The powerful song, “Move the Right Way,” by Rickie Byars Beckwith begins the program. The two discuss Phil’s work and life-long influences, as well as Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement, which Phil Cousineau has edited. 

Much of Phil Cousineau‘s life has been a “echo of the overlap of soul from the pulpit of church to the soul of the streets of the city, from Motown music, to soul food, sports and so on.” They go back to the beginning, back to the roots “where the inner and the outer world overlap.”

Dr. Beckwith is one of the contributors of Beyond Forgiveness. His powerful contribution starts off the book.

Listen to the archived interview here.

Phil Cousineau, editor of Beyond Forgiveness, was recently asked by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat from Spirituality and Practice to contribute a reflection to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. His thoughts are below. Phil was a passenger on a plane landing in New York just as the first World Trade Center tower was hit. He had a unique journey in New York, in the ensuing weeks trying to get home, as well as in grappling with the mythic enormity of such tragic events. Here is Phil Cousineau’s “Antitdote to Revenge:”

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I landed at LaGuardia Airport at 8:50 am, as the first plane hit the first tower. I had been scheduled to launch my book, Once and Future Myths, at Rizzoli’s across the street from the World Trade Center at 11 am. Walking out of the airport that morning was stupefying — the freeways were empty going into Manhattan. It was, as so many have commented, as if the world was ending. With a great effort my publisher found a way to bring me into Manhattan the next day to meet for lunch.

On my walk to the restaurant where we were to meet, blocks from Ground Zero, I passed a young man whose hair and face were lightly dusted with the falling ashes, that grisly mix of bone and plaster. Across his forehead he had etched into the white ash the word “REVENGE.” Later that day I saw the same word — REVENGE — drawn, as if by angry fingers on street signs and across the windshields of abandoned cars. I’ve never been able to forget those images.

Now it is 2011. Over the past two years, the word “revenge” and all its implications came back to me in an angry rush as I worked on an anthology of essays and interviews, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement (Jossey-Bass, 2011). I came to realize that the synthesis of forgiveness and atonement, annunciated by such great leaders as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela, is perhaps the most effective antidote to that fierce desire for revenge. Without forgiveness, there is no future, as Tutu says, but without atonement there is no present, in the sense that we can’t live in the miracle of the present moment if we are hell-bent on retribution or retaliation.

And so every day I try to practice monitoring my own large and small urges to revenge, whether it’s due to a personal affront, the humiliation of my favorite sports team, or a calamitous attack on my country.

The essayist Calvin Trillin once famously wrote, “Living well is the best revenge,” a witty line, but one that can be amended, in every sense of that word, to “Living well is the best antidote to revenge.”

In addition to Phil Cousineau’s account, please visit the Spirituality and Practice website to glean wisdom and practices for the 9/11 10th Anniversary from 25 other spiritual teachers. Here are but a few:

• Beyond Forgiveness contributor and scholar Jacob Needleman recommends The Practice of Mirroring
• Cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien contributes tips on The Power of Forgiveness
• Psychologist and meditation master Jack Kornfield offers a Forgiveness Meditation
• Lama Surya Das, an American lama in the Tibetan tradition, reads a Forgiveness Chant
• Tibetan Buddhism scholar Robert Thurman advises Nonretaliation or Forgiveness

Thank you to Spirituality and Practice: Resources for Spiritual Journeys resource website and Phil’s Cousineau for permission to repost Antitdote to Revenge.

Phil Cousineau, editor of Beyond Forgiveness, and contributors Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook discuss many nuances of forgiveness and atonement on the Conversations radio program with Michael Stone. Click on this link to access the Conversations podcast to listen and learn more about the process of atonement, which “helps clear the conscious of the offender and relieves the victim.”

Conversations: Possibilities and Perspectives on Local and Global Issues is a wonderful radio show bringing you leading edge thinkers, authors and activists in the areas of environmental restoration, social justice, evolutionary cosmology and spiritual fulfillment.

I am shattered like a glass when, within weeks of the birth, I’m set up, held hostage, brutally assaulted and raped by three angels from hell.

Tossed overboard without a life preserver, thrown from a plane without a parachute, climbing the mountain unaware of the avalanche. I’m thrown bodily into the mythic story line and growing up does not appear to hold any promise.

Rising up from beneath the trauma comes the instinct to keep moving. I take action and change the very texture of the rest of my days. I climb aboard a Greyhound bus in August of 1968 and travel, with an acquaintance, to The Farm.

“You can dent the soul and bend it. You can hurt it and scar it.
You can leave the marks of illness upon it, and scorch marks of fear.
But it does not die.”
- C. P. Estes

The Farm reminds me of my most idyllic days as a little girl wandering Grandfather’s enchanted orchard. This connection returns to me, through The Farm, as the beginning of my long healing process takes place.

Each morning I wake and walk outdoors breathing in the harmony of land and sky ringed by the beauty of the forest. I feel a deep sense of home.

Here I discover that something serene exists in the world beyond the chaos and I know the way I will choose to live for the rest of my life.

I wander. I hike the land until tired. I find an ancient tree to lean against and watch…snail, spider, butterfly, rabbit, hawk, doe and clouds.

There is a large garden enclosed within a beautifully weathered fence forming a sacred space far more private than the rest of the surroundings. Life is burgeoning. Bees and butterflies are at work in profusion. Instantly I realize that I need a garden in my life. I see, as I peer through the oversized foliage of a summer squash, a natural pond outside the back door of the main residence, a low single story contemporary home lying snug against the earth.

I stare.

The sun is dazzling the surface of the water. I watch a graceful nude figure rising up and out of the water with ease. There’s fluidity to her movement and dignity in her posture as she wraps herself in a flowing white garment. She stands in the radiant light and idly creates a long single braid in her pure white hair. Turning she steps into the shadows that absorb her into the house.

