Jill’s Story of Radical Forgiveness

To many of us it seems like the world is falling apart and becoming a pretty scary place. We have been facing existential challenges like climate change for years and not making much progress in combating it. And right now we have Covid-19, and thousands of people protesting in the streets for police reform and racial justice. There are several places in the world that have been at war for years, and there are several more where war could break out at any time. And then there’s Trump and what he’s doing to undermine what’s best about the United States, while at the same time making the whole world less stable.

But happily, at the same time, there are also many people like Colin Tipping, who are working to help us “evolve spiritually,” and make progress on issues like these. Tipping says that what we need most to evolve spiritually is a ‘change in consciousness.” (56)

 In the introduction to his book Radical Forgiveness, Tipping says that we spend too much time seeing ourselves as victims. He says that “it is essential that we adopt a way of living based not on fear, control, and abuse of power but on true forgiveness, unconditional love, and peace. That’s what I mean by something radical, and that is what my book is all about: helping us to make that transition.” (xv-xvii)

Radical forgiveness is about a lot more than what we traditionally think of as forgiveness. Tipping says “Radical Forgiveness is nothing less than a spiritual path.” (56). And he says, “Radical Forgiveness offers extraordinary potential to transform consciousness” (56) as I mentioned earlier, we would have to do if we want to “evolve spiritually,” and save our species.

Tipping begins Radical Forgiveness by telling the story of his sister Jill and her second husband Jeff. Once when Jill came to visit Colin, she was very upset with Jeff and thinking of leaving him. Jeff’s daughter from his first marriage Larraine had lost her husband in an accident the year before, and now, for some inexplicable reason, Jeff is giving all of his attention to her. As a result, Jill is feeling very neglected and unloved. In previous blog entries, I’ve mentioned that often when someone feels hurt, they get caught in a victim mindset. When Jill comes to visit, she is definitely feeling like a victim and feeling that Jeff has betrayed her.

Jill is surprised when instead of commiserating with her, Colin asks her if she is “willing to look at the situation differently?” (7) He asks her, “What if, beneath the drama, something of a more spiritual nature is happening—same people and same events, but a totally different meaning?” (9) And he says, “What if you could see this as an opportunity to heal and grow? That would be a very different interpretation, would it not?” (9) Because she is open to this, Colin continues.

First, he asks Jill how she feels. She says she feels anger, frustration, and sadness. She feels “alone and unloved.” (10) Then he asks her if she can remember feeling the same way when she was a child, to which she replies, “Yes, Dad wouldn’t love me either.” Colin then asks her to reconsider if this were really” true”. He says “the facts” were that her father didn’t hug her, spend time playing with her, or put her on his lap. However, he reminds Jill, her father did spend countless hours working on a doll house to give her one Christmas. Colin suggests that maybe intimacy was just scary for their father. But, as children often do, she took her father’s behavior personally and started believing that she was unlovable and “not enough.” A feeling she still has as an adult.

Colin also tells her that the situation with her first husband, who was a womanizer, gave her an opportunity to “heal” this belief that she’s unlovable, but, instead because she didn’t “understand the lesson,” (15) it reinforced the belief. Colin tells her that she will continue to create situations in her life that support this “core negative belief” that she is “not enough (272) until she realizes that this belief that she created, when she was young, isn’t “true.”

Colin tells Jill that because he made her feel like she’s not enough once again, Jeff “provided her with an opportunity to get in touch with her original pain and to see how a certain belief about herself was running her life.” (19) And, happily, because of Colin, Jill can interpret the situation differently this time. Colin tells her that Jeff has given her a “gift.” (15)

Happily, Jill thinks that this time she has gotten the message, and she is ready to go home with an openness to forgive. I hope you’ll read my next blog entry where I’ll write more about Radical Forgiveness. I also want to thank the people who have taken the time to comment on my blog. I would like to ask all of you if you would consider commenting by sharing something from your personal life. I would LOVE to have the comment section become a conversation. Thanks!