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Forgiveness in Latihan
By Anonymous Forgiveness is another form of surrender – a letting go of the chains that bind us to a situation or person that has hurt us. Until we forgive, we remain connected to the situation or person. Our ego/nafsu/lower forces generally don’t want to forgive and will argue that if we forgive it means we condone the situation or person. Or they may argue that some things are unforgivable, and we must never forgive because if we do, it is a sign of weakness. Forgiveness is a human choice and a test of our surrender. The harder the situation to forgive, the greater is our test, and the greater the rewards are if we can forgive. The Latihan has been my greatest teacher of forgiveness. ******* FORGIVENESS Sometimes the things we need to forgive are so big that we don’t want to face them, and we bury them deep inside hoping that they will never surface. But the Latihan doesn’t allow that in me. Sometimes it’s like lava rising from the depths of my soul, bringing up what was previously hidden. From deep within, the Latihan gently exposes the cracks and weaknesses that open the door to reveal what was once hidden and submerged. I almost didn’t want to go to Latihan today, having an inner knowing that there would be something big to face and not wanting to face it. But not going to Latihan was also not an option - when the time has come for more movement and shifts in the landscape of my soul, I can only trust and follow. I could delay the process and put it on hold, but God suggested that it was alright, that today I would be strong enough to handle whatever I would be given. I can only defer my own fears and choose submission to a Greater Knowing that will navigate me safely through these depths. Forgiveness…. my fate, calling me onwards, knowing its value, trusting it’s necessity, and yet something keeps holding me back. My soul knows, my mind understands all the issues, my body memories are subsiding, but it’s my heart that doesn’t want to forgive and let go. The heart full of pain in my aching chest is like a leaden weight sticking to my being, refusing to budge no matter how much I try to remove it. Suffering seems to be God’s method of bringing things up from the depths, and calling to God for help is my only solution. And gratefully for me, God does indeed answer my call, when I am in a place of quiet, or of desperation, or darkness, when all understanding has failed, when I can’t find my own solution, when no one else can help me and I have nowhere to run but into the hands of God. That place where I need to let go of all expectations and realise that I don’t know anything, until I reach that place of emptiness and surrender. It’s only in the surrender that the understanding and answers start to arise. I was there facing my grief again this morning, as I have been for the past ten days. Sorrow knocking on my door from the moment I awoke to the moment of sleep. The physical chest pains as a manifestation of the emotional pain. Aha! So my heart and body are in cahoots together, to create a more intense impact within me, to expose something I cannot deny, or avoid, or run from. I am given the understanding that only God can orchestrate this pain – pain that is intimately customised to my journey and my destiny. And only God can orchestrate the process of forgiveness, for I am helpless like a corpse in the hands of the ones who wash it, like a piece of seaweed in the ocean. Only God can help me navigate this desolation, but at the same time, I must also ask God for help. So in my Latihan today, I was taken to the place of forgiveness, and shown the multi layers peeling away. A logical pain exists for a logical reason, but that is only the most superficial level of outer pain; the layers are many and go deep, deep down to the core of life and to the very core of my being. Forgiveness and letting go of being hurt sounds simple enough. And with the knowing that the pain will stop once forgiveness has been achieved, the constant hope is to achieve forgiveness so that there are no more attachments that can hurt me anymore. That’s the easy-to-understand part. The reality is that I cannot fully erase this despair without God’s help. As I am carried down through the layers and depths of my despair, I am taken into other realms of suffering, of my past existences, of my soul history, my biological ancestors, the history of the world, and my existence as a human being as a symbol of the earth herself. And I wonder why the sorrow keeps washing up towards me, when all I asked for was a simple life, for a life below the radar, a life of servitude and love for others, a simple life without need of returning to earth or having karmic debts after my passing. All my life, I had asked for a life of unconditional love and forgiveness, and now I am shown that these concepts are the core stuff of life and the universe, and that’s why the tests are ceaselessly pounding its waves upon the shore of my being. IF the purification of my soul is what I want, then I need to brace myself for the tough stuff, no room for namby pambies on this journey of the soul. In my suffering, I have had to give up the plans for my future. As long as there was a future, there was hope. Without a future there isn’t