I decided to do something a little different for my blog this week. Usually I write a lot for you, but today I wanted to connect with you a little more more personally.
Is it possible for one human being to heal wounds they did not personally cause? Could a German today apologize to a Jew for the holocaust, and create healing, even though it was decades ago and the actual perpetrators are dead? Could a conscious man today apologize to women for burning witches? Is this a form of healing or creating toxic shame? Watch this video and PLEASE POST YOUR THOUGHTS !!! …
You can read The Manifesto for Conscious Men on Facebook HERE.
The Translucent View 
December 9, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Dia Lynn says
A Course in Miracles teaches this principle that we are all one Sonship of God. No separation by gender, no guilt by what appeared to have been done in the past. Forgiveness is the key that unlocks guilt and any sense of “sin”. Forgive the brother for what (in Heaven) never really happened at all. We are still in the consciousness of the mind of God. Anything that can be done to forgive and move into present time and forget the past brings
healing to all of us together.
This is a wonderful manifesto that I will be glad to share. Thank you for this offering. Blessings to you both.
December 9, 2010 at 7:12 pm
I do not believe that ‘forgetting’ the past is a virtue. True healing occurs when we acknowledge and accept the past as a manifestation of an inner shadow configuration that requires and cries for love yet has somehow forgotten its true self. We need each other. Compassion is our salvation.
November 30, 2010 at 12:57 am
Thank you, thank you, Its amazing how healing can happen.
November 20, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Thank you Arjunah ~ Yes, of course this is possible ~ We are all part of the collective hologram and in doing so we change the world. When I read the manifesto I was overwhelmed, stunned, and began a release. I found it as a verification that we are entering a greater time on earth. I lightened knowing there are men capable of worship ~ of honoring shakti.
I as a woman in this incarnation can also apologize for the collective… am and will continue to do so as life calls for.
This world will be such a great place as
feminine power flourishes ~ we will all benefit so much. Filled with gratitude for all of the men able to do this ~~~ blessings
November 17, 2010 at 5:51 pm
I have been impressed with your good work since reading awakening into Oneness some years ago. It and other influences have resulted in me becoming increasingly involved in community service to raise awareness and global consciousness to those open to it. I have been blessed with ample success so far.
Your apology philosophy is OK with me … I can readily give and receive apologies, and these could well improve my/receivers sense of wellbeing. I do feel however, that any ‘suffering’ really IS the perception and attitude of the victim, and that an apology from a non-perpetrator is more of a pain reliever than a real cure. It might act as a catalyst and ‘help’ them to deal with their issue, but in the end, it remains their issue and their perception, so only they can address their own issues. There is little others can do other than to reassure and comfort the ‘patient’ while this process (involving the past) happens, and sufferers can move on to the present. So an apology might act a bit like an aspirin helps relieve pain for a time. In the other hand, a sincere apology from an actual perpetrator could be a completely different matter!
You do wonderful work ….. do keep doing it! 🙂
November 16, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Lots of comments here. Well, I directly experience collective conscious healing and have felt that much of my life now is being a vehicle of healing for many and not just myself. I have been repeatedly asked by non-physical beings to play an important and necessary role in the awakening of the human race. So I can’t deny that there is something being asked of us as humans in this area of collective healing. At least, that is the way it manifests for us to work it out. So yes, I not only do believe it’s possible, but I also believe that we are being asked to heal the collective consciousness of mankind. Thank you for your contribution. Every bit helps and soon we will go beyond our current level of perception to an even more true living of unity consciousness.
November 16, 2010 at 2:15 pm
It’s possible, and good. People should do this but the healing needn’t be dependent on it. If there’s no demand from the victims, then there shouldn’t be any toxic guilt, but if there is then it’s not healing.
November 16, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Dear Arjuna,
Just wanted to quickly honor the heart you put into the work you’re doing. This has been a very healing process for many people (myself included) and I am very glad I spoke up with a critical voice on the manifesto’s Facebook page. So many *very* conscious men have thanked me “off the record”. I don’t feel I was at any point outraged, though Rick was clearly a bit miffed.
I don’t believe you are presenting the complete picture of what healing looks like, but I’m not quite getting what is missing right now. There is something which isn’t quite working around the issue of individual vs collective unconscious here. Some subtle misunderstandings around the ego-archetype axis.
I will savor this tasty morsel – there is more healing and insight to be found for me here.
It has been a marvellous one.
Thanks,
Eivind
November 16, 2010 at 1:10 pm
My heart hears your calling, but I’m wondering about the focus on being wounded in the first place. With so much emphasis being put on the wounding rather than the wholeness we are. This feels like imprinting the story onto women again. Since most of us are eternal we have no doubt lived through a lot of things. I know my soul has.
I felt the shadow of the of myself connected to the woman you spoke about and the men who apologized.
It’s like stepping backward to me. Like all the healing we’ve done is being replicated again.
Thanks for you thoughts. Much love an blessings to all.
November 16, 2010 at 7:14 am
Hey Arjuna Ardagh,
I thing that there is a communal responsebility to the actions of any government when it makes peace treaties,
or on the other side,crimes against humanity,and war crimes,like which the Nazies did in the war world 2.This responsebility, which demend them to be sentence and to be punish.This law is valid for ever, and has no limitationof time.The holocaust,and the disaster, which the did can’t never be repair.The sentance and the punishment of the war crimer is for to prevent another genoside in the future.
November 19, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Humanity is big soup, no apparent boundaries between us being as real and enduring as the irrevocable oneness that we all participate in. Society prepares the crime, then those who are chosen by society commit the crimes. When we look into our subconscious histories, through generations before and after WWI, WWII, etc., the selfish, materialistic, ignorant Americans, British, and Jewish people are all equally responsible for having perpetrated the holocaust…all by literally and figuratively BUYING into the selfish greedy deceits and posturings of each our own respective cultures. Only by first identifying with our eternal pure identity which moves us to eschew the petty ego-comforting provincial platitudes, identities, lies, and limitations of the cultures in which we have been born and raised will we effect our escape from the morass we have collectively co-created.
November 16, 2010 at 6:53 am
Salaam Alykum Arjuna,
Its so good to see your blog! Thank you for your invitation to reflect…
In my experience the need or ‘request’ to giving one’s loving attention to wounds either we as individuals or groups have suffered, or even, places on the planet!all arise in life spontaneously,in the moment of one’s living, and meeting them fully with one’s heart, something deeper happens. A small gesture can have a big result.thank Goodness!
love Hil
November 16, 2010 at 3:03 am
When we consider the following and realize more and more that we are connected to each other: human to human fusing into humankind and therefore building a body of its own – like our cells in our body – and a consciousness of its own, an emotional body of its own, a mental body, etc which itself is connected to everything what is. How could we then think of ourselves of being separate? Whatever happens or happened in our realm of human life has an effect on the individual and the collective.
So if one cell in our body is doing something it will effect the rest of our body – even if it seems to be only the immediate neighbor cell. In the same way if one human (man or woman) is doing something it will and does effect the whole.
It is absolutely true for me, because I have experienced it within my own body, how true it is whenever we heal something within ourselves that we also do it for the collective – because there is no separation at all. It is like a reparation process in our body, whenever there is something out of balance.
This has nothing to do with shame or guilt. It has something to do with our attitude of reaching out our hands and hearts to connect. Its about healing and repairing to create something we could describe as creating heaven on earth. Thank you. I am deeply touched by your Manifesto and your willingness to be an agent of collective healing.
November 15, 2010 at 10:26 pm
We can participate in collective healing across linear time in all directions. I am not sure that it would take the form of an apology for collective healing, particularly one on one. I think it has to do with a much deeper acknowledgment of what has happened as a simple suchness of what is. This starts with just one person touching truth. Regardless of cultural norms, apologies argue with what is, with what actually happened… yes, it does dis-empower the victim. It is a different order to acknowledge the “blood on the floor”… to simply see the truth and the possibility of such atrocities. Then we can transcend victim and perpetrator dynamics to realize the oneness of the act. When that happens, compassion opens my heart when I realize: “there but for the grace of God, there go I”… I could play either role in the mystery.
Part of waking up is to recognize that we all have these parts within us… so we are not apologizing or acknowledging the actions of someone else, we are recognizing that we have the seeds of those actions within us. Never-mind that it is not in our life-time to perpetrate these so-called crimes. And, part of maturation will drop the identity of victim and perpetrator to see how the universe works in a continuum of duality and non-duality. And, the feminine must acknowledge her own complicity in the dynamic to reclaim herself.
