A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. “If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, "Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait." Kevin turned to his youngest brother and said, "Ryan, you be Jesus!"

Sound familiar? Sibling rivalry is inevitable. There’s only one way to avoid it- have only one child!

Family offers the most intense of human relationships. Passions are felt deeply and they’re hard to release. There is a bond that unites, and a rivalry that divides, and families often exist in tension between the two.

Most ancient traditions have their own form of a sibling rivalry story. The Greek myth of Romulus and Remus resembles the Hebrew story of Cain and Abel. Romulus and Remus were twin sons of the God of war, Mars. Romulus killed Remus in order to be the first ruler of Rome and have Rome named after him.

The story of Joseph and his brothers is another famous sibling rivalry story. This is every family’s story of tension, rivalry, forgiveness and grace. I want to focus this morning on forgiveness, inspired by the insights of both science and spirit, and empower you to expand your circles of compassion. Ultimately the brothers tap into various aspects of Joseph’s character. Romulus and Remus are yin and yang, two sides of the one coin. As you expand your consciousness to include the perspective of others, even those you are in conflict with, forgiveness becomes a natural response.

Forgiveness is something most people aspire to. In a recent Gallup Poll in this country, 94% of people surveyed said it was important to forgive. At the same time, only 48% of people said they usually try to forgive. Forgiveness is just so hard in the midst of conflict. In the same poll, 85% said they could not forgive on their own and needed some outside help. Prayer did not rate highly in the study as being helpful for forgiveness, which is surprising considering the number of evangelical Christians in this country. In fact only one thing correlated with effective forgiveness, and that was meditation. How interesting! Is meditation outside help, or inner realization?

So, who wants to see greater forgiveness in your life? Who would like to see greater forgiveness in the world? Who wants some outside help with forgiveness?

Outside help comes from both science and spirit. First, the spirit of forgiveness.

The Spirit of Forgiveness

Neil Douglas Klotz is a sufi journalist who has written several books that seek to uncover the original, Aramaic, sense of the words of Jesus.  Douglas Klotz’s books are a must read for progressives who want to find meaning in sacred texts beyond the usual Christian piety.

This is how Douglas Klotz translates the famous forgiveness words of Jesus’ Lord’s Prayer-

 “Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
As we release the strands we hold of other's guilt.
Don't let surface things delude us,
But free us from what holds us back.”

Seeing Surface Things for What They Are

The Lord’s Prayer comes alive when you allow the Aramaic of the original language to come through the words. Without forgiveness, you are held captive by surface things, like the immediate impression of things and events as being unfair or unjust. When you stop expecting the world to be perfect at the surface, forgiveness becomes a whole lot easier. When you stop expecting yourself not to make mistakes, you lighten up. When you stop expecting others to be perfect, you are freed from what holds you and others back. When you stop expecting the world to be perfect, the world becomes a much more friendly place.

Forgiveness is spontaneous in people who have gained the ability to relate to the unity of life with the entirety of their being.

Compassion that Unfurls from your Inner Womb
Jesus said, “Love your neighbor, as you love God, as you love self,  that is with heart, soul and mind.” 
Douglas Klotz offers another helpful translation from the Aramaic-

“Let compassion unfurl from your inner womb for Sacred Unity in the form that impresses you most deeply inside or out. Send this love with and through your whole passionate self, your whole awakening, subconscious self, your whole instinctive mind, and with all your life energy.

“Give birth to love for the one ‘next door’, as you do for your own soul-self and the part of it
that feels like a neighbor. Give birth to compassion for the nearest, yet unfamiliar, aspect of your self, as you do for the one outside who feels like a stranger. Give birth to the deepest warmth for the neighbor, inside and out, as you do for your own subconscious community, inside and out.” Neil Douglas-Klotz The Hidden Gospel-Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus.

Consider Joseph in this context. According to this translation, Joseph found the most surprising forgiveness for his brothers, because he had grown to love the least familiar parts of himself. The parts of his brothers that could make him vengeful and murderous were reconciled and so he could reconcile with his brothers.

