Forgiveness becomes easier when
you understand another’s innate innocence

Forgiveness is the final frontier in the peace-building process.

A s a Love Master involved in a creating peace, let’s review forgiveness:

Forgiveness does not mean that someone condones another’s wrongful or harmful actions.

Forgiveness does not depend on both parties forgiving. One party can forgive alone.
Mutual forgiveness based on understanding of each other’s needs and a true desire for fairness is the highest place of peace.

Even though the possibility of forgiveness may seem distant or even impossible, a Love Master gently, but constantly creates openings for forgiveness. Forgiveness may occur slowly and in small ways, but each opening for forgiveness moves the process of peace to higher ground.
Forgiveness in conflict is far more than getting one side to admit they were wrong and then apologize so the other side can forgive them.

Forgiveness is for everyone involved. Once a person in a conflict moves into an attitude of forgiveness, that person’s heart will find immense healing and relief. Our hearts yearn to live in peace and unity. Conflict is antagonistic to our well being. When we move to forgiveness, the walls of separation slip towards unity. Forgiveness seals peace within our own heart.

A key to the process of creating openings for forgiveness is to understand the innate innocence of each party. When you dig deep for the cause of harmful actions and words in a conflict, you will usually discover that the real cause of conflict is ignorance, a lack of being genuinely loved, as well as a lack of experiencing or being taught the love skills in this book.

Forgiveness becomes easier when you understand someone’s views. It’s not easy to do this in the middle of anger, meanness, or injustice, but that’s your role as a Love Master. And not just to see this yourself, but to help all sides in the conflict get glimpses of each other’s needs.

Your goal as a peacemaker is not to force anyone to forgive. Your focus is to keep the process of peace moving steadily forward. You have done this with your calm, empathetic listening and unconditional positive regard. And you have done this by gently exploring solutions for unity and justice satisfying for everyone.

At this stage of peace-building, you are taking advantage of the greater goodwill that the peace process has created to explore forgiveness. Healing solutions and attitudes almost sneak into reality because of your confidence in the peace process as a Love Master.