Six Big Fat Lies About Forgiveness

A Miracle Story

Communion Without Bread and Wine

Gratitude: What a F***ing Nightmare!

Love Lessons from Tiger Woods

Six Big Fat Lies About Forgiveness

Karen Bentley

There's a difference between the more familiar social version of forgiveness and the less familiar spiritual version of forgiveness. This is because the purpose of the social version of forgiveness is to assign blame and to make self or another guilty for a mistake, whereas the spiritual version of forgiveness is to undo the guilt you feel for yourself or the blame you want to put on another. One version of forgiveness undoes hate and the other extends it. One leaves you feeling good and the other leaves you feeling bad. As you can see, these two versions of forgiveness are not the same.

Here are six of the biggest, fattest lies about the social practice of forgiveness.

Lie #1: Saying the words "I forgive you" or "I apologize" is an act of forgiveness.

This is the biggest lie of all. While saying "I forgive you" or "I apologize" is a popular social convention for dealing with mistakes, it does not necessarily end the hate you have in your own mind or the hate that someone else holds against you. In fact, saying these words has the opposite effect of making the mistake more real and more serious rather than minimizing it. Remember when Tanya Harding publicly apologized to Nancy Kerrigan for having Nancy's knee whacked just before the winter Olympics in 1994? Even though Tanya said the right words and appeared to be sincere, the words did nothing to change Nancy's mind about Tanya's badness or wrongness. It most likely had the opposite effect of keeping Nancy's grudge alive rather than undoing it.

This is not to suggest that you should never say "I'm sorry" or "excuse me for making a mistake." Rather, it's to ask you to become more conscious of why you are saying these words and what you are really doing. When you give an apology or demand one from someone else, you are not choosing to see goodness in self or another. Instead you are choosing to see the worst. And you get what you see. Always. Is the worst what you really want, dear reader? The spiritual practice of forgiveness develops your spiritual vision, which is the ability to see self or other at the highest possible level.

Lie #2: Forgiveness takes a long time and may involve many steps.
This is another popular social concept which is untrue. Many social and psychologically-oriented forgiveness practices involve several steps, stages, or degrees of forgiveness. First you think some more about the way you've been mistreated. Maybe you write down all the injustices. Then you get ready to forgive. Then you do this. Then you do that. Then maybe you write a letter or talk to a counselor about how badly you've been injured. Then you do something else. Yes, you can engage in this kind of angst and turmoil for as long as you want. And there's an advantage to it because your ego-based need for attention from others is fulfilled. But try to remember that this need does not make you happy, so ultimately there is no benefit. Wallowing in misery and delaying your joy is completely unnecessary.

Spiritual forgiveness is not hard, time-consuming, complicated, or mysterious. It begins with the awareness of hate in your mind and ends with the tiny willingness to give it up. You practice forgiveness the very moment you change your mind about yourself or another being wrong or bad. So here is the question to ask yourself. How long does it take to change your mind? Not even a second.

Lie #3. Forgiveness only needs to be done once.
In the social version of forgiveness, you say the words "I'm sorry" or "forgive me" once, and typically the deed is done. However, this doesn't really work because the human mind is disorganized and untrained. Thoughts of badness or wrongness keep coming back again and again. Because the mind is so unruly, it's critical to approach forgiveness as a form of spiritual fitness, something you do for yourself on an ongoing basis, rather than a one-time event. Developing spiritual fitness is the same as developing physical fitness. You cannot expect to grow a big, beautiful bicep muscle by doing one repetition of a bicep curl. Likewise, you cannot expect to develop a mind that's free of hate by one small act of forgiveness.

Here's how it works: A loveless thought about self or another enters the mind, and you notice it. Now you have a choice. It's always the same choice. You can keep the thought and indulge it, or you can change your mind and thereby undo (or transcend) the loveless thought. The loveless thought gets undone over and over, every time it presents itself, maybe several times a day. You just keep at it, like a diet. Eventually the thought is dismantled because there is no fresh investment of energy to keep it going.

