According to me, all spirituality stems forth from one's belief that in reality the individual is the energy, the spark, the sigh of The Creator and thus in reality, each one of us embodies Divinity in varied degrees of slumber.
So it all begins with the realisation or conviction of one being the spirit energy rather than matter and that the former is a process of eternalness, while the latter is a mirage of permanence.
The second important realisation comes forth from the firm belief that God is Just and God is noble and thus God cannot be partial or unfair.
Thus, we are energy rather than matter and that God exists and that God does not take sides and to make certain no sides are taken God does not intervene in either the process or the ramification of one's thoughts, words and deeds.
If you believe in God, then inevitably the concept of Karma has to follow.
What is Karma? As you sow, you shall reap. Sow weed and you are going to get a beautiful yield of...weed. All that we reap is the culmination of what we have sown. God has got nothing to do with the sowing or the reaping. S(H)e watches in aghast as we go about cutting our own feet with supreme daftness.
Thus, all that we experience in the form of discomfort or calmness, grief or joy, wealth of various kinds or poverty of all kinds, is the harvest we reap. Yes, Karma and the future are fluid, dependent on the use of whatever Free Will one still has left in the terribly depleted spiritual reservoir. It is a complicated business and many times one wants to finish off with the stinking mire of give and take and the Karmic web, so we try to take on as much as possible to be worked out as quickly as bearable.
Now if everything is about either reward or cleansing and balancing, then in reality the concept of repentance and seeking absolution should take center stage.
It is actually simple. All ramifications of ill advised use of Free Will, leads to having one's rather ludicrous nose rubbed into hard and thorny grounds as well as some dork nailing the family jewels to the floor. It is exceedingly painful and terribly humbling. I would have used more poetic and appropriate words to describe the process but then each one of us has already gone through this mind numbing process and thus why rub salt to the battered body.
Nine out of nine times, usually we are paying for our actions that have caused others pain. I mean I can't think of anything more damning than to cause pain to others or oneself.
Yes, I am sure there must be other ways of truly messing up one's Karmic balance sheet but I do not think that anything can get one's scale heavier than when hurting others. The intensity of us causing pain may range from mild to heartlessness, but more than often we are being cleansed, thrashed, mauled and have one's sanity clinically amputated due to the pain and grief and hurt and heart ache we have caused others, somewhere down one's marathon, through life times of self centeredness, weakness and stupidity.
We all call ourselves spiritual but the fact is when going through our own hell, how many times have we ever wondered that what must have we done and to whom must we have done wrong, for one to go through such harrowing grief and pain. If I am suffering and God exists, and God is Just, thus I am being cleansed of all the Karmic sludge which I have carried with me, and most of it must have come from hurting others. If somebody breaks my heart or deceives me, if justice has been denied to me, if my children are taken away, if I have been manipulated, if I have been wronged, then if were to believe in the laws of Karma, which is the very foundation of eternal life, then I have broken hearts, I have deceived, I have floundered and manipulated in the past.
Our Karmic debt can only be this heavy if we have messed up this bad. Why else would one have his or heart yanked out metaphorically, in spite of the individual, in this life time behaving like a boy scout. And I have begun thinking of all of this and very often sub consciously my heart has gone out to all those who I have hurt, knowingly or unknowingly; those I have caused pain, those who I have deceived and broken their trust and most importantly their heart and I am ashamed...not wiser just ashamed....and I have begun to seek their forgiveness.
Now I know the confession box or booth is as therapeutic to the earnest and the hypocrite but if an individual is truly in the heart wringing process of repentance, then I believe the prayer of forgiveness and the process of repentance can release one from the bonds of hurt, pain and hate that one shares with others, carried forward from and for lifetimes.
Now this is how I think it works. First understanding that obviously we all have messed up often through the journeys we have walked about in self centered smog. Now, we have hurt others. Yes, others have hurt us. We have wronged and been wronged. We have deceived and been deceived. But where does all this end. I hurt you. You hurt me in some other life time. May be you have hurt me a little more and thus now I seek justice and thus in the next life time I want to dish out whatever justice the books of accounts can hand over to me. So I again hurt you...laws of Karma state that there has to be zero accounts left....but so often the accounts never balance....to be carried forward in the next bloody lifetime....and this crippling dance of hate continues.
What if one wants to step out from this dance? We do not know how many accounts are floating about waiting to smack us in the face. The concept of repentance and seeking forgiveness in such a scenario becomes truly important.
When you in earnest begin to feel horrible with just the notion of having hurt and deceived and troubled others, been slanderous, bad mouthed, spread malicious lies and gossip, broken hearts and trusts, in this life time or any, one begins to bleed from within and the first step towards freeing yourself from this web of hate commences.
The bleeding is good. Bad blood has to be drained out of one's being. The dirty water has to be removed from the vessel, the vessel needs to be cleaned and then one can use the vessel to fill fresh water to quench one's thirst. This cleansing can begin only through repentance and seeking forgiveness.
So what does this process of repentance and yearning for mercy truly achieve? Well, first and foremost, it makes one realize that what a stupid worm one has been, thus triggering this strange alien emotion, called humility, which slowly but surely seems to have gone out of circulation. True humility comes from knowing, we all are the same, in varied hues of spiritual evolvement or degradation.
