Oh boy! Another huge Radical Forgiveness challenge this week. How on earth can we forgive Ariel Castro, the seemingly depraved, animalistic torturer, jailer, rapist and alleged murderer who kept three women and a child captive in his house for 10 years?
All I can say at this point is that I am working on it. I’m doing my best to find a way to trust in knowing that the Universe had a plan, or that, as the Congressional Chaplain put it a few days after 9/11, “The hand of God was in there somewhere.” But it is a struggle.
I don’t usually do this, but let me make a stab at why Spirit might set something up like this. As a noted psychiatrist said on the PBS News Hour last night, “let’s not forget that many thousands of girls in this country of ours suffer almost exactly this kind of thing in their own homes, for years on end, at the hands of their own fathers or step-fathers. Incest in this country is endemic, and no one is talking about it.”
Could the purpose be, then, that those many thousands of young girls, now grown, who suffered the trauma of incest or coerced sex from step-fathers or siblings, might recognize their own suffering in this story and will come forward and say, “Yes, me too— that’s my story,” and finally begin to heal? Or perhaps girls who are currently being abused might find the strength to bring it to light?
Even if they don’t speak out, they at least will know that others have suffered as they suffered, and it will give them another opportunity to bring their pain up for healing. So, maybe the intention was to bring all this up to reveal something to us. Look what happened in India. One incident of gang rape created a mass demonstration countrywide protesting the way women are used and abused. The same could happen here, if only we would begin the conversation.
If, by any chance, this is resonating for you and you can identify with this, or you have someone close to you who has suffered in this way, please do consider using the Radical Forgiveness programs, or use a Radical Forgiveness Practitioner to help heal the residual pain once and for all. We have many people who have been horribly sexually abused attend our workshops. The results are always amazing.
Even if you do not have a personal history of abuse, maintaining a Radical Forgiveness perspective is challenging. If you you are struggling to hold the higher vibration, I suggest you download a Radical Forgiveness worksheet. Click on Free Stuff on the top menu and do one on Ariel Castro. Not only will this help you, energetically it will help the women heal from the trauma, and hopefully bring peace to Castro’s daughter. If enough people do this is will make a significant different at the energetic level, because we are all One.
I completely agree, here in GB your soon to be destination, there are paedophiles as high profile TV “personalities” being arrested, as though they too as you suggest, are being brought out of the woodwork, following the Jimmy Saville BBC scandal late last year.
Sexual abuse is becoming a “hot topic” your teaching my learnings expereince has shown, no matter how distressing you find “making a police report” “addressing your family” there is NOTHING like the relief of forgiveness. It brings a sublime relief a feeling like no other. TRUST me it is this great. God bless all who made, make and undertake this healing journey. Thank you for having the courage through a series of selection boxes to bring the TRUTH to the fore.
Thanks for this Pamela. We Brits have always been good at sweeping stuff under the carpet, but now it’s coming up to be healed. I’m hoping to spread the message of forgiveness in UK this summer. Maybe I’ll get to meet you at one of my workshops. Check the schedule at http://www.colintipping.com/events
Blessings,
Colin
Very well said…and is a notable imagery to what so many suffer and are too scared, ashamed, and don’t think will be believed, to mention to anyone.
I was thinking of the horror and wondering what you’d come up with…which is a very interesting observation as too much family sordidness is kept ‘hidden’ casing so much harm..and working radical forgives is amazing I must say..i’m so happy and greatfull to have found this sistem of radical healing, as its really helping me manage a huge trauma right now… many thanks
Thank you Colin for sharing. I was very much hoping you would help us out with this one. You are a blessing and I love your work!
Thank you for your work Colin.
sexual abuse, torture, violence is a reflection of our own unwillingness to speak up. it reflects the kind of society we have helped create, be it actively or in actively with our ‘tolerance’. people love to ‘discuss’ such matters as if they are contributing to it… but i think they are venting their own apathy towards he sociaety we have all contributed to create.
the universe is giving us an opportunity to take responsibility to the moments when we closed our eyes to the slightest injustice we have witnessed. it is an awakening call to each of us to honour another human being and acknowledge the validity of each of our existence which we have denied at some level among our own. i believe too that circumstances have to go from worse to worse before we make way for a better world, a better tomorrow to every living being on this planet.
until our words turn into action, until each of us refuses to subscribe to such limiting beliefs and emotions in every arena of our life… only then are we truly free! how much do we all want is the true quest.