Lie #4. Forgiveness is painful
It's true that the social version of forgiveness can be very painful because it always involves assigning ownership for a mistake or admitting ownership for a mistake. Ugh! Of course that hurts! No wonder forgiveness has such a bad name! However, the spiritual version of forgiveness is not painful at all because it is the complete overlooking of blame. Therefore, real forgiveness results in joy, not pain.

Lie #5. Forgiveness means that you accept or condone certain acts and behaviors as okay.
Forgiveness is not the overlooking of a problem. It's the overlooking of the blame and the judgment of badness or wrongness that typically accompanies the problem. If, for example, your house is on fire, you can't overlook it and pretend that nothing's happening. You have to solve the problem at hand, put the fire out, tend to processing insurance claims and salvaging your belongings. Your mission is simply to solve your problems and make life more functional without the dose of attack, guilt, or blame that usually goes along with it.

In our world, love (or special attention) is given or withheld based on the performance or non performance of certain desirable behaviors. But if you give or withdraw your love based on what people do or don't do for you, then your love is completely and totally conditional. What you're offering is actually a bargain – not love. Real love is unconditional and unshakeable. While it is more pleasing to have people in the world behave the way you want them to behave and value what you want them to value, love is not dependent on the behavior or value system of others. Love is dependent on your decision to be a loving being and that is all.

Lie #6. Forgiveness corrects errors
The social practice of forgiveness often includes the provision that someone else must correct an offensive or inappropriate behavior. As you can by now see, this is yet another condition on love. Therefore, it cannot be love and must be hate. Since forgiveness is the undoing of hate, correction of another cannot be a form of forgiveness. Correction of another is God's job, not ours. Our job is to accept our brothers and sisters "as they are." The hardest thing we are asked to do on the spiritual path is to witness a behavioral mistake in another without judgment or correction. Can you do it? Of course you can. A more important question is will you do it? Will you refuse to be shaken by the insanity of another? That is the test of peace you must pass.

We want the people in our world to conform to our morally correct and uplifted standards, so it is always a challenge to remember that this is our fantasy about how the world "should be." This fantasy is the subtle way in which we all "dream" or "sleep." Because of this, spiritual forgiveness is a gentle way of awakening. Many of us give good lip service to wanting to awaken from our dreams and to become enlightened, but the bottom line is always the same. What we really want is for our brothers and sisters to awaken so that we don't have to do the work of being a loving being in the face of constant lovelessness.

A Miracle Story

Karen Bentley

A few years ago I was a volunteer at a nursing home in Sudbury, a Boston suburb where I used to live. At the time my personal life was going through a choppy period, and "being there" for older people who had no one, or at least no one close by, made me happy. Typically I would visit the same five or six people twice a week. One of my friends was Delia, a frail and tiny woman who suffered greatly because of an estranged and bitter relationship with her only child, a daughter. One day when I went into Delia’s room to see her, she wasn’t there. She had gotten critically sick with pneumonia the night before and had been sent to a local hospital for extra care and supervision. Later that same day I went to the hospital to see her.

Delia was in a dire state when I arrived. Mostly she was unconscious, but every now and then she would semi wake to rail about the hatefulness and treachery of her daughter. Then she would drift off again. The nurses told me that Delia’s breathing had been blocked by her own phlegm. “Things don’t look good for her,” they said. I was told that no resuscitation efforts would be made on her behalf. Since Delia had told me many times that she wanted to die, I thought her request was finally being granted, and that this might be her last earthly appearance.

I considered what I could do for Delia that would be in any way useful to her. My inner guidance was to give her love, which made a lot of practical sense to me. If I could put love in her mind, maybe it would make her death easier and less fearful. So I started calmly whispering to Delia how much I loved her, how much her daughter really loved her, and how God sent me to tell her that He loved her. I repeatedly told her that I only saw her goodness and that God saw only her goodness. Throughout all this, Delia made no response and appeared to not understand or even hear what I was saying. After about 30 minutes I kissed her goodbye and went home.