Of course, I am not necessarily speaking of he and she as gender terms.
As not-so-long-ago Zen Master Kosho Uchiyama says: “The past, the present and the future are all contained in the present.” To realize this is to touch collective healing.
For the masculine to apologize, misses the true vulnerability that the masculine does not recognize it’s own powerlessness and vulnerability. Instead, it delegates the powerless feminine as the powerless being while it remains the one who has the power to apologize. Wholeness returns to the masculine when he claims his own powerlessness and transcends the duality of masculine and feminine. The same is true for the feminine. Little does he know that powerlessness is the last lesson in true power.
The conscious masculine needs only to feel its own beautiful vulnerability as a part of himself to free the feminine and effect collective healing.
November 15, 2010 at 6:15 pm
This is very much like Ho’opono pono, Hawaii Kahuna medicine. I am so very sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Why does one apologize? Because we forgot your divine magnificence! I lived in 3rd world countries for a while and was constantly apologizing for western arrogance and its effects. Was I arrogant? Maybe. Unknowingly. I cried listening to your video. This is the love of Christ, remembering that we are all innocents and the Dalai Lama’s plea for compassionate behavior for and toward all life. Including the perpetrator. Wild blessings to you Arjuna!
November 15, 2010 at 1:35 pm
I thought love meant never having to say you’re sorry! 😉
While I understand the concept, spending so much time on the Past – which doesn’t even exist – seems a less productive way to spend the Present moment. While it’s true there is a collective consciousness, it is also true that I am not responsible for the acts of others. There is no collective “karma”, in this sense. However, I am a big proponent of individual forgiveness – both the seeking of and the providing for.
This sort of thing does effect the emotions, however, and I can see where people could be touched and healed.
November 15, 2010 at 8:51 am
Dear Arjuna,
Thanks for your beautiful and humble video. I felt deeply touched.
With that, I have some mixed feelings, because…
Once, a German man asked me where I came from, and when I told him that I was from Israel, he apologized and started crying. He was not even born at the time of the holocaust… I felt very touched AND very uncomfortable that he felt so bad when he had done nothing! To a certain degree, I felt that his reaction reflected a personal “button”.
On the other side of that coin, I apologized twice…. once to a Lebanese man and once to a Palestinian man, for what Israel did and does to them. But it was not from a place of “through the personality called Olivia into the collective” as you so nicely mention in your video. I really felt and still feel guilty, as if I, the personality, am responsible for that in a direct way.
So I am a little confused or have mixed feelings, maybe because I have not dropped into the collective when I did apologize, but there seems to be a fine line between apologizing without a personal attachment, versus the personal (and maybe collective to a certain degree) guilt that I felt.
I would love your input on that! Thank you…..
November 15, 2010 at 7:23 am
Respectful greetings,
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French Author known for his famous “The Little Prince”, wrote in his book “Earth of Men”:
“Being man is precisely being responsible. It is being proud of a victory won by comrades. It is knowing the shame of a misery that did not seem to depend on oneself. It is having the feel while putting in one’s stone that one contributes to building the world.” (sic)
“Thoughts are things!”… that all of us are continuously broadcasting througout the Universe, adding to any other ones that are homogenious to ours, thus causing them to reinforce each other according to the Law of Attraction. Hence, without being aware of it, we are participating in the induced actions of people we don’t even know about, all over the world.
So, it’s neither unusual nor surprising if some of us, in moments of spiritual enlightenment, feel the need to apologise on behaf “Humanity” as a whole.
Now, it wouldn’t be worthless if, in the name of the human “Feminity”, Women could think about understand Men’s weekness of not always been able to resist the temptation of biting the “apple” that never cesed being handed to them by all means of insidious seduction…
Let everyone take his own “share” of the backlashing responsibility, and actively behave the right way in thoughts, words and deeds, to help make the world a better place to live!
Heartfelt regards,
Marc
November 14, 2010 at 11:53 pm
I have always believed that there is a collective wound carried by all human beings, and that some groups carry a larger wound than others (i.e., African Americans, Native Americans, Aborigines, etc.) I believe that, even if a Black person in the U.S. has not personally been the target of overt racism, he or she carries the wounds of the cultural shadow from the era of slavery and Jim Crow laws.
As such, I (a white woman) must look for ways to outwardly recognize that wound … but not get all caught up in it personally; my work to empower others, and to acknowledge their pain has absolutely nothing to do with me. Yet, as a human being sharing the planet, their pain has EVERYTHING to do with my existence and continued evolution.
And who is “me”? It cannot be the ego aspect responding to the plea for an apology. It must come from the heart, and the deepest aspects of my being, which is, as you suggest, part of the collective soul. When there is no ego clouding the situation, then my heart can meet that pained person fully and completely. In that way, healing can occur for everyone in the room, regardless of what color or background is their heritage. Thanks for this discussion.
November 14, 2010 at 11:27 pm
namaste arjuna,
i am very moved by the manifesto.
I so admire your ability to manifest such a response. We are enjoying more concious men on the planet. those able to truly feel from a place of clear seeing. and some able to articulate those feelings. and even some with the courage to touch that place of sweet desperatel humility……the admission without turning away frome the heartbreaking atrocities we humans do to each other. especially those done by men to women. the motivations may be different the results very similiar…..pain and suffering.
i am willing to not just apologize for theese attitudes and behaviors, but to make my life a living ammends for this situation as is still exists today!
We may not ever fully right all theese situations, and we can make a difference every day.
my intention is that one day soon,all people will fall into their heart, face the terror of nonexistance…..realize who they truly are at their core…..and love wildly and without shame from that place.
much love
santosh
November 14, 2010 at 8:46 pm
I say YES, Arjuna, because I see the interconnectedness and want to participate in our collective healing. Those who refute your idea seem to not yet recognize our oneness. But that’s okay. There are enough who do, and those numbers are growing.
Thank you for planting this seed. May we all now watch for opportunities to practice…
November 14, 2010 at 6:41 pm
As I listened to you, I was crying. i totally believe that we can heal the collective even though we might not have personally done such things as abuse women. If I look deaply, I can feel myself in the collective. It is hard to face and admit. It does bring up shame and uncomfortable feelings. I alos believe as each one of us heals our own wounds and condtioning, it helps heal the all.
Arjuna, I was in your workshop a few years ago, and you apologized for all men to me because I as a woman had become some “masculinized” in my thinking and personality. I was stunned and touched by your apology. I apreciated it, but later, I felt that you saw that my woundedness was not healable, and your apology was like a “I am soo sorry”, like I was beyond help. So that was what my mind did with it, though I know it was sincere on your part.
It is one of my deepest desires to open fully to my partners love while still being a strong feminine presence. I deeply desire to have equality between men and woman. I deeply want to heal the shame around sexuality. I deeply want to let go of my fear around men and maleness. And I want to much for men and my guy to feel safe and trust me as a woman. That I wont use them or hurt their tender hearts. Dee
November 14, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I was in Berlin last few days & experience the very ‘coolness’ charater of Germans; including a train officer not willing to know why I had a booking print-out with me only instead of a ticket, another train office forced me to sign twice on the credit card receipt (my credit card & passport signature), generally peoples are not friendly.
One could feel its an appearance of efficiency, careless about others, don’t want to know other’s problem and importantly care about self benefit only.
It’s not meant to be offensive here, but sorry to observe that more smiles and cares of others is really needed for peoples there generally. Can’t imagine how stress or tension one can stand living there even thought it’s not a over populated city like India/China, which one find more torelance.
November 14, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Isn t it the same idea of Christ to take all the “sins” and heal it though his acceptance and love?
November 14, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Yes Arjuna, your words are powerful indeed. The world needs people like you to bring all your honesty and true healing thoughts, such deep healing to human beings. You are talking of Divine Healing. I support you in this Divine idea of yours. Although i beleive this practise could disturb some people as it may wake up deep unhealthy feelings which have long been dormant.However I sincerely beleive that humanity needs healing on that level. When 1 person heals, we are all healed on some level. Amen, God Bless You!!
November 14, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Dear Arjuna, I don’t know about adults but research has shown that children who are abused actucally suffer brain damage as a result of abuse – maybe acknoweldgement of the wrong they have suffered would perform amazing healings – it seems to? I have no doubt that cultural abuse , as you say, causes deep pain to other cultures eg. the spisirutal and physical abuse pereptrated against Indigenous people in Australia where a apublic apology was made BUT it hasn’t been backed by authentic, upright action – is it then toxic to apologize – its like being raped twice or something. There should be rules for follow up in my opinion. Thank you forthe above – I think your motive is very forward thinking and possibly the beginning of a revolution Diana
November 19, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Yes! Japanese proverb: Words of forgiveness offered where there is no repentance are words written on the surface of water.
