Neural & Eternal Pathways: Redemption Is More Real Than You Know
A foundational key to life is this:
That no traumatic thing you’ve experienced, will ever experience, or could imagine someone experiencing is beyond God’s desire or intention to Redeem. As offensive as this is to some, it is foundational in the journey to realizing Reality beyond all limitations, both good and evil. God will Redeem everything. You might not know how or when it will happen, or you may not find how it all works in your lifetime, but it will happen. However, the more you awaken to this redemptive reality in time, the more you will see it in your lifetime, because for one, you will be intentionally participating with its process. Secondly, you will see it because you now live more outside of time in the Eternal, while firmly planted within time to reveal it.
Never mind if that last sentence was a bit deep. Let ‘s get to a common example of how this process works.
One example of this is neuroplasticity, which refers to the brain's ability to grow new neural pathways and networks through learning or spiritual awakening. This growth enhances existing cognitive ability, while awakening dormant spiritual capabilities. We see this in examples of humans experiencing the worst situations and being able to grow through them to find the highest meaning, as we are about to see in one woman’s story. Think of Holocaust survivors or anyone surviving abuse, who’ve turned the evil done into the compost by which the Spirit grows up from the soil of what they’ve experienced. This even speaks to those who have been killed, whose blood still speaks from the ground and whose spirit has transformed in the next phase of life after death.
This means that not only can we develop new neural pathways, but we can develop new eternal pathways too. While I would refer to these as Ancient Pathways not really new, they are available to be discovered, which causes growth in our present state. Eternal pathways reveal the cycle of God’s redemption and transformation of anything and everything.
These pathways reveal how all things can become new, and the cycle of life continues to arise from the dust, ashes, or the grave, to become a new creation. This was not just something that happened in the famous story of Genesis, which may very well have not been the first time God spoke into the dust to create new life. It is an eternal cycle, not a one time thing. An arising and returning to dust, while that which cannot actually die, remains.
Once you connect this in your brain and your heart, you realize the true meaning of how the body keeps the score, but the Spirit rules the game.
The task at hand then, is to develop neural and eternal pathways in our lives that understand God’s actual nature of redemption, of absolute forgiveness, and of the soul’s growth through all of life and death, and all the ways we misunderstand what they are. It is to understand what heaven and hell is, and how they are both found in God, rather than somewhere outside. Just ask someone invited to forgive someone who has caused them great pain, if that invitation feels like heaven or hell? Their response will vary depending on their understanding. It is here we learn what these dimensions of experience mean, and where we understand the gates of hell cannot prevail against God, or the ultimate good.
We’ve all been to hell.
And we’ve all been to heaven.
Some of us are living in one of these now and some of us are living in-between them.
These are dimensions of reality we can choose to stay in or leave, or help others join or leave too. Love holds all these together and works all things for good. Here is true story that reveals this tension between living in a state of hell and unforgiveness, before turning to the state of heaven.
The following excerpt comes from Rabbi Alan Lew’s book: “This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days Of Awe As A Journey Of Transformation.”
Alan writes of Aba Gail, a woman he had met while protesting California’s death penalties being carried out at San Quentin prison:
“18 years ago Catherine Blount, Aba Gail's youngest daughter, was living with a friend, a young man named Eric, sharing an old farmhouse outside Auburn, California, in the hills above Sacramento. Eric had a best friend named Douglas. They were both Vietnam vets, and both had gotten heavily involved in drugs while in Vietnam. Back in the states, Eric managed to clean himself up. Douglas never could. Now he was pretty seriously strung out and prone to psychotic, paranoid delusions. Finally he came to believe that his friend Eric had stolen his power as a human being, and the only way he could survive was to kill Eric. So Douglas went up to Auburn and murdered his friend Eric, and he killed Catherine Blount too, simply because she happened to be in the house when he got there.
It was a horrible crime, a grisly, senseless double murder, and there was absolutely no question as to Douglas’s guilt. For eight years afterward, Aba Gail was consumed with anger and rage. She screamed in the shower every day. She cried every time she was alone. She couldn't even drive a car, because as soon as she was alone behind the wheel she would start to cry so hard she couldn't see the road.
The sheriff's department told her that they were going to find the culprit, convict him, and execute him. Then, they assured her, she would have peace. She believed them. She felt she had to hurt someone for what had been done to her daughter, and she thought that once she did, she would feel better.
This went on for eight years. Douglas was arrested, and then he was convicted, but there was no peace for Aba Gail in this, and she began to realize for a certainty that there would be no peace when he was executed either.
