To: personal email
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (NocTifer)
Subject: Ethics and Forgiveness (Excerpts)
Date: Kali Yuga 499410xx

My 'views' are irrelevant to the feelings in my heart.  If I feel that I
must oppose something (say, for example, a woman is being battered and I
cannot stand to let it continue without throwing myself between them or
at least calling the police), then it is not a matter of my knowing anything
about them.  I am taking an action out of my compassion and my own pain.

It is not about what I think is 'right' or 'wrong', it is about what I
can stand to witness without prevention/opposition.  I have at times
stridently defended the lives of small insects in our home.  I have, at
others, killed them maliciously after having been bitten.  I have very
different feelings at different times and these do not come out of my
head.


Forgiving someone?  Oh, you must mean something which I can't yet under-
stand.  I've never been able to understand how 'forgiving someone' can
help to resolve anger.  It sounds crazy to both my heart and head.  I agree
that expressing anger can be a very important thing.  However, I think there
are times when the anger comes out of places where it is best to respond to
it by dealing with the issues in myself which bring it up moreso than trying
to make the anger go away by removing the person/object restimulating it.

Example: Mr. X decides to ignore me, then proceeds to tell the elist of
this.  I feel great anger at having been shut out of his consciousness.
However, I know that he is experiencing pain at my words, that he has seldom
if every run into those such as myself, and that his typical means of
dealing with demons/adversaries is to banish them/exclude them from his
life/mind.  

My anger is still there.  Just because I understand his motives and can
deeply sympathize with them doesn't make my anger go away.  I can't just
'let go of it' (as some mean by 'forgive him').  He did me no wrong by
screening me out.  He was trying to protect himself.  I feel that I would
rather sit with that anger and look at it carefully, ask myself where is
it coming from, how is what he's doing restimulating a previous pain of mine.

I see that I have felt very deep pain about being cast out of social groups,
out of being 'the outcaste' because of my unwillingness to capitulate to
group-pressures regarding interests and expressions.  I see that I have a
need not only to feel welcomed by all, but to push those boundaries in
myself and in groups of people, perhaps feeling pushed myself in the
opposite direction and wishing a sort of vengeance.  I have known about
this tendency ('trouble-maker' I've heard it called) for quite some time
and have watched it carefully, somtimes (as in the FiatLVX group) being
fairly careful about how my expression is directed.  Yet the anger is still
there.  I must perhaps be outcast many times, placed upon the Cross and
killed, before I shall heal my pain.  Mr. X and I are kin who would
perhaps benefit from resolving our differences.  It takes two, however.