The medium is the message. Words of forgiveness offered in an atmosphere of ongoing injustice is little more than a cruel, taunting torment.
November 14, 2010 at 11:28 am
Hi, Arjuna!
Entschuldige, dass ich hier in deutsch schreibe, aber für die Tiefe dessen, was ich ausdrücken möchte, reicht leider mein englisch nicht aus.
Ich bin dir/euch unendlich dankbar für das “Manifesto” und dafür, dass du/ihr Menschen diese wertvolle Gelegenheit gebt, kollektives Leid zutiefst wertschätzend und verzeihend zu behandeln und damit Erlösung, Befreieung und Heilung für Einzelne Betroffene und auf allen Ebenen des Kollektivs über Zeiten hinweg zu ermöglichen. Dieser Dienst ist unschätzbar!
Deine Geschichte in Schweden hat mich tief berührt und ich fühlte mich der Frau unsagbar verbunden … und vorallem auch den 40 Männeren, die diesen Mut aufgebracht haben. Ich verneige mich tief vor ihnen!!!
Meine Überzeugung ist es, dass hier nicht nur der Frau und dem weiblichen Kollektiv Heilung widerfuhr, sondern dass in der Seele dieser 40 Männer und deren Ahnen durch diesen Vergebungsakt tiefe Heilung geschehen ist. Diese Männer werden nie mehr Stolz, Überheblichkeit, Missachtung und Ignoranz gegenüber Frauen agieren müssen. Sie wurden durch diesen Akt der Demut (zumindest davon und sicher noch viel mehr) geheilt. Eine Welle von Liebe erfasst mein ganzes Wesen, wenn ich an den Mut dieser Männer denke.
Es geschieht offensichtlich jetzt überall auf der Welt zeitlose Heilung durch Vergebung, Wertschätzung und Achtung durch Einzelne, Gruppen und damit für das Kollektiv. Schön, dass es Menschen (wie Euch) gibt, die Räume dafür schaffen und wirklich wissen, welch großartigen Dienst sie damit für uns alle und Mutter Erde tun.
Das dunkle Astralfeld der Erde wird mit jeder Erlösung von Vergangenem heller und lichter, so dass das Licht der Quelle uns immer kraftvoller erreichen kann.
Es werde Licht auf Erden! Und so ist es bereits!
In Liebe, Wertschätzung und unendlicher Dankbarkeit für Eure Arbeit an und für die Menschheit. DANKE!
Antara Minerva, Germany
November 14, 2010 at 10:35 am
I really appreciate your courage Arjuna and thank you for sharing your love in such a huge way!!! Your ideas may take a while for people to appreciate or even consider, that’s part of the healing process as well. But what you are suggesting is s oprofound and true, it will touch every human being on this planet in some way in the near future. This is how I see it brother! Sending you and Chameli much love from Sweden!!
November 14, 2010 at 8:30 am
I have been drawn to this for several years now. I find myself going to the collective consciousness and apologizing to individuals in prison. I will take any part…father, mother, any sort of unconscious perpetrator. My entire heart goes deep into understanding and I find myself apologizing to individuals collectively. I take full responsibility for all of it, any of it.
November 14, 2010 at 7:49 am
This work takes such courage. It take much more courage to do this work than it did for those who committed crimes against one another. For those of you who are unaware of the collective consciousness of humanity, this work will make no sense to you. You see it as personal. Your pain is too deep, and taking on the resposibility for more is too much. But for those of you who get it, and those who are willing to approach, even for curiousity sake, you will be healed and give healing. Words cannot express my gratitude for your courage and strength. May people everywhere be healed by your work. So be it. Debbie
November 14, 2010 at 6:55 am
Dear Arjuna,
I hear you and Guy speaking the Manifesto for Conscious Men on your Teleseminar. These spoken words, opens my heart in a way, I didn`t expected. For me it was a deeply healing process, that is still going on, everytime when I reed the Manifesto. But I`m just a normal women. No one has ever raped me or does something else in that way. But as a woman it seems to me, that I allways felt something like a shame or a stigma, to be a women. A feeling, I don´t get into the right words, but in that moment, it was beginning to release and go, i realised that I had those feelings. So I hear and read the Manifesto many times, since that day. But a little time later, i read about the Womens Response for the Manifesto for Conscious Men. And yes, I´ll agree with that too, because the World, equal Men or Women, are in a deep need of healing. So let us name it, not for blaming each other, but for doing a Quantumstep into the right direction.
So I send you, Guy, Chameli and Stella my deepest respect for doing the Manifesto and the Response from the womans perspective and please apologise my english, because this isn´t my mother tongue. Inge Dyan
November 19, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Yeah…in the formless subconscious we all are one, and herein, too, earthly time and place have neither power nor meaning. All one. So these expressions from deeper heart can land with positive result in the heart of another, others. Depending on the unique combinations of positionalities in psyche/emotion and needs of individuals, sometimes these communications will strike the right chord, inducing a healing response that can be felt in another individual. And every drop helps. Who can say which drop from which modality will be the last drop which breaks the dam open for a true profound enduring collective healing/wholeness to be established…? All our prayers, apologies, intentions, affirmations, giftings, nurturings, murmurings, tears have a collective vibrational/manifestational weight..
November 14, 2010 at 4:56 am
Thank you Arjuna
Yes – let us collectively heal our hurts – this is a huge contribution to Oneness.
Thank you
bob
November 14, 2010 at 4:13 am
is it still a need for collective apologizes??? has not the history teached us that …the history is always repeated…i just think that any kind of groups…no matter what it is ..is capable of grat crime or great deeds….depending on the leaders….no i dont belive its possible for one individual to apologize for a collective sin…in our dreams maybe.love the idea of it…but in reality it feels pathetic to do such a thing..sure we can all apologize for beeing humans…because we are the most evil species on eart…capable of so much evil and so much good…but thats the nature…its better and more real to accept human nature for what it is..good and bad..in all matters….i belive more in the individual responsibility…to apologize for what i have done…and not do it again…but i probably will if the lesson is not learned …humans will always repress..weaker groups to gain power…its never the individual,but the collective evil,that comes with groups and powertrips..collective shame..its a cheap way of getting diciples…but as they all say..we are all one…so apologize to yourself..for being human??to me that is so relative…dpending on situation…do i apologize for all the good deeds ido??? i dont think so..but good deeds can sometimes be just as harmfull…in the eyes of a guru..what do we know?..the good can be evil and the evil can also be good…its close to impossible to solve this puzzle..but shame??? hello…it doesnt serve anyone…this old dusty rag…what we need is the individual to be strong enough to separate from the collective and be your own..groups,organisations..and so on…build their power on collective fear and shame..but if it makes you feel better,,to apologize…do it…how can that be harmfull..beeing the only white child..i never felt guily for beeing white…but when i was a grown up women..being the only white…in a group…i was guilty as hell…but i didnt apologize for beeing white…i worked hard on tranforming that guilt…into compassion..and be loving…its enough….
November 14, 2010 at 3:22 am
I was moved to tears by your story of the woman who had been raped. And I really do believe that we are collectively responsible, after all we are all ONE, therefore we are all affects by the smallest and the largest of hurts, consciously or unconsciously. Thank you for your wonderful work
November 14, 2010 at 3:21 am
Father forgive them for they know not what they do!!!! He did it on our behalf.
I often think He wasted His time….Sorry Lord for my negativity…but I too didn’t thank you for what YOU did. Please accept my apologies for not understanding…but at the age of 60, I humbly ask your forgiveness for not understanding.
Help us to move forward Lord and heal our world.
November 14, 2010 at 12:25 am
dear all – my soon to be ex husband and I tried to do that. He’s German, I’m Jewish, my parents were refugees from Hitler, his father was on Rommel’s private staff. Husband and I married thinking that we would heal the Germans and the Jews. Its probably possible – but doing it brought up so much stuff for me. When we were travelling in Germany and Austria I kept looking at folks thinking what were your parents doing in the war ie I became more rigid in my thinking than I had been before. Now I think I didn’t continue long enough.
