This in some way offers a solution to me and to three women who I have known for what seems eternity. I was asked almost in the space of a month, had I forgiven them. They don’t know each other or where they are. We once loved and shared wonderful moments. I know them from across time and different parts of my life. I found the request as hard to deal with as it would be to ask forgiveness of my behaviour for not loving others as they hoped throughout my life. The adage what goes around comes around, well it is true, for what we deal, we get back. Forgiveness is our gift to self and others, providing it is does done humbly and as a first step in a process with ourselves. There will always be consequences which follow our behaviour and how we live in future is our gift. We need not expect to find our process of forgiving mirrored anywhere in this world. We can expect the consequences of our actions and life experience to be as hard felt as any connected with our primal and irrefutable purpose, love.

Throughout history, mankind has felt the need to forgive. What is it, this forgiving malarkey? A description we will find is: 1 a : to give up resentment of or claim to requital for b : to grant relief from payment of 2 : to cease to feel resentment against (an offender) :to pardon forgive one's enemies>. It is also a transitive state, moving from one state to another.

So forgiving all is moving from a state of not forgiving, to a state of forgiving. And forgiving is certainly part of a natural healing process of living.

Why would I suggest that forgiving is more than a process we use? A process in itself suggests that we just do something as automatic, that we are in command of that process and it is a natural and easily assumed state of transition. Forgiving is not a natural state of transition we are able to assume easily. As with all human doings we have to work at our process of forgiveness, we have to get used to it and get good at it or we find our resentment of life so great, we are unable to shake off old experiences making room for new ones.

As to elevating forgiveness to an art, well it may be an art we get good at in practice, we get good at forgiving all trespass against us, and we need forgive ourselves for our human quality of fucking everything up to get to know how to not fuck up. Its like we need to be able to forgive ourselves through practical steps as we need to forgive others for their learning. It is a two way street.

Indeed the art of living is as good as we can get, it is also science. Our art of living from our emotions, our science of living through our intellect and thinking. Art and science, emotions and intellect, they work well together in this battle of wilful control of life and ourselves. And if we are good at our art and good at our science we learn we can mange our choices. We get good at seeing the world as is, that the scope of our control is near perfect in a moment with the information we have, and as near imperfect the next as all the world changes around us.

So we need our forgiveness to work all day and every day. We never reach a state of grace when it comes to forgiving, we work at forgiveness as often as we need to make life work.

Love requires much forgiveness on a personal level and with others we encounter day by day. We humans are good at loving when we are in complete harmony with ourselves and others. Love, that splendid mixture of emotion, the root of all we are, the very essence of purpose. The very root of all pain. Love needs forgiveness. As love is perfect in a moment and gone the next, as our imperfect world turns, we are in a constant transitive state ourselves. And so is our forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a maintenance process, a step by step movement towards letting go resentment and letting in, making room for more love. Often we get love from those we know, and we love them more for our trust is developed in our own process as we forgive and make room for more of what we love. What we love is ourselves and those around us we encounter.

Nature has its sway in our love process. Our human chemistry, our chemicals plus our learning make our human condition open to all manner of love. And all manner of opposites. When we love we feel light, when we hate we feel heavy. The Ying and Yang, love and hate, two sides of the same primal drive and drive to acceptance of reality. We avoid hate for hateful feelings are as like poison we might consume. And we need be mindful that hate will poison all life and all outlook as prejudice will turn us to resent our very experience of life.

We don’t thrive on hate, we decay in it. Love on the other hand where we move with fleet feet and light step makes us able to let go and get on. Our art of living is predicated on our emotions. If we live with love, our world turns, if we are consumed by hate, our world stops and we resent and stick there till we break out one way or another.

Love our primal base of living, the drive of all life. Love is chemistry pure and simple, ingredients of love come from nature and nurture. Our capacity for love is what we get on arrival and is utilised as we experience our lives.

Our capacities for all our elements of life are pre determined by our make up, plus experience we have to make those capacities work. There is something in our nature which produces connection and love and desire and translates to trust and loyalty we display in our choice of love. For we do choose our love with our chemistry first and by experiences second.

The nature of love, is instinct. Our choices beyond reason and intellect. Our predetermined preferences are capacities we are given as human beings from nature. We can debate nature and God to the end of time, they are one in essence for my explanation and this art of forgiving. We need not trouble ourselves with God, or with Nature, we need trouble ourselves with our art of living with what we have.

