Revenge, Sacrifice, and Forgiveness

One of the most deep rooted and ancient tendencies human beings indulge in is the urge to take revenge against those that have caused them pain. This urge has a huge range and includes everything from an automatic reaction to hit back to a conscious, premeditated plan of vengeful action. If you look closely at your life you will find incidents when you felt this urge and most likely took action, perhaps when you were a child or even more recently where it snuck up on you. Even older souls will find that the urge to take revenge sneaks up on them such as badmouthing someone who has been hurtful to them. When human beings were primitive this tendency tended to run life and was carried out one on one and between families and tribes. This is the pattern that created feuds, grudge wars, vendettas, bad blood, retaliation, payback, retribution, punishment, and settling scores. The biblical phrase an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is yet another way of describing this nasty behavior. Notice how many words and phrases we have for such activity. The number of different ways of naming this tendency speaks to the strength of the activity in our societies and cultures. First let us understand some of the main ways that revenge gets acted out and then we will seek to understand the ways humans have tried to heal this problem.

The rationale behind revenge is the notion that if someone or a group does harm to another there must be consequences or the perpetrator will think they can get away with their aggression and they will do it again. Therefore revenge is the belief that one must strike back and teach the perpetrator a lesson so they will never do it again. History shows that this is a repeatedly failed policy but nonetheless it prevails as a rationale. Why? Because there is a twisted gratification in it. Warring tribes often celebrate their vengeance believing they have one-upped their aggressor. They celebrate with dances, re-enactments, songs, stories, and so on. In modern times these acts of vengeance are often celebrated with parades, holidays, statues, memorials and the like. It all amounts to the same thing. In New Mexico, Fiesta is celebrated every year to memorialize putting down the Indian revolt against the Spaniards and restoring Spanish rule accompanied by truly horrific punishment of the Natives. Today the Spanish descendants proudly parade down the street with their conquistador costumes much to the discomfort of the local Pueblo Indian population. They say they are only keeping the traditions but no one wants to look at what it really is. This is just one example of practices that take place all over the planet to commemorate revenge and superiority, always a sign of basic insecurity.

To see how engrained revenge and punishment is in our culture all you have to do is look at what happens to all villains in Hollywood style movies. They always meet up with a grizzly death while the heroes chuckle, hug, and kiss each other. We are supposed to feel some kind of justice has been done and all is well failing to recognize that the villain is just another us.

Revenge doesn’t have to be a blatant act of aggression. It has many passive forms such as giving someone or a group the cold shoulder, overlooking them in hiring practices and the like. Almost every group of immigrants to the United States and other countries have gone through this process. The basic vengeance is, “How dare you come here and take our jobs, giving us competition, and adopting our good way of life. For this you will be punished.” Just look at how much of this mentality is going on today around the world and quite clearly in the United States.

The criminal justice system is a structure largely based on punishment and retaliation. Otherwise it would be a system more oriented toward rehabilitation, re-education, and healing. Even after endless research has shown that punishment does not work and only makes the problem worse, politicians appeal to our lower nature and still carry the day with law and order campaigns, otherwise known as punishing crime, not healing it. The death penalty is nothing more than state sanctioned murder, revenge killing, an eye for an eye. Just witness all the relatives of the victims who attend state executions and revel in the prolonged agony of botched executions. Revenge is still carrying the day in these matters.

As a child I was subject to rather brutal corporal punishment when I committed an infraction, sometimes not actually knowing what it was I had done. Did this form of vengeance teach me anything of value? I learned to be afraid of pain and I grew resentful but I did not become a better person for it. In fact the result was that I got into more fights in school. So much for the lessons of violence!

In ancient times when nation states were first forming there was recognition how dangerous and pervasive revenge was and how it could destroy the fragile structures of the new formal societies of humans. Thus was created the idea of sacrifice to appease the forces of revenge. In these early nation states a council of women often selected a king who would represent the wellbeing of the people and who would take responsibility for anything that happened to the people whether it was a plague, a drought, or an attack from without. The king would be held responsible and if the problem was big enough the king would be sacrificed, killed to appease the sense of people’s revenge. In those days a lot of kings went by the wayside. Thus was born the idea of the sacrifice, one person being sacrificed for the many. Eventually this form of sacrifice was carried over onto animals and by the millions they were slaughtered as offerings to appease the gods wrath (revenge) and their punishment of human beings. This shift accompanied the transition from a goddess based pagan way of life where sacrifice was basically unknown to a patriarchal one where everything and anything could be sacrificed.

