Seeing the “Perfection” in the Situation – The Reframe

Do you find it difficult to make a Radical Forgiveness reframe? Many people do. It's not easy to get the idea grounded in reality that everything is unfolding according to a Divine plan and that there's nothing to forgive. This is especially so when you are in the middle of some crisis. Thank God we don't have to do more than express some willingness to see it as perfect! And thank Spirit for giving us the tools with which to do just that.

When we reframe a situation we basically exchange one set of assumptions rooted in the World of Humanity (as in the victim story), for another set rooted in the unseen and essentially mysterious World of Spirit. It matters not whether the reframe is "true;" rather it is how we frame it with assumptions anchored in the World of Spirit that constitutes the test as to whether it is indeed a Radical Forgiveness reframe or not.

It is very common for people, even seasoned Radical Forgiveness coaches and graduates, to express their reframes in terms of having received a ‘gift,’ a ‘lesson’ or even a ‘healing’ that remain, to all intents and purposes, firmly anchored in the World of Humanity, even though they are dressed up in spiritual language. They nevertheless fail the test.

During a conversation with a very good friend of mine who was herself a holocaust survivor, she told me about an exhibition in the Holocaust Museum in Auschwitz, Germany, that featured a huge pile of children’s shoes. All of them had been taken from the children before they were gassed. As you would expect, the exhibit has an extremely visceral and profound effect on anyone who confronts it.

As a student of Radical Forgiveness she made an attempt to reframe it, primarily so she could come to terms with it herself and integrate it somehow into her own personal history of having been part of that terrible experience. She said that perhaps the reframe was that the ‘gift’ (there’s that word again — always a trap), was that the souls of the children ‘volunteered’ to die in this way so that people who saw the pile of shoes would ensure that, since children are always the victims of war, they would never create war again. In that sense, there was a Divine purpose in what happened.

In that statement were indeed two assumptions rooted in the World of Spirit. One was that there is no death and souls choose when and how to make their transition both in and out of human form. The second was that there was Divine purpose even in this situation. It counts, perhaps, as a partial reframe to that extent. But making it about “stopping wars” snapped it right back into the World of Humanity. It therefore failed the test. It was not a true Radical Forgiveness reframe.

Even if such a result was to occur, which it never would because it doesn't get to the root of why humans kill each other, it would simply be an "effect," not a reframe. It would be simple cause and effect, which only operates in the World of Humanity, not in the World of Spirit.

Another example is saying that Jesus volunteered to die in order to teach us to be good and to love each other. He did teach that of course, but I don't believe that it was the purpose of his crucifixion. My reframe of that drama was “to show that death is not real and that life is present before we take on a body and it continues afterwards. Therefore, no one dies. Therefore death is not to be feared and life is to be lived free of that fear.”

My reframe of the shoes story, even though I haven't seen the exhibit, and it might well be different afterwards, might run something like this: "That the soul's who inhabited those children's bodies incarnated with a specific mission to be killed in a particularly gruesome manner to teach us that we are all One, that separation is not real, that death is not real and that when we senselessly kill a seemingly innocent child, we kill ourselves. And that we are all children of God; the One ‘Sonship.’"

It might also be part of a larger reframe which I have spoken of publicly in the past and have held seminars on; that the soul lesson inherent in the Holocaust was about our letting go of 'victim consciousness' which the Jewish people volunteered to exhibit to the extreme. It was also about the error of 'specialness' that the Germans volunteered to demonstrate to an equal extreme. The only meaningful opposite of victimhood and specialness is Oneness. The drama continues - the lessons still to be learned.

In anticipation of someone asserting that the reframe inherent in Jill’s Story (Chapter One in my book Radical Forgiveness, Making Room for the Miracle), fails the test because I made it about saving my sister’s marriage and ‘healing’ her core-negative belief that her father didn’t love her, let me say this. If it were just about that, it would fail the test. What it was really about though, and Jill really did get this, was that her own spiritual intelligence created the whole scenario as an opportunity to learn that she was loved, that she was whole and complete with or without a man, and that she was entirely responsible for her life and that only Spirit is real. The rest was simply an illusion — a victim story based in the World of Humanity which she was able to release.

I hope this helps you in the process of doing a Radical Forgiveness worksheet, in particular with Step number 18. Having said all this though, it really doesn’t matter what you write on the worksheet. Your intention to do it is enough. You cannot screw it up! Would God care if you failed the reframe test? I don’t think so.

Blessings,

Colin

P.S. I invite you to post a reply letting us know how you might have successfully reframed some event or circumstance in your life. This would be very helpful to a lot of people. Thanks.