There is some trouble in our love choices, not something that nature ever purposefully intended I feel from experience. Our love choices and chemistry determine who we fall for in this world. And fortunately we are predetermined to love more than one. And fortunately again, accommodating love helps when we love differently and experience love differently in our relations with others.

We can love anyone in this way, the pattern of life enables. We can love appropriately to the experiences of mankind. And we can love without prejudice almost in any circumstance as our art of living develops.

And we can find in this vast and varied world, that we love some and feel affinity beyond all reason. And that unfortunately we will not always find love comes back in return.

Love, the magic of living, so unpredictable across our world, we find we love some who love others and others we love, love us. And as time enables and experience delivers we may love others who never love us in the same way we might prefer.

Over time as we developed civilised ways of living, and values and codes and ways to make life work, we developed complexities where love develops and dies, and where we might find our lives barren. For we developed experiences and expectations above our nature to make mankind what we are today. Often in love and not loved, loved and loved back, not loving and loved over and over again.

And so as we work at living and loving forgiveness becomes an art in its own right. Forgiveness our tool to letting go others who might have felt some connection to us, and through our joint experience decided quite rightly that love had been lost along the way.

And of ourselves on our journey to our perfect connection, we find in our living our love can deceive us. As love is never a perfect choice made. For the choice is not made in our emotion or intellect its made without our conscious choosing most often than not.

When we find partners for living, our chemistry works, and it works as it will and not to our design. We are able to make good on our chemical choices and develop our love if we are so gifted. The choices so easily lost in our desires where dreams and wishes keep alight what we hope will come true, when life is less forthcoming and reality sucks.

We try love all places and all over our world, and sometimes it works and then we strike gold. But it ain’t necessarily ever so easy, and we work at our love as our capacity unfolds.

So forgiveness need be greater the longer we take and our choices move us to every mistake. No doubt in mind as I live, my choices for love have led to many heartaches. For me and for others we don’t get it right and our learning from life shows what we learn. That we can love unconditionally and get nothing back, and others find us as unhelpful in their outlook.

And forgiveness is needed as we all learn as we experience love, as often as life offers new choices, it let’s us fuck up.

I read somewhere years ago that before we go to bed every day and say to ourselves, forgive everyone everything. And in my half agreement and half grudging retort I added, and in the morning say fuck em till forgiveness finds its way.

In my small way I recognise we have the capacity always to forgive, and it is the most helpful process of letting go and moving on. And realistically we don’t forgive easily or quickly as we find some forgiving is more difficult to achieve. And yes we can say, fuck em in the morning, and add, till forgiveness finds its way. Because forgiveness as any art of living is learned by doing and not by learning the intent. We can be taught the principles of all living, our experience is our way to build our ability to live and to utilise all our capacity.

I mentioned recently that many are on a spiritual path and see themselves elevated to new states of living.

Like all life there is one state of living, right here, right now. The rest is history recalled and future potential. We need room for our potential with love.

As to the thorny debate of higher states of existence than this present we all share. Any other state has passed or is potential. The worry for me is when others describe higher planes and states of being they merely describe connection and usage, not actual higher states. It would be unfair in my opinion to become persuaded that we have any greater status than any other in our endeavours. No one in my opinion is less worthy than me, or indeed more deserving than me, we are all equal per se.

And for those who improve their connections in life, their art of living and their deployment of science or intellect offers great connection to one or a few elements, but no greater state or value than any other who lives and dies.

When some in our history talk of false prophets and worshipping inappropriate God like figures, it is through forgiveness we come back to our code of living and life. That we are all equal in value and worth, that we have no greater perception beyond now than any other we might wish to influence. That our faith in our purpose and belief in all life predicates a maker and more than we have, well ok let it be so, just enjoy what we have here and forgive every day. Otherwise we never make good our connection to this life when we sacrifice others to our ideals of living.

So every day, before we go to bed forgive everyone everything, and in the morning say if we need to, fuck em, till forgiveness finds its way. Fortunately we are gifted so, and as a final comment to those who might feel some discomfort, we are always forgiven, however our behaviour is never forgotten. And memory and perceptions are the consequence of life…