The following day, after our initial meeting, Alice silently invites me to spend time with her. We become companions. She speaks to me of things foreign and exotic like India and Ba’ Hai, meditation and miso. She tells me of the rigors of art study, and polio and chiropractic adjustments.

She allows me to accompany her for serene uninterrupted hours. I’m entranced. I observe the manner in which this angelic woman glides through her days. I also am aware that a frailty visits her… I watch as she floats around a corner, like mist, disappearing into her room.

I want to be nowhere else but with her and I want to be more like her than like myself.

After several transcendent weeks on The Farm I make my unwilling departure. I disassociate. It is unfathomable to imagine not being in the company of Alice any longer.

I write to thank her for all that I have gained as her guest. A week later the mailman delivers the first of twenty-six years of rich and meaningful correspondence:

Donna Donna Donna
Dear Lovely beautiful
Donna.
Tis my turn to thank you and also to thank that Unknowable Beyond Our Knowledge God which gave us both, Life…on whose path we walk towards Life…Your gracious and penetrating letter plumbed the heights of my depths! How about that for a paradoxical impossibly feminine construction?!
We learned anew, deep truths anew! You and I!
Man changes…man becomes Man, girl becomes woman and woman becomes WOMAN! Our humanity is potentially, no more than that! It must become high, Donna, higher than the angels, for so it is decreed!

…since I first saw you, your lovely self has firmly imprinted its image upon my heart, my inmost heart! Yes you will never leave the farm…always I’ll look up to see your piquant face and slender strong figure, your eyes with the depths of the High Ones shining through their lustrous grays…and wherever you walk, I’ll be with you…my strength is vast, and from Beyond, …but O my path is that razor sharp Path… So take from me what you will…I know that you will use it wisely. We rejoice at your gift of yourself…it gives us joy…
Lovingly yours,
Alice August 21, 1968

Years later, Alice settled in New Mexico, and as I camped beside her stretch of river she shared her story. Twenty-three years earlier, in 1968, she had lost her eighteen-year-old daughter in a car crash. It occurred six months before I arrived, young and frail from my own trauma. We had bonded as surrogates each unaware of the other’s recent tragedy.

Without knowing what each had gone through we provided a life line for one another. Through 26 years of letters and visits we quietly healed one another’s heart.

Donna Iona Drozda © 2010

This is the burden of guilt—and the power of its resolution. While we may not end up hospitalized over a guilty conscience, we are all burdened to some degree or other by feelings that we have done something seriously wrong, or we live in a society that does. Think of Martin Luther King‘s lament in his famous Riverside Church sermon against the war in Vietnam that his own nation was “the greatest purveyor of violence” in the world. Consider the ever more appalling number of military personnel who are taking their own lives because, as David Swanson recently wrote in War is a Lie, those “who survive war are far more likely now to have been trained and conditioned to do things they cannot live with having done.”

What is the solution? Read the rest of this story in The Huffington Post now.

The original blog article, “Beyond Forgiveness: Atoning for the Past to Repair the World,” from which this is an excerpt, was written by Michael Nagler and Phil Cousineau and was originally published by The Huffington Post on March 31, 2011. Learn more about the new book, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement.

What did that boy discover about what we are and who we are? I think it was the joy of selflessness. It’s there inside us, waiting, but the culture puts a crust around it for selfish reasons, telling us to: Get, get, get. Then the culture puts a crust around the crust, saying: You have to be nice. We’re brought up in a culture of human relationships – Cosmo magazine and so on – asking, “Are you getting enough out of the relationship?” Instead of “Are you giving enough?” But it never tells you what you have to get to is what is underneath the crust, which is your heart that is longing not to get, but to give. The boy was no guru, but he knew something there. The little boy discovered that part of himself and he’ll never forget that.

And where does that come from?

There’s a word in Greek, metanoia, that means, “to change the mind,” and it also can be translated as “repentance.” What that means is payment. We all have to pay a price to be a part of the human family.

This story, from an interview Phil Cousineau conducted with Jacob Needleman in his home in August 2009, is excerpted from the chapter on “The Wisdom of Atonement” in the book, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement, with permission of the publisher Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint. Copyright © 2011 by Phil Cousineau and Richard J. Meyer.

Beyond Forgiveness Study Course Lesson 1: The Wisdom of Atonement

In preparation for this lesson, please read the Preface, Introduction and Chapter 1 in Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement, Healing the Past, Making Amends and Restoring Balance in Our Lives and World by Phil Cousineau (ISBN 978-0-470-90773-3)

Throughout human history, the practice of forgiveness has been championed by religious, social, and political leaders, from the Buddha to Christ, Mother Teresa to Martin Luther King, Jr. Traditionally, forgiveness has referred to the act of excusing a perceived mistake, pardoning an offense, canceling a debt, or a dispute in order to dissolve anger and let go of resentment. Typically, forgiveness is not automatically granted simply because someone deserves it; instead, it is bestowed as an act infused with love, faith, trust, mercy, and grace.

So forgiveness is no simple matter; it is simply the heart of the compassionate life.

And yet, how many of you believe that forgiveness is enough? How long has it lasted in your own life? Has it actually healed your relationships with the people you’ve been in a dispute with or with those you have harmed? Have you ever wondered if there is anything beyond forgiveness that could help in your attempts at reconciliation in your own difficult relationships or those in the world at large?

Fortunately, there are a few visionaries in our time who have looked at reconciliation as a long journey with many stages, a journey that links forgiveness with atonement to create a longer lasting and deeper healing.

In our time, leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have promoted the dual practice of forgiveness and atonement, or as some refer to it, restitution, or compensation. While not a new idea, since indigenous peoples around the world have practiced different forms of ritual atonement for centuries, in modern times we are witnessing movements around the world that advocate restorative and redemptive justice. What these various movements share in common is the belief that the most effective forgiveness is rooted in the compassion of forgiving ourselves and others, especially if it allows room for acts of restitution, restoration, or making amends.

