Beyond Forgiveness
Beyond Forgiveness
You do not need to forgive harder
Is it time to forgive?
No.
It’s not.
It’s way past that.
The time to forgive was the moment the pain occurred, but most of us were completely incapable of doing that because we were still inside the wound, trying to understand what happened, how somebody could do such a thing, why we did not see it coming and whether the person responsible might eventually arrive with the apology that would put us back together.
We believed they had taken something from us.
Naturally, we assumed they would have to give it back.
So we waited.
Some of us waited angrily. Some spiritually. Some waited while chanting, journalling, analysing childhood attachments and buying crystals large enough to require their own municipal planning permission.
Still, we waited.
We were waiting because we had been taught that forgiveness happens between the wounded person and the person who wounded them.
It doesn’t.
Forgiveness happens inside the one who is ready to become free.
The dictionary cannot save you
According to our friend Merriam-Webster, forgiveness means pardoning an offence or letting go of anger.
Lovely.
Concise.
Completely useless when your nervous system is still reacting to something that happened twenty-seven years ago while your brain insists you are over it.
The dictionary can define forgiveness. It cannot make forgiveness happen.
That has been our mistake.
We have tried to understand forgiveness as if the brain, once presented with a sufficiently impressive definition, would lean over and switch off the pain.
It won’t.
No dictionary is that good.
We have also confused forgiveness with being sorry, receiving an apology, demonstrating remorse or deciding that what happened was somehow acceptable.
Forgiveness is none of those things.
You can ho’oponopono your way into next Tuesday and still remain emotionally handcuffed to the person you are trying to forgive. You can give or receive the apology you spent years rehearsing in your head and discover, to your absolute horror, that it changes nothing.
You can say, “I forgive you,” through clenched teeth while your left eye begins twitching with the effort of being holy.
That is not forgiveness.
That is rage wearing organic bamboo.
Forgiveness is a strawberry
Forgiveness is a strawberry.
Stay with me.
You know how this goes. First I lead you to the edge of reason, then I drop-kick you over it.
Bungeeeeeee.
Look, Mom. No rope.
Years ago, I attended a course about forgiveness. I left knowing a great deal more about the concept, but with one fairly important unanswered question:
Had I actually forgiven?
That question told me everything I needed to know.
You cannot eat a strawberry and wonder whether you are eating it.
You know.
You taste the sweetness. You feel the juice. You smell the tender red flesh of it. There is no committee meeting inside your head to determine whether strawberry consumption has successfully occurred.
It is unmistakable because it is an experience.
Forgiveness should be just as unmistakable.
WARNING: IF YOU DO NOT LIKE STRAWBERRIES, PLEASE REPLACE THE STRAWBERRY WITH SOMETHING YOU LOVE. DO NOT EMAIL MY TEAM TO REPORT THAT THE ENTIRE TEACHING FAILED BECAUSE YOU PREFER MANGOES.
The course I attended did not give me that experience, although it gave me something unexpectedly useful. It showed me what forgiveness was not.
Words were not enough.
Apology was not the remedy.
Understanding why somebody behaved the way they did, did not set me free.
Feeling sorry did not restore what had been lost.
So I kept looking for the strawberry.
Years later, the answer finally arrived, and when it did, I did not have to ask whether I had found it. Every part of me recognised it because the answer was not an idea I had to hold inside my mind.
It was an experience that entered my body.
That strawberry was innocence.
And this is true for both sides of forgiveness: the person being forgiven and the one doing the forgiving. Whether you are carrying the pain of what was done to you or the shame of what you did, the way home is the same. You reclaim the innocence that pain, blame and shame convinced you had lost.
Forgiveness is the reclamation of innocence
Forgiveness is not something you give to the person who harmed you. It is the moment you reclaim the innocent self you believed their actions had taken away.
Forgiveness is not a pardon one person grants another. It is the reclaiming of innocence, whether you are forgiving someone else or learning how to forgive yourself.
Pain convinced you that something essential had been damaged, stained or permanently changed. It told you that you were now the abandoned one, the betrayed one, the abused one, the guilty one, the foolish one or the one who should have known better.
Those identities may describe what you experienced, but they do not describe you.
Your innocence is not ignorance. It does not mean pretending that nothing happened, allowing dangerous people back into your life or wandering around with such aggressively open arms that even your boundaries file for resignation.
