What if this were true?
“Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
Here is the answer to your search for peace. Here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. Here are all questions answered; here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.â€
If this were true, there would be no more uncertainty about where to focus your efforts or how your time could best be spent. If to forgive is divine, there would be no more to fear, having dedicated yourself to forgiveness as the means and healing as the end.
It is true. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. Therefore, you have the key in your hand. If you need help to learn to use it, google A Course in Miracles, a work dedicated to making the meaning of forgiveness accessible.
Those of us who have learned this lesson are now available to teach it. Ask and receive an answer. Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
G.W.
23 comments
Yeah, no, BS.
There’s no secret to happiness. Do what you like doing just so long as you don’t adversely affect others. That’s the closest you’ll get to ‘happiness,’ then again, if a person does this and still never has friends or a romantic interest or anyone to hang out with they’re going to be lonely, so, probably not quite content.
So you think that we should go around forgiving serial killers and child abductors. What if they kidnapped your child. What then. If you can just ‘forgive’ them you must be a psychopath.
I like your response, persephone. That’s my course, simply do.things I enjoy, and don’t or try not to hurt others in the process. And I fit in the category of one who has always had difficulty maintaining relationships with others.
ACIM is a bunch of bullshit. See the world through rose colored glasses and ignore reality. I think MOST people on this site are fairly intelligent and would be smart enough to see what nonsense ACIM is.
This guy just doesn’t learn.
Forgiveness is not a key everyone holds. Some of us have had it taken away, while others have sacrificed it willingly. Whatever the circumstances, forgiveness is just not possible for some of us.
Do you have any other ‘sage advice?’
Or are you stumped when confronting the notion that forgiveness is NOT the all-encompassing holy-grail you’re trying to portray it as?
It appears that A Course In Miracles is something of a ‘relgious’ type of thing that sucks you into it’s fantasy and makes you a believer, then you have to start ‘evangelizing’ others. Maybe he’s delusional becuse he’s been sucked into it and can’t help himself.
Seems to be a lot of those types of things circulating the cognisphere. (just made that up; combination of “cognition” and “sphere,” means exactly what it sounds like it should!)
It’s just like all those other ‘hack jobs’ trying to make a name for themselves by asserting and insisting that “the answer” is actually something blatantly obvious and simple, that we’ve all just somehow managed to overlook. I have a lot of thoughts on the dynamics of such ideas, but i find it overly complicated to articulate any of it in meaningful ways.
Nothing is ever “just that simple” as suggesting that “forgiveness is the key to happiness.” It’s so absurdly inaccurate and overly-generalized, i can’t help but to refer to it as “stupid.”
IMO, if you can “just forgive,” and that actually makes you feel better… then you must not have been hurt very much by whatever it was. At least, not enough to make it a life-altering problem that required being granted such “sage advise” as being told something so absurdly simple as “forgiveness is the key to happiness!” is “the answer” to whatever is wrong, and will somehow make the results of the unjust affronts all better.
Calling it “stupid” isn’t even enough. It deserves to be incessantly blasted, until people stop using such tactics. It’s infuriating.
The truth is this: when it comes right down to it, the real “key” is in the favors granted to you by others. If people are unwilling to give what you need, and you are unable to take it from them, or create it out of nothing: you will go without. And as anyone who has ever faced REAL problems will tell you: going without, is not a life anyone wants, and is not compatible with happiness.
Zeitgeist
The current zeitgeist is all about marketing hype noise.
The most important thing we all need to be doing, is eliminating all that “noise,” and “curating” information, so that we can learn what we need, when we need it, without all the BS that wastes time and distracts everyone, causing wasted life and unsolved problems, not to mention immeasurable excess suffering for countless individuals.
Eliminate suffering by solving problems by getting to the source and seeing things as clearly as possible, and then applying critical thinking from multiple angles, and selecting the most effective and efficient solution from what is actually available, while hopefully allowing for any sub-optimal or temporary solution to be improved later, should better options become available.
The “key to happiness” is fixing the fucking problems that cause people to be unhappy. And there are a lot more of them than any amount of “forgiveness” than ever hope to resolve.
How’s that for blatantly obvious and overlooked?
Clevername – Agreed, 100%.
I was just reading today about how potatoes changed the world. Seriously, potatoes.
If you’re Irish or Lithuanian then potatoes played a significant factor in your heritage, sure.
forgiveness is for yourself, not the person you forgive. it eases the heart of emotions that are heavy to carry over a lifetime, but it is not the key to happiness. without forgiveness there will be karmic debt of unresolved issues. new lives will be required to complete the cycle. forgive and release the karma.
Potatoes changed my world just the other day!
Someone brought me some leftover fries and i did things to them; naughty things… those potatoes were potating all over themselves.
Hmm. What sort of naughty things can one do with fries? The mind reels considering the possibilities. Did you put them “somewhere”?
hehe. Nah, but seriously, if you have spare time read about how potatoes changed the world. It really is fascinating. The world will never be the same.
@Persephone; All of Europe, actually, and a huge reason why so many Irish emigrated to the New World.
sorry, karma is BS. It doesn’t actually exist.
What does, however, exist, is the fact that effects have causes, actions have consequences, and if you make an enemy who can make your life difficult, they will. Unless they have a more beneficial reason to refrain from doing so.
You can preach “forgiveness” all you want, but you’re missing the point: it’s not always possible. Stop harping on the same non-solution, and look deeper into the problems, or your solutions will remain laughably irrelevant, and people like me will not respect anything you say, because what you’re saying is inferior, and yet you still believe you’re correct.
Hey you guys!! Check out the time stamp!!
The time change occurred while you were on a suicide site!!
Groovy.
commenting.just cause i wanna be a part of this : (
so you’re telling me i have to live that last hour of my life /again/?
****.
It’s weird. “Potatoes changed my life” at 1:53 AM on November 3rd according to clevername, then the next comment was at 1:00 AM, also on November 3rd. Someone has a time machine or the time changed.
*cue Twilight Zone music*
Haudi Kimmm.
Ah so this site is in the Eastern time zone? I always wondered if it changed for everyone. Guess not.
You know what i think?
It’s the other way around.
To say that “forgiveness is the key to happiness,” is just absurd and foolish.
But if we flip it the other way…
“Happiness is the key to forgiveness.”
Now that’s actually somewhat accurate.
You can forgive anyone for anything, if you’re happy.
Nope. I can’t forgive anyone for deliberate and repeated acts of injustice towards other human beings.
I’m gonna do it again. Watch.
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is the way it is typically said…
But actually, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence.
Let’s flip it:
“Evidence of absence is not absence of evidence.”
Now it’s accurate.
I know what it has done for me and I see that the power to forgive has never been denied me, though I had thought it was. Forgiveness is the remedy prescribed by the Master, seventy times seven, as there is a learning curve. It is the underlying precept of the Golden Rule, and implicated in the Beatitudes. If there is an need for authority, there it is. But it is more than platitude. Forgiveness is a practical approach to the goal of wholeness. Ultimately, it always overcomes fear. G.W.