..As we forgive those who trespass against us

Someone asked me, where the Greek Gods, my primary source of spiritual inspiration are with respect to forgiveness; a fundamental concept of Christianity. It was a good question because it’s true that in Greek myth the gods tend to be relentless in their punishments, though once they withdraw their anger they don’t seem to hold grudges either, so in that sense they do forgive.

The Greek gods and their myths arose in prehistoric times, before history that is, before the invention of writing.  This is significant; this was the time after the invention of language but before the invention of written language.  It was a time humans lived much closer to the natural environment that shaped our evolution.

As I discuss in Theory of the Sentient Mind, the gods are creations of the intellect, abstract ideas formulated to integrate the experiences coming from the Sentient mind with the world as understood by the intellect. Prior to the advent of writing the intellect’s understanding of the world was rudimentary. Intellectual knowledge could only be passed by word of month. Once writing was invented it could be passed down the generations: civilizations blossomed (from the evolutionary timescale) overnight.

Psychologist Julian Jaynes[1] has speculated that until sometime between 2000 and 1000 BC humans had no consciousness but “automatically” followed the voices of the gods as they heard them speak within. This time period corresponds to the invention of written language and extreme as the speculation is, it is consistent with the idea that the more sophisticated our intellectual model, the more difficult it is to connect directly with the gods.

Consciousness, that all important attribute that seems to be at the very core of what separates us (at least in our own minds) from other sentient animals is pretty much identical with the Ego. The Ego is the perceived boundary that separates Self from Other. It encompasses the intellect and all its concepts and cognitions, as well as our real-time experiences of sensory perception and our emotional state. However, since the beginnings of modern psychology it has been clear that much of the human mind lies outside this boundary. This outlying part is, roughly speaking, what I refer to as the Sentient Mind.

This is why the products of the Sentient Mind, thoughts that are Mythopoetic rather than Intellectual seem as though they have been “revealed” to us rather than to have been invented by us. They arise from the operation of a part of our psychology we do not perceive as being part of the Self.

The gods, not our intellectual ideas of them but the psychological reality of which those ideas are metaphors, exist deep in the Sentient mind. God is within us but is not “us.” Thus the more powerful and defined our consciousness, the better developed the Ego, the harder it is to connect to those hidden resources that are the fountain of all desire and all aversion, all that makes life worth living, all that make it meaningful.

Greek myth is full of stories about people getting in trouble because of their pride, in fact it could be said that at the root is all the myths is the same common theme, the perils of Hubris, what happens when people think they are better than the gods or that they don’t need the gods. It is the same in Christian myth, Lucifer the origin of all human separation from God, was the embodiment of the sin of Pride.

The experience of personal pride is inextricably connected with the Ego. As we believe that part of us bounded by Ego, our intellect, our thoughts, our knowledge, our will power, our strength, our moral values – can give us everything we need to live the abundant life – we are guilty of the sin of Pride.

That is why you cannot storm the gates of heaven, why people kneel to pray, why you need the (humble) heart of child to come before God. This is the hardest lesson of all to learn and perhaps the most painful to experience.

When we finally “get it” and understand that living within our Ego, our Sapient minds alone, has led us into an emotional wasteland, we cry out to the gods. We fall to our knees and beg for forgiveness for our sins. But what sins? The master Sin, Lucifer’s Sin, the sin of Pride is the one that most truly matters.  Pride is what separates us from the gods in the first place: if we were not separated from them we would have been following their bidding all along.

Forgiveness is the experience of reconnection to our innermost emotional resources, the very wellsprings of the waters of life. It cannot be experienced; it is not needed, unless one is separated from the gods. So it is true that to be forgiven one must first know Sin.

Forgiveness cannot be attained unless humility is attained first. Finding that humility is a process by which the Ego and its mighty servant, the intellect learn to voluntarily step aside and hold open a door to a realm in which they have no power.

It takes a civilized mind, with great knowledge of the nature world, with great power over objective reality to really become truly disconnected with the gods within. It is the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge that drive us from God’s presence.

The ancient Greeks had no illusions that they were masters of the universe, their pitiful wooden ships were so easily smashed against the rocks, they fell prey to beasts in the forests, and nature was an overwhelming force all around them. It was natural for them to see the hands of the gods in these forces. They bowed their heads in humility and were afraid. They had no need for the notion of forgiveness because they never got far enough from the gods to need it. But they sensed that they had better keep their heads bowed, hence the constant emphasis on the perils of Hubris.

Forgiveness though is not only something that we civilized people must seek it is something to be given as well. Here too there are pitfalls that arise from the Ego. We tend to think that if we come to understand the reasons why someone has done something that angers us and acknowledge that we ourselves might have done something in similar circumstances that we have “forgiven” them. We have not, we have only understood them and in that understanding may even experience some degree of sympathy or empathy that mitigates the anger we feel in our hearts.

People say that you can forgive someone and still be angry at them. This is forgiveness from the mind, from the Ego, not from the heart. True forgiveness can only be experienced through the lense of humility. Thus it still comes from God and you experience God’s forgiveness for the person who has trespassed against you and in your humility you experience your anger towards them dissolve.

And who can have such humility? Only one who has connected with the gods, only one who has experienced the God’s forgiveness of their own trespasses. Now we see that the powerful words of the Lord’s Prayer should be recited as “Forgive us our trespasses (against you) that we might forgive those that trespass against us.” Being forgiven, not by mortals but by God is a prerequisite to be able to truly forgive others.