In other words, atonement, the effort of becoming at-one again.

THE ROOTS OF ATONEMENT

If you look up the word atonement you will come across a startling etymology that reveals the very movement in our hearts from a state of separateness to a state of at-one-ment, which is the true meaning of reconciliation. True reconciliation is impossible as long as we are separate from other people. For the purposes of discussion, our definition of atonement is that it is an act that rights a wrong, makes amends, repairs harm, offers restitution, attempts compensation, clears the conscience of the offender, relieves the anger of the victim, and serves as a work of restorative justice by providing a sacrifice commensurate with the harm that has been done.

So, at its core, in its heart, the word and the lesson says, we need to become “one” with those we have hurt, but also with those who have hurt us, as we forgive them and allow them to make amends to us.

IN PRACTICE

Every week of our course we will review the Seven Practices of Atonement, which are based on the life work of the fifteen contributors to the companion book to this study series, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement. Together, they can lead to a genuine change of heart, and can lead to a more compassionate life for everyone who practices them:

Seven Practices of Atonement

1) Acknowledge the hurt, the harm, the wrong

2) Offer apologies, ask for forgiveness

3) Try to make amends commensurate with the harm done

4) Help to clear the conscience of the offender

5) Relieve the anger and shame of the victim

6) Practice compassion for victim and perpetrator alike

7) Establish a spiritual practice of prayer or meditation

These practices reveal the journey-like quality of the work that links forgiveness with atonement and healing. No one practice, no one belief system will produce lasting change or unleash the kind of transformation that is called for in our often troubled lives.

Sometimes we think everything in life should come easily or it’s not “natural,” and so there is often a resistance to practice or ritual, as if they are artificial devices.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Do you agree that it can help to have a spiritual practice? Do we all need a practice, or just those who are in real trouble?

These are the kind of questions that are at the core teachings of one of the great spiritual teachers of our time, Michael Bernard Beckwith. His vision of forgiveness is one of the clearest and boldest that is being expressed today, and his work is a powerful place for us to begin our course studies.

FORGIVENESS AND ATONEMENT AS SPIRITUAL LIBERATORS

Michael Bernard Beckwith is a world leader and teacher in the New Thought-Ancient Wisdom tradition of spirituality, and founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center, In Los Angeles, California. He has dedicated his life to issues of the soul, spirit, and social justice, and emphasizes in his sermons, teaching, and books, and sermons, that people learn to liberate their own inner spiritual life.

In the book, Beyond Forgiveness, Michael Bernard Beckwith speaks with Phil Cousineau about the ways in which forgiveness and atonement are both forms of spiritual liberation.

“To me, real forgiveness takes place,” Dr. Beckwith says, “not only when amends are made—when that real sense of atonement has happened—but when I can see from the other person’s perspective.” (Refer to pages 3-5 of Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement by Phil Cousineau, Jossey-Bass: ISBN-13: 9780470907733)

A story from Dr. Beckwith’s boyhood plays out like a parable to the power of seeing life from someone else’s point of view. He tells of the time that he and a friend saved a sleeping man from a burning building, only to suffer the indignity of racial slurs from a firefighter who arrived on the scene later.

What possibly could have motivated a firefighter to swear at two young boys? Is there ever any excuse for this kind of cruelty? Only after years of deliberation on the painful memory did Dr. Beckwith realize that the firefighter had actually been worried about the safety of the two boys.

For Dr. Beckwith, forgiveness is powerful, but other steps are needed for what he calls our “well-being.” To his chagrin, he had failed to realize — until just recently — how dangerous the situation was from the point of view of the firefighter.

“It’s very powerful when something happens and you are willing to see things from the other person’s point of view, and your perception expands. That’s the birth of compassion: to walk a mile in the other person’s moccasins.” (Refer to page 5 in Beyond Forgiveness.)

PERSONAL REFLECTION: What keeps us from taking this next step going beyond resentment, anger, and sometimes the desire for retaliation, to compassion?

Dr. Beckwith uses a Christian analogy that can help us deal with our perceived slights and deeper disputes: “You should turn the cheek if someone smites you; you should turn the other cheek if they wrong you.” Turning the other cheek, he concludes, means you’re giving back another form of energy. If someone gives you negative energy, you give back positive, affirmative energy—such as compassion and forgiveness, which might end up being purely theoretical in someone’s life, unless you commit to a practice. For Dr. Beckwith, the practice of forgiveness means that you are at least getting into the healthy habit of self-examination and attempting to do something life-affirming to lift your spirit. If no practice is in place, you can’t activate your “soul force,” as he says (Refer to page 12 in Beyond Forgiveness which requires a high state of consciousness.

Otherwise—and here is the key to our work in this lesson—we may revert to a negative impulse when we perceive that we’ve been wronged, and try to strike back, retaliate, exact revenge. This is the birth of revenge in the human heart, which can deteriorate into endless cycles of resentment, or worse, of violence. On the spiritual level, in Dr. Beckwith’s beautiful words, these negative feelings “separate us from the divine.” If you rise to the occasion and find it in your heart to forgive you can step into “real spiritual power.” (Refer to page 15)

PERSONAL REFLECTION: How do we move through the “heart of compassion to spiritual perspective” in life?

Let’s keep exploring the mysterious process of moving beyond forgiveness, which is so often a temporary fix for our misunderstandings, our arguments, even our battles, to the next stage, the next level of compassion-centered reconciliation.

AT-ONE-MENT

One of the main points of Beyond Forgiveness that we are studying in this course, is that the experience of atonement is simply but elegantly the realization of at-one-ment. This can be described as the astonishing experience that reveals to us that we have never actually been separated or cut off from other people. Instead, we were caught up in a delusion of isolation, which comes from, as Dr. Beckwith says, “a matter of perception.” (Refer to page 15). Atonement work—actually making amends, for instance—can help people see that they are already at-one with themselves and others, but only if they work at it. Often, it is a matter of moving from a misperception of “unforgiveness” to “forgiveness,” from being at-odds to being at-one.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: What can we actually do to make ourselves feel more connected, more at-one with ourselves and with the world?