In general my view about healing others is that of course that’s what we’re doing each time we deal with another piece of our stuff. Each bit we acknowledge and deal with, frees others to be themselves as they no longer need to mirror of our broken places.
cheers Jennifer
November 14, 2010 at 12:19 am
Arjuna, it is nice to meet you through the video. I was very moved by what you said. The two comments, one from a therapist, that you shared….I sense we have to come from a deeper, wider consciousness of ourselves to accept and apologize for our collective part in wrongdoing. We are all walking history books not only of this lifetime.We carry in our genetic makeup memories of very hard times, hard behaviours, darkness in humanity’s very winding and uphill path to know itself beyond the shadows of its own life. In a way we could all benefit from being able to give and receive collective healing as members of the human race, and be free to start again with hearts in partnership with life, with ourselves and all others.
November 14, 2010 at 12:05 am
Arjuna,
You and Gay Hendricks are showing the rest of us a simple way of healing our world. You are revealing to us, as a species, a way to unite as one entity for the salvation of our planet, no matter what dichotomy we feel we represent, man/woman; German/Jew; White/Black; rich/poor; developed country/poor country; on and on… You are illuminating a pathway to healing and survival.
The way of ‘one group gaining to the detriment of others’ is exterminating life on every level: from the natural world – animal, mineral, plant, water, air…; through our family units; our communities; our societies; our cultures; our countries, our world. We are all one and what we do to the other, we do to ourselves.
When we kill and pollute our earth by oil extraction and burning; when we kill and pollute our society by dismissing and dominating others; when we believe it is alright for some to have unlimited wealth while others don’t have enough to provide life basics; life for everyone is unsustainable.
Compassion, caring, and taking personal responsibility for the collective well-being of life on this planet is what will enable us to bring health and wellness to all aspects of life here on earth. Each of us individually is empowered to create wellness for ourselves, our family, our communities… We just have to awaken our consciousness to what is happening and to what kind of life we want for our universal life here on earth.
You Arjuna and Gay have given us a vehicle, a way to awaken our human conscious… a way to turn life around to cooperation, support, caring, nurturing, and healing our lives into a joyful, peaceful, and loving sustainable existence for all.
I thank you and I fully support you in this endeavour. Whatever I can do, I will do. Keep leading us.
Joy and Peace,
Shirley Walsh
November 13, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Thank you Arjuna…
For this stunning example of what is occuring all over the world with the “Collective Conscious”. Men & Women gathering together in the Extraordinary Act of Forgiveness on behalf of one another/each other!
When we understand that this deep level of forgiveness offers, not only ourselves, but all those known and unknown an opportunity for healing… well, anything is possible. I am a living/breathing example of this type of healing and I honor the process we all go through to get to our Now.
May we dive deep… in the knowing that we are not alone and together we can shift and raise, to the truth… our consciousness.
November 13, 2010 at 10:43 pm
I’m failing to see how this is “new”. We have for centuries been listening to white people and white men apologize for wrongs they didn’t personally commit. The most recent I recall is Bill Clinton apologizing on behalf of all America for not intervening in Africa’s recent genocide.
I don’t know that it has changed anything in the past to have the occasional representative apologizing for the collective, but then, I don’t suppose we know what the world would be like today if they hadn’t.
November 13, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Have many mixed feelings about this topic.
Used to like reading prayers in Marianne Williamson’s book Illuminata: A Return To Prayer and in that book there’s a few prayers apologizing to groups of people, African Americans, Native Americans…
With the Manifesto for Conscious Men I am having a hard time relating to it. It feels like a lot of ‘made up story’ to me. I think sometimes people buy into stories and they adopt the pain they think they should have from taking on the ‘story’.
Personally, I would like to honor and cherish the women I am with in present time without the ‘story’… Would like to see her as the Goddess that she is and recognizing someone as God is seeing them without a past or a collective-past. There is just beauty and the divine there. Seeing them fully for who they are…
November 13, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Hello Arjuna, God keeping blessing you every single day of your life. YES!!!!, I believe from all my heart from each cell of my body that we can heal and be heal colectibly, of course not everybody agree by now because we need to open and wake up our consious and conect ourself with the infinit power from we come from, I thin also that is easy to talk about than to act like, but I believe since is not outthere and inthere, that everybody is connect; in some way will be that magic moment that in the correct time that all as one be a great heart and soul in love and greatness, by now I am another more that bileve, it doesn’t if by myself can’t heal anything I believe that together any thing we do is possible.
November 13, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
Thich Nhat Hanh
November 13, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Arjuna, Thank you so much for your work!!!! I agree that the only way forward is forgiveness. As I like to tell my clients, forgiveness does not deem another right or wrong, it releases the hold the other person has on you. To forgive sets people free. I feel that by a person stepping up and apologizing for an event that their gender, or race has committed and asking for forgiveness allows the other person to hear the words that will help relese them from their pain.
Many Blessings and Much Love to you
Chip
November 13, 2010 at 8:22 pm
The past is like a painting we cant take away what has been painted there but we can add things to it We view the past through the lens of the present and the new forms laid donn by us of empathy apology change our whole perception in this now where we all live. less poetically if people ar allowed even encouraged to feel collective pride in ancestors and as nations much of our history .flags etc collectively bask in past glories then it is totally logical that their can and should be collective aploogy and compassion even if only as a balance-copyright
November 13, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Suzie Kidder said it for me. To take it one step further, the primary apology we need to make is to ourselves for believing we are separate. It’s the ultimate betrayal and has nothing to do with gender. Still…your video was beautiful and inspiring. Thank you.
November 14, 2010 at 4:18 am
totally agree…thanks
November 13, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Thoughtful lovely video thank you. And I am perfectly sure that everything you say in the video is right.
But I think that like everything else it is complex. Not one size fits all. And it is really hard to “manufacture” on demand. It can be just right, and releasing — or a strained and uncomfortable attempt that just doesn’t gel.
Also there is a bit of a myth that once something is ‘released’ it’s gone, like a magic wand. But the brain doesn’t work like that – changing memory track associations can require more than a single ‘release’
And there is a dreadful market-driven guru-circuit of spruikers who just LOOOOOVE this kind of thing (more ‘content’ to package up and sell to woo-woo land). They turn it into a sales pitch and single-issue “secret” solution, and cover it so thickly with treacly schmaltz that it becomes unbearable, like “the Secret”. Everything is WONDERFUL and RICH and JUICY and they can “feel the energy shift” yabbada yabbada – oh, and buy at a discount NOW before the offer expires, and blessings on you all … There is some good amongst the dross (I count you in that lot) BUT the habitual happy-happy makes the whole “circuit” so undiscriminating and unwilling to say anything other than JUICY and RICH that rivers of derivative muck flow through the system (some of it pinches a single idea from one or two academic papers but without any acknowledgement of the fact, so it LOOKS like personal revelation and also can’t be tested).
OR it could turn into dangerous psycho-babble with cult-like overtones like the Est people who have to keep changing their name as the old one catches up with them, or the Scientologist-type crazies.
So – I think you do great work. But this areas is so habitually gushy that I thought you could do with something that (1)supports your idea but (2) doesn’t swing automatically into a rich and juicy ‘bless you’ reflex. There is a fine line and a certain crowd to keep it away from — there are a lot of very schmaltzy (and I think ultimately insincere) woo-woos – at least they SOUND as if they are trying so desperately to “flourish” — but it isn’t EMERGING from within themselves, it is a ‘pulling and pushing’ and a DETERMINATION to flourish by doing their practice and bless everything to get their own ABUNDANCE ….
Cheers, Sal
FYI – link to manifesto under the video gives error message:
“You can read The Manifesto for Conscious Men on Facebook HERE.”
November 14, 2010 at 9:18 am
The cynic in me easily adopts this view point. However, the problem solver in me continues to look for solutions to the collective well-being (the Paul Newman, John Wooden, MLK, Ghandi philosophies). Looking at the big picture the sins of humanity are many and individually as well as collectively we are human beings that make mistakes. Striving for perfection is the journey of life. I believe the work of Collective Consciousness is another step on that path. I belong to a men’s group and read the first paragraph of this manifesto to all present. I felt uncomfortable. Now I understand why. A deeper level of unconsciousness was being accessed. Systems and processes will need to change dramatically to achieve the outcomes of this new way of identifying ourselves. It may not happen in my lifetime, however, my deepest desires are that we not give in to the status quo and that we continually seek a more thoughtful and compassionate understanding of one another and practice true empathy each moment of our presence between the cycle of birth death.
November 19, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Yep, the whole mammonic-materialist-political-capitalist-scientist-religious-educational system is A SLICK SICK LIE, and until people become conscious enough to pull the plug from that patriarchal-patriotic-nationalist-militarized American factory cesspool, it is only being daily reinforced and perpetuated through the compulsory public hollywood, disneyland, and G.I. Joe mis-education system and prostituted corporate-$-controlled news media.