A Sea Change

By two thousand years ago this shift was well entrenched and sacrifices were endemic everywhere, even in the new world. Along came Jesus of Nazareth and his cohorts who began to teach a new and different program, that revenge was to be met with turning the other cheek. Now basically he and his followers were not really saying to literally turn the other cheek as in sacrificing the other cheek. What he meant was don’t react, don’t respond, maintain neutrality in the face of the everyday insults that people visit on each other. He was introducing a fairly new concept for people concerning revenge and punishment, that it could be handled by not engaging, by not responding in kind. He said that forgiveness was a good tool to accomplish this. This was a bit too much for the local baby souls who simply could not understand this fairly advanced concept. So, what did they do? They did what they knew and sacrificed him instead. Knowing the mentality of the times Jesus decided to go with the program so he allowed himself to be sacrificed like the kings of old. He said, OK, if your going to do this then I will take the whole load of garbage with me and be done with it once and for all. I will be the last king sacrificed and in its place I will make available a new high frequency that you can all access and because of it there need not be any revenge, any punishment needed anymore. Of course he knew that almost no one was ready for this but he did manage to put the frequency in place and some could feel it and live in great peace by it. The vast majority however misinterpreted his action and thought that they should allow themselves to be sacrificed as well. There were many early Christians who reveled in martyrdom and allowed themselves to be sacrificed to lions and such. Then punishment and sacrifice reared its ugly head again in church practices allowing for the inquisition, personal punishment for sins and so on. This activity continues to this day but is lessening slowly. Some practices die hard.

Remote Healing

Each month, around the new and full moons, Jose, Lena or Anna leads a remote shamanic healing session. These approximately 30 minute sessions are designed to be experienced in a quiet, safe place free from distraction. Even if you cannot join live they can be very powerful, and always include a good clearing and beautiful icaros. Recording access is included for a short time afterwards. See the product description for dates and times.

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The frequency Jesus formally made available was the Christ force. This force has been available to the masses for the last two thousand years but the population was just too immature to access it. This is now changing because the population of the planet has matured to a degree. As the age of Kali winds up with its mayhem and bad behavior, the Christ force will strengthen and within twenty-four years from now will become palpable to a great many people on the planet. Between now and then many of the older souls who are more sensitive will begin to feel it and adopt it. This corresponds to Mayan prophecy that says a time of renaissance is coming but only after a tear down phase and a revolutionary phase. We are in the tear down phase right now. The Christ force will become palpable during the revolutionary phase soon to be followed by renaissance.

How does the Christ force feel?

First of all Jesus was a seventh level old soul king who was clearly in his last lifetime. He was also enlightened and at one with Spirit so you could say he understood the big picture, knew the forces of evolution, and knew where we were going as a race. Christ was not his name, it was a force, a high level frequency that if utilized, could be highly transformative for human beings. He knew that practically no one was ready to feel it during his lifetime or even soon after. He knew that once it was made more available that there would be a gradual and slow evolution among people who would be able to access it and experience its benefits. Before he was born the Christ force was an intensely high vibration that was akin to essence, what the soul could realize only after hundreds of lifetimes. It was a vibration that could be reached only with very involved and ritualized practices taught by masters. Basically what he did, being an avatar himself, was pull this frequency in so that it could be accessed much more easily without all the hoopla that was necessary before. What he was saying was, “Now you can experience what I am feeling every day. I am experiencing the frequency of my essence in this body right now here on the physical plane. You can too from now on.” This was, to say the least, a very nice gift. Christ is a frequency, a force that is now accessible. This is kind of like saying, “I am going to make it possible for you to see a wider range of frequencies through your own vision. Now you can see infrared.” One still has to learn to see the new frequencies, feel the new frequencies. If there are too many energy leaks as a result of all the egoic and psychological parasites still around, then people are not going to feel this frequency very easily or at all. Yet this is not because it is not available, it is. A little windex will help. If your glasses or car windshield are really dirty perhaps you need to wipe them clean, then you can see much better. Some people’s glasses or windsheilds are almost painted black so a lot of cleaning is necessary. The scenery is out there ready to be seen. In prior times it wasn’t seeable because the eyes were not adjusted for it. Now everyone’s eyes are adjusted. It’s the windshield that is the problem.