When I came back the next day I was expecting to do more of the same or to be told that Delia had passed away. You can imagine my surprise when I learned she had fully recovered and would be discharged shortly. Was it coincidence or miracle? Since there is no such thing as coincidence, by default it must therefore be a miracle. I believe in the power of love, and I believe that we all have the power to heal ourselves and each other.

Can you help yourself or another to undo fear? Can you, for one holy instant, filter out your ego and extend the love in your heart to another? If you can perform these two seemingly simple skills, you are a miracle worker because you have made it possible for the Holy Spirit to do His work through you. It is nothing special or extraordinary. It is just the abundant love in your heart manifesting itself. Love is, after all, the only thing that really matters!

Communion Without Bread and Wine

Karen Bentley

Communion with God is traditionally thought of as a religious act where we eat food and/or drink wine to remember Jesus and connect with God. Many people are greatly inspired by this religious ceremony. This is because communion is an act that joins man and God, and the natural byproduct of this reunion is happiness. The happiness effect makes communion highly relevant and important. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate dictionary defines "communion" as an instant of sharing.

There are other words with the "com" root that are also related. "Communication" is the sharing of words, behaviors or signs. "Community" is the sharing of geography, behaviors, family, work or beliefs. Even the word "common" is the sharing of similar characteristics with others. Sharing enables us to join with each other and with God.

People who communicate are generally happier than people who don't. People who live in community with others are generally happier than people who live alone. People who perceive themselves as joined together by common characteristics are often happier than people who perceive themselves as different and isolated by their differences. Solitary confinement is considered a severe form of punishment. In fact, the secret of happiness lies in communion or joining, and the cause of all misery and pain is separation from God and others.

While the religious practice of communion is very beautiful and uplifting, the ability to join with God is not exclusive to this ceremony. Even more, communion is not limited to any food or drink or by any condition of the body, temple, church or sacred site. Joining with God in holy communion is dependent on one's peaceful state of mind. Since a peaceful state of mind can be had at any time you want it, holy communion can also be had at any time you want it. When you choose to share, unite and communicate with God in every moment, you are enlightened. You are in heaven. Most of us have not yet reached the point in our journey of awareness where we are willing to pay full attention to God.

Communion with God is similar to communion with human beings because it involves giving and receiving, or the transmission and exchange of thoughts. As you know from your own daily life, if you don't want to engage in conversation with another, nothing happens because there is no dialogue, no exchange. And if someone wants to talk with you, but you don't choose to listen, then nothing happens either. So, to be in communion with God, we have to be willing and open to both giving and receiving. This requires the ability to talk to God and the ability to listen to Him. Talking to God is typically referred to as praying. Most of us are more skilled at talking to God than we are at listening to Him. Yet listening and being open to receive answers is a very big and important part of the communion process.

I have an elderly and dearly beloved aunt who does not understand that conversation involves both talking and listening. All she does is talk, talk, talk. Having a conversation with her is like putting a nickel in a gabbing machine and letting it go. My sole job is to say "uh-huh" every few minutes and to let her ramble on. Real communication is blocked because the conversation is one-sided. Likewise, many of us talk or pray to God in the same way that my dear aunt talks to me. We talk, talk, talk and do not listen. Therefore, real communication is blocked because we are not open to receiving. We are only concerned about giving. We want to make absolutely sure that God knows everything we want, everything we need, every unhappiness we suffer.

The only way to hear the Voice of god is to still the mind, which dis-engages the ego, and then to listen. The simple act of listening enables you to derive the answer to your problems and direction about how to proceed in life in a way that leaves you feeling good about yourself and others.

