On Forgiveness

By Way of Jesus Christ and Atheist Sigmund Freud

(“I’m sorry; please forgive me; we’ll be right with you; please hold on”); and on and on and on. Are you as sick and tired of it as I am? They, in their greed for their end-of-year-bonuses, are too cheap to hire an extra phone receptionist or two. They would rather keep hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, and keep customers and potential customers waiting.

Don’t even try to complain! You will get nowhere, as has happened to me. As a personal client of JP Morgan Chase for three or four years recently (yes, I did say “personal”) with about a half a million in various accounts, I called my “Personal” banker at least thirty times during business hours, and never once, NOT once, did he ever pick up the phone. Yes, he returned my call at 5:00 pm or the next day, but that totally ruined the spontaneity of my thoughts and questions.

But let me tell you how this story relates to the words of Jesus and theories of the unconscious of Sigmund Freud. And we know this to be true about good old Sigi from his multiple books and essays on the unconscious and how it affects our health and our lives.

That is why we ‘MUST’ forgive as Jesus told us, and forgive honestly and earnestly. Why? Because when we do not forgive someone for their indiscretion, big or small, it remains in our unconscious mind, like a thorn in our finger or foot that can evolve into a major infection or some form of ‘disease.’

Why did Jesus tell us to love our enemy? Was he naive? Did he have ADHD? So, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. History rolls on, and we hear the echoes of Jesus from others like Lincoln, in his famous words, “with malice toward none, with charity for all...” And just about 100 years later, a nanosecond in the annals of history, the Beatles, who did as much to transform our social landscape as the moon landing transformed our technology, when they sang the spiritual phrase, “I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.”

Freud and Jung and a few others, who popularized the soft science of Psychoanalysis and whose keystone was the unconscious mind, truly hit the nail on the head of why Jesus implored us to forgive our enemies. As we will see, it is not always easy, but it sure is worth it.

The first hard proof we have of the Unconscious Mind comes to us from individuals under the influence of hypnosis. In this conscious state of being, grown adults in their fifties can easily recall the events of and the people who attended their fifth birthday party.

So why did Jesus Christ tell us to ‘love’ our enemies? Because in some way, He knew, 2000 years before Freud and his apostles (Jung was Freud’s Peter), and as Peter denied Jesus three times, Jung denied Freud, an avowed Atheist, when he included the spiritual in the make-up of the human psyche.

Jesus told us to love them because if we hated them, we would be instilling negative hate in our unconscious mind, and we can only reach God through love. When we hate, we drive out love (and God) from our minds, and our soul/spirit remains lost, wandering alone, lonely with our ego among the walking dead of the world.

We must ask ourselves repeatedly, “Is he, or she, or they worth it?” That by holding onto hate of our enemies, we lose sight of God in our conscious and unconscious mind. We pay a terrible price and get nothing in return. And notice that Jesus does not tell us to hang out with these people. He wants for us what He attained for Himself, a conscious and unconscious mind completely liberated from negativity, fear, hate or sin. He knew that the original meaning of the word ‘sin’ was ‘to miss the mark’ about what life is all about, ‘love!’

And any negativity in our unconscious mind not only causes a gap between ourselves and our Creator but will eventually seep into our bodies, causing heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and hundreds of other medical conditions that shorten our lives.

Think about it, friend! Because the medical and insurance industries don’t want us to be aware of what Jesus said and meant.

And notice that neither Jesus nor Freud tell us that we should ‘forget’ the harm that was done to us. To ‘forgive’ in Aramaic meant ‘to let go of. But to ‘forget’ is something very different indeed. Remember the proverb, “Those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it?”

Let’s shovel a bit deeper down here for the good of us all. Psychologically speaking, what is a ‘heart attack’ but an attack upon oneself? And what is cancer but a slow suicide during which our own body destroys itself? And why do so many women get breast cancer? The breast represents the milk of life, and where else would any negativity in one’s mind cause harm to a woman’s body than to her breasts? And why do so many men get prostate and bowel cancer? It is from holding so much of their emotions within themselves or from not being comfortable with sharing and releasing their emotions. Someday our medical schools might pay more attention to the words of Jesus and Freud.

As far as me, I have no doubt that unforgiveness plays a very important role in every medical diagnosis, from migraines to ulcers, from cancer and heart attacks, from arthritis and multiple sclerosis to tremors and on and on and on.

ATTENTION MUST, AND SHOULD, BE PAID TO THIS!