Coming Back to Yourself: the Practice of Forgiveness

In your spiritual journey, have you ever had a moment where you witnessed yourself calling in a challenge? I have. Numerous times I have watched my Highest Self ask for a test. A test to see if I can truly forgive. Meanwhile my ego says, "yeah, you got this." And another part of me is screaming, "NO!!!" Without a doubt, Source escorts these situations to me, proving the old spiritual adage that we get exactly what we ask for. And what we ask for, whether it's a difficult or a lovely experience, comes from the place in us that already knows we can handle it, and is fully ready and willing for an upgrade.

Meher Baba described this exact mechanism. He taught that the soul's long journey, through countless lifetimes, is one of gathering sanskaras, the impressions left on consciousness by every thought, feeling, and action, and then, gradually, wearing them down until they release their grip entirely. Nothing is wasted, and nothing is random. The very challenges we seem to "call in" are the soul, in its own wisdom, choosing exactly the friction it needs to dissolve an old groove and open into a deeper experience of Love. As Baba liked to put it, so simply: "Don't worry, be happy" not as a dismissal of pain, but as an invitation to trust the intelligence quietly working behind it.

Why does this happen? I guess it's the part of me that wants to see where I'm still holding on. Forgiveness is central. It is mandatory. Our inability to forgive creates bondage, energetic chains that bind us to one another. Meher Baba taught something remarkably similar: that unresolved resentment is one of the heaviest sanskaras a soul can carry, because it keeps two souls tied to each other in the exact entanglement they are both trying to outgrow. He described all of creation, and its long evolutionary arc, as existing for a single purpose, for the soul to shed its false coverings and awaken to its true identity as one with God. Every unforgiven hurt is a thread still sewn into that covering.

“Forgiveness is the best charity"- Meher Baba

In Matthew 18:21–22, Jesus tells Peter to forgive not seven times, but "seventy times seven", the number of divine alignment and personal transformation. Meher Baba held Jesus as one of the great Avataric forms of the One who returns, age after age, to remind humanity of this very truth: that love and forgiveness aren't optional add-ons to a spiritual life, but its entire substance.

As if on cue, after I witness some part of me asking for a test, I go through a difficult experience. Most recently, I felt deeply hurt by a friend I cherished. It wasn't a one-time occurrence, I realized it was a repeated, slowly accumulating experience that eventually became undeniable. What I felt was unbearable, not only because this was a friend I thought I'd grow old with, create with, someone many people respect, but because it was so clearly part of the pattern of sisterhood wounds I first experienced in this lifetime in third grade, a wound I have since traced all the way back to its origin. I thought I had moved past all of it. Then, all at once, it came back to me.

Such is the path of peri- and menopause, which brings up the past in very specific and purposeful ways. I've come to notice that as we enter a new phase of life, our sanskara patterns resurface, helping us see with even greater clarity and rise into higher levels of awareness. To fully surrender to the mental and emotional pain of a sanskara. Sanskaras are buried impressions in the mind, akin to grooves of an old record. The needle of a new life passage inevitably finds its way back to the deepest grooves, not to punish us, but to finally let us play a different song, to make better decisions, to see and experience life in a new way.

I remember praying to God to please help me see clearly, to help me let go of the intensity of all of the hurt, anger, and frustration of betrayal. Then, suddenly, it all disappeared. Poof. Vanished. All within the blink of an eye. Literally! It simply wasn't there. One moment the suffering and the hurt were there; the next moment, they were not. It was so wild.

I was shown the pure illusion of it all. A moment to feel the nothingness. The pure insanity of it all. This is close to what Meher Baba, and the countless masters and sahgurus have taught before and after him have meant when they have said and taught that life itself is a dream, a passing shadow-play, and that only the One who witnesses the dream is real. For one breathless moment, I was standing in that witnessing place.

However, within fifteen minutes, the heavy weight of it all came pouring back in. Poof! There it was again. I knew I had to come into my own forgiveness.

This is what I did.

My hope is that you will find something beautiful in this musing that supports you on your own journey. Write your hurt self a letter from your Highest Self. Here is one, from Highest Self to you.

Dear One,

Here you are, within another moment, where life invites you to choose. You can hold on, or you can soften. You can resist, or you can grow. Even in the discomfort, there is an opening, an opportunity to return to yourself and move forward with more awareness, truth, and freedom.

1. Everything begins with honesty.

Be real about what you feel. Not what you think you should feel, not what looks strong or composed, but what is actually there. Maybe it’s fear, anger, grief, confusion, even hope. When you stop trying to rise above your humanity and instead meet it fully, something shifts. That honesty becomes a doorway into clarity, into deeper self-trust, and into the guidance that's already within you. This mirrors one of the very first things Meher Baba asked of those who came to him: radical honesty with oneself. He taught that no real inner progress is possible without it. We cannot outgrow what we refuse to name.

