Free The Age of Miracles by Marianne Williamson Page A

have a beauty of their own. You don’t have to be young to be fabulous.
    Yet how do we do emotionally what those ice-skaters do physically? How do we get up again when life has thrown us down? How do we get over the past?
    Without forgiveness, it cannot be done.
    O NE NIGHT I WAS LYING IN BED, NEARING SLEEP, and I realized that I’d been taken to some dimension I’d never experienced before. I say “taken” because it just seemed to happen. In this place I knew I was older, and I couldn’t have entered if I were not. But there was a light, a luminescence that was clearly something I couldn’t have known until this point. I knew then that if I could live in this place on a consistent basis, I would never see it as a lesser world. It wasn’t a booby prize; it was clearly a reward. It wasn’t as though I was carrying baggage; it was as though I had received a gift.
    “Oh, this is what age is!” I said to myself, relieved that it was so wonderful. But a response came clearly: “Well, not for everyone.” I was visiting an inner domain that was not a given. It had to be chosen. It was revealed to me in one of those momentary gifts of grace, perhaps, but only as an enticement, a demonstration of what was mine to earn. Before the present could start to shine like that, I would have to learn to forgive.
    It’s fairly easy to stay loving and serene when others always act the way you want them to, but that’s not a realistic picture of life. Everyone’s imperfect, everyone’s wounded, and most of us have been somewhat scathed at one time or another by the casual cruelty of others.
    Forgiveness involves faith in a love that’s greater than hatred, and a willingness to see the light in someone’s soul even when their personality has harbored darkness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that someone didn’t act horribly; it simply means that we choose not to focus on their guilt. In focusing on it, we make it real to us, and in making it real to us, we make it real for us. The only way to deliver ourselves from vulnerability to other people’s behavior is by identifying with the part of them that lies beyond their bodies. We can look beyond others’ behavior to the innocence in their souls. In doing so, we not only free them from the weight of our condemnation, but we free ourselves as well.
    That is the miracle of forgiveness.
    Forgiveness isn’t just about being nice —it’s about being spiritually intelligent. We can have a grievance or we can have a miracle, but we cannot have both. We can build a case against someone, or we can be happy. Any justification I come up with for an attack on another person is just my ego’s ploy to keep me in pain.
    A concept it has taken me years to embrace fully is that I am 100 percent responsible for my own life. 100 percent responsible doesn’t mean 34 percent responsible, and it doesn’t mean 96 percent responsible. Unless you’re willing to accept that you’re 100 percent responsible for your own experience, then you can’t call forth your best life.
    Some people nurse grievances that go back 20 years. At a certain point, however, it becomes harder to blame all your problems on what someone did to you that long ago. No matter what they did, the real culprit is the one who’s let 20 years pass without getting over it.
    Some awful things might have happened to you during the years leading up to this moment, but you are still responsible for how you choose to interpret them. And how you interpret your past determines whether it will uplift you or emotionally sink you. Yes, there may have been some people who viciously wronged you. I understand that. But it serves you to realize any of the ways you might have made it easy for them to do it. Yes, there may be aspects of your life that are lacking, joyless, chaotic, and disappointing. But it is your responsibility to own every dark corner of your life and transform it.
    I’m not saying forgiveness is easy; I’m simply saying