THE GIVING WITHIN “FOR-GIVE-NESS”

Some of this work can seem pie-in-the-sky, idealistic, or romantic. After all, who has the energy to spend their lives constantly monitoring their behavior? Why not just live and let live? And who hasn’t secretly wished that others make the first move to heal a broken relationship?

But here Michael Bernard Beckwith has some practical advice. He recommends that we look at forgiveness as an act of affirmative energy, and that forgiving and being forgiven is a kind of gift to both the victim and the offender, a gift that brings a true change of consciousness (Read pages 7-8 in Beyond Forgiveness.)

That’s easy for you to say, right?

Well, Dr. Beckwith suggests that forgiveness isn’t an act of weakness as much of a move towards a higher consciousness. For him, the practice is practical, so to speak. He recommends that every night before bed people go over their day and scan their behavior to see if anything needs to be addressed. He suggests we simply ask ourselves if we made any serious mistakes that day, or if there are amends that can be made, or if it is time to weigh our conscience. If the answer is yes to any of these questions we put to ourselves, we must have the courage to take the next step and act upon them as soon as possible.

To strengthen his case, Dr. Beckwith suggests that people look at their lives as a journey, a journey of transformation, of learning from our mistakes, of seeing the world with new eyes, as a spiritual place, a place where harmony could reign if we lived with more compassion. If we lived life as a constant journey of growth, we could more readily recognize our challenges as “spiritual liberators.” And if we say our lives as journeys it becomes easier to see every experience with forgiveness and atonement as being a journey within a journey (See the diagram of The Atonement Journey wheel).

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Does the image of your life as a journey help you appreciate the stages of forgiveness and atonement?

NIGHTLY PRAYER PRACTICES

One of the constants in a well-examined life is the belief that there is no time to wait, no time to put off the deeper questions of the soul. Michael Bernard Beckwith recommends, actually, he invites people to look at themselves each night before they go to bed, to simply ask: Are there amends to be made in your life?

With these simple but provocative and potentially cleansing questions and practices in mind it is far more possible to enjoy a good night’s sleep and a clean conscience. Eventually, with practice, forgiveness can become a way of life, and not allow anger and resentment to fester and become a kind of soul rust, and it can set the stage for the atonement work that can help prove the forgiveness that has been offered.

CONCLUSION

With these inspiring thoughts and practices offered to us by Dr. Beckwith, we are now face to face with a deceptively simple question: Are we ready to change our lives? We are all on a journey in which we are trying to live the good and honest loving life, but inevitably we will confront hurt and harm. At that point we have a decision to make—to live in pain and resentment, or make an honest attempt to reconcile the misunderstandings and disputes of life. The burning question for all of us is this: How far are we willing to go to amend our lives–and are we willing to commit to change, which means to open the door to our spiritual transformation?

Let’s take a moment to affirm our commitment to living the change, to actually be the change we want to see in the world, as Gandhi challenged us to do. If you choose to commit today, we ask you to regularly re-confirm your commitment to going beyond forgiveness toward acts of atonement. If you do, you will feel the blessing of the gift of compassion infusing your life and, ideally, the lives of those around you. You will sense the joy and celebration of living in a community that also embraces deep reconciliation.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND CONTEMPLATION

1. How often do we miss the teaching moment or the hard lesson of our experiences due to anger or self- righteousness?

2. How could a spiritually sophisticated man like Dr. Beckwith miss the compassion point when reflecting—through most of his adult life—on the childhood incident with the firefighter?

3. Is there a practice that could help us become more self-aware of similar incidents in our own lives when we made assumptions that caused us to be stuck in resentment or anger?

4. What do you think happens when we, like Dr. Beckwith, think we’ve forgiven someone, but really haven’t?

5. What mistakes have you made recently that you can learn from in the new light of forgiveness and atonement?

6. What could be “spiritually liberating” for you about consciously practicing forgiveness and atonement?

7. What do you think of the remarkable story of the roots of the word atonement?

8. How do you feel about Dr. Beckwith’s powerful statement that someone else cannot determine your destiny; only your perception can determine it: “When I forgive you, I take my power back. When I give you back affirmative energy for something you may have done, I own my power—and now I own my destiny, then I can go forward with my journey.”

9. How can forgiveness and atonement heal you in your painful and unresolved relationships?

10. Will you vow to review your actions of the day before drifting off to sleep at night?

AFFIRMATIONS

Select those that resonate for you:

• May I have the courage to forgive and the compassion to allow those who have hurt me to make amends for what they’ve done.

• I affirm that I will work towards being at-one with myself and one with the world, and acknowledge that not being at-one, being separate, at-odds, is self-defeating.

• May I develop the discipline to regularly check in with myself at night to ensure that I am not harboring any resentments, and have not forgiven someone I should have.

• May I have the vision to turn what is unforgiving in me into something that allows me to be forgiving.

• May I have the courage to transform my perceptions of life’s inevitable obstacles as problems to challenges, which can help liberate my spirit.

• Can it help us clarify our spiritual perception?

SUGGESTED VIDEO CLIPS

• “Its A New Day” performed by Will.i.am and the Agape International Choir as featured in the new PBS special Michael Bernard Beckwith the Answer Is You. Uplifting video!
• Video of Michael Bernard Beckwith talking about Azim Khamisa; Michael Bernard Beckwith‘s work is coming up in Lesson 6
• Explore whether group members have read the book, Atonement by Ian McEwan, or have seen the film? View an Atonement movie clip here

Click here to go forward to Lesson 2 of the Beyond Forgiveness Study Course>>
<<Click here to go back the Introduction

These study course materials were prepared by Phil Cousineau, and were created to be used hand-in-hand with the book, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement, with permission of the book’s publisher, Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint. Copyright © 2011 by Phil Cousineau and Richard J. Meyer.