We have our best and genuine example, that of our Lord Jesus Christ when He was still undergoing the greatest pain on the old rugged cross – He groaned in loud voice and exclaimed “forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”. The heinous acts committed by Aerial Castro might be even more than murder – abomination before the eyes of the Lord, yet let us find some strength in our hearts to forgive him. Maybe some day he might find salvation in the 11th hour like the one dying thief who was repentiful to our only Saviour at Calvary. I have personally in the past fallen into deadly sins, and even became backslidden as a believer, but my Christ came to my rescue, and i am now free, and free indeed. Our Father in Heaven gave to us His only begotten Son so as to pay the Ultimate price for ANY SIN, except that of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Let us forgive Ariel, and we will also find forgiveness in the same measure. And to the Living God who sees all things both visible and invisible be all the glory now and forever. Amen.
I agree with Colin that it is probably time for awareness and bringing this abuse out of the closet. After all, we are in the year 2013.
My concern is, because of our rapid communication with the internet and other news medias all over the world, that we are forced to live these horrors in the world over and over and over again. I find it very hard to continually watch the constant atrocities on TV and the internet on a continual basis, and keep my peace. So, I do not watch the news that much, and not because of any spiritual reason. But, because I want to maintain my peace. I only have to deal with my life and the challenges I am faced with, not all of the world’s problems (which would be impossible to deal with anyway). I love and bless others and what they are going through and know that God is right in the middle of all of it, but if I constantly watch the news, I am constantly out of peace. This is not to say that I don’t help others in the world, I like to think I do. But, how can I help the world if I am constantly watching the atrocities and am constantly out peace? My job, as I see it, is to remain in love and peace as much as possible, constantly sending this love and peace to others. I believe the world will be healed from within each and everyone of us, before it will be healed on the outer world. I am now sending love and light to all of those who are experiencing any and all challenges in the world. Namaste
The healing is about Love and Compassion. Loving Ourselves and Loving Others. No matter what. Isn’t everything perfect exactly the way it is in all its magnificence and glory? How did we get here on this earth plane to begin with ?????? Do you believe in Adam and Eve? They had Cain and Abel? Cain murdered Abel because of jealousy? Was a sister born to Adam and Eve? Did sister and Cain copulate? If there were no other people on Earth but Adam and Eve how did the rest of human beings come into this world? Different cultures are amongst us, how do those cultures evolve? This is about loving ourselves and others, forgiving ourselves and others, compassion for ourselves and every other person involved. What if the women and child wanted it that way so they could learn something or what if they had no food, or were poor, and this was the only way to survive? What if Ariel was tortured, raped, and wtinessed murder at a young age? It is to teach us Love and Compassion and that we all have so much to heal from the beginning of our time here on Earth. Healing our Ancestry. We are all healing in the hands of time! And healing angels for each other! Colin you taught me this! So much love coming your way! I am grateful for the knowledge, it helps me get through what I have gone through in my family healing!
Thanks for this offering, Colin. Stay well and continue to support us, as only you can do, by sharing the growth possibilities and opportunities that prevail in all suffering.
Colin,
I don’t know if you have read Robert Schwartz’s books “Your Soul’s Plan” and “Your Soul’s Gift,” but I believe they would provide enormous insight into the work you’re doing on forgiveness.
Your book “Radical Fogiveness” and his books have radically helped me with my own forgiveness matters.
Keep up the great work.
Love and Blessings,
Charles
I know Robert very well. He is a personal friend of mine. I recommend his books all the time.
Personally, I have nothing to forgive Ariel Castro for; he hasn’t hurt me in any way!
