Copyright 2001, Colin C. Tipping

TRADITIONAL 
 
FORGIVENESS
 , the will-
ingness to forgive is present but so is the residual
need to condemn. Therefore victim conscious-
ness is
 
maintained and nothing changes.
With 
RADICAL
 
FORGIVENESS
 , the willingness
to forgive is present but NOT the need to condemn.
Therefore the victim consciousness is
 
dropped,
and everything changes.
(
Victim Consciousness
is defined as the conviction
that someone else has done something bad to you, and
as a direct result, they are responsible for the lack of
peace and happiness in your life).
Different Worlds — Different Perspectives
Traditional forgiveness should not be seen as being
inferior to Radical Forgiveness. It is simply different.
When used in the context of a certain set of beliefs —
beliefs that are firmly rooted in the physical world and
in everyday human reality, traditional forgiveness is the
only form of forgiveness possible and has great value
in its own right. It calls upon the finest of human quali-
ties and characteristics, such as compassion, mercy,
tolerance, humility and kindness. Joan Borysenko calls
forgiveness “the exercise of compassion.”
Radical Forgiveness is different from traditional for-
giveness because it is rooted in the metaphysical real-
ity of the world of Spirit — that which I call the World of
Divine Truth.
This makes the distinction between Radical and tra-
ditional forgiveness very clear, because we can see
now that in each case we look through completely dif-
ferent lenses. The lens we are using to view a situation
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will determine whether we are using traditional forgive-
ness or Radical Forgiveness. Each one provides us
with a totally different point of view.
Figure 2:
Perspectives On Two Worlds.
But we should not fall into the trap of thinking of it in
terms of 
either/or
. It is 
a both/and 
situation. This is
because we live with one foot in each world (since we
are spiritual beings having a human experience) and
can therefore reference situations through either lens
or both lenses at the same time. While being fully
grounded in the World of Humanity, we remain con-
nected to the World of Divine Truth through our soul.
Since the importance of the distinction between these
two worlds cannot be overemphasized, some further
explanation will be helpful here.
The World of Humanity and the World of Divine Truth
represent two ends of a vibrational scale. When we
vibrate at a low frequency, our bodies become dense
and we exist only in the World of Humanity. When we
vibrate at a high level, which makes our bodies become
lighter, we exist also in the World of Divine Truth. De-
pending upon our vibration at any moment, we move
up and down the scale toward one world or the other.
SOUL
World of
Humanity
World of
Divine
Truth
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