2. Before you react, pause.

Place your hand on your heart. Take one intentional breath. Let your body catch up with the moment. Ask yourself what feels true. This simple act brings you out of old patterns and back into alignment. It becomes your compass, especially when emotions are high.

3. Support yourself energetically.

Imagine your body surrounded by a warm, golden light. Let it wrap around you, steady you, and create space between you and what isn't yours to carry. Whether you see this as spiritual or simply grounding, the effect is the same, you begin to feel held, clearer, and less entangled. Turn inward for guidance, and begin exactly where you are. Meher Baba reminded those who came to him that even a Master's guidance exists only to awaken your own inner knowing, never to replace it. The light you're imagining now isn't separate from you. It is you, remembering itself.

4. Acknowledge the pain.

Notice where it lives in your body. What does it feel like? If it had a voice, what would it say? Sometimes what we're feeling isn't just about the present experience, it's a much older, familiar pattern resurfacing, asking to be fully processed this time, so it can finally be released. This is the very mechanism Meher Baba described in his teaching on sanskaras: impressions gathered over many lifetimes, shaping not only our personality but our recurring emotional patterns. He taught that these impressions must be exhausted, never suppressed, and that fully, honestly feeling something, never bypassing it, is often the exact friction that wears a sanskara down to nothing.

Write down the emotion, and the belief that comes with it. Is there a time you've felt this before? Write down every moment throughout your life you can remember feeling this way.

5. Meet that part of yourself with compassion.

Close your eyes and imagine yourself in front of you. See clearly what you're carrying, and what it represents. Meet this part of you with boundless love and compassion.

6. Ask for what this part of you needs.

Maybe it's comfort, expression, connection, a specific action. Allow yourself to give and receive whatever your hurt self needs. Say a prayer for assistance in seeing clearly.

7. Call upon your Highest Self.

What does your wise self want to say to the part of you that feels betrayed? What perceptions (beliefs) and projections (biases, emotions, expectations) are playing out in this experience that are patterns from the past? Allow these two parts of you to have a conversation. You can even journal it, back and forth, as though transcribing two different voices.

Meher Baba taught that this Highest Self is not a metaphor. It is the Real Self, the one and only Self that lives at the heart of every soul in creation. The "I" that feels hurt is the limited ego-self; the One who can witness that hurt with total compassion is far closer to who you actually are. Calling upon your Highest Self, then, is really an act of remembering, not inventing.

If you have been betrayed by another person…

Bring to mind the person involved (even if it's you). Not to excuse, but to understand. What might they have been operating from? What pain or limitation shaped their actions? Perspective doesn't erase accountability, but it softens the grip of resentment.

This is where Meher Baba's teaching on the fundamental Oneness of all souls becomes medicine rather than mere philosophy. If, as he taught, we are all sparks of the very same Flame, the One Ancient Soul wearing countless different masks, then the one who wounded you is not separate from the One who is trying to heal you. Understanding their pain doesn't excuse the action. It simply lets you set the sword down without pretending you were never cut.

8. Zoom out, and hover above it all.

Seek a higher perspective, and merge with the part of you that sees more clearly. Look at the situation from a higher vantage point. We cannot meet a problem from the same level on which it was created. We have to rise above it to see it clearly.

Meher Baba described the whole of manifest existence, every joy, every wound, every apparent injustice as taking place within maya, the grand illusion through which the One plays at being many. He often said that life itself is a passing dream, and that only the One who witnesses the dream, unmoved, is real. Rising above your situation isn't spiritual bypassing. It's remembering which part of you was never actually touched by it in the first place.

Ask:

What am I not seeing?

What matters most right now?

What would my most grounded, loving self choose?

What lesson is here?

What strength or clarity is this experience asking me to develop?

What can I take from this that actually moves my life forward — in a positive, more aligned, more intentional way?

The more you practice this, the less you depend on external validation, and the more you trust your own inner knowing.

Pay attention to what brings you back to yourself. Notice what makes you feel open, genuine, and alive. Your natural state isn't heavy and contracted, it is engaged, creative, and connected. Let that be your signal. Move toward what nourishes that feeling, and gently step away from what dims it. This isn't a coincidence. Meher Baba taught that our true nature is itself infinite existence, infinite consciousness, and infinite bliss. It is what the old traditions called Sat-Chit-Anand. Heaviness and contraction were never who you are. Only what you were temporarily wearing.

And from this place, we slowly arrive at forgiveness, which is sometimes a process, a process we return to again and again, until one day we find that we have truly let go and forgiven ourselves and others. For forgiveness is not passive, and it isn't easy. It asks each of us to release the weight of resentment, not because what happened was acceptable, but because you no longer want to carry it. It is a decision to stop reliving the same emotional patterns, and to reclaim your energy.