This is because the guidance you receive from within is always and only harmless. It's the only sure way to make a decision that does not attack. Without this inner guidance, you risk being fooled. The ego will trick you into believing that attack in the name of goodness is warranted or that it's the least objectionable choice. For example, who isn't influenced by a good reason to justify anger? Who isn't influenced by a good reason to get even in the great scorecard of life? This viewpoint of attack being sometimes justified is reinforced by cultural conditioning, TV, movies, books and games. Everything supports the ego's position. This is why it takes such great awareness and desire to override these persistent messages and to go within to listen.

About 10 years ago, I did seminars focused solely on the spiritual practice of forgiveness. It was common for me to get curiosity calls from potential attendees who wanted to learn more about the seminar and whether or not it would be appropriate or helpful for them. One of these information-seeking callers still stands out in my mind. This man, who chose not to identify himself, sounded like he was about the age of a baby-boomer. He contacted me because he was highly suspicious about whether the seminar could actually undo the decades-old anger he felt for a clergyman at his local church.

The original incident occurred more than 30 years ago, when the Vietnam war was still raging. The caller had just gotten his draft notice, and he felt very conflicted about the possibility of killing another human being. So he met with his clergyman to ask what he should do. The clergyman advised the caller that going to war was okay. He believed that God understood and supported the concept of fulfilling your civic duty in time of war.

Consequently, the caller went away with the idea that killing during war didn't really count. Unfortunately, this man's worst nightmare came true. He went to war, and he had the experience of killing people, which is how he discovered that killing others counted. In fact, he realized that it counted very much. The man claimed that he still felt guilty about the people who lost their lives because of him. And even more, he was deeply disturbed that the religious person he went to for advice led him down such a painful path. The caller was very angry at his clergyman, had no inclination to forgive, and ultimately declined the invitation to attend the seminar.

Through hindsight we can see what happened. The caller received an unconscious intuitive message from his Christ-self or soul regarding the potential for feeling bad about killing someone. Perhaps he was expecting his clergyman, who represents God, to validate or reinforce this intuitive message. Maybe he was waiting for him to say, "Don't go! Don't do it! Killing is never justified, and it always makes you feel guilty."

Instead, the clergyman said something else. He said, "Go. Do your duty." Perhaps this was what the clergyman really felt in his heart. Maybe it was what he thought he should say. In any case, the caller did what we all tend to do. He ignored the quiet voice from within and placed a higher value on his clergyman's opinion. And now the caller is unhappy with his decision and feels justified in blaming the clergyman and holding a lifelong grudge.

And so I ask you, dear reader, was the clergyman mean, wrong or bad? Was he trying to turn this man's life into hell on earth? No. He was just an ordinary guy, doing his personal best with a tremendously difficult question and challenging situation. The bottom line is that whenever you're too busy to listen to God and prefer to look outside yourself for the answer to your questions and problems, you risk being misdirected. Even more importantly, you risk saying or doing something that isn't authentic or true for you.

The people you go to for advice may be caring and well-intended. They may be smart. They may be successful. They may know more about a particular subject than you. They may even love you dearly. But there's a catch: the guidance you receive from anyone who is not in an egoless, Christ-self enlightened state of mind cannot be relied upon. Sometimes the advice will be great. Other times it may have no substance or real value. If you can't tell the difference, the advice will throw you completely off track.

The awareness of non-romantic love is still rare on planet Earth. Even the most highly educated people do not fully understand what it means to be a loving people. The most moral, upright religious people do not understand either. But you understand because you are a pilgrim on the path of Love. This is why it's so important to go within and do the beautiful work of listening to figure out your next step.

Gratitude: What a F***ing Nightmare!

Karen Bentley

The last line in My Cousin Vinny, the sidesplitting 1992 comedy, was spoken by Mona Lisa Vito, the smart-mouthed character played by Marisa Tomei who won an academy award for her performance. Mona Lisa wanted to jerk the chain of her disagreeable fiancé, Vinny Gambini, the character played by Joe Pesci, because Vinny wouldn’t allow Mona Lisa to help him win his first criminal law case. All through the movie Mona Lisa kept pestering Vinny and asking him what she could do to help out, but Vinny relentlessly resisted. He wanted to win it on his own. It wasn’t until the end of the movie that Vinny gave in and asked Mona Lisa to be his expert witness. After winning the case, Mona Lisa offered this prediction about how Vinny would win future cases, too. “And then afterwords,” she said, “you have to go up to somebody and you have to say thank you… What a f***ing nightmare!”