Innocence is the part of you that remained whole while you were experiencing the illusion of being broken.
That is what forgiveness returns you to.
Once I experienced this, I no longer had to forage for more strawberries. The taste remained because the experience had become part of me.
And unlike my car keys, it was not something I could lose five minutes after putting it somewhere safe.
Where we get trapped
When somebody else has harmed us, we often believe that they must become involved in our healing.
We wait for them to understand.
We fantasise about the moment they finally realise how deeply they hurt us.
We imagine that if they could explain themselves, show enough remorse or say exactly the right words, the pain would release us.
This gives the person who hurt us responsibility for the very freedom we are trying to reclaim.
When we are trying to forgive ourselves, we create a similar trap.
We believe shame is proof that we care. We punish ourselves in the hope that enough suffering will eventually make us innocent again, or wait for somebody else to absolve us from a sentence we imposed upon ourselves.
Neither blame nor shame restores innocence.
They keep us circling the wound, rearranging the furniture and calling it home.
You can spend your life there.
You can learn to manage the background anxiety that moved in without permission, eats your food, refuses to pay rent and has somehow added itself to the family WhatsApp group.
You can function.
You can succeed.
You can even become very spiritual.
Yet something will continue to feel out of place because the version of you who survived the wound was never meant to become your permanent identity.
There is somewhere beyond forgiveness
Beyond forgiveness is the place where you no longer need the past to become different before you can be whole.
It is where the one who harmed you stops holding the imaginary key to your freedom.
It is where the apology may come or may never come, and neither outcome determines who you get to be.
It is where you discover that your innocence was never in their possession and never something that could be lost or corrupted.
This is why I created the six-week Beyond Forgiveness course. For a limited time you can use coupon code BEYONDFOR65 for a massive 65% discount.
It is not a course about forcing yourself to pardon people who have not earned access to you. It is a journey through neutrality, acceptance, shame, judgement and the identities created around pain, leading you back to the self you thought you had lost.
We dismantle some of the most damaging myths about forgiveness:
• Some things are unforgivable.
• Forgiving means condoning what happened.
• Saying sorry creates healing.
• Shame is necessary for accountability.
• The person who caused the wound must help to close it.
• You need to understand the past before you can be free of it.
Although I recorded this course several years ago, I would not change the teaching if I created it today. If anything, it has become more relevant because people are exhausted from trying to forgive with their minds while their bodies are still carrying the unfinished experience.
My personal recommendation is to listen with your eyes closed.
I considered removing the video altogether, but left it available for those who occasionally need to check that I am still there and have not been collected by a galactic Uber.
This work was created to be experienced.
Not merely seen or heard.
Not intellectually admired.
Experienced in the same unmistakable way that you taste the strawberry and know it is in your mouth.
You do not need to forgive harder.
You do not need to make what happened acceptable. There is nothing to condone but everything to restore.
You do not need the person who wounded you to return what you believe they took.
Your innocence is still here. It has been waiting beneath every story that said you were broken, damaged, guilty, abandoned or no longer enough.
Beyond forgiveness, you find it.
Beyond forgiveness, you find yourself.
From my heart to yours,
EXPLORE THE PLASMA LIGHT TRIBE
Today, 3 October, is a public holiday in Germany: German Unity Day.
I think this is a lovely opportunity to celebrate my own inner unity and do something good for it.
I’m doing this by treating myself to the ‘Beyond Forgiveness’ course.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, dear wonderful Kerry, for the generous discount.
I’m really looking forward to the course.
*** HGCTG ***
Warm regards,
Bianca
Thank you for investing this time in your growth, Bianca, and for being part of the ripple.
Much love
Oh, Kerry❤️🫶🏾
I will absorb even deeper again, repeating for the third time🪽
This is one of the diamond courses amongst the treasure trove you have allow into creation, THANK YOU, Kerry!!!!🙏🏾✨🦋🌹🌸 🤍🔥
Thank you, Eva (ava)… I love that you invest the time and energy into your growth. The ripple…
Shine baby shine!
“Innocence is the part of you that remained whole while you were experiencing the illusion of being broken”.
This line finally shifted my shame of having fallen so deep into the illusion.
A great relief!
Thank you for such a sacred sharing.
