Copyright 2001, Colin C. Tipping

 
Clearly, traditional forgiveness
offers itself as 
a way of living in the world
 
while Radi-
cal Forgiveness is nothing less than 
a spiritual path.
In terms of our capacity to heal ourselves and to evolve
spiritually, Radical Forgiveness offers extraordinary po-
tential to transform consciousness, and this potential
far exceeds what is possible with traditional forgive-
ness.
Yet we must recognize that we all still live in the World
of Humanity, and at certain times we will fall short of
what we might think of as the spiritual ideal. When we
find ourselves immersed in pain, for example, it be-
comes virtually impossible for us to move into Radical
Forgiveness. When we have recently experienced harm
at the hand of another, such as when we have just been
raped, we cannot be expected to accept, in that mo-
ment, that the experience was something we wanted
and that it represents the unfoldment of a Divine plan.
We will not have the receptivity necessary to entertain
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that idea. It can only come later in moments of quiet
reflection, not in the heat of anger or in the immediate
aftermath of a trauma.
But then again, we must continually remind ourselves
that what we have created IS the spiritual ideal; that we
have created circumstances in our lives that help us
grow and learn; that the lessons we need to learn are
contained in the situation and that the only way to ob-
tain the growth from the experience is to go 
through
it.
The choice we have in this is not so much whether or
not to have the experience (Spirit decides this for us),
but how long we are going to hang out in victim con-
sciousness because of it. Should we choose to quickly
let go of victimhood, it is comforting to know that we
have a technology that will make that happen. Tradi-
tional forgiveness, by contrast, has little to offer in this
regard.