Welcome to the Additional Material page for The Energy Of Forgiveness, Chapter 2.
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Have you observed situations where love is more powerful than fear? List two or three examples out of your experience.
Have you observed situations where fear has produced a result that was not what was expected or wanted? List two or three examples.
Have you observed situations where fear produced a result that was harmful? What were they?
What does your spiritual tradition teach about God: how does God relate to love? What does it teach you about how to live your life?
What does the word grace mean to you? How would you compare that to the definition as given in “The Energy Of Forgiveness?”
When you want or need something, what means do you use to get it? Which paradigm does that fit better, Control-Power-Fear or Love-Grace-Trust?
Have you observed others using Control-Power-Fear?
Have you observed others living by Love-Grace-Trust?
Try, at least for a day, to smile at people you meet even if just passing by. How do they respond? If you’re up to it, ask a few of them how they felt when you smiled at them. It would be especially useful to ask someone much later in the day, or even the next day: how did your day change after we exchanged smiles yesterday?
Do you think you could trust someone to do (or not do) something, knowing that they might not live up to the trust? How would it be to trust them anyway? How do you develop trust in a child?
I used the word “imbibed” in this chapter. The word “imbibe” is sometimes used to mean “drink an alcoholic beverage,” but it really means just “to drink.” It can also mean to “absorb or assimilate” as in ideas or knowledge. The context that I used the word implies absorbing or assimilating a half-truth, but it means more than that. The symbolism is that when you drink something you are taking it into your body – it becomes part of your body. It becomes part of who you are. The idea is that someone who has “imbibed” a half-truth has taken it for the truth. It becomes reality for that person, part of who they are, even though it is not truth – it is not real. So, their reality is flawed. Imagine that you are using a map to get yourself from here to there. But the map has an area that is mixed-up and full of errors. If you happen to stumble into that area of the map, you will likely get lost, like the band of dwarves and hobbits. You may not even be able to find your way back to the accurate part of the map, because the map errors may lead you further and further astray. This is a difficult situation to recover.
List a few half-truths that you’ve seen or heard. Have you discovered yourself believing a half-truth? What was it? Describe the process of realizing that it was a half-truth: how did it feel, and how did you recover?
Have you tried to “enlighten” someone who has “imbibed” a half-truth? How did they respond? Were you able to help them realize the error?