True forgiveness, suicidal empathy, and confusing the levels¶
Forgiveness is in the heart and mind, not really the body, although..
Jesus on the cross had a perfect heart and mind, but he suffered excruciating pain and distress while it was happening.
However, after his physical death the body reconstructed because of his pure heart and mind, and his unequivocal connection to God, and because that’s what God had planned.
So, the visceral trigger the predator instills in the prey is not a failure of forgiveness, and although the heart and mind may be mostly still about all this (a having forgiven state), if we were to think that there was some error in reacting this way we would be imposing suicidal empathy on the prey by confusing the levels.
This physical trigger is very literally life-saving.
Christians confuse the levels by saying we’re all equal and should be treated so. And this sounds good and true, but it becomes chaos because the measure is Jesus and to assume everyone is of pure heart and mind like Jesus is here in the physical world - EVEN THOUGH at the divine level this is true - the outcomes are disastrous.
That is why JC in A Course In Miracles says: Equality does not imply homogeneity NOW.
It’s warped forgiveness and it more often feeds evil rather than doing anything to dispel it.
Anyway, back to true forgiveness.
It’s very personal because it is about a pure heart and mind looking out.
You can’t impose forgiveness on anyone, nor insist upon it from someone else, both these approaches are ego.
Imposing forgiveness on someone, I forgive you, would not necessarily have any effect apart from making the one doing the “forgiving” feel better.
Insisting someone forgive us because we assume they should is also, obviously, not going to do anything about our evil-doing.
Because it is so personal, and so universal, my view is the only approach to forgiveness - at this physical level and in this period of history - is for a person to sincerely request it.
This is always going to be a mini-(maybe maxi)-healing and never has to have anything to do with the other party.