1. The Forgiven
In this true story, the man Hansi Coetzee was forgiven for his involvement in the murder of Mrs. Morobe’s daughter. Mrs. Morobe confronted him with hateful rage before ultimately forgiving him outwardly at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa in 1995 after the end of apartheid (racial segregation and discrimination). They used a process called Amnesty and Forgiveness for anyone empowered by apartheid who confessed their crimes at the commission, before the family members of their victims.
Hansi confessed his crimes with bitter shame and said he could not ask Mrs. Morobe to forgive him, feeling utterly unworthy in her presence. She said that she wanted reconciliation for her country but showed no signs of forgiving him from her heart, and no one faulted her because of the pain she bore losing her daughter and standing before a man involved in her murder, though not the one who murdered her.
Consider everyone’s position in the one soul of Name. As living souls, we each experience it as our own soul through our own body, and thus we cannot experience the wholeness of Name’s soul, to which we belong. This wholeness is Name’s unconditional love for everyone. But each of us experiences it separately through our soul positions, bound to chosen others in unconditional love for them only. Thus, Mrs. Morobe felt unconditional love for her daughter but not for Hansi, because of what he did but even before it. She felt a conditional love for him at best before it happened, more likely a tolerance or hatred due to apartheid.
Word’s teaching for us to love our enemies is impossible as living souls for this reason. But if we choose to learn, our primary choice in this life, we are transformed into life-giving spirit. Able to experience the wholeness of Name’s one soul, we have unconditional love for everyone. Had she been transformed (using this as a teaching point, not to imply anything less of Mrs. Morobe under such a tragedy), she would have still been angry at Hansi, but from her love for him, not for who he thought he had become, for it restricted his unconditional love to those who enslaved her and her relatives.
Spiritually, where unforgiveness is hatred and hatred is murder, Hansi gained forgiveness and saw her light in his heart, the first to appear in the blindness he had been dwelling in for many years. Mrs. Morobe murdered him in her heart but left a place there for forgiveness, a place for vision to replace the false belief that people know what they are doing when blind. The door for transformation was before both of them.
The Forgiven 2018, Saban Films
2. Les Misérables
According to Google, this historical fiction has one of the most frequently referenced scenes of forgiveness.
Summary of a Google AI Overview:
Jean Valjean, a former convict imprisoned 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister’s children, is caught stealing silver from the Bishop of Digne. When the police capture Valjean, they bring him back to the Bishop, expecting him to press charges. Bishop not only refuses to condemn Valjean but also pretends the silver was a gift, adding two valuable silver candlesticks to the stolen goods. Bishop’s act of unconditional mercy inspires Valjean to change his life.
The Bishop of Digne says to Jean, “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”
— Stealing the Bishop’s silver out of fear and desperation is, in some minds, justified as a matter of life or death in his poverty. But even for those of us who see it as unjustified, it is still not necessarily part of “black thoughts” or a habitation of evil as the Bishop surmised. And yet the Bishop showed unconditional forgiveness.
This kind of act can remove layers of false beliefs about inner and outer evil appearances in our mind and suneidesis.1 It opens our minds to knowledge about loving the enemies of our suneidesis by putting to death — not our physical — but our soulish body. This includes buying each other’s corrupt soul for transformation in the hands of Name in Word.
Les Misérables 2012, Universal Pictures
3. The Bourne Supremacy
One of the best cinematic examples of personal forgiveness is when Jason Bourne in the fiction The Bourne Supremacy confesses to a young woman at the end that he murdered her parents when she was a child.
She never says she forgives him, how can she as a living soul in this predicament, nor does he ask for it but says that he is sorry in a meaningful way. If we look at it spiritually, where hatred is murder and unforgiveness is hatred, he gained forgiveness and saw her light rise up out of his blind but repentant heart. She, however, murdered him in her heart and blinded herself to his light, depicted though as only in a partial blindness searching for the light of life-giving spirit.
It is not ironic that the Bourne series is about a person with amnesia. We all have it unknowingly when identifying with this physical experience. Living souls incapable of unconditional love outside our personal circles, we are spiritually blinded by our own love.
I watched this series, in fact, because of the amnesia theme, not because of the endless violence it dramatizes. Movie violence symbolizes hatred in society not the actual violence, if we know how to envision it. From the personal to the collective, the process of spiritual vision is in “The Spiritual Drama of Democracy”.
The Bourne Supremacy 2004, NBCUniversal
4. Good Will Hunting
A Google AI Overview:
Will Hunting is a troubled, self-taught mathematical genius
working as a janitor at MIT, while Dr. Sean Maguire is the therapist and psychology professor who helps Will confront his past trauma and reach his potential, forming a deep father-son-like bond. Sean is Will’s court-ordered therapist, tasked with breaking through his defenses, and their sessions evolve into a profound personal relationship.
Sean tells Will “It’s not your fault” to help him process and release the deep-seated guilt and shame from his childhood abuse, a trauma that caused him to build defensive walls and sabotage his life. Repeating the phrase is a therapeutic technique to break through Will’s denial and allow him to finally accept that the abuse inflicted by his abusive father wasn’t his [fault], leading to his emotional breakthrough.