November 13, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Having experienced this process in a workshop many years ago, I totally support what you are doing. We, in this United States, think of ourselves collectively as Americans.
When people talk about the atrocities that happened to Native Americans and African Americans from the time our European forefathers landed on this continent, it’s common for people to say something like “look what we have done”.
The pain…the guilt still pervades our collective consciousness and has yet to be fully acknowledged, forgiven, absolved and released. By carrying those collective subconscious memories, we perpetuate the separation and those fringe groups in our culture such as the KKK and Neo-Natzi’s.
A national forgiveness day would be an awesome experience, where we forgive and let go of all the guilt, shame and blame that haunts us as a nation..a culture…a collective consciousness. Where leaders of conflicted factions hold ceremonies much like the indigenous peoples of the world do at the Gathering of Eagles events that occur annually all over the planet…drumming together and sharing a medicine wheel ceremony with the intent to heal he wounds between them and walk together as one.
November 14, 2010 at 4:22 am
the collective guilt seem to be so diffrent in diffrent countries..based on our history..
November 13, 2010 at 7:05 pm
I’ve been privileged to participate in several group sessions run by Dr Hellinger who developed the process called Family Constellation Work. This process is similar to what you are proposing, however, it has been contained to family perpetrations passed through generations. My experience allows to me state here, from my own experience with these kinds of processes, that there is profound healing that can be experienced through constellation work. There is an inordinate amount of documentation already available on transformative results from this model. And I encourage you to take your expanded version of this work into the world community. And I encourage others to participate in the process. What has anyone got to lose in participating? Only a narrow perspective of what can be helpful to all mankind! And what might anyone have to gain in participating? Only a new freedom from past suffering. How glorious a thought!
November 14, 2010 at 4:28 am
we have to suffer…its part of nature and a natural way to bring humans together…our collective sorrow bonds us..
November 13, 2010 at 6:20 pm
this is creating toxic shame
November 13, 2010 at 5:53 pm
I am just reading the book by Drunvalo Melchizedek: Serpent of Light, where he travels all around the world with a group of dedicated people to help heal hearts, align energies. right ancient imbalances, like you are talking about and increase our awareness of the indivisibility in the universe. I hope you all can read it too. Right on Arjuna. Thanks for doing that work.
November 13, 2010 at 5:45 pm
I believe there is power in the words Forgive Me, no matter what the cirecumstances.
Have you heard of Ho’Oponopono ? This is a very powerful process that can work on forgiveness, also.
I have used it and have felt great relief for myself and others.
Keep spreading information for all to use.
November 13, 2010 at 4:38 pm
About 30 years ago I took a philosophy course and this was one of the discussions we had during the semester. The question was whether we, as individuals, could take responsibility for wrong actions that had been perpetrated by our forefathers to others of different race, religion, etc. At the time, I absolutely could not see taking any responsibility for any acts not committed literally by me.
Today, as I listened to the your video, I could say, Yes, without reservation. I think it is compassion and remorse, in the context of the offense, that the wounded need to experience in order to heal, regardless if it is the actual offender or not. At the collective level we all know what know what it takes to give and receive forgiveness. We can all step outside our individual, ego state and extend an olive branch to any and all of our brothers and sisters in humanity.
November 13, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Arjuna,
You and Gay Hendricks are showing the rest of us a simple way of healing our world. You are revealing to us, as a species, a way to unite as one entity for the salvation of our planet, no matter what dichotomy we feel we represent, man/woman; German/Jew; White/Black; rich/poor; developed country/poor country; on and on… You are illuminating a pathway to healing and survival.
The way of ‘one group gaining to the detriment of others’ is exterminating life on every level: from the natural world – animal, mineral, plant, water, air…; through our family units; our communities; our societies; our cultures; our countries, our world. We are all one and what we do to the other, we do to ourselves.
When we kill and pollute our earth by oil extraction and burning; when we kill and pollute our society by dismissing and dominating others; when we believe it is alright for some to have unlimited wealth while others don’t have enough to provide life basics; life for everyone is unsustainable.
Compassion, caring, and taking personal responsibility for the collective well-being of life on this planet is what will enable us to bring health and wellness to all aspects of life here on earth. Each of us individually is empowered to create wellness for ourselves, our family, our communities… We just have to awaken our consciousness to what is happening and to what kind of life we want for our universal life here on earth.
You Arjuna and Gay have given us a vehicle, a way to awaken our human conscious… a way to turn life around to cooperation, support, caring, nurturing, and healing our lives into a joyful, peaceful, and loving sustainable existence for all.
I thank you and I fully support you in this endeavour. Whatever I can do, I will do. Keep leading us.
Joy and Peace,
Shirley Walsh
November 19, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Shirley, I loved reading the breadth of your concern and so, the depth of your understanding. I immediately sense you as a trustworthy being, as one who recognizes that every allegedly “isolated” particular social issue of ignorance, inhumanity, imbalance, disregard, pollution…is connected to and reflective of all the others, i.e., the collective ignorance of a whole conscious nurturing understanding and relation with health in our ‘physical’ human bodies reflecting our insane/imbalanced treatement of earth/nature/air/water/ground…or the sad collective inequality/oppression of male against female, or ethnic culture vs. ethnic culture…or…or…these are all the secondary symptoms of institutionalized, patriarchal, patriotic materialistic cluelessness—made possible only by prior ignorance/lack of conscious self-awareness of deeper pure universal being. I find it difficult to imagine any of these particular issues becoming genuinely and fully healed until we are conscious enough to disallow perpetuation of any kind of ignorance, fear, falsehood, inequality, and violence in any part of human society. IOW, none of these will be healed—and, none of us will be healed—until all of it and all of us are healed in return to pure conscious awareness. Patriarchal religions, military build-up and blow-up, capitalist-materialist rape of the planet, air-and-water-polluting use of petrol, “legalized” robbery of indigenous homelands, etc., all of these must be considered unacceptable to the ones who realize all are one and deserving of whole respect.
November 13, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Thank you for the videoblog. I feel it in my heart to be true what you are saying. It’s the kind of truth that moves me, touches something time- and placeless. It’s this kind of healing that could move things forward.
November 13, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Thank you Arjuna for setting this in motion – I am overwhelmed by the depth and beauty of many of the comments left above by so many wise people!
This is really another example of the rising consciousness of Translucence. I don’t need to say much more because so many people have already said it: we are all perpetrators as well as victims. We just need to accept our dark side and the forgiveness will follow.
November 13, 2010 at 4:09 pm
hi Arjuna,wow,like the lady before.. this short talk got me weeping deeply ..remembering a sitution in a relationship 20 years ago offended me from the boy friend and my body closed down after that sexually and not had any more boy friends well untill last year and i felt that i wasnt all there too like the lady in your story ..i had some tantric work done and it openend me again ..off course we can heal collectively .the Hopono Pono the Kahonna,Hawaiian healers they believe that every thing and every body that comes their way its their resposibilty,i am sure you know that .and they have a prayer i think its like i love you ,i thank you i am sorry forgive me ..some thing like that ..
I am a massage thearpist, Rebirther and clairvoyant .ladies clients who finish with the boy friend or the husband ,spend many years after wanting them to back and apologize its crazy even me lol and they did lol lol .It dosnt matter who says it we are all respensible for every that is happing now in the world.
so thanks very much for the work you doing to heal the world GOD BLESS
Abla
November 13, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Dear Arjuna,I believe whole heartedly in what you shared. What came to mind was a small episode where my husband had done a lot of work for a friend and she denied to thank him. I was very upset because of that and I was told by a third friend ” Why don’t you thank him ” And I did, I thanked my husband from the bottom of my my heart for all that work he did for this friend and it was complete.
This was just a small example but it gave me a profound lesson in how we can give thanks or apologies on behalf on someone else and make it complete and bring healing.
Lili Just Simons
November 13, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Absolutely, I believe 100% what you are saying, Arjuna, that humans can heal another’s wounds that they did not personally cause. The perpetrator is rarely gonna apologize or admit anything. So, there has to be a way to heal. It only takes one event to make a person prejudiced, so why not the other way around – we can change/heal by a positive interaction with another person, it doesn’t matter WHO it is, it is the interaction, the feeling that happens. Why do people have such a hard time with this? I think because they feel they are being personally blamed. They aren’t, so they have some blocks inside them that need healed also. We all need so much forgiveness and love and kindness to heal, takes courage and strength to reach out and do it, to help another heal their wounds.