I agree with Celeste. All of us are spiritual beings playing the roles we agreed to play in this lifetime. Ariel Castro will not be punished when he dies. He will be honored by the souls of the women and child he imprisoned. They may have been rapists and torturers in their previous lives and needed to have the experience to learn love and forgiveness. Besides forgiveness is not for the person being forgiven it is for the one who forgives. Love (and forgive) everyone as yourself. Thank you, Colin, for bringing this to us!
Hi Colin
I think your “stab” is a pretty good one. I too hope that anyone who has or is suffering or has suffered such abuse can find peace a result of this exposure. I want to suggest the other side of this story – what could possibly drive a man to become such a monster and create such horror? What is this man’s history?
Could this story help us men begin to heal the “monster” in ourselves that generates attitudes and actions towards women that cause so much harm and conflict?
I attended men’s recovery groups 20 years ago and I will never forget something that came to light for many of us. Most of us had a real problem with “sexualising” women in our heads and we all agreed it was a really unhealthy habit – very hard to break! I still struggle with it. One of the therapists that ran these groups suggested that exposure to pornography in our formative adolescent years was a great contribution to our distorted view of women. Something to ponder on.
I’m sure there is a lot more in Ariel Castro’s history than exposure to porn. It will be very interesting to see what comes out in the trial.
I think I will do a RSF worksheet to prompt the healing of my little “monster”.
Thanks Colin
I feel all people…women and men have shadows and we all could benefit from shadow work. I ve done some myself utilizing worksheets by Colin and its tough but so very worth it. People may not like doing shadow work as we are so afraid of our shadows. But the truth is as long as we try and hide from our shadow and supress it the worse it can become.
Sue, saying that Ariel Castro’s victims ‘may have been rapists and torturers in their previous lives and needed to have the experience to learn love and forgiveness’ really does not help! There is a ‘blame the victim’ mentality by many people in society in cases of rape and sexual abuse already and such comments only add to this common view. A little bit of empathy PLEASE!
I have a difficult time with that comment as well. Eventhough it may be true, its enough to just deal with this Life time. So many other things Collin suggest I definitely agree with. However suggestion that these girls nightmare…to put it lightly could be because of Karma from a previous lifetime is just way to much for any of them to hear at this time of their life. Comments like that have to be very carefully layed out and only at the perfect time. I ofcourse dont feel Collin is suggestion that anyone suggest this possibility to the girls at this time but I cringe to think they would get wind of this suggestion at this time of their “recovery”…but then again…maybe not….jeeze who knows….its can be very disturbing, but I do truly feel that there is opportunity here…for all!!
Living in CT, we have had some trauma almost every month on cue. Last year it was a hurricane (also having one the year prior!), then a blizzard, the shootings at Sandy Hook school (where my friends sister is a counselor), the bombing in Boston, and now this. I keep looking for the “perfection” in each situation and trust in knowing there are soul contracts being lived out. For me its a lesson in learning to surrender and trust the process, trust the Universe and God.
The other idea that came to me was this: are these events just a projection of our beliefs as a society- scarcity, lack, distrust, fear in life as a whole. All of these represent our 1st and 2nd Chakra beliefs, so are these events part of the plan to help us see the old paradigms we still hold innately?
I am so grateful for all of the RF work! Anything that “spikes” me is showing me where I need to heal and give Love. Thank you Colin!
Everytime I read anything about these girls I cry. My heart hurts so much for them and for the little hurt girl in me. I believe I have found forgiveness for the person who hurt me, I used to wish such horrible things on him and I no longer have that. But I still hurt and there is still such a sadness and longing inside me that I can never seem to escape. I recognize the sickness in these men, the one who hurt me and these men who held these girls captive and I know that they too are God’s creation and they too need healing…… I just still hurt!
Hi Virginia,
It is very understandable that you still hurt, even though you have, for the most part, forgiven the person in the way we normally think of forgiveness. My wish for you is that the hurt will go away, so I am taking a risk to say please try Radical Forgiveness. If you have tried using the tools and it still hurts, talk to one of our coaches. Let them help you. You’ll find a list of them on the website.