Finally something turned in her, and she realized she would never find any peace until she could forgive Douglas. It took her four more years to be able to do it. She took small steps at first. She signed up for a meditation class. She started reading books. Then it became a full-time obsession. For four years, she never read a novel or a magazine. She never watched TV or went to the movies. She studied voraciously. She studied Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Jewish teachings on forgiveness. She soaked everything up like a sponge. But still her heart was full of pain, rage, and violence.
She thought that she had actually forgiven Douglas at one point, but she still felt no peace. One of her friends told her forgiveness would never be real unless she verbalized it to Douglas, but that only made Aba Gail furious. She even stopped speaking to this friend for a while. What do you mean, tell him? I don't have to tell him. I know what's going on in my own heart.
But shortly after that, four years after she felt that mysterious turning in her breast, and twelve years after her daughter’s murder, Aba Gail heard a voice, an inner voice, but a voice as loud and as clear as she had ever heard in her life. It said, You must forgive him and you must tell him you forgive him. You must speak it to him.
Aba Gail complied. She sat down immediately and wrote Douglas the following note: “Dear Douglas, the spirit of God in me sends a blessing to the spirit of God in you.” Then she put the letter in the mailbox, and as soon as she did, she felt healed. She felt herself to be in a state of grace, and she has felt that way ever since.
Now all this happened unconsciously and unintentionally on the level of instinct. True, four years before, she had embarked on the path of forgiveness. But she had never said to herself, I am full of pain. This anger is destroying me. She had simply heard the voice, written her words, sent them out, then immediately felt how much these things had been true, how full of pain she had been for those twelve years since her daughter had been murdered – how much her anger had been destroying her inside. She felt this all quite clearly in the way she felt the moment before and the way she felt the moment after she wrote to Douglas. She felt the psychological damage that violence and anger and rage had done to her. She felt what it had done to her body, her mind, her soul, her family. And she felt the heroic effort her soul had made to let all of this go, and she knew for a certainty that she had been healed, that she had been able to bring all this up and then let it all out the moment she had gotten the words out, the moment she had put the words to paper and then sent them away, the moment she had spoken true.
Speak and let go. Speak and be human. Speak and be healed.”
Reflections
As you read Alan’s recounting of Aba Gail’s journey into forgiveness, what thoughts and emotions arose in you? Write them down, get them out.
When she realized there would be no actual peace from the death of the one who murdered her daughter, “Finally, something turned in her.” What turned in you when you read this? Did you allow the turning to go as far as Aba Gail did, or did you recoil at the thought of forgiveness?
Aba Gail’s friend told her she would never realize forgiveness unless she communicated this to Douglass and Aba Gail became offended. Have you ever been offended by someone telling you the truth of what needs to be done for your own freedom?
(As you work through this specific reflection, maybe reach out to someone you judged who was trying to help you and thank them for doing so, even though you didn’t receive their help at the time.)
“It took her four more years to be able to do it. She took small steps at first.”
Like Aba Gail shutting down all distractions, learning prayer, meditation, and studying the process of transformation, what small steps can you take to do the same?
When Aba Gail realized her heart was still full of pain, what was the key that unlocked the transformation for her? What is the key for you?
(It took her four more years to experience total healing, which is far better than remaining in the prison of hell and unforgiveness the rest of her life. Do not think if the process appears too hard or long for you that it is not worth it to start. Your transformation has effects on this lifetime and the next, along with all who will be touched by it forever.)
Final Thoughts
This is a classic story of how unforgiveness towards those who hurt us or our loved ones, actually keeps us in prison that harms our own lives, essentially leaving us on our own path to death row. Yet the eternal invitation is for forgiveness to rule our hearts and reality, which frees us, and others, to live unconditionally in a world trapped by judgement and unforgiveness. Did you find yourself inspired with Aba Gail’s journey? Are you still thinking how in the world could she possibly do such a thing as forgiving, therefore how could you possibly do such a thing? To the degree we wrestle with this is to the degree we have allowed forgiveness or unforgiveness to be the foundation of our life.
Only one path leads to forgiveness and eternal life, now and forever. The other leads to a state of hell until we are ready to surrender.
I bless you on the journey to know God’s unconditional love for all, especially yourself and those who have, or will hurt you. As frustrating as it can be for God to cause the sun to shine on the just and the unjust alike, it is also the most beautiful freeing Reality we can know and experience.
Much Love on the Journey!
-PH