November 13, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Thank you Arjuna. This is beautiful.
November 13, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Arjuna – Right on! Contraversial – expect nothing less – and so on the cutting edge. It can only be through the courage to take that level of responsibility for what is happening in the collective of which we are a part, that it can change. The ripples in the pond have to start somewhere.
I was on a workshop a number of years ago and there was a woman in immense pain. She was unable to move through a traumatic and abusive event in her past. In a moment of inspiration the facilitator got down on his knees infront of her and begged her forgiveness for everything done to her … then everything done to the feminine by the unconscious masculine.
Something HUGE shifted in a room of 100 people that day.
It works. Little by little, it works.
Bravo Arjuna.
Can I share the video on Facebook?
November 13, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Dear Arjuna,
I am just reading the book “RADICAL Forgiveness, Making Room for the Miracle” by Colin C. Tipping, and … Yes, I do believe it is possible, by using radical forgiveness, to erase a collective guilt. After all… are we not all one?
Love and Light,
Namasté
Wendy
November 13, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Dear Arjuna,
Thank you..I get this very deeply. As an African-American I would be willing to accept my collective part in the hatred and bigotry to facilitate healing between the races.
November 13, 2010 at 3:42 pm
It seems to me that to vehemently object to apologising for something that one has not personally done – is to also deny the shadow side. The shadow side is what we do not want to look at in ourselves – but it still exists – and will continue to unless we accept it as part of us. The same can be said for collective consciousness – just because we haven’t done something as an individual – it doesn’t mean to say that we are not capable of it as a gender under a certain set of circumstances. And if there is no past and future as far as the subconscious is concerned – only present – then an apology or healing can only take place in the now.
November 13, 2010 at 3:38 pm
As commented to Johanna’s comment, YES I think it is possible and it is even necessary and it will happen with or without our participation. We do it on a personal level when we want to go on with our life and reach higher consciousness level and I think we are doing it collectively, too.
November 13, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Fascinating statement — and discussion.
Are there historical events that deserve to be labelled for what they are, and for harm that has been caused?
Of course.
Is it useful for me as an individual to issue a set of aplogies for some or all of the atrocities throughout the human story?
Only the ones I have personally been a part of.
This could get not only unwieldy, but quite absurd!
For example — I was raised in Canada, but my father was an American from the South.
Atrocities were committed by certain branches of the Union forces against the people of the South.
Perhaps some of those victims were my ancestors.
Would there be any use of someone who lives today, giving me an apology for that? Or me giving an apology for any atrocities committed by my Southern ancestors against the Union ?
Now push it back even further. My ancestry is Celtic, and we know the Celts were invaded by the Romans some 2,000 years back –many were killed, others enslaved, and women raped, as is always the case in war.
Should I as a Celt expect an aopogy for that?
Whoops! I have to remember that for centuries the Celtikc Armies attacked and sacked Roman territories. Should I as a Celt apologize to all those who have Roman ancestry?
This sounds like sophistry to me!
We all have painful memoires of some kind, caused by someone somewhere — if I want to deeal with whatever pain came from that, better I deal with my own painbody and tendency to look for someone else to blame for my current problems.
Only I can choose to take that step — or not.
And it makes little sense for me to sit around waiting for an apology from a total stranger who had nothing at all to do with my pain.
I think there are better ways to use our energy than running around apologizing to everybody in sight who suffered whatever.
Al
November 13, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Dear Arjuna and all,
Thanks so much for bringing this up, and the timing is perfect because this morning, on my morning walk, I came to a realization regarding this very topic. Ah glorious synchronicity!
So here’s my insight: Yes, it can be done, but there’s a MAJOR caveat. Let’s take the rapist example. You, as the man, must get in touch with AND FORGIVE, that shadow part OF YOURSELF that is capable of rape — that IS a rapist. You must forgive yourself, the rapist, before you can honestly apologize to those whom you have raped. This energy must be transmuted and transcended inwardly before it will have a meaningful effect outwardly. This is so because at the very highest and deepest levels, we are all one. Any area within that is not loved — i.e. transmuted to love — remains in the collective field of hurt as well. This would also be true for the one who was raped. She would have to forgive her rapist, because she too has an inner rapist somewhere. If she merely holds resentment and victimization and looks for apologies from outside before she can forgive, she will remain a victim and no healing will occur.
This entire dynamic points to the fact that inward and outward, individual and collective, past and future — in fact ANY polarity you can name — are really illusory. Or perhaps they could be thought of as derivative phenomena. They are facets of one Divine Whole, which sort of “congeals” or separates out into these apparent real polarities.
So I’m not sure how effective this would be as some kind of ritualized or formalized apology, because the energy dynamics would have to be real for it to work. The reactions of the two men you read on your video blog are an example of how the whole thing could be misunderstood. And until they are ready to see that part of them that is capable of rape (continuing this example), trying to force out an apology would do no good at all.
I think this kind of work is best done in small groups as you’ve described, where the stated purpose is clear. This work will also have an effect in softening the heart of the greater collective.
Blessings upon Blessings to you for your extraordinary work!
Lee Offenhauer
November 13, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Dear Arjuna
I do enjoy your energy, your great intentions and your work. As a psychologist I have worked with trauma all my life. My comment on this subject is that I believe that the exercise was good for the victim of abuse and was helpful to her. But a victim is healed not when the perpetrator finally ask for forgiveness. But when the victim is ready to stand up for oneself or better saying for the emotional child within, standing up in a confrontation where one is not asking for anything from the perpetrator but is simply ready to say the truth out laud. It would come out like this, “yes it took all this years working on myself to let go of the consequences of the sexual abuse perpetrated against me by you. I just want to let you know the consequences of what you have done, this this and this.” This way he or she can get free and able to let go of being a victim. Now carrying the precious emotional child inside the heart.
Coming back to your sharing of the exercise my feeling is that it has probably being more powerful for the man that apologized because it takes surrender and depth of heart. Places that may have been opened for the first time through the opportunity.
I also want to explain why I did not say she when referring to the victim it is because the victim of sexual abuse has been also men. Sexual abuse is not about sex, it is all about power.
November 13, 2010 at 3:18 pm
A HEARTY “YES!!!” to this question. In Reality, there is no time, no space; only the infinite NOW. I apologize and ask forgiveness to Mother Earth (we take all of our sustenance from her, then stab her without the slightest feelings of remorse) and to the animals (we do the same to the animals choosing to be unconscious of their hopeless plight in this paradigm which we have created. And in this moment, I also apologize and ask forgiveness of all of the children who are being installed with a program of violence – in an attempt to negate the Lovingkindness which is our true nature. I apologize and ask forgiveness of the creation for our choice to serve self rather than The Creation and All of Life.
November 13, 2010 at 3:11 pm
i think what you have created is an opportunity for some deep darkness to begin to be healed. We all live collectively even if we live alone, & we have all been left with some deep wounds of mens’ violence. So amazing to me that to look at violence and to look at which gender does the violence stirs up such a hornets’ nest. Just look @ the number of rapes in this country, the number of murders, of violent assaults, see how many are committed by men, how many by women? When their guilt is proven they are personally punished & collectively we are all impacted. A man could choose to feel into this & apologize, or not? It is there, mens violence, & yes it is personal, & it is collective. I heard of something like this from a process called Hono’onpono [spelling check didn’t help] A Dr on a psych ward for the criminally insane changed the place & the people in it by saying silently…”I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you”……..What ever motivated you to start this I am sure that it did not come from a shaming/blaming place, & if someone is angered, hurt, upset by it, your intention is pure, & you have lovingly started a deep process of inquiry. And there is also healthy shame, & denial that may have been triggered by this inquiry. We’ll just have to wait & see, I do not see the inquiry as responsible for creating any ‘toxic shame’ I think it healing & truthful to apologize for the ‘shameful’ acts of our own & others.
November 13, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Dearest Arjuna,
From my perspective it is possible for one to stand before another and apologize for an act that was not committed by them yet results in great healing for the person receiving the apology.
Several years ago, I was teaching in Germany. I was giving seminars in several cities. One of the things that struck me at that time was the enormous amount of guilt that so many German people carry for the atrocities committed during the World Wars and the Holocaust especially. Most of these people were not even alive during the wars. As an American who had been raised on the newsreels of the 1950’s this surprised me. Especially ,that young people, who would have to go back at least 2 generations, carried so much guilt.
