Journey to Enlightenment Part 01

Author(s): Chitrabhanu, Chetana Catherine Florida, Nirmala Hanke, Raksha Penni Helsene
Publisher: Create Space

Page 90

Fall 1992: Forgiveness Festival
The following are excerpts from Chitrabhanu's message of forgiveness presented August 19, 1992 to an audience at the Doral Hotel, New York City.
Today we are going to meditate on the celebration of forgiveness. Generally people think to forgive is difficult. One has to make a lot of effort to forgive somebody because it becomes part of your thinking and goes deep into the emotions. So forgiveness is considered very much religious. For the philosophy I teach and share - the philosophy of celebration - forgiveness is not a big religious act, it is a dance of life. If you forgive you enjoy your life. If you don't forgive you carry the load, you carry the burden, and you carry the heaviness or bitterness so you don't know what life is. Life is passing by and people are sad because of their heaviness. One man came and he said that he was not enjoying the vibrations of the people who are meditating. He was looking around and he said these people are relaxed, their jaws are not tight, their eyes are not staring, they are relaxing, and they are just sitting as they are, not trying to become anything else. And this man saw that I don't do that thing, I don't enjoy that thing, but the teacher had insight. The teacher knew the vibrations; he experienced the vibrations of the person. So just when he mentioned why are you carrying the sack of stones on your back? You are sitting in the chair, leave it there. So he started thinking. What is the sack of stones? Where are the stones? And then he thought, yes I do. I have the big stone of ego. I have the big stone of resentment to people. I have a kind of deception, pretension to prove to the world I have inside bitterness, and I also see the world everybody is enjoying and I feel heavy. One by one, he started seeing the stones he was carrying on his shoulders. And that is why he was not relaxing....
This philosophy tells you one thing - it is very clear. How can anybody love you if you always become something else to be with them? How can anybody love you for who you are, or for what you are, if you are continuously becoming something else to be with them? And we are always trying to become something else to be with somebody. To be with somebody we try to become something else and at the same time what we are demanding from the people is, why don't you love me for what I am? But we don't think how they can love us when continuously we are becoming something else to be with others. And you are not you. There must be something steady in you in order to receive or you become something else according to another's wishes or demands. It is very deep, continuously working in us and that is why we are not comfortable with ourselves or others. And in this discomfort we are not able to see exactly what the problem is and that we are projecting the problem outside. When you project the problem outside of yourself, what you need is an analyst because he explains your outside problem. Because he does not go in, you don't want to go in, both are playing outside again. It is a big business in America - lawyers, doctors, and analysts. In Asian countries you will not find so many analysts; millions of people don't have as much comfort as you have, but still they are not crazy. You don't find so many mental hospitals, nor so many asylums. In every country I see big hospitals and I ask who are the big executives, big educators, and big doctors. I ask how could they become
On the Wings of Light and Love - 91