Whither revenge

Revenge and retribution will continue to be a problem for younger souls because these patterns are so deeply rooted in the psyche. They are after all based on fear and insecurity in the instinctive center of our Simian bodies. Older souls have the possibility of dumping this old reactive habit but it will take determination, intention, and some discipline. Practice neutrality, practice not reacting, practice forgiveness, and so on. A very powerful evolutionary shift is taking place. Whereas before it literally took the vast majority of people thousands of years to evolve to become older souls this will no longer be the case. Evolution on this planet has been painfully slow and even people with a many lifetimes under their belts still behave rather stupidly and have significant amnesia about who they are and what is possible. This is all changing as we speak. Evolution will now speed up with the accessibility of the Christ force. What took thousands of years before can be accomplished in mere hundreds. Instead of ten or more lifetimes per level, there being five sets of seven levels, it will be possible for people to move a whole level after only one lifetime, meaning that with purpose and intention people will be able to master all the levels in thirty five lifetimes, not hundreds or even thousands. If we use the metaphor of a whip, when someone cracks a bullwhip, the crack comes from the acceleration at the very tip of the whip. The rest of the whip unfurls more slowly. We have been through the slow part and now we are at the tip of the whip of our evolution. Things are speeding up and there is a thunderous crack to be heard.

Forgiveness

The key to this rapid acceleration is of course forgiveness or what the Buddhists call compassion. When one practices compassion they are coming from understanding that the one who is behaving badly is just afraid and insecure. This does not mean that you let them kill you or rape your daughter or anything else unacceptable. You may need to stop them like you would stop a two year old or a psychotic person who is on a rampage. No they cannot cut people’s heads off without limits being set. The limits however are not punishment, not vengeful, not retribution. This setting of limits sometimes calls for a show of great unified force and to some degree aggressive action. The purpose is to stop the behavior not to punish and yes, there needs to be some rehabilitation if possible. Otherwise the person may have to be isolated from the rest until they learn to get along. Killing them is no solution as they simply come back in another form. Killed enemies almost always are reborn into the culture or society who killed them. Think about it. Cowboys became Indians, many Germans became Jews, Vietnamese reincarnated as Americans. Today Jews become Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans become Americans, Americans become Iraqis and Afghans and so on. With this knowledge it is possible to understand history much better and come up with more peaceful solutions. Otherwise reactive vengeance goes on and on and on.

Peace can be costly but it is not a sacrifice, it is an investment. When countries of the world unite to end something that is cancerous, it is sometimes necessary. Yet the solution is not massacre. It is eliminating the supply of arms and other goods that allow the fighting to go on. End the means and you end the bulk of the behavior. And yes there have to be incentives to shift. These need to be well thought out and not by younger souls that control state departments and such. Millions of dollars in prize money can be spent to reward the persons who come up with the most feasible and reasonable solutions to these problems and then we need to implement their plans. This works.

Finally we forgive and forgive quickly just as we forgive our grandchildren when they make a mistake and act like little monsters for awhile. We don’t punish a two year old for days on end. We do not reward their bad behavior but we do hug them as soon as they behave and love them nonetheless because they are the future us.

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José Stevens

José Luis Stevens, PhD is the president and co-founder (with wife Lena) of Power Path Seminars, an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and indigenous wisdom to business and everyday life. José completed a ten-year apprenticeship with a Huichol (Wixarika) Maracame (Huichol shaman) in the Sierras of Central Mexico. In addition, he is studying with Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and with Paqos (shamans) in the Andes in Peru. In 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies focusing on the interface between shamanism and western psychological counseling. Since then, he has studied cross-cultural shamanism around the world to distill the core elements of shamanic healing and practice. He is the author of twenty books and numerous articles including Encounters With Power, Awaken The Inner Shaman, The Power Path, Secrets of Shamanism, Transforming Your Dragons and How To Pray The Shaman’s Way.