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July 2005 - The London Bombings... Radical Forgiveness is the Only Sane Response
When I worked at London University, I rode the Piccadilly Line and alighted at Russell Square on many occasions. It was the nearest station to the University. Russell Square station was one of the three places on the London Underground that was bombed and the one that lies the deepest beneath the clay upon which London is built. What happened there this week was made all the more personal for me because I know that station so well. Not only that, London was my home. Londoners are my neighbors. I grieve for them. It is ironic that the London Underground which was the safest place for people to sleep during the war became this week the most dangerous place to be.
Thankfully, no one I knew personally was killed or hurt in the bombings, but it was still a test for me. Faced once again with man's cold-hearted inhumanity to man and to my own neighbors, I wondered whether I could still hold the Radical Forgiveness vibration. Could I see the perfection? No, of course not. Was I willing, though? Yes, I think so.
What I could see was the mirror. The violence out there was reflecting my own violence within and my quiet acquiescence in the face of the social, economic and racial inequality and injustice that is my reality in America and other countries. I see the mirror of toxic religious fanaticism and extremism that poisons and pollutes life here in this country that I do little or nothing about beyond ranting against it (except to write books to show that there is perfection even in that.)
I feel the pain of those millions of people around the world who live in the abject poverty and the perpetual hunger that breeds religious extremism and the terrorism that accompanies it - on both sides, and yet do little or nothing about it. I see the war in Iraq and grieve for the tens of thousand of Iraqi dead the Pentagon refuses to count or acknowledge. I grieve too for the American soldiers dead and wounded who agreed to support the lies and deception of a government I helped to create. The mirror was cracked but alarmingly accurate.
Like everyone else, I needed to be jolted out of my comfortable soporific state so I could be reminded of the reality of life as we have collectively created it. Like 9/11 and the Madrid bombing, the London bombing served that purpose. Such awful events stop us in our tracks so that we might ponder our own individual and collective responsibility for what lies behind the event itself; the root causes of terrorism.
It was no accident that it happened under the very noses of all the leaders of the world and that not one of them had an answer for it. They all stood there impotent, powerless, culpable, exposed and extremely vulnerable. But no less jolted than you or me, I fancy. For that, at least, I was grateful.
The fact that Russell Square Station is the deepest place on the underground system, so deep in fact that it is the one place on the system where you have to ride down to the platform by elevator as opposed to escalator, is symbolic of how deeply we have repressed our collective shadow. The fact that, as of the time of writing, the rescuers haven't been able to reach the location to retrieve the dead and the media talk about that area being rat-infested and poisonous with fumes, only seems to add to the symbolism. Can we own it?
I also needed to be reminded that, while anger is an understandable response, revenge and eye-for-an-eye justice is madness and only perpetuates what we have now. It is futile. The only sane response to all of this is to hold a higher vibration - the vibration of peace and forgiveness. Not traditional forgiveness - which is clearly impossible in this context, but RADICAL forgiveness. (To learn the difference between the two, click here). It has been shown over and over again, that holding the energy of Peace and Love is the only thing that works. And that's where the technology of Radical Forgiveness takes us. It is true that if we do our work, raise our own vibration and remain willing to see the perfection in what is occurring, we will create the necessary critical mass to collapse the energy fields that currently produce the madness we observe everywhere in the world.
We need look no further for that madness than in our own lives and in our own country, no matter which it is. I urge you therefore to do as many forgiveness worksheets as you can on the terrorists. (An online version of the worksheet can be found here.) The reason for doing it on them is that they have strongly resonated some issues within you and the collective consciousness to which you belong (i.e. the culture and country in which you live), that cry out for healing. Doing a worksheet will shift the underlying energy in the direction of peace, and eventually to world peace. It will honor those who made the transition as part of the agreement. It will ease the pain and suffering of the wounded, and will relieve the grief of those who lost loved ones. It will also help to alleviate the suffering of our collective soul as we struggle to emerge, from the darkness into the light, not as homo-sapiens but as homo-spiritus: spiritual beings having a spiritual experience here on Earth.
I began on a personal note and would like to end on one. I have heard the newscasts coming out of London in the last couple of days recounting, for one thing, how well the rescue people acquitted themselves in dealing with the crisis, but also countless incredible stories of kindness, bravery, sacrifice and even heroism. My quick reframe is that the bombings have brought people together again to experience oneness and love for one another. They remained calm and came together as people do in such times but perhaps as only Londoners can, having lived through the Blitz and the bombings by the IRA. They are already back living their lives normally and steadfastly using the buses and tube trains. I am so incredibly proud of them and even though I am against nationalism as such, I have to say at this moment, I am proud to be a Brit.
Blessings,
Colin
email: colin@radicalforgiveness.com
P.S. My mission is to raise the consciousness of the planet and to create a world of forgiveness by 2012. Thank you for being on this path with me. I feel your love and support.
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