Imagine that the universe is like the Mona Lisa character. It wants to help you and to you give you what you want. Like a parent at Christmas time, the universe gets deep satisfaction and joy from giving. Now imagine that humans are like the Vinny character. Vinny was unwilling to receive, and he actively resisted it with his attitude and whining. Holding resistance in your mind is the surest way NOT to get what you want. In fact, it’s like a big giant no on steroids. The problem is that most of us don’t realize that our own lack of gratitude is a form of resistance where our magnificent power works against us.

Instead, we’re programmed to mistakenly believe that resistance to receiving is polite and that it’s more humble and socially appropriate. Or maybe we’re worried we might have to give something back. Or maybe, underneath it all, we don’t feel worthy to receive goodness in any form. My personal vote is for option #3, lack of worthiness. Of course, everyone is inherently worthy, but not feeling worthy and not believing in your own worthiness is another story.

When you don’t feel worthy, you hold a dirty, untrue thought in the back of your mind that you don’t deserve to get what you want. I remember when I was a young girl of about 9 or 10, one of my aunts brought me a gift from her recent trip to Africa. She showed me two exotic native necklaces, and she said I could pick whichever one I wanted. Can you believe I picked the less attractive one, the one I didn’t want? I thought the most beautiful necklace was too nice for me to have. This is the kind of perverse, self-sabotaging thinking we all need to be aware of so that it can be systematically undone. Gratitude is an easy, powerful tool in your bag of tricks for turning your mind around and getting it on the right track – the track that says I deserve. The track that says I am worthy of goodness and the best that the world has to offer. If you don’t actively work at changing your mind about your own worthiness, your mind will stay where it is, stuck in a rut. On some level, you probably realize this already.

Here are the two most common ruts that I observe in others and that I work hard at correcting in myself. Firstly, whenever I give a gift to a friend or a hostess, for example, the most frequent response I hear is oh, you shouldn’t have or you don’t have to bring me anything. And secondly, if I give a compliment, the most frequent response is to refute the compliment in some way. If I say you look fabulous, my friend might respond by saying but I’m so fat. People rarely just say thank you and leave it at that. When they do say thank you, it’s usually a conditional thank you that’s prefaced by an off-putting remark of some kind. Don’t do this for me; don’t do that, it’s too much, blah, blah, blah. Because I aspire to be a loving being, I do my best to honor requests my brothers and sisters ask of me. So I stop giving unwanted gifts, and I stop offering unwanted compliments because that is what is asked of me. Do you think it’s possible you give out this same “don’t give me anything” vibe and therefore create the same corresponding response from everyone you meet in the universe?

Believe it or not, the universe really is at your command, and it will give you whatever you want. That’s the rule. The question you have to ask is what do you really want? Are you giving yourself the prettier exotic necklace? Or like the younger version of me, are you holding back and picking the less attractive necklace that you don’t want because you think that’s all you deserve? You make the decision about what you want with your attention. Your attention tells the universe how to respond and what to do. If you’re blocking gifts or compliments or affection, then your attention is on not getting. It’s like holding up a wordless sign up and saying no. The universe, of course, responds accordingly. If, however, you’re accepting gifts and compliments and allowing affection, then your attention is on receiving. The silent sign you’re holding up says yes, bring me this and bring me more of it.