If we don't forgive, we stay bound to the story, the emotions, and the cycle itself. Anger, guilt, betrayal, shame, they keep repeating until we're willing to see things differently. Forgiveness interrupts that loop. It creates space for something new. This is precisely the mechanism Meher Baba described in his teaching on sanskaras: an impression left unresolved tends to generate another one like it, resentment breeding resentment, until the soul consciously interrupts the pattern. Forgiveness, in his teaching, is one of the few acts capable of breaking that cycle rather than feeding it. It burns through the impression instead of reinforcing it.

9. Remember…

Life is truly an illusion. Learn to see through it. What are your perceptions (beliefs about your life) and projections (biases, emotions, expectations)? Can you see this playing out in your life? Meher Baba taught this without qualification: that the world of forms of separation, of mine and yours, of hurt and hurt-doer is maya, real enough to be experienced, but never the final word. Life is a dream, he would say, and so is death; only the One having the dream is real. To see through the illusion isn't to deny that something happened. It's to stop mistaking the dream for the Dreamer.

Forgiveness is a process. Sometimes gradual, sometimes layered. But each moment you choose to loosen your grip, you reclaim more of your peace. And part of that process is clarity.

You're allowed to set boundaries. You're allowed to outgrow people, dynamics, and environments. Forgiveness doesn't mean continued access, it means freedom from the emotional weight. You can release someone and still choose a different path for yourself. You can still love, without being in someone's immediate world. Meher Baba distinguished, again and again, between attachment and real love. Real love, he taught, wants nothing in return, not even nearness. You can love someone completely and still walk a different road.

Your command is powerful and important. Meher Baba taught that even amid vast cosmic destiny, the human heart retains real freedom with true forgiveness. Regaining the freedom to fully receive and give love. And to forgive, is to choose differently in this very moment. That freedom is your command.

What you choose changes everything.

10. Vocalize your intention.

I command all illusions of betrayal to unwind their energetic binds and coils of anger, frustration, sadness, hurt, and resentment.

I choose to release what no longer serves me. I choose to move forward with clarity and strength.

I ask that all heartache and hardship move me into the highest Divine Will, for the highest good of all.

I choose freedom and forgiveness. I choose peace.

Visualize all the beings who have been part of this story, standing in front of you, and say:

I love you. I'm sorry. I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you.

If you'd like, you can close with two of Meher Baba's own phrases, which carry that same surrender in far fewer words: "Do your best. Then don't worry; leave the rest to me." And, even in the middle of it all , "Don't worry, be happy." ( Bobby McFerrin’s famous song was inspired directly by a Meher Baba poster he once saw.) Not as denial. As trust.

You can put all of this into your own words, but whatever you do, return to it daily, and vocalize whatever you need to say out loud, as many times as you need. Over time, something begins to shift.

You feel lighter. Clearer. More present. And more connected, not just to others, but to yourself.

When you learn to listen this way, to feel honestly, to pause, to reflect, and to forgive, you become available to your own guidance. And from there, your life starts to move in a very different direction.

As for My Story…

I choose to take the path of forgiveness. I choose to look at the situation as an opportunity to forge a new path. In this, I found a beautiful new opportunity I would otherwise never have found. While I will always love my friend, and see her from her Highest Self, I realize that sometimes we outgrow one another. I celebrate her wins, and I see her insecurity. I see her younger self finally getting all that she has wanted and desired. I wish her well on her path, knowing that we are always One.

This is, in the end, Meher Baba's whole teaching in a single line: that separation was always the dream, and Oneness was always the truth beneath it. Forgiveness doesn't create that Oneness. It simply lets you stop pretending you don't already know it.

In letting go, I allow something new to grow and take place. I see what no longer aligns. I release control, and I relinquish my ego, placing this situation into the Heart of One. I trust the Divine in all things, large and small. I invite in the fullness of relationships that feel supportive, inclusive, spiritually aligned, honest, heart-nurturing, and abundant.

Eternal Love wins.

Whatever you are navigating, I hope you find peace and contentment, today, tomorrow, and forever.

Love,

Kari Rivers

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A note on Meher Baba: Meher Baba (1894–1969) was an Indian spiritual master who taught that love and forgiveness are the direct path to conscious union with God. From 1925 until his passing in 1969, he communicated only through an alphabet board and, later, his own hand gestures, teaching largely through silence and presence. He identified himself as the same One who has come in every age, in different forms: as Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. His return was simply to remind humanity, once again, that the only real answer has always been Love. While he is no longer in body, he is very present and available to anyone who desires to connect with his loving eternal presence.