BELIEVING, TRULY BELIEVING

Reason is like an officer when the King appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun. -- Rumi

We cannot solve the problems of the mind with the mind. -- The Buddha

We must one day pass beyond discursive thinking and enter into a higher mode of knowing. -- Eknath Easwaran

Guess who is driving herself bat-stuff crazy trying to figure out how to be a forgiving person. How to reason her way To Be...A Forgiving Person.

I read those quotes and I agree with them 100 percent, not for the first or the 41st time, may I say. There is nothing in me that disagrees, nothing that says "Yes, but...." Unfortunately, the names of half dozen people who need them pop up, and my name is not one of the half dozen.

From my eyebrows up I've got how to do it: The minute I have a judgmental thought...real or fancied...mentally say, "I forgive." Do not get into specifics of what I am forgiving, else the specific becomes my hook. Just "I forgive" and let God fill in the rest by forgiving. Could it be any more simple?

Blinding flash of the obvious: It is the part about letting God do the forgiving that my reason resists.

It comes back to believing, truly believing, that God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf. Or as God Calling says on this very date: "For prayer, believing prayer, is based on the certainty that I am working for you and with you and in you."

I'll realize that I am already a forgiving person when God knows I'm ready to realize that...and God is never too early or too late.

Thank you.