any hope, or anything to hold on to. Giving up my future is the equivalent of dying. And why is this necessary? I asked God. Why not just let me have some hope, a future to hold onto, whether real or imaginary? I am reminded that holding on to anything isn’t truly surrendering. I’ve been surrendering myself and my soul to God for over thirty years and then I expect it to get easier? It has to get harder. Abraham wasn’t expected to surrender his fish and chips, but his first-born son that he waited 70 years to have. It has to be a big thing to test the strength of my faith and surrender. The tests don’t go away, they just get bigger and bigger. In my latihan, I am moved to ask God for forgiveness over and over again, and slowly I get the realisation that I’m not only asking God, but I’m asking my own self to forgive me. As my Latihan goes deeper, the circles of forgiveness get wider and wider until I am asking for forgiveness for all the suffering caused by humanity. I am shown how I’m connected to all humans of the past and present. I contain inner memories of wars and injustices spanning thousands of years. I contain inner memories of the indigenous peoples who were decimated, while my own physical DNA contains the genes of those who colonialised and killed them. I am shown that I have two warring sides within my own self that need to be reconciled and forgiven. This is the deep stuff. It’s not really about the superficial mistakes, but it’s about the history of the world and history of my soul. This is about my soul needing to experience and forgive the history of the world, in order to be able to ascend to another plane of existence; the true human world that Bapak frequently described. Bapak explained to us that this world is the material world and not the real home of the true human being. He said that this world is only a temporary stop on a long journey. “Clearly, God created human beings not just to die on this earth, but to experience something, so that they can return to the perfect world, the human world, which is greater, more prosperous and more beautiful than this earth.” [Bapak Talk Code Number: 57 EIN 2] To leave the world is like a difficult birthing process; a very long slow road that requires patience, trust and surrender. In fact, it seems my whole life is a preparation for my departure from this world. Every person in my life has been a part of the journey, each suffering is a vehicle for my departure. Every joy, every sorrow, every experience is to help me understand this world, to forgive it and to reconcile the suffering that has existed in the world, to transform it into unconditional love and forgiveness. And if I can find that within myself, then I pray I will be granted the gift of traveling beyond this world after the death of my physical body. The Latihan has traveled me through so many layers of life and forgiveness, and I’m still journeying. God, please give me patience, trust, and surrender. ******* Extract from Bapak's talk in Cilandak 1975 [Code Number : 75 CDK 7] "The messengers of God have already explained that conditions in the life after death are far wider and more glorious and more enduring than in this one. In contrast our present life here in this world can be compared to an overnight stop or to someone on a journey who breaks it for one or two or three days, whereas afterwards, when you have left this world, the time is incomparably longer and can be called immeasurable. Therefore pray to God that you will find your way there in your life after death, and that you will be able to work in that glorious world; a world far more glorious than this, the world that is truly heaven. Those of you who can already receive a little bit can catch a glimpse of that world. There are also some of you who cannot yet receive, but later on they will certainly be able to. Because they cannot yet receive, their faith is of course less, but it does not matter. But those of you who are able to receive must have no doubts. Bapak will also test this." - - - - - “Who is Bapak” By Anonymous This morning I found this long ago report of a test which Bapak's Secretariat assistant Sudarto Martohudojo did on his own: Sudarto tested "Who is Bapak?" He received a column of light and was asked to step into it. Then within that column of light, a still brighter column of light appeared. Again he was asked to step into it and so on, until this had happened seven times. Finally, Sudarto was in the centre of a soft, but brilliant light, where he saw Bapak waving at him saying, "Yah, Yah, here I am." Then he stopped the test. The next day when he saw Bapak while walking around the Subud compound, Bapak shook a mildly scolding finger at him saying "Sudarto, that test was just for you and don't do it again." Because of this, Sudarto concluded that Bapak's Jiwa is merged with God. - - - - - |
