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n the interest of peace, perhaps it is time to take an honest look at what you consider to be “problems” in your life. In order to even ref lect on a problem, you will see that first you have to go into memories of the past to generate a story of the supposed problem. This is a moment of choice and this choice is present in every moment of your life. Generally, we choose to remember the past to recreate our problems. If we choose not to regenerate them, what does that mean about their importance? How can we know we have learned the lesson? We have an investment in the problem’s importance, so we go back to the past to conjure it up again. This is called “rebirth.” This is the choice to be reborn with the same problems, stories and miseries, day by day. Once we are aware of that choice, we have the possibility of recognizing exactly what is required to keep any problem alive. It is necessary to invest time, effort and energy on what “was” to keep feeding the importance of the problem. We search for answers to alleviate our problems and to end our suffering, but the search follows the rebirth, a rebirth that we have actually chosen. The choice we often make is to be reborn as the sufferer, rather than simply be here as nobody, as nothing. The willingness to be nothing, to defend against nothing, can lead to exceedingly intense feeling. A great fear can arise: “I could really disappear here, and then the whole of my life will be of no actual importance.” But you have to understand that this is going to happen anyway. You really will disappear at some point, and even though you may make great contributions in your life, finally, they too will disappear. So the question becomes: Are you willing, at least for this moment, to not be reborn? If you are, then you can recognize what is unborn, what remains alive without story, without suffering, without problem. Recognize what remains alive and let its spaciousness, its peace, be revealed as your own heart. You can recognize it as yourself, having nothing to do with birth or death. If you are willing to be true to that recognition,
then rebirth is not a problem, because then your story, your “problems,” are consciously recognized as appearing in the vast intelligence of who you truly are. Then you know yourself as essentially free of any past. The past can be welcomed, can be learned from and can be appreciated in its full spectrum of beauty and horror. No matter what the world is reflecting, whether circumstances are beautiful or terrifying, if your internal story is one of victimhood, you will suffer. It is very simple. If you are quite certain that you aren’t telling yourself a story of victimization, and yet you continue to suffer, then I suggest you are lying to yourself. You are telling yourself some thread of an ancient story of how you have been wronged. Whether it is a story of how God, or your parents or circumstances have wronged you, or how you have wronged yourself, it is all a story of you being the victim. Even the most violent aggressors, when the superficial layer of aggression is cracked, have a story of having been wronged. Striking out in anger or revenge always involves a story of victimization. Seeing how this victim story plays out in your own life is an important step toward realizing true freedom. When you really see it, you see that it has to be recreated each time it plays. It may surface in your mind through momentum, but to play it through takes energy, attention, belief, emotion and some kind of masochistic pleasure in the pain. Yes, it’s shocking! To see this operating within your own mind can be quite disturbing. The willingness to realize the truth of yourself, the willingness to be free, is the willingness to no longer be a victim—regardless of pain, circumstances, or the actions of others. To stop being a victim doesn’t mean to trivialize the horror in your life, to deny it, gloss over it or repress it. It means that you can fully meet whatever appears. You don’t have to hide, run, justify, wail, curse or moan. You can just meet life as it is. Are you willing to let your stories of victimization go? Are you willing to let all those horrible aggressors go unpunished? At a certain point, you have to be will-
ing to just call it off. Yes, there has been horrible suffering, and you have been on both ends of it. You have perpetuated it, and you have experienced it directed at you. Are you willing to end it? You are free to suffer, and you are free to stop suffering. No one can end it but you. That is where your freedom is. Conscious freedom is the freedom to meet suffering consciously, and then consciously choose to let it go. The bondage is in being unaware of the choice. You can choose to be free, or you can choose to suffer. It is up to you. Everyone has experienced the sweet release of forgiveness, as well as the
hard coldness of not forgiving. You know the difference, and you know the investment in the story that keeps a lack of forgiveness in place. You also know the relief when you actually forgive and let go of the burden. Our parents were not perfect. They consciously or unconsciously did things that were harmful to us, as our grandparents did things that were harmful to our parents. Our lovers, our children, our governments and our competing tribes have harmed us. Now is the time to forgive. Horrible things are continually being done all over the planet, in our own individual minds and in the collective mind. To for-
