I did not make the digital switch with everyone else back in 2009. And I don’t have cable (and won’t give money to cable company C) so I don’t have TV at all unless the network also uploads their shows to the internet. It’s mostly okay – I subscribe to netflix and I’ve found I actually enjoy my favorites more without the commercials. With the exception of House which Fox puts up on their website 8 days after the show airs, I wait for the others (the Mentalist, SVU, & Criminal Minds) to come out after the season ends and love the rush of watching 22 episodes in two days. I highly recommend that you try this at home, and with a batch of unbaked cookie dough. Now, the package says, “please don’t eat cookie dough raw.” It’s so polite and concerned that I did initially reconsider. And after all, they do say please. But … no. I still eat it. Delicious, soft, gooey, chewy, yummy, crunchy chocolate chip cookie dough – right out of the package. Oh, it’s so good. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched 11 episodes of the third year of Criminal Minds in a row while snacking on chocolate chip cookie dough, salt and vinegar chips and Stoneyfield cream top chocolate yogurt. So awesome. Thank you, God, for chocolate chip cookie dough.
Okay — back to TV. Another show I miss watching during its original broadcast is America’s Most Wanted. If you ever want to know what Archangel Michael is like, turn on AMW and look at the man in the leather jacket. John Walsh reminds me so much of Archangel Michael that when I first realized it when I was 19, I would just watch, agape. It was like seeing Michael on the TV. John Walsh is a hero of mine and tops the list of my favorite living people (followed by Ralph Nader, Michael Moore, Ron Paul and Anthony “the President is wrong. He’s wrong on torture” Romero). I watched AMW as often as I was allowed to as a young girl and as an adult, I began watching more regularly and joining in prayer with the guardian angels of the victims for them to be comforted by the angels and additionally began joining in prayer with the guardian angels of all law enforcement for their minds and hearts to be filled with clarity and motivation so that they would be able to easily and quickly solve all crime and be healed of all pain and sadness associated with the investigation. You can probably see where this is going: then I began to join in prayer with the guardian angels of all the victims’ family members for them to be comforted in their time of loss and uncertainty. And finally it occurred to me to pray for the (alleged) criminals themselves for them to be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with God’s Love and to feel that Love calling them to do the right thing and surrender to the authorities. I didn’t realize back then that by praying for them to be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with God’s Love that I was forgiving them. The amazing thing that forgiveness does is open the heart. When people take actions that hurt others, it is because they can’t feel God’s Love: that’s why they hurt others. When we pray for them, God is able to use us as conduits: healing divine love floods from the heart of God through the heart of the person praying and into the heart of the person being prayed for. Imagine if everyone watching AMW prayed for everyone they saw on the show to be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with divine love! And this effect is amplified exponentially when we call on the guardian angels of all these people to join in prayer with us. Now, when your heart is opened, you can suddenly feel empathy, so if you were a sociopath or psychopath, you would be flooded with something even more terrifying than the darkness you previously felt: remorse. Most of us know what remorse feels like: awful. You messed up, you made a mistake, you took an action that caused another person pain and now you feel regret. Ideally, we feel the regret or remorse and are subsequently motivated by our empathy for another person’s pain (that we caused) to apologize. To put this in perspective with a tiny example from everyday life, think of how bad you feel when you accidentally step on someone’s toes or in some other way cause someone pain that you had no intention to cause. You probably quickly apologize and tell them you didn’t mean to. Now imagine if you’d hurt not just one person, but many people, and not accidentally, but with premeditated deliberation and that you did all that because you couldn’t feel Love: this means that your very existence – your whole life – would be a living hell of being unable to feel joy or love at all. Talk about the ultimate prison sentence. Now imagine that suddenly your heart was forced open and you could empathically relate to the pain of all your victims! You would be in excruciating pain and you’d do anything to make it stop. That’s when you’d turn yourself in and confess everything.
The other night, Tuesday, the 12th of April, I watched Saturday, April 9th’s episode of AMW on Fox’s website and did the usual joining in prayer. I began foraging around the site after the episode ended, and lo and behold! One of the child predators had been hiding in the desert and had turned himself in one day after the episode aired! Praise God! As more and more people forgive everyday, humanity’s heart opens more and more and this kind of quick – peaceful – resolution occurs more and more often. And, the more (the more of us and the more frequently) we all pre-forgive by joining in prayer with the Circle of Angels that perpetually surrounds the earth and envelops it in a cocoon of love and pray each morning, “God, please let everyone on Earth be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with Joy by the power of your Love,” the more we prevent pain and tragedy from occurring in the first place. Why? Because people who can feel God’s Love do not take actions that hurt others on purpose. Why not? Because they have no desire to.