I was teaching a retreat outside of Hamburg and there was an older man attending who had been conscripted by the Nazi’s as a Hitler youth. He suffered debilitating guilt. I realized how generation after generation of German’s entire identity had been effected by these horrific times.
While this man sat sobbing, as the seminar facilitator, I felt something deep move through me. I knew as apology was called for. I stood before the group, as I witnessed the burden of their collective guilt being held as unforgivable, and I asked for their forgiveness. They were stunned. I knelt before them and said that I represented the rest of the world. The world who had judged them as guilty, just for being born German. There was a hush, followed by tears and much emotion.
Never had it occurred to them that such a forgiveness could be asked for.
I took the time with the former Hitler youth, then in his seventies, whose entire life had been devastated by what he had been forced to do. And I asked the same, please forgive all of us who have judged you for your actions, I held him in my arms while he cried. The hush in the room was palpable. The result was an unburdening of unimaginable pain.
The discussion that followed was one of great healing and a relief that many never expected to happen in their lives.
So, yes, I do know that we can apologize for others and it can have a deeply transformative effect. Thank you Arjuna and Gay for your manifesto. It is an important stand and an important beginning.
Many Blessings,
Lindsay
November 14, 2010 at 12:43 am
Thank you Lindsay!
November 14, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Thank you Lindsay, that was beautiful,Blessings
November 13, 2010 at 2:45 pm
THIS IS SO POWERFUL. I cried as I listened to your description of the men apologising to the woman, who was raped. And in doing so feel I released some trauma within myself. I live in Australia and a couple of years ago, our then PM apologised to the Aboriginal people, which was a huge healing for our entire country. And on a personal level, in this lifetime my brother was killed by IRA terrorists and our family was touched in the recent meeting of a former IRA member who met with us and apologised for his part in this “war”.
November 13, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Dear Arjuna,
I have been communicating with animals and plants for almost 18 years. They tell me the BIGGEST illusion we live with is this idea of Separation! Where doyou end and I begin? EVERY THING I say and do AFFECTS All of Life. Every animal, plant, insect, human, the planet. If we are all ONE, if God is experiencing itself as all of its creations, we ARE all One and ALWAYS CONNECTED. Dr. Hew Len healed dozens of prisoners in a prison for the criminally insane without seeing them personally by working on himself! I took the class way before it became popular and we do daily rituals for “all of humanity” to heal all perpetrators of all painful events, back through all time. Thousands of people now do this daily.
I am part of a visionary network and we do this work all the time for ALL PEOPLE EVERY WHERE. http://www.transformingourworld.com
http://www.theglobalbrillianceproject.com IT is the Most Exciting work I do, on behalf of our entire Universe!
We can no longer believe somehow we live in isolation. I forgive myself for all things I have done intentionally or unintentionally to anyone in this lifetime and all my past lifetimes as all people I have ever ever been. I forgive everyone who intentionally or unintentionally hurt me in any way shape or form for all my lifetimes in all ways. THIS is what creates healing, going beyond the self and knowing you CAN love unconditionally. My forgiveness and love touches all people, all life, even beyond this planet and all its inhabitants. YES YES YES to your question.
When has hate, judgment, resentment, anger, holding a grudge ever, ever “healed” anything? Look at Dr. Emoto’s work with water. Our angry thoughts pollute our Own Vessel, our own body, 70% of which is water. There is no good reason to do these things any longer. Love heals me and you and everyone I am connected to.. one little step at a time. At least that is “my truth” and I am proud to own it. With great love and appreciation.
November 14, 2010 at 2:07 pm
hi Morgine, thank you for that, I would like to join you, will be in touch!!
November 13, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Wow…!!! Very moving.. I felt like a lazer beam went through me as I listened to you. what an interesting and insightful approach. I am an Israeli woman, and think that this is so deep, and clean and pure! In every aspect!!
Thank you for re-reminding me what life is about!
November 13, 2010 at 2:28 pm
What comes to mind first is that I am female in this birth, but I may have been a male in other lives.
We represent our particular gender in this day and age of dawning consciousness, so have a powerful responsibility to act from that representation now.
Knowing that I have experienced life as both genders (or able to imagine so, if I don’t believe in “past” lives) I can feel drawn to apologize to and forgive as a human spirit clothed in a female body, those human spirits who now represent the male experience.
It is the collective spirit that we represent with our individual bodies, whether we happen to be born woman or man, wealthy or poor, mentally well or ill, of color or not.
Since now we, of the living generations, are called upon to go to the depth of our being to heal our physical and spiritual world, we can find ourselves able to communicate our apologies and our forgiveness to each other; for it is by grace or by chance that we are here in this form.
In a way it is apologizing to and forgiving the male/female forces entwined within each of us – and as such this can be a very deep healing rather than a source of blame or shame.
November 13, 2010 at 2:25 pm
I felt this deep collective relationship during my year in France (I am German). My dear friend showed my German bomb holes in the Normandie, a very physical proof of (German) violence. I did what my soul wanted to do: I appologized as a German for this destruction. She didn`t understand and said: “you didn`t do it so why would you appologize?” Deep inside I still felt the need to say SORRY- not at the very personal level.
Later on the french parents of my boyfriend told me (without blaming Germans or myself!!) that they hided American soldiers and risked their life with this human act. I started to cry because I felt the beauty of this unbelievebal courage and the fear they went through. While crying I felt that these tears can heal something. Again I said SORRY, but they didn`t understand.
I am sure that there is collective pain,collective revenge-feelings (I have them too for many reasons, collective anger.
Every time there is a group of people overpowered by another group there can be collective healing in this way!!
In Germany we tried to create an awareness culture of what “we” did in the third “Reich”. But this process often stopped in confronting younger generations with these cruel historical facts. What is missing is just the act of appologizing and crying out the pain both sides accumulated- the victims and the murders!
Maybe you know the foto of Brandt bowing his knees at a very official event to appologize for collective German cruelity. Never before and after a powerful politician and MAN did this simple act without words!
It is not to accuse oneself without finding a healing end in this process (what many Germans critizise because they “didn`t commit these crimes themselfs”) but to do what you are describing f.e. at the Deeper Love!
This prooves that we are all related and we can heal even on a global level!
thank you so much for your courage!
diana
Lets do it every day!
November 13, 2010 at 2:16 pm
In my perception we are all ONE- one human soul too. But even if you would not be into this idea. There is a text about a medical doctor who healed all his patients only with the old HUNA method:
———————-
explanation of this method:
When applying Ho’oponopono, the Divine will cleanses a specific thought of all suffering and pain in the first step – COMPASSION: „I am sorry“.
In the second step – FORGIVENESS: „I forgive myself for what I have created“ – the energy of pain is set free, and emptiness arises.
In the third step – unconditional LOVE – the divine Light is allowed to flow into the emptiness to fill it up: „ I LOVE MYSELF / YOU / ALL OF CREATION“
————-
Ho’oponopono is a remarkably simple process of spiritual healing and is based on the properties of the quantum universe. In order to become able to work with this process, it is helpful to lay down the old world-view of classical nature sciences and to open up one’s mind to a shamanic and quantum-physical world-view.
Each person is able to communicate with all dimensions of time and space through resonance, and even with being All-at-One beyond time and space.
(I just chose to copy from :
========================================
This is in the perception of
we are all connected- in fact- we are ONE
and everything that happens here on the planet – is happening to us all – in some way and we are all involved in it.
At least it should be easy if we look at it from QUANTUM PHYSICS PERSPECTIVE
And as we are all “in this” together – we also have to work us “out of” all what is now – to a better sort of life for Nature and Human beings.
November 13, 2010 at 2:52 pm
THANK YOU Joanna! I was about to post on this wonderful method of taking 100% responsibility. I trust it has been said and that it aligns with the intention of those creating this conversation. YES! We are ONE and it is possible to start NOW in healing our collective inheritance of anything that appears as hurt, confusion or separation.
WIth love, in peaceful self responsibility.
November 13, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Hi Johanna!
Very nice! I share your idea and think it is possible and maybe even NECESSARY in some level to do it, because we ARE the same energy. It can also work the other way round. “I FORGIVE all the men who burned witches, because they really didn’t have a choice. They didn’t know what they were doing.” And I do forgive them.
I’d like to get to know that Ho’oponoponopo.
Riitta
November 14, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Thank you for reminding me!!
November 13, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Dear Arjuna,
I SEE you – I HEAR you – Thank you.
This healing is a gentle unraveling of the collective shadow – some have not yet developed the “ears” to here it…
This is powerful and profound.
