Some people have difficulty forgiving themselves. What can they do about it?
“We start by forgiving ourselves. We must realize, and will realize under the tutorship of the Masters and the Christ in the new era, that Divinity is a gradation. We do not forgive ourselves because we have had instilled in us, from childhood, the idea of perfection in behaviour – at every stage from birth upwards; and that we have somehow to be, if we are Christians, like Christ; or if we are Buddhists, like Buddha, and so on – which of course is impossible. We cannot be as these higher Beings are all at once, but we can be like Them in potential. One of the problems for Christians, for example, is that the churches have removed Christ from humanity.
The orthodox teaching down the ages is that the Christ is now sitting ‘up there’ somewhere in Heaven, on the right hand of God, and we can know Him only by the reports of His work in Palestine: how He died for our sins, and so, if we sin we are denying that terrible sacrifice He made, and so on. It is a tremendous pressure of guilt which is inflicted on us, so we cannot forgive ourselves for stealing two prunes.
From infancy this great weight of guilt is put on us. Whereas, the Christ should have been presented by the churches as He is – as a living, acting, working, present Being in the world; a divine man, but divine in exactly the sense that we are divine; only we have it in potential while He has manifested it, perfected Himself and achieved that divinity, which is the goal for all of us. That is the difference between Him and us, and in having achieved divinity, it is the guarantee that we shall also do it, that it is possible for each of us.
So it is easier to be divine and it is easier to be Christ-like than the churches believe, and at the same time it is more difficult. Just to say: “Be like Christ,” or “Be good,” or whatever, does not make it possible; they have not shown the way. They say: “Do what I tell you,” but that is not showing the way.
The Christ will show the way – He will show that “the way to God is a simple path which all men can tread”. It is like that, a simple path which all men can take – religious and non-religious men – those whose way is through politics or economics or education, and so on, not necessarily through religion at all.
The path to God is broad enough to take in all men and women. Some of us know about the imminence of the Reappearance of the Christ; people desperately want the Christ to be in the world, but they are afraid at the very thought. It fills them with awe, and perhaps with fear, and many reject what they most deeply want because they feel that they cannot stand before the Christ as they are, and face that blessed One. They forget that He is the Lord of Love and also the Lord of Forgiveness; and not only that, but that He does not judge.
And so it is with all the Wise Ones. The Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Shankaracharya, the Dalai Lama and all Those who have graced us with Their beautiful Presence over the ages. It is the power of Love and Wisdom that They hold, always seeking to teach humanity the higher vision.”
A message from someone who truly cared for humanity and its path
towards freedom. He has since departed this physical plane of Earth.
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