John Walsh also mentioned in that episode an incident in South Carolina where a young guy attempted to hijack several cars before he was able to find one he could drive and murdered one man in the process and attempted to kill a few other people. One man who barely survived was a preacher and he was filmed in his church saying that this man needs to turn himself in, that he needs to be punished. Then, as if God literally flooded his heart with love on camera, the preacher quickly added, “and even more, this man needs to be saved.” The Christian concept of “being saved” would be better presented as “being healed of all pain and sadness by the Power of God’s Love.” This young man will turn himself in once he can feel God’s Love. He’ll be healed and desire to make amends and he’ll have no desire to take actions that cause others pain – then what will be saved is the lives of those he won’t ever end up killing because he no longer desires to kill. We can achieve that outcome much sooner the more intensely and more frequently we pray for him to be healed of all pain and sadness. This man and other people who hurt others with the intent to kill or torture are in the worst hell there is: a place where they can’t feel God’s Love at all. Ironically, it is possible to be in this state of existence whether dead or alive. God doesn’t send or sentence anyone to this place – it’s caused by not knowing how to forgive. The hell of regret (i.e. Remorse) I mentioned earlier that usually motivates us to apologize and make amends is second only to the hell of not being able to feel God’s Love at all – that place is where child predators and criminals like this man who shot two elderly gentleman point blank are trapped every waking moment of their lives. Because we aren’t born knowing how to forgive and it horrifies us that God could allow such horrific tragedy and suffering, we cling to a vengeance lifesaver that helps us deny the sadness of the realization that God is allowing that suffering in the first place and doesn’t stop it. So we tell ourselves that someday those who hurt others will see God and pay the price and get their just desserts or that what goes around comes around. Either way, we assure ourselves, they’ll pay for what they did, either later in life, in the next life (if you believe in reincarnation) or after death, in hell. The truth is much more devastating: they are already in a hell where they can’t feel God’s Love. That’s why they hurt others. There isn’t a worse punishment than being unable to feel God’s Love at all. There is no other, additional, hell for people to go to later. There is no other realm in the Universe where people lose everything they have – their house, their belongings, and their money – because they got sick but didn’t have insurance. There is no other realm in the universe where human beings are bought and sold into slavery or where child pornography is being sold on the very same internet that connects you to my blog. Our human desire for God’s wrath or vengeance – divine retribution – acts as a lifesaver that helps us stay afloat in a sea of sadness that would literally drown us if we were forced to acknowledge that God is allowing that suffering in the first place and doesn’t stop it. So why does God allow all the pain and suffering humanity endures? God allows us all to experience Separation – life on Earth – in order to know two states of existence: Joy which runs the gamut from the surprise of delight to the bliss of Oneness with our soulmate and Forgiveness which is to know what it is to love others, not because they have earned it or deserved it but simply because they exist, to love the way that God does! We couldn’t perceive either without the ability to contrast them both with other emotions. Only Separation from God allows us to know that high degree of unconditional love, love that requires nothing in return, indeed, the kind of love that requires an act we disapprove of. The act of forgiveness is the act of loving the way that God does – it is powerful beyond measure and is as close to omnipotence as we will get in our lifetimes. When you pray for someone to be healed of all pain and sadness and filled with God’s Love – despite the fact that they have committed atrocities – you forgive them. In that moment, you touch the heart of God and act as a conduit for God’s omnipotence: Divine Love floods from God into your heart and into the heart of the person you are forgiving. In that moment, your desire for another person’s ability to feel and know Divine Love, given up to God in the form of a prayer, heals them and prevents future pain of the same nature. How? Once they can feel God’s Love, they will no longer hurt others. Why? Because they will no longer desire to.
When we can feel God’s Love, we do not take actions that cause others pain.
Why? Because we have no desire to.
A great act of service you can incorporate into your daily activities is joining in prayer with the guardian angels of people you see, either in life or on television or the internet, for God to heal them of all pain and sadness and fill them with Love. Forgiving daily is the fastest way to Heaven on Earth, a place where injustice is prevented through the power of forgiveness … in the mean time, Justice is both the reactive concept of ensuring that we protect society from dangerous members of society by quarantining them (in a prison) after they have committed acts of injustice; and the proactive framework that guides us in our decision-making as a society whose Laws protect the vulnerable and do not reward those whose hearts are filled with either greed for money or greed for power. Remember, the biggest injustice of Separation (Life on Earth) is that some people can feel God’s Love and some can’t. It’s simply not fair.
So, in the words of John Walsh, let’s get justice for all victims and their family members who suffer in their grief. Let’s pray for all the criminals spotlighted on the show: let’s ask God to fill them with so much love that they walk into the nearest police station and confess all.
Praise God from whom all blessings – and opportunities to forgive – flow.