— In this fiction about real life trauma, Will symbolizes living souls who, for reasons not directly of their own doing, are incapable of fitting into the society of living souls to which they belong. Sean symbolizes the living souls who successfully steer such people into a place in their mind and suneidesis where a relatively peaceful life awaits them, one with unconditional love only for those closest to their souls.
Having such a life first requires forgiving ourselves not just for committing outward wrongs, but for failing to love those closest to our souls unconditionally. It does not, however, give us the kind of life that loving and forgiving everyone unconditionally does in the one soul of Name. The latter requires forgiveness from Name in Word not ourselves, for we do not have that kind of authority as conscious members of our singularity. Receiving Name’s forgiveness is our way of forgiving ourselves.
The lives that Will and Sean symbolize present us with challenges that bring out hatred in us for any outsider who speaks or acts against our loved ones. For the unconditional love that Name has for them also does not disappear in our soul position. We simply misexperience it as something it is not, tolerance or hatred. Experiencing it correctly despite their failure to do so with us gives us an agapé stronger than death for them.
At some point, we are forced by such moments in our lives to focus on overall suffering around the world. It pushes our mind and suneidesis to search for answers, all of which lead to the one answer if we do not stop searching — unconditional love and forgiveness for all others without being against ourselves, the principle of Word.
Good Will Hunting 1997, Miramax Films
5. The Mission
A Google AI Overview:
The Penance: Wracked with guilt after killing his brother in a duel over a woman and for his past life as a slave trader, Mendoza seeks absolution. Father Gabriel challenges him to find his penance by working with the Jesuits. Mendoza accepts and undertakes a severe act of contrition: he drags a heavy, netted bundle containing his armor, swords, and other symbols of his violent past on the difficult journey to the mission above the Iguazu Falls. This represents the weight of his sins and past life.
The Encounter: After an exhausting ascent up the cliffs and through the jungle, the Jesuit group, along with the tattered and weary Mendoza, reaches the outskirts of the Guaraní village. The Guaraní people, who previously had been victims of Mendoza’s slave raids, recognize him. There are tense moments as one of the natives approaches Mendoza with a knife, shouting at him and holding the blade to his throat. Mendoza, resigned and tearful, waits for what he believes is a deserved death.
The Forgiveness: Instead of killing him, the Guaraní man, after a word from an elder or leader, uses the knife to cut the rope that tethers the heavy bundle of armor and weapons to Mendoza’s back. The weight falls away and tumbles down the cliff into the river below, gone forever.
The Aftermath: The removal of the burden symbolizes the lifting of his immense guilt and the acceptance of his repentance by the people he wronged. Mendoza breaks down in profound tears of relief and gratitude. The indigenous people then approach him, no longer with anger or fear, but with open arms and embraces, welcoming him into their community.
This act of mercy is pivotal to Mendoza’s transformation, allowing him to accept the Guaraní’s forgiveness and begin his new life as a Jesuit priest and advocate for the tribe.
— This historical fiction should humble all civilized societies before the unconditional love that some indigenous societies possess. Mendoza symbolizes many of us — born into a corrupt society, we turn it on ourselves by enabling it to magnify our own selfish choices.
A society of living souls is one divided into soulish segments, each stealing from the others in the world or in their hearts. Mendoza asked for and received forgiveness, bringing the light of the Guaranis through the soulish cracks of his past into his restored heart.
The Guaraní people are real and mostly live in Paraguay. They are a society of life-giving spirit, sharing a common position in Name’s soul and experiencing its wholeness together. This is not to say that their moral/ethical standard is fully developed under the principle. It does mean that the principle of Word governs their mind and suneidesis, and that their standard will fully develop far ahead of societies that govern their mind and suneidesis with their standard. They are calling out to us with unconditional love.
The Mission 1986, Warner Bros.
The Reason
The reason we all need this forgiveness equally is not that we all have lived a soulish life and have failed to love the enemies of our suneidesis. We are not accountable in our hearts for what we do wrong until we understand that it is wrong. It is that we all reject learning the principle when we first understand that failing to love unconditionally is wrong.
The beauty is that Name forgives unconditionally, but we cannot know that in the mind of our heart until we learn it.
Suggested reading:
The Spiritual Story of Democracy
Suneidesis, pronounced soo-NAY-day-sis, is a Greek word that joins our natural awareness with our sense of conscience. Click on the link for a detailed explanation. It is central to this teaching. Using this foreign word regularly in discussions helps us get accustomed to experiencing something new and positive working in our awareness itself. When the word conscience is used, it will refer to the aspect of suneidesis that involves right and wrong, but this aspect cannot be separated from our co-conscientious awareness of all things.
If I understand that my awareness of something as simple as a cup includes co-conscientiousness, I do not allow myself to get blinded by the cup alone but know it as part of all creation at the hands of the Creator or the universe, depending on one’s beliefs. Spiritual maturity does this naturally.