An Astonishing Experience of Forgiveness

Meena Compagnon is a very dear friend who underwent one of the most challenging experiences I have ever heard of. While she was absent from her home, her husband committed suicide while with their two children, and then the house caught fire accidentally. In one night she lost absolutely everything she possessed in life: her two children (3 and 6, beautiful and so lively), her partner and every single thing she owned on earth. For my coming book on forgiveness, which will appear in French in September, she wrote the following lines which she authorized me to translate from the French and share with Cygnus readers. She is now a well-known adult trainer and therapist and runs her own workshops
www.meena-compagnon.com

When on May 8, 1985 I was told that my two children and their father had perished in our house in flames, I was far from imagining the long path of initiation awaiting me behind that trail. How was I to survive the suicide of the man I had loved so deeply, who, in an act of despair, had taken our two children with him into the clutch of death? How could I forgive such an action? Who could claim to reply to this question? I was an atheist living in a Cartesian milieu. Hence I had no religion to which I could cling, no therapist who could empathize with the violence of my suffering: only the solitude of my suffering, crumbling inner defenses, and a bewildered ego which was falling to pieces. A symbolic death.

And it is this very pain and the loss of my inner anchors as well as the unconditional love for my children that turned out to be my very salvation.

To survive so that their death would not be without reason! Using the fact that the ego had laid down its weapons to open other doors inside myself. To really inhabit my mourning, step after step, without medication of any sort which only dampens one’s consciousness. Accepting the outstretched hands which enable me to discover new pathways, new ways of thinking, living, acting! Touching upon that which is essential and plunging into the infinite resources of the inner path because there is no other way to heal!

Lifting the veils of oblivion and of the question, ‘Who am I?’

And then seven years later, this ultimate moment, out of time, in India, in Benares, alone, facing the cremation fires which brought back to mind that terrible night when the flames devoured my loved ones. Suddenly, a veil is torn, a moment of eternity. The bodies I behold in front of me are only carcasses emptied of their essence, of their soul. In a few seconds, I understand everything. I am overwhelmed by an immense gratitude. My children, their father, have but been the catalysts of my inner awakening!

The miracle of grace descending into my heart. My living faith without dogmas or belongingness. A spiritual awakening.

I am at that moment experiencing the essence of the word FORGIVENESS: to forgive means to discover the Gift that is hidden behind the trial. It is to take back the responsibility of what is happening to us without trying to accuse anyone. If there is no more guilty party, whom should we forgive?

To forgive means thanking oneself and thanking the other. To forgive means coming out from duality and discovering that we are one with our co-creators.

The ultimate forgiveness takes place on May 8, 2010: 25 years later, during a ritual I organize in homage to, and in the memory of, my children and their father. Standing facing their portraits, I witness to each of these beloved ones all the love I feel for them, starting with my children. When I face the portrait of the man with whom I shared the best and the worst, I am silent, as if petrified. I plunge into his eyes and suddenly I understand, with an emotion shared by the whole assembly, that there are no longer perpetrators or victims, only soul contracts that we all accepted. Rivers of tears flow from my heart and are transformed into gratitude. It is as if I remembered this contract from the past.

Just at that moment, a person in the room who is a medium says: ‘I have a message from Robert. He tells you: Finally you have understood! You remember. THANK YOU‘ Then I have this vision of his face which has become so luminous and of the children in the background, smiling and saying: We came to advance you on your spiritual path, as agreed upon.

That is the ultimate GIFT. True FORGIVENESS. What is there to add but GRATITUDE?

© 2014 by Meena Compagnon, Pierre Pradervand and Editions Jouvence