Thank you,
Peace and blessings,
Ali
November 13, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Arjuana: I began listening to this piece in a comfortable, protected, intellectual energy. I was already in philosophical agreement with your thesis – the physics of fractals would suggest that the representative of the whole contains all the essential elements of the whole – hence its actions can act on behalf of, and stand for that whole. And the work being done on the potential effects of non co-located “phenomena” would confirm my personal belief that “it’s all connected, we’re all connected, and there’s nothing more than, or less than, the Whole.”
And then I listened as you spoke of apologizing to the women of the world – and by extension to “the Feminine” – for those aspects of masculine energy, and the violence done to women by men now and over time. And I got that “whole body” movement of energy that says “This is Real and this is True.” So, the short answer would be “Yes.”
And then listening to the reactions of some of men who wrote in response to this only confirms that you hit a nerve – a nerve that has been suppressed, denied, buried, and twisted into silence for hundreds and thousands of years. It made me very sad to listen to them.
Right now I would like to apologize on behalf of all the women in their lives who were not strong enough, wise enough, generous enough, and brave enough – to give them the space to vulnerable, and small, and afraid. I would like to apologize to the men I know for the times my own needs have prevented me from acknowledging their needs. I am truly, deeply sorry, and I’m weeping as I type this.
Just as there is a richer, deeper palette in which to paint “the Feminine,” so too is there a richer, deeper, more emotionally fulfilling palette in which to paint “the Masculine.” And, for what it’s worth to the men who fear this transformation – you have no idea how sad women feel when we see men who are still struggling to break out of that iron box of “what a man is supposed to be” – the anger, the violence, and the rigidity that never quite succeed in hiding the underlying fear. You have no idea how amazingly attractive, sexy, and compelling you are when you rediscover the fact that strong and tender are not opposites – and what an astonishing “turn on” this is to a woman.
This is an important discussion to be having right now as we collectively attempt to figure out how shift so much insane of the behavior in which we’ve been collectively engaged on a global scale.
I remember reading that “We make war because we’ve forgotten how to dance.” To those men who wrote in to say “It wasn’t me,” I believe you – sort of. I believe you haven’t actually done those things to the women in your own life. But I also believe that you’ve done damage to them, and even greater damage to yourselves, by not looking at the old, tired, 2-dimensional picture of “what it means to be a man.” So, here’s my hand – let’s dance?
November 13, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Dear Arjuna,
when I was at the Deeper Love -Seminar in Germany two years ago, I feeled after the healing-ritual between women and men that there was a very huge feeling in me. It was too big to explain it.
November 13, 2010 at 2:03 pm
As a practitioner of Updated Ho’oponopono, I have learned to be responsible for what I see in my world— responsible to erase or transform the memory or meme that exists within me. I do this by expressing remorse and asking forgiveness. It is entirely an interior process which can be actived by saying to oneself, “I’m sorry for the problem, please forgive me.” This does not require expressing this to another. This process is elucidated in the book Zero Limits. This, of course, does not invalidate expressing remorse to another when one is led to do so.
November 13, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Beautiful, Arjuna. Absolutely, this is The Way forward. Thank you!
November 13, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Thank you so much Arjuna for your words on’ becoming an agent of collective healing’. What an exciting dialogue! My personal response to hearing you and Gay speak your manifesto, and when I read it also, is one of deep weeping. I am so extremely grateful and so deeply moved that you would both be so noble as to ‘take responsibility’ and to speak on behalf of all men in this way. It’s deeply, deeply healing for me to receive your sincere, heartfelt words of apology.
At the same time, I understand and honor the responses you have received from men who are outraged and upset by your manifesto. Within the collective, we are also individuals who are all at different stages of evolution, of healing, of understanding. Not all men are at a place where they are ready to, or able to, or need to ‘take responsibility for other men’s actions’. It’s good that those men acknowledge what’s true for them at this point in time. Thankfully, women don’t need all men to apologize . . . even if only a handful of men are able to speak from the place that you and Gay speak from, that is sufficient for women to receive deep and powerful healing of their wound.
With gratitude,
Sahina
November 13, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Some people are already (and have been for some time) apologizing for what their forefathers have done, but it is not enough. What we need to do is to raise our consciousness about those events, in other words to gain the perspective of your higher self (the perspective of the souls who planned to experience those events). This is what will heal the world.
To gain the perspective of your higher self you must reconnect to and integrate with your higher self–there is a simple process for this (simple, not necessarily easy). Once you begin this process, you gradually begin to gain this higher level perspective that shows you WHY certain things have happened. And, we have a huge opportunity to shift to a new world at the end of this cycle ending December 2012.
I have found that gaining this higher level perspective is the key to this new world of peace–inner and outer.
Christine Hoeflich
November 13, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I find this amazingly compassionate! Deep, deep, understanding of human energy and what it takes to open people’s hearts and minds to heaql and grow. Thank God for people like us, who see a challenge and do something about it. Thanks, Gay and Arjuna, for doing much good for all men and all women. Even though many may not know!
Steinar, Oslo, Norway
November 13, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Pondering, I was deeply touched by your ideas Arjuna. Of course if we are all connected and connected from the moment consciousness first took physical form then it must be possible to heal collectively. It must be possible to take on the shadow side if we can drop in as you say to the whole of who we are. Doesn’t one murder, rape, or decimated river touch the whole of life with the pain? Why not then healing these pains by taking ownership of these devastations as we are a part of those who perpetrated them? If those of us who can feel we’d like to help heal see that it is a way there then in the spirit of service to a more loving humanity and world I see no way of denying this idea.
November 13, 2010 at 1:42 pm
I was deeply moved. I absolutely believe that life is broader than just this lifetime and my own personal self. Please speak to ways to facilitate this process for others. Or, does this take place primarily through our own willingness to take responsibility?
November 13, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Hello Arjuna,
Your posts are so moving…I have shared.
‘Is it possible for one human being to heal wounds they did not personally cause? Could a German today apologize to a Jew for the holocaust, and create healing, even though it was decades ago and the actual perpetrators are dead? Could a conscious man today apologize to women for burning witches? Is this a form of healing or creating toxic shame?’
This is a profound query…with my whole heart I say YES!
This feels reminiscent of the Huna prayer of O’ponopono which is so powerful…I hold the space for this healing…
For as long as I can rememeber, even as a young child- I have apologised within my heart as I grew up in a community of mixed ethnicities…and I was aware of how some of the kids felt and noticed how some kids were treated, etc.,
Thank you for reframing these tragedies into a new light with the potential for an ocean of healing to occur.
Blissings to you and to Chameli
November 13, 2010 at 1:34 pm
I understand your viewpoint on collective healing and believe that it can work, especially in the wider context of clashes between indigenous groups, races or nations … in which the ‘individual’ is a more abstract entity … it reminds me of the Reconciliation movement in Australia towards the past horrors committed against the Aboriginals … which, after all, as I have understood, didn’t have the desired effects in the long run because the common Aussie couldn’t identify with it …
Why not start for the ‘conscious’ men with the women they have been with in their own lives? … past one-night stands, lovers & partners … create with them this healing ritual you use in your workshops in actual meet-ings … in an eye to eye encounter? … it can be very powerful if both parties agree … and that’s more likely in this case …
Isn’t it so that your present idea of collective healing might not get the recognition you are looking for under men? … Rapes, burning witches etc. are examples of horrors that are committed … but probably a number of men can’t identify with it directly … see the examples you mention yourself …
Why not instead use as example the pain or hurt that they have caused in their own relationships with women? Something they can identify more easily with because that was part of their own responsibility …
And is there any real difference in the experience of pain between these horrors and so-called minor ‘abuses’, quarrels & misunderstandings that happen in relationships? … the experience of pain is after all subjective … and in my experience that determines the amount of pain or hurt a person can feel …
I see why you have created this manifesto and especially the bearing of it … the global appeal, recognition or sympathy you are looking for … and also the hidden motivation: to make men more aware of it … but why not make it as an idea more accessible, recognizable and identifiable for ‘conscious’ men … more in general? … And with effects that can be in the long run more meaningful… Every so-called ‘conscious man’ can sign this manifesto … but what is it’s worth if he doesn’t practice it in his daily life?
November 13, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Blessings on your work Arjuna. I get it. My husband and I have begun watching ROOTS again. I REALLY get what you are saying. Now I’m waiting for another shoe to drop, to hear your thoughts on next steps after that apology and release of trauma. Do we know how to continue down the path together after the rifts that have kept us apart?