Forgiving is a Necessity

White Roses in the Author's Garden

A human being uses many of the planets resources just to live. Humans in prehistoric times began clearing forests for agriculture and then cleared some more to cook that food. Modern humans may not depend on wood fire but make use of many other chemicals substances that harm the planet. The conclusion is that just through the process of living we tend to damage the planet as well as all life that lives on it. An ecologically sensitive human can minimize this damage but not eliminate it.

Aside from the damage to the world at large, humans also end up causing harm to other humans, even near and dear ones, at times intentionally and at other times inadvertently. Small perfectly reasonable actions of ours, at times produce harm, sometimes grave ones to someone we love dearly and any human may realize this through introspection. What is the consequence of all this? A person who believes that his or her intelligence is about the highest one in the universe and there is no intelligence higher than that may ignore all this and move on with a modern philosophy, the past is gone, forget about it; and when sometime later a brick falls on his head he may put it down to bad luck. However there are others who believe that the human intelligence is just a tiny portion of an infinite universal intelligence that brings all actions to account. Every action has an opposite reaction. Some call it God’s law, some retribution, others karma and some merely as a universal balancing and educating mechanism. 

What can a human then do to mitigate the adverse reactions of his adverse actions? Reflecting on ones actions and repenting for wrong ones while resolving not to repeat that helps. On this path of repentance there is no forgetting about the past and living in the moment. Time has to be set aside for this past. Some adverse actions of ours may get mitigated by our good deeds. Thus a person who helps in forestation efforts and planting trees helps to mitigate the damage caused by the trees that have been cut down to produce his food or the carbon dioxide and methane he has added to the atmosphere through his breathing and the cow pharts that produce his milk. Meditation by mystics attempts to cancel their good and bad deeds for which they may be separately rewarded or punished by Nature.

Aside from what has been described, a powerful mechanism that is available to all of us is to forgive those who have wronged and harmed us. When we do that, we set up a similar reaction of being forgiven for our own wrongs. True it seems hard to do that when someone has willfully and intentionally harmed us but then those who trust in the Universal intelligence leave any consequences of that to the Universe while forgetting about that wrong on their own part. They do this for they own well being and not as an act of generosity or goodness. While forgiving may be seen as a noble act by many, for a spiritually enlightened person it is a necessity required for their own peaceful existence in the universe.