There is One Truth:
Forgiveness.

And Truth is One:
Forgiveness.

The righteous and the wicked
both vanish into one
overall humiliation:
Forgiveness.

The friend and the enemy
both melt into one
all encompassing affirmation:
Forgiveness.

The best and the worst
play their roles
in one grand drama:
Forgiveness.

Blaming someone,
blaming one’s self,
blaming something,
blaming everything,
is not the Truth.

There is one Truth:
Forgiveness.

When the Truth of forgiveness dawns
all life philosophies crumble
like a tall building
into a heap of dust.

The Truth of forgiveness
is a scandal to the moralist
and sheer foolishness to the thinker.

But whoever steps off the cliff
of moral and intellectual certitude
into trusting the Truth of forgiveness
becomes mighty and golden,
becomes both servant leader
and wise follower,
seeing the whole picture
with compassion for all.

Forgiveness is not too hard to understand, but it is surprisingly easy to misunderstand.

Forgiveness is not something you have to accomplish or deserve. Forgiveness is always present. It is part of the cosmic face that each Real moment offers each of us—a fresh start. It is always true no matter what has happened, is happening, or might happen. An option for fresh start is being offered to you and me and everyone in this living moment.

The past is real, it cannot be changed, but our relationship to that past can be changed. The first change we may need to consider is our memory of that past. We have forgotten the real past. What memory we do have of the past is actually a memory of what we thought was real at the time, but our thinking was always limited—somewhat true, somewhat flawed.

But however flawed our memory is, the real past is completely gone and forgiven. A fresh start is at hand, perhaps that fresh start will include remembering more of the real past— perhaps to laugh or cry at how mistaken our views of that past have been. Cleaning up such memories may improve our lives, but not the consequence of what our lives have done. These consequences live on as part of our capacity as a human being to alter the course of history. We altered history in every moment of our past living, just as we will alter the course of history in our next action, in our next thinking about our next action. Every motion of our brain or our body alters the course of history in our lives and in the lives of all we touch and through them in the lives they touch forevermore. Such a tragic, yet wondrous karma is very real.

Nevertheless, a fresh start is open before us right now. No admission fee is required, no begging is necessary. And there no price to pay for this fresh start except the consequences of taking on this humiliating new start for our personal programing.

Our understanding of this “forgiveness for a fresh start” makes us more bold in our freedom to take on the consequences. We can make this unprecedented leap into the future, because we know that however this works out, we will be forgiven for a fresh start once again.

Forgiven does not mean excuse or permission to flee from real life or to indulge in our worse impulses, additions, and potential meanness. We will pay the consequences of whatever actions we do. We will remain in need of forgiveness for whatever we do. Believing in forgiveness means believing that there is a fresh start in realism before us, right now and always will be.

Let us also be warned that our delusory choices can become stuck ways of life for our personal being—life ways to which we cling, defend, and never own up or accept their needed forgiveness. Being stuck in unrealism is like an internal bondage or slavery in which we may have become powerless to change. We may find ourselves dependent on Reality and waiting on Reality to expose our unrealism and forgive us again.

We cannot presume that when we have lost touch with Reality, that Reality will find us again—at least not right away. We can drift down the corridor of time for quite a while before the judgement of our unrealism comes up again for review. We need to take care to not mess with Reality, or thumb our nose at Reality, or think we can get away with creating our own reality.

Consider how long the racist patterns of the U.S Confederacy have lived on in the lives of both whites and blacks and all those in between. We are all forgiven for a fresh start in a new world order in which black and white have no more horrific implications than short or long feet. Nevertheless, we cling to familiar patterns of status, privilege, mindsets, and rages, rather than be forgiven for that fresh start that fights the tragic karma of our ongoing culture.

Martin Luther King Jr. helped us find some fresh start on this unrealism, but we still cling to, or slip into backslides to, old familiar untenable patterns of delusion. Many U.S. citizens persist in fanning and fostering our racial delusions for the sake of some other delusion that Reality has not yet vanquished.

So, when and if Reality has found us again, we do well to grab hold of Reality with all its forgiveness and fresh starts before we lose our way again. The pay-out of unrealism is despair in the end, for Reality always wins. And the pay-out of realism, however costly in some ways it may be, is always on the winning side, for Reality always wins.

Lord Reality have mercy on me a sinner, may my estrangements from Thee be healed this day.