The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.  

My dictionary defines “to forgive” as “to give up resentment against or the desire to punish” or “to stop being angry with”.

The Lord’s Prayer says “forgive us our trespasses (or “debts”) as we forgive those who trespass against us (or “our debtors”).  That is to say, forgive those who wronged me, and God will forgive me.  For what?  What will God forgive me for?   Have I wronged others?   Why did I do so?   Why did others wrong me?   Did I play some part in that?

Let us leave this line of questioning for the moment, and look at “sleep”.  In my “sleep”, in my unconsciousness, I say and do harmful things (or to be more exact, my “machine” [the habitual things I say and do without being aware of them] says and does them).   I wrong others in my sleep.  And they wrong me in their sleep.

This is the realization that leads the adolescent to forgive adults, and to become an adult in the process: I realize that adults (especially my parents) could not have been even a tiny bit different.

Yet I hold the idea that this is not true for me.   I could have been different.   If only.    I will be different next time.  The wrongs that came through me in the past might have been otherwise.  Mightn’t they?

This is pure egoism.

When I really understand how I could not have been even a tiny bit different, something shifts in me, something relaxes.  Something forgives.   I see that I could not have been otherwise.

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.   Alden Nowlan

Lou Gottlieb                        11/20/2012

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The meat of this paper is about “doing”.  We believe we choose to think and feel and say and do things.  But careful experimentation shows that this is not so.  However, this discovery is somewhat dangerous.  It cannot be made abruptly, lest we destabilize ourselves.  But little bit by little bit, we can safely discover our complete powerlessness.  This sounds horrible, but in fact is freeing, for we do not have to pretend to ourselves, and lie to ourselves.  We can live more simply.  And occasionally, we can choose (and we can choose love then).

The essence of the paper is about our hypnotic “sleep”.  Just because I remember what I said or did or thought or felt, that doesn’t mean I did it.  And it doesn’t mean I was present when it happened—that would constitute discovering my mechanicality.  Our bodies, with their complex wiring and programming, function in such a way as to make it appear (even to intelligent minds) as if we choose, but really observing ourselves gives us the (at first very disturbing) impression that this is completely false.

Lou Gottlieb                        8/18/2014

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There’s no room for guilt in this view of the world.  Or blame.

Lou Gottlieb                              4/26/2022