Breakthrough your internal resistance and turn your nightmare into a dream. All you have to do is express two simple one syllable words: thank and you. Conveniently, these two words are already in your vocabulary. Don’t muck it up with any qualifiers, excuses, conditions, complaints or any other words. Just say thank you. Try it now. It’s not hard, is it? And even better, saying thank you always makes you feel good about yourself and others. That’s the miraculous life-enhancing part where your feelings of worthiness are awakened in you. Thank you means yes. Yes, I want. Yes, I allow. Yes, I accept. Yes, I receive. Yes, I will give you the pleasurable experience of giving to me. Yes, I am good and you are too. Yes, yes, yes. My most favorite word.

If the incorrigible Vinny Gambini can learn to say thank you, you can too. Give yourself a daily skill-building goal to say thank you at least 10 times a day, more if you’re really inspired. Say thank you to your significant other for sharing his or her life with you. Say thank you to the grocery bagger for the careful pack job. Say thank you to airline pilots for a safe and comfortable ride. Say thank you to your ancestors for heat and electricity on demand. Say thank you to the people at the town dump for making the world a cleaner, greener place to live. Say thank you to the people who wait on you in restaurants for their willingness to serve. There is no end to your opportunity to notice goodness and to give thanks for it.

By the way, dear reader, thank you for your attention to this article. I wrote it because it’s the lesson I most need to learn.

Love Lessons from Tiger Woods

Karen Bentley

Before we get to that world class hound dog, Tiger Woods, and his shennanigans with not keeping Mr. Weenie in his pants, I ask you to indulge me for a brief moment to talk about dreaming and sleep. Trust me that sleeping, dreaming and Tiger Woods will all come together in a blaze of glory and understanding later in the article.

For now, though, imagine that you're in the middle of a very deep, enjoyable sleep and you're having the most wonderful, lucid dream. The dream is so good, so delicious and so filled with favored images and activities, you somehow realize that you never want the dream to end. Even stranger, you also realize you can keep the dream going as long as you want. All you have to do is stay asleep, and this is what you intend to do. Then wham! Someone screams in your ear, whacks you on the head, shakes your body and jumps wildly on your bed. You complain bitterly and try to stop it, but the person continues, relentlessly, until you finally begin the process of waking up from your mind-numbing dream.

Okay, okay. Having your sweet dreams interrupted is never a fun experience, and it's not so great being rattled out of a sleep either. But here's a thought. What if we stay stuck in Snoozeville forever if there's no one around to bother us and force us to wake up? Enter Tiger Woods, golf champion extraordinaire and powerful magnet to beautiful babes. Woods bothered a lot of people with his extra marital exploits. Are you one of them? Being bothered can be your wake-up call if you want it to be. It can be the smack in the head that rattles your brain and gets you to change the way you see things. Perspective, baby, perspective.

Here's how to make the switch from seeing Woods as bad boy devil to divinely inspired angel. The first but most unlikely idea to consider is that we're having the dream of love rather than the actual experience of love. Love comes from your God-self within, is always available and can always be experienced. This subtle sacred love, however, is forgotten and is not valued as much as the exciting human attention and love that comes from another. Awake dreaming is the endless hypnotic fantasy about getting love from another. Our dominating thoughts are about finding special love, keeping special love, placating your special love's feelings, wondering if special love is worth the effort, trying to force special love to be delivered exactly the way you want it, apologizing and feeling bad when the special love experience turns sour, and finally -- lamenting special love when it's missing. Sound familiar?

It seems like the dream of special love is real, but it's not. It seems like you're awake, but you're not. Instead, you're hard at dream work making sure someone else loves you. Making sure someone else thinks you're special and worthy and important. Making sure someone else takes on the task of making you happy. Or conversely, maybe you're having the reverse side the dream -- the nightmare that no one loves you. No one thinks you're special or important. It's all the same.

Our special love behaviors are closely governed by our culture, our families, our religions and our government, and they all reinforce the same special love "deal." You give your special love to someone and that person gives his or her special love back to you. Maybe your special love interest is a spouse. Maybe it's a parent or a child. Maybe it's a friend. The object of your special love can change over time, but the underlying contract and condition on love never changes: no one else can have your special love and no one else can have theirs. Love must be separated and cut off from others or it's not special, is it?