Beyond Forgiveness Study Course Lesson 2: The Wisdom of Atonement

In preparation for this lesson, please read chapters 8 and 13 in Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement Healing the Past, Making Amends and Restoring Balance in Our Lives and World by Phil Cousineau (ISBN 978-0-470-90773-3).

If you were asked to isolate a single incident from your youth that helped shape your character, what would it be? Would you choose a heroic episode, or perhaps a spiritually transformative moment? Or would you have the humility and boldness to portray your human side and reveal a mistake that you learned from? If asked to write your life story, which significant experiences on your life journey would you choose to tell others what made you who you are today?

In Beyond Forgiveness, Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, describes several extraordinary incidents from the autobiography of his grandfather, The Story of My Experiment with Truth. The transformative moments occur in a chapter entitled simply “Atonement,” in which he describes an episode from his youth that indeed helped shape the contours of his life. (Refer to page 103-106 in Beyond Forgiveness.)

The incident was simple, but reflective of the behavior of youth all over the world. To prove himself to a friend who was mocking him for being a vegetarian, and something less than a man, the thirteen-year-old Mohandas Gandhi felt he had to do something he immediately regretted. Chastened, he confessed to his father. What courage that must have taken for a teenage boy! What a profound statement about the moral and ethical system that had already been infused in him by his parents!

Can you guess what happened?

His great-grandfather’s response was so compassionate that his grandfather learned a lifelong lesson about the importance of atonement and “the charity of unconditional forgiving.”

In a wonderful turn of phrase, Arun Gandhi writes that the tears of his grandfather and great-grandfather “mingled together to wash away the sins,” which is a marvelously vivid way to describe the catharsis that comes when forgiveness and atonement act together.

The question, then and now was: How do will we deal with remorse, a deceptively powerful word that derives from an old Latin phrase that meant “biting back,” as in someone’s conscience eating away at them? How do we respond to our own bad deeds, or someone else’s misdeed who is trying to seek forgiveness from us? Do we wish to retaliate or do we believe in redemption, atonement, and a restoration of our relationships?

PERSONAL REFLECTION: What would have been the repercussions of such a confession in your life if you had done something wrong and written a similar letter of remorse as a child?

MAKING FORGIVENESS MATTER

As if forgiving yourself and others weren’t hard enough, Gandhi’s grandson, Dr. Arun Gandhi, ups the spiritual ante, so to speak in his essay in Beyond Forgiveness. He adds, “Forgiveness without atonement is worthless just as atonement without forgiving means very little. But equally, atonement has a double meaning—changing one’s self, and changing the issues created by others that create the conflict.” With penetrating insight, Arun Gandhi reveals how his grandfather had a life-long fascination with what we call today “self-improvement,” but complemented it with an interest in raising the consciousness in society about the ways in which “each of us contributes to conflict.” (Read page 106 of Beyond Forgiveness)  As many of our great spiritual leaders throughout history have taught, the only way to break destructive habits is through a life of self-awareness.

In this sense the often maligned description of “self-improvement” doesn’t suggest that the old Puritan ethic of constant progress of the ego, but in improving our awareness of where the self belongs in the world, and its relationship to the community.

For that sense of self to improve, a different kind of honesty and a different practice is required, one based on compassionate living, which is rooted in understanding that everyone is human, everyone makes mistakes, everyone longs for forgiveness and atonement.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Ponder for a moment how you have contributed to conflict either physically, emotionally, or psychologically.

THE ULTIMATE ACCEPTANCE

As one of the great sages of our time, the historian of religion, Dr. Huston Smith, has asked, “Does your compassion have any limits? If so, why limit yourself?” This is an indispensable question to pose to ourselves on a regular basis.

Arguably the most stunning revelation in Beyond Forgiveness, as well as the anecdote that poses a great challenge for all of us, is a story that Arun Gandhi reveals here, in print, for the first time. It centers on a detail about his grandfather’s assassination that has the power to make us all sit up and pay attention to what Albert Einstein once called “widening the circle of our compassion.”

The whole world knows that Gandhi was assassinated in the spring of 1948. But few know that there were several attempts—by the same man—beginning in the mid-1930s. After one attempt, the assassin-to-be was caught by some volunteers and brought before Gandhi. What he said then, very few of us would ever be able to say, “Forgiveness must always be unconditional.”  (Read page 106 of Beyond Forgiveness.)

Gandhi’s words and deeds seem almost superhuman in the way they reveal the far reaches of his compassion. They seem scarcely believable, until you consider the role that forgiveness and atonement played in his non-negotiable, deeply felt commitment to non-violence.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: How do you feel about Gandhi’s extraordinary act—was it pure compassion or pure foolhardiness? Do you agree that forgiveness should always be unconditional?

FEAR OF PUNISHMENT

We’ve been discussing the role of forgiveness on the personal level, but what about the collective or the social level? Once again, Arun Gandhi’s life and work provide inspiration. For almost thirty years he and his wife, Sunanda, worked with destitute children in India, where he was able to implement his grandfather’s philosophy of Sarvodaya, the Welfare of All Citizens. Most recently, he has worked with the new Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute to promote community building in eco-depressed areas of the world, joining Gandhian philosophy and vocational education. Arun Gandhi has also worked with prisoners, which has provoked him to think deeply about the role of punishment in our justice systems around the world. Many of the prisoners with whom he has worked have asked him, “We are willing to atone for our sins, but is society willing to forgive us?” (Please read pages 106-108 in Beyond Forgiveness on the culture of violence and the culture of materialism and how they overlap/influence each other.) 

PERSONAL REFLECTION: How do you feel about allowing prisoners and wrongdoers a chance to redeem themselves?

