“It is said: ’Forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ Feeling you are owed, feeling debts, stops everything. You hold back yourself and you hold back the other person.” Maurice Nicoll

The Spiritual Balance of Forgiveness

“It is the balance whose one scale is on the earth and whose other scale is in heaven. The Lord’s prayer reveals to us the principle of the justice of grace and the operation of weighing by means of the ‘heaven-earth’ balance. There it is said: ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ And then the Master adds: ‘For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (Matthew vi, 12, 14-15).

“The Master is explicit with respect to the balance operating between earth and heaven—’…if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’—this is the law, this is the infallible and implacable operation of the ‘heaven-earth’ balance. That this balance governs not only forgiveness but also the entire domain of gifts from above, understood as the Holy Spirit, is evident in the words of the Master concerning the Lord’s prayer in the Gospel of Luke: ‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!'” (Luke xi, 13) Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p179.

Understanding Our Debt in the Work

“Man, in his ordinary state, not having ‘come to himself’, and not aware that his real meaning is not found only in external life and its aims, is regarded in the Gospels as a debtor. Men are regarded as debtors in relation to higher truth – that is, to a higher possibility in them. If a man remains inferior to himself, he owes to himself, and so is a debtor to himself. If, for example, a man knows better but acts worse, he owes himself – that is, he is in debt to his better nature and his better understanding. This makes everyone unhappy, because most people feel this about themselves, only they do not really know where they owe, or about what they are in debt to themselves. But from the standpoint of the Gospels, where it is taught that a man must undergo an inner evolution beginning with metanoia and ending in re-birth and the Kingdom of Heaven, everyone without exception is regarded as a debtor. In the Lord’s Prayer, the second request is to forgive one’s debts — that is, in the literal Greek, to have all that one owes cancelled, completely written off, which is the real meaning of forgiveness.” Maurice Nicoll, The Mark, p162

The Psychological Need for Forgiveness

“The psychological result of making accounts against others is the feeling that other people owe us. Other people are in debt to us. All these inner accounts must be cancelled. The Lord’s Prayer says literally: ‘Cancel our debts in proportion as we cancel other people’s debts.’ Now if you cannot cancel what you believe are other people’s debts you will not have debts cancelled for you through the action of the Work on you. This means that your whole relation to the Work will be wrong.” Commentaries, p571-572

“A man in the Work can only grow through the forgiveness of others. That is, unless you cancel your debts, nothing in you can grow. It is said in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ Feeling you are owed, feeling debts, stops everything. You hold back yourself and you hold back the other person.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p253

Forgiveness as Spiritual Practice

“Sending gratitude and thank you and blessing and forgiveness, even if it’s only the best forgiveness you can do at this point, is always a good way to begin to get comfortable in doing this wonderful work between the realms.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter With Evil Feb 2023 CA, 4:00 Day 3c Evening Session.

“Life must call forth from you a way of making a connection with the higher qualities of gentleness, compassion, grace, forgiveness. The qualities that contain your Being.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Awakened Mind and Heart, 4:56 02 Track 3-2.

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Logion 25
Yeshua says...
Love your brother and your sister
as your very own being.
Protect them as you would the pupil of your eye.

Logion 22
Yeshua noticed infants nursing
and said to his students,
"These little ones taking milk
are like those on their way into the kingdom."
So they asked him,
"If we too are 'little ones'
are we on our way into the kingdom?"
Yeshua replied,
"When you are able to make two become one,
the inside like the outside,
and the outside like the inside,
the higher like the lower,
so that a man is no longer male, and a woman, female,
but male and female become a single whole;
When you are able to fashion an eye to replace an eye,
and form a hand in place of a hand, or a foot for a foot,
making one image supersede another --
then you will enter in."

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I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.
Juan Ramón Jiménez

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Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise. 

Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The Mark refer to Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, 1954

Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.