Scottish Ancestors By Anonymous When I got married over 30 years ago, my mother joked that her Scottish ancestors and my husband’s Scottish ancestors were historically warring clans. I was still young, and I laughed and didn’t believe that our ancestors and their clan wars would have any effect on me or my life. How wrong I was! As a young person I refused to believe that I had any connection to my ancestors. Nearly twenty years after I got married, I had an experience about my ancestors as written about below. Bapak and Ibu Rahayu speak about how the Latihan helps to purify our ancestors. I didn’t believe this until I experienced the reality over the many years of Latihan that took me on very unexpected journeys… Scottish Ancestors 2011 This evening, as I was in Latihan, what arose was unexpected… I’m wading through murky, heavy clouds of darkness, a thick woolen blanket smothering my face and body. I feel aspects of my mother within me, and unexpectedly, a deep hidden anger arises within me; anger for the Scottish genes bequeathed to me through my mother’s ancestry. I don’t want to be a white person; I don’t want foreign Scottish blood coursing through my veins. Blood that has no connection with my soul; physical DNA of strangers embedded deep within the fabric of my body, against my inner nature and my soul’s history. The anger arises and continues as I protest and cry in the Latihan. Then slowly my Scottish ancestors begin to appear around me. ‘Foreigners’, strangers, all vying for space around me, they are of me, yet not ME… More and more of them appear in the Latihan hall as a messy mass of warring clansmen, aggression, anger, animal men vying for power amongst themselves. And now my husband’s ancestors are arriving… OH NO… there are so many clansmen in their tartans, wrestling, pushing, fighting, and shoving each other. In the chaos I see the ground around me soaked with blood, their blood, my blood, OUR blood. I can’t bear the weight, the chaos, and the aggression. I am helpless in facing such an unruly mass of Scotsmen, foreigners with whom I feel no connection. I am utterly powerless and can only surrender more deeply, begging God for assistance. Out of the chaos all around me, an empty space opens within me; a vertical shaft of stillness, wholeness, splitting me open directly through my body and soul, reaching up to the skies and down into the ground. Within this column of stillness that envelops me, I experience the tangible presence of God’s Power, a vast emptiness of pure energy that cuts through my physical body and into a different reality, different to the physical place in which I am standing in a Latihan hall on earth. The Latihan brings forth prayers through this open space of emptiness. I am being made to pray for these souls, a myriad of the collective ancestors of our two clans. This deep, quiet, gentle Latihan continues within me and slowly the fighting and brawling all around me quietens down. The ancestors appear to cautiously begin to feel this deep and peaceful aspect of the Power of God. One by one, slowly, quietly, they enter the empty shaft within my being, and rise upwards into the skies above. Hundreds of the dead move upwards through my body... souls from both sides of the family, no longer separated, no longer enemies. I look upwards and I see them engulfed in a myriad of delicate slivers of bright light; God’s Love, God’s Power. It seems that it is time for them to detach from the blood-soaked land, to let go of the warring, to find release and peace in God. What was heavy now feels light, released into the Hands of God, I pray as they go on their way, united, lifted up, and it feels as if God has relieved the world of a little of her burdens of ancient history embedded in her soil. These are the strangers on both sides of the family whom I have prayed for regularly in the past few years. Sincere enough prayers perhaps, but none-the-less, prayers of duty without an authentic feeling of connection to those strangers. These are ancestors I had met in the past during Latihan, and not known what to do but to call upon Jesus to help them on their way; to absolve my responsibility to these strangers because I didn’t want to admit they were a part of me. But tonight, by the Grace of God, through the Latihan, it seems something has happened on a different level… God has brought them for me to face directly and has released them through my physical body and the Latihan. Only through the Love and Mercy of God was this breaking open made possible; for my prejudiced heart to open to the foreign strangers within me and to beg for God’s mercy and help. By the Grace of God, the Latihan has connected and reconciled my inner self with the DNA of my physical body and my ancestors – an unexpected feat only achievable by God's Love and Mercy. I finally can feel the gratitude and respect for the Scottish aspects of myself. Our earth contains layers upon layers of blood-soaked fields from centuries of war. Some of the remains, buried now by fields green to the eye, or covered over by concrete and shopping malls, are still left behind waiting for release. Perhaps the earth is asking for the cleansing of her human history and if it is God’s Will, perhaps it’s the responsibility of those who experience the Power of God, to bear witness to God’s work, even if only in a small way on a small patch of our earth. Thank you All Merciful, All Loving and All Compassionate One. P.S. Just a note of caution: in the past when I have prayed from my will, mind, or emotions, I have become ill, or nauseous and once I almost passed out. I learned from my Latihan that there is a difference in praying from my will vs. praying when in a state of surrender or of being prayed by the Latihan. - - - - - |