THE TWIN PILLARS OF SATYAGRAHA

Now we have a clearer vision of the light that Beyond Forgiveness is trying to shed on the complex problem of social justice. Whereas, Michael Bernard Beckwith devotes most of his attention to the power of forgiveness, while allowing for atonement to strengthen the entire attempt at reconciliation, Arun Gandhi reveals here that for him and for his grandfather the equation is more like 50/50 between unconditional love and forgiveness. He emphasizes not only the importance of confessing or acknowledging our guilt, but also atonement, the offer of redemption. ”Atonement and forgiving not only played an important role in Grandfather’s personal life; they became the pillars of his philosophy of nonviolence.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Why do you think Mohandas Gandhi believed both forgiveness and atonement were required?

NONVIOLENT RESOLUTION

Arun Gandhi recounts and illuminating incident in his Grandfather’s life that influenced both of their lives (Refer to pages 108-109 in Beyond Forgiveness), as they pertain to his grandfather’s belief that an incident with his wife, Kastur, became the “first and most profound lesson in nonviolent conflict resolution that he learned.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Can you recall any incidents in your own life in which you used anger creatively, sympathetically, or as he writes “intelligently and positively” to forgive an oppressor?

VALUABLE LESSONS FROM OUR ELDERS

Arun Gandhi concludes his compelling essay in Beyond Forgiveness with a succinct but beautiful description of the power of atonement. He describes his grandfather’s enormous influence on him when he was only thirteen-years-old, including his advice about dealing with his deep-seated anger or resentment—what Arun Gandhi calls his desire for “eye-for-an-eye justice.” Mohandas Gandhi inspired Arun’s own lifelong mission to help “society see the futility of hate and prejudice.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: What do you think Arun Gandhi means by citing his grandfather’s powerful image of the double-sided coin of atonement and forgiveness? Can you think of other images that evoke these forces?

TALKIN’ ‘BOUT MY GENERATION

In her essay in Beyond Forgiveness (Read chapter 14), Stephanie Van Hook, codirector of The Metta Center for Nonviolence Education, describes her admiration for the Gandhian way of peace and reconciliation, but also reveals her own belief in the need to go that extra step and take action. She writes about her motivation for joining the Peace Corps in early twenties, a decision that was rooted in her need to personally respond to what she perceived as the ill-advised political policies of the United States. She writes that she wanted to “atone for the harmful and violent foreign policy choices and ‘war on terror’ by means of a personal commitment to nonviolence and community-building.”

This move to take personal action, make amends for a wrong that we have personally committed or believe has been made by our family, our tribe, or our nation, is at the heart of atonement.  Another feature of her perspective on atonement is that she places a great deal of emphasis on the power of love as a motivating force in making our world safer and more compassionate.

This is a grand challenge. Do you think we are up to it? Stephanie Van Hook is convinced that we are, if choose the right road, the right leaders.

“We are learning from Gandhi‘s legacy,” she writes, “that violence is subject to a universal law. When it is used as a means to peace, violence only begets more violence. It remains for us to recognize that this law can help us to understand atonement as well as nonviolence, which both beget peace.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Do you ever feel moved to take personal action (such as join the Peace Corps, become active in peace or social justice movements) to demonstrate your deepest beliefs? Are love and compassion motivating forces for you?

A REVIEW

Let’s review our course work. In each new lesson we review the Seven Practices of Atonement, which are based on the life work of the fifteen contributors to the book, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement. Applying these practices in your life can lead to a genuine change of heart, and a more compassionate life.

No one practice will produce lasting change or unleash the kind of transformation that is called for in our often-troubled lives. Yet practiced together, these practices of atonement reveal the journey-like quality of the work that links forgiveness with atonement and healing.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Do you agree that it can help to have a spiritual practice? Do we all need a practice, or just those who are in trouble? If so, why? Does a practice help deepen our spiritual life?

THE NEXT STEP

Let’s keep exploring the mysterious process (see Phil Cousineau’s Atonement Journey Wheel) of moving through and then beyond forgiveness, to the next stage, the next level of compassion-centered reconciliation.

SATYAGRAHA AND PRAYASCHITTA

Two of the central tenets of Mohandas Gandhi’s nonviolence resistance movement are satyagraha and prayaschitta. The first is an ancient Sanskrit term that we might translate as “soul force” or “truth force.”  Gandhi placed this at the center of the independence movement in India, a practice that later influenced Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States. The latter refers to the numerous levels of atonement in traditional Hindu thought.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Do these foundational ideas to Gandhi’s life’s work connect with your life today? Does it help to see how universal the idea—and practice—of atonement is around the world and throughout history?

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1.    Can you recall an incident in your youth where you committed a transgression that made you feel guilty? Can you recall how you handled it? Would you consider it a “life-lesson”?

2.    Have you ever been forgiven by someone you love: a parent, lover, spouse, friend? Has someone you love ever forgiven you?

3.    Have you ever followed up an acceptance of an offer for amends or made amends yourself? Have you ever  “proved” your remorse with a real act?

4.    What can happen when we think we’ve forgiven someone, but really haven’t?

5.    Has there ever been an incident in your life that appeared at first to be “unforgivable,” and then surprised you by resulting in a compassionate response? (For example, when Gandhi forgiving his assassin in advance of what was going to happen.)

6.    What could be “spiritually liberating” about “deliberating” over each of your actions, as Gandhi professed to, and if a mistake was involved, vow to confess it and then take action toward atonement?

7.    Do you agree with Gandhi that there is an “intelligent” way to use our anger, and that it is actually crucial as a kind of life energy, without which atonement and forgiveness are impossible?

8.    What do you think of the famous advice Gandhi gave the young Arun Gandhi, when he lived with him as a boy: “Nonviolence is much more than a strategy for resolving conflicts peacefully. Nonviolence is not a weapon; it is a lifestyle.”

9.    How do you feel about the Mahatma’s insight that we must all widen our concept of violence to include “our language, relationships, behavior, attitude,” until we understand that everything about us is potentially violent?

