TO LIVE WITH, BUT NOT ACT ON

My morning's blinding flash of the obvious: Forgiveness, like love, is already within us just waiting to be used. It is folly to ask for God's forgiveness...God is love and cannot withhold or supply conditionally any good thing.

My reasoning mind's take on that: Our ego cannot, is incapable of, giving over to forgiveness.  To our ego, forgiveness equates to losing, which, in fact, it is...losing our resentment, losing our resistance to love.

I wonder if all of the within goodnesses, i.e., love, kindness, patience, forgiveness, et al., aren't controlled by God's grace. They cannot be called into use by self will for self will is for self. Even with the highest sounding motives, self is the driver...I think I hear echoes of the long-ago advice, "Get out of the driver's seat."

Forgiveness of self cannot be realized through self determination. A self-determined objective, however, is the basis  for our decision to give over, to surrender, to accept God's will, whatever and whenever that may be, as the only way to forgiveness of self and others.

It seems to me forgiveness only comes when we give up all hope of reaching, attaining, our desire to forgive. We finally accept that we will simply have to live with, but not act on, our sense of self being wronged. Then we are unblocked and grace can rush out, freeing us from our resentment, our hatred...and that particular sense of self being wronged is finally realized as a necessary factor in our life's search for peace, for love.

Thank You.