Forgiveness is a conscious choice, but a subconscious realization

Douglas Klotz offers the bridge between spirit and science. Forgiveness may be a choice and a discipline, but it comes from a changed reality at a subconscious level of impulses rather than choices. The subconscious is ruled by our most in-grained fears and desires, so if you can train your subconscious to crave reconciliation and lessen fear, then the world will be changed one thought at a time.

Forgiveness and the Evolved Human Brain

I’m going to keep this very basic, because that’s all I can understand. The Cingulate Gyrus, Cingulate meaning belt in Latin and then think of Gyrus as the belt buckle, is named because it partially wraps around the Corpus Callosum. The Cingulate is an evolved feature of the mammalian brain. It functions as a clearing house for the subconscious mind, deciding which primal instincts are appropriate after assessing all the social evidence. The Cingulate also adjudicates when there is conflict between rational thinking and emotional responses. Think of the Cingulate as the belt around your consciousness. It functions in the brain a little like a mediator, as well as collector of sensory information about other people’s consciousness.

What’s this got to do with forgiveness? Well, research has shown that activity increases in the Cingulate (amongst other parts of the brain) during moments of forgiveness. The brain is hardwired for forgiveness, able to consider the other person’s intentions, their emotional state and the forgivability of their actions.

If the brain wasn’t so crowded out with competing demands and competing stories from the past, there would be more forgiveness because our brains would be free to do what they can do so well and so impersonally. That’s why meditation is such an effective tool for forgiveness. In meditation, you can train your mind to allow your highest consciousness to rule your life, rather than allowing your base survival instincts to rule your life.

Forgiveness and Human Health

We tend to think that forgiveness only benefits the person being forgiven. However research has found that forgiveness is good for the person forgiving as well. It lowers blood pressure, improves cardiovascular health and strengthens the immune system.

This is not to mention the social benefits. People who forgive tend to have less depression, longer lasting marriages and stronger social networks. With forgiveness, what goes around most definitely comes around.

An Evolving Consciousness

Forgiveness and sibling rivalry are survival instincts. While you need to compete for the attention of parents, at the same you also know that you need the loyalty of your siblings. Forgiveness now is important for later when you may need the favor returned. This is evident in many species.

Some species have displayed a level of loyalty beyond kin. Some species of termite have evolved to the situation where each nest has just one queen. All in the nest are the kin of the queen, and often the kin lose their ability to reproduce, lessening the genetic warfare. So the nest becomes a large clan of mutual care. The remarkable fact about these nests is the size of the tribe who reciprocate care. In most species, the level of care will drop off with each fork in the family tree. For termites they consider all in the nest their kin.

How much wider could your embrace be than a termite nest?

Humans are amongst only a handful of species, with a brain large enough, to think beyond survival and reciprocity; that is the need to repay debts. Your capacity for forgiveness is limitless, and both science and spirit empower you for forgiveness.

Mark Nepo tells this story about forgiveness in “The Book of Awakening”:

A spiritual teacher grew tired of his student complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the student returned, the teacher instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.
"How does it taste?" the teacher asked.

"Bitter," said the student.

The teacher chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the student swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake."

As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the teacher asked, "How does it taste?"

"Fresh," remarked the student.

"Do you taste the salt?" asked the teacher.

"No," said the young man.
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At this, the teacher said,  "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. . . . Stop being a glass. Become a lake."

The science and spirit of forgiveness is summed up like this:

Loosen the belt of your consciousness. Become a lake of forgiveness. You can absorb pain and injustice without becoming a bitter person. You can come face to face with pain, your own and others, without becoming hostile.

Forgiveness is good for you, and so much better than holding on to resentment. Forgiveness is also good for the world. Forgiveness is one of the powerful thoughts that change the world, beginning with your inner world.

Lets end with a forgiveness exercise-

Say to yourself-

May I be at peace. May I be a lake of forgiveness. May I be truly happy.

Think of someone who has harmed you, or needs your forgiveness-

May you be at peace. May you be free from suffering. May you be free from pain. May you be happy.

Bring all the peoples of the world into your focus-

May the world be at peace. May it be free from suffering. May it be free from pain. May it be happy.

Finally, bring the Earth into your focus-

May she be at peace. May she be free from suffering. May she be free from pain. May she be happy.

Loosen the belt of your consciousness, top expecting the world to be perfect and become a lake of forgiveness.