10. Does the “Gandhian Way of Atonement”—making amends through social justice work—resonate with you? Does that work in your own life? Do you agree that we need to try to transform hate into love wherever we see it?

NIGHTLY PRAYER PRACTICES

One of the constants in well-examined life is the belief that there is no time to wait, no time to put off the deeper questions of the soul. Mohandas Gandhi advised his grandson Arun to “build a genealogical tree of violence,” which included two branches, physical and passive.” (Refer to page 110 in Beyond Forgiveness.) Every day, he advised, we should analyze all the events of the day and put them into their appropriate places on the tree. The standard was that if any of our actions “Caused someone anguish or emotional injury, or made someone unhappy, than that would be passive violence.” Consider creating your own nightly list of acts of passive violence – and then create a parallel list of actions that might make amends for them.

With these simple but provocative and potentially cleansing questions in mind it is now helpful both for a good night’s sleep and a clean conscience. Eventually, with practice, forgiveness can become a way of life, and not allow anger and resentment to fester and become a kind of soul rust.

As Mother Teresa once said of someone’s particularly nasty enemy, “Forgive them anyway.”

AFFIRMATIONS

Select those that resonate:

• I am the change I wish to see in the world.

• I am alert to my acts of passive violence that might lead to acts of physical violence.

• I affirm the need to douse the fire of violence in me.

• I let go fear because it spawns negative feelings, such as greed, hate, prejudice, and lack of respect for others.

• I look at my talents and gifts “in the Gandhian way,” which means that I am only a “trustee” of those talents, and so I must share them with others.

• I practice atonement “the Gandhian way” by first getting rid of hate within myself and then by helping society see the futility of hate and prejudice.

A QUOTE FOR REFLECTION

“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.” – Norman Cousins

RESOLUTIONS

• I resolve to transform hate into love wherever I see it.
• I vow to understand that everyone is undergoing a great struggle and they deserve my empathy.
• I resolve to become a bridge-builder not a bridge-destroyer.
• I vow to do my best to transform the negative feelings others might have against me into positive feelings by displaying my unconditional love for them.
• I vow to sow the seeds of atonement now.

SUGGESTED VIDEO CLIPS and MORE RESOURCES

• In this short video clip, Dr. Arun Gandhi explains his grandfather Mohandas Gandhi’s original use of the word, Satyagraha.
• We recommend that you screen Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film, Gandhi. Pay special attention for the scene where Gandhi he offers a form of atonement to the Indian man who slaughtered a Muslim family. View a trailer.
  You are welcome to share your own stories, reflections and wisdom on forgiveness and atonement on this website.
• Learn more about Arun Gandhi’s work.

Click here to go forward to Lesson 3 of the Beyond Forgiveness Study Course>>
<<Back to Lesson 1
<<Go back to the Study Course Introduction

These study course materials were prepared by Phil Cousineau, and were created to be used hand-in-hand with the book, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement, with permission of the book’s publisher, Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint. Copyright © 2011 by Phil Cousineau and Richard J. Meyer.

Beyond Forgiveness Study Course Lesson 3: The Wisdom of Atonement

In preparation for this lesson, please read chapter 10 in Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement Healing the Past, Making Amends and Restoring Balance in Our Lives and World by Phil Cousineau (ISBN 978-0-470-90773-3).

In the worst of all possible worlds, what would be the absolute worst thing to happen to a parent? Most people would say the death of one of their children. Worse than that, many would add, would be their death by senseless murder.

That is exactly what happened to Azim Khamisa, an Iranian-American banker living in Southern California. In the early 1990s, while delivering a pizza, his twenty-year-old son, Tariq, was murdered by a thirteen-year-old trying to earn his way into an East Los Angeles gang. (Refer to pages 135-138 in Beyond Forgiveness.)

Where Azim Khamisa’s tragic story diverges from the rash of arbitrary street killings is in his response. Not only did he overcome the urge to exact some form of revenge, but also he also forgave Tony, his son’s killer, and then offered him a chance to redeem himself. Azim told Tony that when he is paroled from prison he could atone for what he had done by working to help other kids avoid making the same mistakes. (Read pages 145-153 from Beyond Forgiveness for more on Tony’s atonement.)

In his powerful story, Azim Khamisa shows true humility when he explains where his nearly unfathomably compassionate response comes from. He calmly explains that it comes from his spiritual background as a Sufi. By learning how to forgive and then go beyond forgiving his son’s murderer and offering him a chance at atonement, Azim Khamisa was eventually able to resume his own life. The alternative was being stuck in grief and bitterness for the rest of his days.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: What would your response be to the violent loss of a child? Could you forgive and forget, or at least forgive and offer the assailant a chance for redemption?

In Beyond Forgiveness, this story stands halfway between the first stages of forgiveness, as outlined in Michael Bernard Beckwith’s interview (Chapter 1 of Beyond Forgiveness; Lesson 1), and Arun Gandhi’s work (Chapter 8 of Beyond Forgiveness, Lesson 2), which is explained as a kind of atonement for a youth spent in rage over the racism he faced as a child. For Azim Khamisa, the spiritual teachings came to their ultimate test with the loss of his son, and he was compelled to move, hard as it was, beyond forgiveness in his dealings with his son’s killer. Ordinary forgiveness, often abstract or notional, was given its severest test. The breakthrough is emblematic of this book’s message: there are always two victims in any crime. What allowed Azim Khamisa to see this echoes Michael Bernard Beckwith’s realization of the importance of “walking a mile in someone else’s moccasins,” in other words, seeing life through their eyes. This is compassion of Gandhian proportions. It is extending the circle as wide as humanly possible.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: In your review of the opening pages of Azim Khamisa’s chapter in Beyond Forgiveness, what did you read that helped you understand what make his breakthrough possible? What do you think he means by “going beyond the mind to the soul?”