So when one repents and seeks pardon for one's sins of omission and commission, and truly means and feels it, one is operating from compassion, selflessness and thus this has come forth from the Higher Self. Just as it has come from our Higher Self, our true repentance reaches the Higher Self of all those who we have hurt. Vibrations attract. All those we are entwined with through the bonds of Karma, our auras are connected and entwined too. Like a complex electrical power box, so many wires, each wire oblivious of their connect with the other wires, but all working in unison, in one circumference of one's usage or destiny.
So our Higher Self seeks forgiveness and the vibrations of forgiveness, a cry of repentance is sent out to the Cosmos and it is reaches all those antennas connected with one's Karmic satellite and thus one's plea of mercy is felt and heard and slowly acknowledged by the Higher Self of those we have done wrong; and slowly the bond of hate and negativity and anger and seeking revenge and justice, starts to diminish and then slowly a new bond of compassion sets in.
I have seen it work with many people and numerous folks have come back to narrate strange stories of reconciliation and calmness amongst those who were once a source of serious discomfort and indigestion and ulcers.
But you truly need to mean it and feel it. Not just an exercise to worm oneself out of a difficult situation.
One's prayers are heard and so is the sigh of repentance and seeking forgiveness.
So you have the Higher Selves going about with their song and dance but I also believe that one's intentions touches a chord with the Archangels and spirit workers or Light warriors and guides and guardian Angels, who then intervene and sort of knock sense into the Higher Self of others or into the lower self of the dork crying about for blood and justice and revenge.
I also believe that the ancestors of those who have been wronged, sensing the intention of the one praying for pardon too play a role. They might realise the honesty of the prayer and begin to work their magic on the situation. Blessings are a truly powerful tool to spread peace and compassion. Who knows, if the ancestors are convinced they might intervene and ease the situation which is currently stuck into the abyss of hate and revenge.
But the most important miracle of repentance and seeking forgiveness is that it makes the individual more compassionate and most importantly, more forgiving in his or her own attitude and behaviour towards others. How funny would it be if I pray and go ballistic about seeking forgiveness and in the very next breath I would want revenge and my pound of flesh. It could only mean I am not truly repentant or I am a classified nut job.
When one prays for forgiveness, one acknowledges one's own fragility and that one has feet of clay too. It does wonders to deflate the ego and also creates a calmness within towards the idiosyncrasies of others. And there is so much to seek forgiveness from God, Goddess and Guru too, that no wonder in Zoroastrian prayers, in the Avesta, the prayer of repentance just goes on and on. The translation of the prayer makes you realise how many times in a day we must have saddened one's God, Goddess and Guru, that it breaks one's very heart and makes one want to dig a hole and crawl into it.
Crying out for mercy is an acknowledgment of repentance and desire to start afresh with all those one has been hurtful towards. We mess up countless times each day. So it would be advisable to first seek for forgiveness from one's God, Goddess, Guru, as through our thoughts, words and deeds, we truly hurt The One and also hurt so many, knowingly or otherwise.
The need to seek forgiveness and to repent is also the first step for one's own healing process. It is an acknowledgment to The One, that yes I have messed up, and this has nothing to do with lessening the intensity of the Karmic cleansing, but simply that I am ashamed for having caused suffering to others and Lord please forgive me for I have sinned and done wrong to others and am truly sorry for all those who I have hurt in any manner.
Seeking mercy from The One leads one to seek for forgiveness from all those we have hurt in this lifetime or in the past. It makes one cautious about not adding more weight to the cross one carries of hurt, anger, revenge and hate.
So, one seeks forgiveness from all those who one has hurt and one seeks to forgive all those bastards who have hurt us...just kidding....and one seeks for forgiveness from God, Goddess and Guru.
And then the final sigh....one's begins to seek for forgiveness from oneself too for behaving in such a manner to cause pain to others and thus, causing pain to oneself in the form of Karmic burden to trudge along for life times.
I truly believe this is something we need to do and I also know that this can work wonders on various levels but most importantly to seek for forgiveness from all those we have hurt and seek mercy from The One is the first step towards walking back to our Real Home.
Be blessed always.
Prayer of forgiveness from Baba Sai of Shirdi through Channeling
My God, Goddess, Guru,
I first and foremost seek Your forgiveness for ever hurting You or showing my back to Your Radiance and Love. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
Have mercy on me and my loved ones. Treat me and my loved ones gently though I have sinned through my thoughts, words, intent and actions.
I know I have blundered but I am Yours and thus I plead with Thou to treat me and my loved ones with tenderness and mercy. I do not deserve Your love or Your compassion but I pray for Your love and mercy.
I also seek for forgiveness for all thoughts, words, intent and actions that have caused hurt and pain to any being in this lifetime or in any other, ever.
I repent for my sins done knowingly or unknowingly and thus hurting anybody known (the name of the individual) or not known. I truly seek forgiveness from all. Truly forgive me.
I seek pardon from those I have deceived and from their loved ones and their ancestors too.
If in any way I have caused anybody ruin, I truly seek forgiveness and repent for my thoughts, words, intent and deeds that have caused ruin.
I pray that the bond of hurt, hate, revenge, anger, violence, malice, slander, be removed and a bond of love, peace and compassion prevail.
So be it as I pray, so be it as I plead, so be it as I seek pardon.
Amin.
Ruzbeh N Bharucha is the author of Devi’s Emerald, The Last Marathon, The Aum of All Things, The Fakir Trilogy and The Ramblings of The 110th, RABDA My Sai..My sigh, ANANDA - Musings of the Fakir and The Perfect Ones.
www.ruzbehbharucha.net
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