[g]

Within the unforgivable was shame, as well. Not infant or child shame, and not adolescent shame, either. It was adult shame. And with it came the need to fix it before I could be forgiven. Strangely, it was a matter of character and integrity … or so it seemed.

It would be improper to be forgiven for this thing, I thought, until it is fixed. Ha! Well, when I saw the issue of alliances broken, it became clear. Healing those alliances was easier than I anticipated. And once healed, the forgiveness work that I had already done fell into place. It’s like it was all there (the healing work that I had already done) waiting in potentia. Once I healed (not fixed but healed) those broken alliances, the floodgates opened and the forgiveness fell into place.

To conclude, the phrase Lazaris uses is … ‘The grief that will not end, the unforgiven and unforgivable, and the malady that will not mend.’ I suspect that the issue of broken spiritual alliances is at the root of these, as well. Such broken alliances would be such as an alliance with Soul or with Spirit. It might be an alliance with Higher Self. Or it could be an alliance with our inner child or our Future Self. It could be a broken alliance with God/ Goddess/All That Is.

Q: Jach, could you expand more about forgiveness as a letting go of old ideas and images such as illness and malady? Do you feel there is any limit to this?

JACH:

Well, I am not sure that forgiveness is letting go of old ideas and images. [g] I think that we can use forgiveness …to accomplish this end result … but I don’t think the letting go is forgiveness. Often the forgiveness aspect is to forgive ourselves for holding on to the old ideas and images. When we come to finally admit that that is what we have been doing, we can feel pretty foolish.

We can feel indebted to our Higher Self for indulging us our indulgences for so long. In this case, once we forgive ourselves, then we can let go. I see them as separate activities that call us to separate tasks.

Beyond this, forgiving others may be a critical link. I mean, if we are holding on to those old ideas or old images to maintain a hidden agenda or to maintain a function of blaming them … then that forgiveness would probably have to come first. But even so, then the letting go would follow.

With illness … sometimes we blame our bodies for getting ill … sometimes we blame ourselves. Sadly, in the New Age, there are those who hold severe better-thans about themselves (who are well) and severe less-thans about others (who are ill).

We often buy into that New Age arrogance … sometimes consciously …most often unconsciously. If we do blame our bodies or ourselves, as well as changing the belief about illness, forgiveness would be in order, wouldn’t it?

I refer back to the stages of forgiveness [see Forgiveness I in this section] … if we are in a state of denial or one of blame or pity or one of indignation, then forgiveness seems to be an answer and an issue … our issue and part of our answer. So around illness or another malady … around anything that we sense as failure, there is a role for forgiveness.

Is there a limit? Sure there is. But that limit is not inherent in the forgiveness. I think its power is unlimited. The limits are not inherent in us, either. But they are within the beliefs we choose to hold. I don’t even say within our beliefs … within the beliefs that we choose to hold. And more and more the limits are contained in the choices … the quality of choices we choose to make. Or at least, that is how it seems to me. [vbg]

Q: Why is it so much easier to forgive others but so difficult to forgive ourselves?

JACH:

You know, the answer to that does vary so much with each of us. However, at this point in our growth … when this happens to me … I look at why I don’t want to forgive myself. I mean for someone who knows little about forgiveness the answers may vary, but most of us here know a great deal about it.

So I ask myself why don’t I want to forgive myself … Sure the obvious answer is that I still want to punish myself. That could be true. I also look at this: Am I still wanting to keep others on the hook. What I mean is this … If I forgive myself now, then all is well and the changes can happen and the freedom can come and all is well.

But if I refuse to forgive myself then I am in a less than adult place … I am being less than my true self … I am being less than my ‘more.’ Why would I do that? Why would I do that to me? And why would I do that to others?

This is what helps me get off the difficulty of forgiving myself. Beyond that, I suppose it has to do with belief structures that say it is better to forgive others and better to punish self. [g] Anyway, this is the way I approach it.

Q: How do I know if I really forgave myself or just went through the motions?

JACH:

Well, reality is a nifty feedback mechanism. [g] If any of us have just gone through the motions (motion without emotion as Lazaris would say), our reality will reflect that soon enough. And if we did do the forgiveness … reality will show that.

See, the force of forgiveness has not speed … it is not mass and it is not motion. Forgiveness has not speed. It is or it isn’t. It is a quantum phenomenon. Forgiveness, like change, may not have speed, but it does have size … the size of the change we make … the size of the forgiveness we allow.

There are things that can make the forgiveness smaller in size or larger in size. I think that reality reflects and expresses that nicely. I have found it so.

Also, when the forgiveness is real, it feels freeing. There is an exhilaration and an exuberance … there is a breath … a breath of release or of healing or of something. Perhaps it is called knowing.

As a quick aside … Knowing is something that we think is a big mystery. It is mysterious and it can be mystical, but I think knowing is probably a lot easier than we sometimes think or allow it to be. When we know … we know. When we don’t … we don’t.

It seems to me that the mystery is not about knowing as much as it is about why we will not tell ourselves the truth about knowing. [g]