THE TARIQ KHAMISA FOUNDATION

Every complex story is more than it appears. In Azim Khamisa’s case there is another level that makes the story even more uplifting. Soon after he swore off revenge, Mr. Khamisa approached the grandfather of his son’s murderer, a man named Ples Felix, to team up with him and build an organization to stop kids from murdering other kids. Working together since 1995, they have reached an estimated eight million school kids with their mentoring and nonviolence curriculum, by extensive outreach, and through their powerful presentations in schools, where they inspire change by telling their own powerful stories and asking kids to share theirs.

Stories are the oldest known form of healing, a universal response to conflicts that threaten to bring life to a standstill. To share one’s story is the beginning of a journey to the end of isolation—the first step on the path toward forgiveness, atonement and reconciliation. As Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Have you been inspired by someone else’s powerful personal story? Are you inspired to share your own story or reflections with your group? We invite you to share your own story or reflections on forgiveness and atonement online.

AZIM KHAMISA’S OWN ATONEMENT

A further extraordinary dimension of Azim Khamisa’s story is his realization that he was forced by circumstances to humbly and painfully admit to his own role and Ples’s role in the tragedy. (Read pages 142-145 of Beyond Forgiveness). By doing the good work in his son’s name he was able to atone for his own shortcomings, a powerfully humble admission by any stretch of the imagination.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: How do you feel about this aspect of the story? How was Azim Khamisa able to reach out across the void of pain to reach his son’s assailant, and that boy’s grandfather? What qualities and what practice allowed him to do this?

THE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE MOVEMENT

In the final portion of the interview Azim Khamisa puts his story into the context of the entire restorative justice movement. His conclusion is that punitive justice is pointless, only punitive; instead, the goal of restorative justice is to make the victim whole, and then attempt to bring the perpetrator back to society as a contributing member. And the last step, he points out, is turning your grief into positive action. (Please read 153-156 in Beyond Forgiveness).

PERSONAL REFLECTION: How do you feel about Azim Khamisa’s conclusion that by linking atonement to happiness we can live at a “higher vibratory emotion?

FORGIVENESS PRACTICES

Make a list of the people who have wronged you. Go through the list, one by one, and think deeply about each person and each incident, each story. Take as much time as you need. After reflection and meditation, say aloud to yourself, or write in a note to yourself after each name, “I forgive you and I let you go. My forgiveness is absolute and now we are both released.” Reflect again. How do you feel?

IN PRACTICE: A REVIEW

Let’s review our course work. In each new lesson we review the Seven Practices of Atonement, which are based on the life work of the fifteen contributors to the book, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement. Together, these practices in your life can lead to a genuine change of heart, and a more compassionate life.

PERSONAL REFLECTION: Are you feeling resistant or are you embracing these practices? Where are you in this process? Are there other possible steps we might take if we are to comprehend the immense implications of what Mohandas Gandhi describes, in the epigraph to this chapter of Beyond Forgiveness, “Anger and intolerance are the enemies of understanding”?

THE NEXT LEVEL

Let’s keep going on our atonement journey (see Phil Cousineau’s Atonement Journey Wheel) of moving through and then beyond forgiveness, to the next level of compassion-centered reconciliation.

QUESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION AND DISCUSSION

1.   Do you believe everyone who has committed a serious crime can be redeemed?
2.    Do you feel that there are solid alternatives to being stuck in grief and bitterness?
3.   Have you ever teamed up with others to bring about change, as Azim Khamisa did with Ples?
4.   What do you believe Azim Khamisa means when he said that he knew he couldn’t “think” his way out of his depression and anger, and had to move from this mind to his soul?
5.  Were Azim and Ples brave to seek their own role in their son’s tragedies? Do their actions inspire you to take action in your own life?
6.    How do you interpret the rise of the “Restorative Justice” movement in America, Canada, New Zealand, and other countries, in which redemption and atonement are offered as alternatives to long incarceration?

AFFIRMATIONS

Select those that resonate with you:

• I forgive people who have harmed me or my loved ones because I do not wish to live in bitterness and anger.

• I swear off any desire to exact revenge, either physically or emotionally.

• I vow to reach young people whenever possible by listening to their stories.

• I rejoice in the possibly of a return to a world of Restorative Justice.

• I am a healing force in my community.

• I cast a loving gaze over the world.

QUOTE FOR CONTEMPLATION

“Be kind to everyone you meet because he or she is also enduring a great struggle.” —Philo of Alexandria, first century

RESOLUTIONS

• I will take responsibility as an elder and will be a strong role model for the young people around me.
• I will look upon the news of the world with compassionate eyes and use each example as an opportunity to consider it in the light of atonement.
• I will look at all harmful acts and violence in the light of the Restorative Justice Movement, asking myself, how can this person or these persons be restored, rebalanced, reintegrated into society?

SUGGESTED VIDEO CLIPS & MORE RESOURCES

• The Power of Forgiveness video is highly recommended.

• View “Learning How to Forgive and Heal Oneself,” featuring a five minute video clip of Phil Cousineau’s Global Spirit’s Forgiveness and Healing program with Ed Tick and Kate Dahlstedt (Lesson 5) and Azim Khamisa on Link TV. See full Global Spirit Forgiveness and Healing program here (55 minutes).

• Azim Khamisa says, “There’s no reconciliation without a complete healing process,” and explains his Requirements for Reconciliation in a story excerpted from Beyond Forgiveness on this site.

• Learn more about Azim Khamisa and the important work of the Tariq Khamisa Foundation.

Click here to go forward to Lesson 4 of the Beyond Forgiveness Study Course>>
<<Back to Lesson 2
<<Back to the Study Course Introduction

These study course materials were prepared by Phil Cousineau, and were created to be used hand-in-hand with the book, Beyond Forgiveness: Reflections on Atonement, with permission of the book’s publisher, Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint. Copyright © 2011 by Phil Cousineau and Richard J. Meyer.