Everyone buys in to the promise of fulfillment from special love. Everyone. Straight people have special love dreams. Gay people have special love dreams. Rich people have special love dreams. Poor people have special love dreams. Pretty people have special love dreams. Plain people have special love dreams. Young people have special love dreams. Old people have special love dreams. We're all playing the same game. This is why we're here on planet Earth instead of in heaven with God. God's love is not special. You are not special. I am not special. And it's specialness and distinction from others that we secretly crave, isn't it? Does God Will us to make love special and exclusive or do we simply demand it of each other so we can stay asleep and keep the dream alive a little longer? This is the baseline question you have to ask yourself.

Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren had special love on steroids. The beautiful blond Swede and the equally beautiful Blasian enriched their special love pact with the added ingredients of special fame, special money, special achievements, and special privileges. Through the magic of TV, internet and gossip magazines we saw gorgeous, wholesome, happy images of Woods and Nordegren together, and we loved these images.

Now we see another picture. Nordegren is probably divorcing Woods for smashing her dream of special love. Woods is rumored to be in sex rehab for breaking the rules about special love. Even Jamie Grubbes, the 24-year old former companion to Woods, got into the disillusionment act when she discovered she wasn't his only special extra marital relationship. "Seeing that [he had other women] was devastating to me," she claimed in a TV interview. "It hurts." Everyone feels justified in being mad at Woods or at least disillusioned with him because he broke the special love rules.
Dis-illusion means no illusion. It's seeing things clearly, as they are, rather than as we fantasize them to be. We are all trying, sometimes quite desperately, to feel good and to live the dream. The basic problem is that the dream, being an image, only provides brief moments of satisfaction. Like a broken clock, the dream of love is only "right" twice a day. The rest of the time, special love is problematic. Even though we conform, follow, imitate, obey and willingly play the game, there are always lots of reasons to be unhappy with the dream of love. The dream of love is never recognized or acknowledged as the culprit. Instead we scrutinize the players involved and lay our blame there.

Of course, you can change the people in your dream. We've all tried different variations of the same old special love routine many times, maybe even hundreds or thousands of lifetimes. No matter how smart we get, no matter how beautiful we make ourselves, no matter how rich we get, no matter how able or disabled we get, still the dream misfires. It's enough to make you crazy or worse. Who wants to feel like this? Women are more apt to mask bad feelings and make themselves feel better using food. Like Woods, men are more apt to use sex. Other things work, too. Alcohol is an old standby. Drugs. Cigarettes. Worry. Anger. They all distract. They all provide a moment of pleasure or relief, but the time will come when you want more from life than oblivion.

Society judges some of these mistakes as worse than others. For example, being married and having a special relationship with several women, is judged worse than pigging out on food when you're not hungry or drinking yourself into a light buzz. However, it's worth considering the uncompromisingly spiritual notion that all mistakes are exactly the same. It's not a sliding scale, and there are no degrees of okayness. You are either dissipating your energy in a purposeless way or you're not. Since we all make these seemingly "little" mistakes every day, we cannot judge Woods as bad because it's the same as judging self bad for all our tiny mistakes that we pretend don't count.

Tiger Woods is asking you, wordlessly, to lift yourself up out of your tired and closed way of thinking and to be the love you seek. So what if he disillusioned you? The love that's inside you is completely for free. It does not depend on any condition. It does not ask for a bargain. It does not care who is right or wrong. Go within to find your love and for one holy instant shine it on Woods. Then you can see for yourself if it fills the empty hole in your heart.

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Karen Bentley specializes in writing about the mind-body-heart-spirit connection. She's the author of The Book of Love, she’s America's Spiritual Reviewer, the My Thin Lifestyle Reviewer, and the creator of The Sugar-Free Miracle™ Diet System. For more information, go to any of Bentley’s websites:
www.karenbentley.com
www.spiritualreviewer.com
www.mythinlifestyle.com
www.sugarfreemiracle.com