Your words carry the weight of a journey deeply lived, and I feel them.
Thank you so much Kerry,
You have a way of bypassing the mind and go straight to the heart.
What a beautiful and powerful gift you have been given! Grateful to have found you.
HGCTG? No limit. SBS❣️🌺
I’m so grateful that you are here, Mackie.
Much love
You are funny Kerry! Or drunk when you wrote. I loved having a good laugh. Now where is my teeny tiny crystal?
Oh dear heavens I don’t drink, now what’s my excuse other than utter madness 😂❤️
Thank you, Kerry!!! This is so helpful and a direction I have been moving into. No longer a victim at age 82, not even feeling like a survivor anymore, despite a long journey feeling both those identities. I love strawberries! I’m exploring how to afford the course, and meanwhile happy to be plugged into the PLT. HGCTG!!!
The path home is never walked alone.
It’s an honour to walk beside you Verona
soul to soul, light to light.
Thank you for your insight into forgiveness.
I have done your course “beyond forgiveness” about a year ago and it was one of the most revealing, challenging but above all healing experiences.
Your text today encourages me to do it again. It made me I understand a lot more about innocence so that I am looking forward to fully embracing it again.
Thank you Kerry!
Thank you for sharing, Vera. That brings so much joy to my heart.
xxx
I absolutely feel the same you wrote Vera, the course was challenging and supportive at the same time and this one I a sure doing again, thank you for sharing, Simone
I’m incredibly grateful, thank you Kerry. HGCTG?!!
From my heart…all the way to yours, Tanja
Brilliant!! The greatest appreciation for your message & presentation – anxiety added itself to the family whatsapp group indeed!!
Thank you for your kind words, Liz. They are deeply received.
Thank You Kerry!
My son reads your email messages and You tube posts, and says “how does Kerry always seem to know what’s going on with me? ”
And you certainly do know what so many of us go through, and when . As I am in the middle of this too.
(As well as walking through the awkwardness , and freedom of saying no to some people when its right for me to do so)
I don’t do bumper stickers, but I would love to have one that says ;
“You can ho’oponopono your way into next Tuesday and still remain emotionally handcuffed to the person you are trying to forgive” 🙂
Thank You for sharing the brilliant light that we all can see and feel , and be warmed by, at anytime we need it.
With Love and Gratitude , Candice
I feel your love, Candice. And I send it right back with gratitude wrapped in gold to both you and your son.
What a relieve dear Kerry, not only understandings the essence, but feeling it until the last somatic cell of my body and beyond.
Had to lough about your wonderful humor!
Strawberries and Mangoes….💕
Much love beautiful soul.
Yay! I’m so happy that something spoken from my heart found its way to yours, Heidi.
xxx
I bought this course just the other day and am so excited to dive into it … right after I’ve finished the New Human one .. and keeping up with the live calls every Friday 😉
Thank you for you Kerry!! Your humour, your straight talk and the energy that I feel coming through when I watch or listen to you. It feels like you speak to my soul.
Shine baby shine! Thank you for being on this path, Nicola.
xxx
Thank you for this beautiful message Kerry! Another reminder to clear any remaining remnants. Much love.
( you are a gifted writer ❣️)
Thank you so much, Sue! I really appreciate you, beautiful soul.
Thank you so much Kerry. I love the way you manage to bring in humor into a very deep, meaningful subject such as forgiveness. Your words really resonated at a time in my life when I really needed clarification. Yes, no-one can take my innocence unless I give it away. You have helped me so much to understand that. I will no longer wait for an apology or contact as I realize now how I was giving my power away. Regaining my freedom each day. With appreciation and love. x
Robyn, you are an example of light in our time
not by what you say, but by how you show up.
Quietly. Bravely.
Thank you for being part of this ripple.
I finally experienced my innocence in the midst of a tidal wave that knocked me breathless, changing Everything.
And I’ve never felt more grateful.
And oh how I LOVE guffawing through your brilliant humor, providing Just the comic relief that’s in order in the aftermath of my experience of truly loving me & the other regardless of whatever consequence.
Kerry, I love you. So much it hurts.
😭
Holding you in so much love, Michelle.
xxx
Danke. Grandios und sehr deutlich !!!! Wunderbare Kommunikation. Agnes AWA
Thank you so much for your kind words, Agnes.
Sending you much love