“The world has had a lot of betrayals, a lot of misgivings, and violence that has taken away trust and belonging from a lot of people at many levels of this civilization. But one act of forgiveness from each person every day restores that. It allows something that is not yet in the world to come into the world through our own inner witnessing and awakening, that forgiveness is the fundamental exercise in preparing for abundance and trust and love and hope.
So the prerequisite for giving is forgiving. Meaning that in a certain way I allow myself to feel inwardly so free of even the resentment, that I can give to the other, one who might be called enemy, the very thing that would allow him/her to trust me.
… This is far from just giving money and things. We are giving the very nature that allows beings to recover memory of their own sacred place in the world, and in a certain way to participate in the observation of their own capacity to not withhold but to share into the common belonging that human beings must co-create. Nature won’t give us that part. Nature reveals the mystery of generosity but because we have the nature that could withhold, or compromise, it is up to us to develop the inner freedom to give. I am giving because I can, not because the circumstances determine that I should. I give because as a human being, it is my highest creative act.” ~ Orland Bishop