Blessings,
Colin
25 years ago this spring the news broke in my hometown that a man whom I’d known for several years, had worked for and considered a friend, was a serial killer who had abducted, tortured and killed six men. Cases like this bring all the difficulty of that back, even though I chose to remain in contact with him after he’d gone to prison. At that time I worked for the man who had his power of attorney, so he would call the office from prison on occasion and that gave us the opportunity to talk.
There are many things I’ve learned from this experience and the first and perhaps most difficult lesson is that the perpetrators of these kinds of crimes are actually human beings. Compartmentalized, dysfunctional, screwed up, yes certainly (and interestingly, they often seem to know it), but still human beings. It takes a human imagination, focus and will power to commit these kinds of crimes. And the love they feel for a sister, a son/daughter, their parents or even some friends, is as real as the self-loathing (for that is often what it is) that drove them to such horrible deeds. It excuses nothing. There is no excuse. But it forces us to see.
The second thing I learned is that their victims are not the only folks who suffer/have suffered. Obviously, the victim’s family suffers, but so do the perpetrator’s family (often terribly because we tend to forget about or blame them), as well as anyone who may have known or associated with the perpetrator. Those of us who knew this serial killer ended up forming a tight little community in our own right because no one wanted to help us or listen to our sense of shame and horror that we really didn’t know and couldn’t have done anything. After all, Castro and the man I knew had worked hard to perfect lying and concealment, and Americans tend to respect privacy. I’m not going to go around assuming that all my introvert neighbors are harboring secret hostages in their basements. That’s no way to live.
People do ask me how I forgave him. It was simple. I had to face him. We had been friends. He had murdered my image of him as surely as he had murdered his victims. That hurt me and made me really angry. But, I also knew why he’d had to lie. Of course he had to lie. He was suffering too and projected that violently onto his victims. Everything about that kind of control and abuse of power is a lie. At a certain point I had to ask myself, “What else is forgiveness for if not for extreme situations like these?” We get to a point where it’s easy to forgive all the rest of the stuff (well maybe we don’t but you know what I’m saying). That’s because we think we get to understand the why/how of most other things. But this…I don’t understand this…what could the purpose be…? How can I forgive what I don’t understand?
Perhaps it was easier for me because he didn’t kill one of my children or even someone I knew. I’d never tell the victim’s parents that they “need” to forgive because, frankly, that’s their business if they ever decide to do that. But for me, to not forgive would have been to deny that I’d ever had fun working for him, talking to him and hanging out with him. And I did enjoy those things…and I think he enjoyed them too when it happened. He wasn’t torturing and killing people all of the time. Somewhere, in there, was a regular person, sometimes. In forgiving him, I remember the parts of him that were not twisted and sadistic. He had the same larger connections that we all do, he was just so unaware of them that he got completely “effed up.”
I’m not naive about this. I’ve stayed up nights working on this kind of thinking and every time one of these cases comes up I have to live through everything again. But I keep coming back to Forgiveness: if not for a case like this, a person like this than for what? For whom? Understanding is not necessary, just the awareness that no person, no matter how messed up, is simply the sum of his actions, no matter how awful they were. If we do that, we compartmentalize that person as surely as he did his victims. We chain our own vision in the same way Castro tied up his victims. We do to him what he did to others. We continue the crime.
Justice comes in its own time. Does that mean we let such folks go? Of course not. The man I knew died in prison, so whatever the truth is, he knows it now as we all will.
All I know is that if I don’t find a way to forgive I will live trapped in the horror of someone else’s nightmare…something that, on a larger level, isn’t even real. Why would I want to do that?
Thank you for taking the time to tell this story. It’s easy to talk about these things in the abstract, but not so when something of this nature happens to you personally. I have never been challenged to this degree and I don’t know how I would react if it were to happen. But your sharing is an inspiration and I hope I would have the same compassion as you have found for this poor man. I’m very happy that you have found a way to liberate yourself from the pain.
Colin
So very well written/spoken. Thankyou for taking the time. I agree…..and eventhough I have not had your experience I have had plenty. I love, respect and appreciate your very mature and RF view and thoughts/feelings
I meant to say “If we don’t do that (forgive), we compartmentalize…etc.” second to last paragraph…. sorry for the typo.