Forgiveness

Questioner: I was reading something that Wayne Dyer wrote, that if you don't get past forgiving and resentment, you can forget about getting to a higher spiritual level. How do you know when resentment is resolved, or how do you know that you've forgiven?
Abraham: We like to tease everyone, especially him [laughter], by saying you don't have to offer forgiveness if you've never condemned to begin with. And the Source energy part of you has never condemned. But let's talk about this—you're really going to like this … if the Source within you is one who loves, and that is the case, and you have yourself focused upon something where you're feeling resentment or unfairness, injustice, and you're all balled up over it, what that means is you're looking at that situation in a way that the Source within you will not look. So the feeling of forgiveness is the feeling of relief you have when you start turning downstream and you start seeing it more like the Source within you sees it. So those are really accurate words because until you come into alignment with who you are,you cannot achieve that enlightenment. We want to remind all of you that enlightenment is not something like a college degree, that once you achieve it is yours forevermore; it either is or it isn't in the moment, depending upon what you're doing with your vibration.So isn't it logical that, since you are a lover when you're loving, forgiveness isn't an issue—it's alignment. But if you are hating, now you're upstream, and you've got to turn back toward love or forgiveness.But we don't like to use the word "forgiveness" because "forgiveness"sounds like taking something back. And you can't ever take anything back. Instead, we would like to call it redirecting the vibration ofyour thought into alignment with who you really are.* * *And so your forgiveness—in essence, you weren't so much forgiving someone for what they did as you were finding a way of looking at it that allowed you to align with the way your Source sees it. So interesting, because it feels like it's about what somebody else did,but it's not. It's always about letting yourself be who you are or not. You are a lover, and when you are not loving, you're not who you are. And so, many would say that when you forgive, then you are who you really are. And we say it's not forgiving that makes you who really are, it's looking at it the way your Source energy looks at it that makes you the way you are. And you're right—your Source energy will never condemn anyone.