- Hi, Armin, hi.

Good to see you.

- How are you?

So wonderful to have you with us.

- Well, it's a privilege,

and thank you for including me.

- Absolutely.

So welcome to the first German online forgiveness

conference.

- Oh, well, you know, that's a beautiful thing to present

to people, and thank you for that.

We can use a lot of forgiveness.

- I think so too.

That's one motivation why we do it.

We really wanna bring it out there

and kind of like make it a common good,

so to speak.

Because we think it's very powerful.

And of course that's why we thought about you.

And I'm so excited to hear from you,

what do you think about forgiveness?

How you do it, what you've experienced and so on.

- Yeah.

So, forgiveness...

For me,

is, you know, my job is to share inquiry in the world.

So forgiveness to me is about

seeing that what I

believed happened

didn't necessarily happen.

So...

- Just in 99% if the cases, that's all.

- Well, you know, 99, 99999.99.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's just so true.

And what I...

It's like there you are, this perfect man

in front of me.

And if I am thinking,

if I'm putting Post-its on you,

mental Post-its on you,

these stickies,

and like, he doesn't like me.

He didn't really want me on his program today.

I'm sure someone made him do it.

I mean that's a little ridiculous.

I don't have very...

I'm not coming with any great hypothetical here.

But I put all those negative Post-its on you

out of my own paranoid mind at the moment.

And so the next time you ask me for an interview,

I tell my office, oh no,

just let him know that I'm unavailable.

And so I am not forgiving you

for being the person I believed you to be.

But that's not you.

So if I take all those Post-its

and I put them on a judgmental worksheet,

all those Post-its I put on you,

what I believed onto you,

and I write them down

and I question those Post-its,

those concepts, those judgments on you,

then you remain completely free

and I'm the only one I wouldn't want,

I wouldn't want myself to be interviewed

by anyone if I'm in that state of mind.

(Armin laughs)

And so I have a lot of work to do

before I can say yes to an interview like this

because I'm doing it to you.

You're never doing it to me.

That's forgiveness.

Seeing what I thought happened didn't.

He doesn't like what I say.

He...

I know he, blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Those are the stickies, the Post-its

that I'm talking about that we put on people.

So the mind is just spinning,

and we're really believing some of those,

or a lot of those thoughts.

So now I've got, let's say, a strong word,

but an enemy.

And you're not.

You are not.

I'm deluded.

So this is this kind of inquiry,

we not only find ourselves

left in a state of forgiveness,

but it is shocking to see that person,

to sit with that...

Let's say I've done the work on you

out of that mind that I put on you,

I've done the work on you,

question those thoughts,

and that the next time I see you

I'm shocked at how intimate we are together.

And so there's nothing between us, I'm connected.

But who took care of that?

You didn't change.

I questioned what I believed about you,

and forgiveness happened.

And there's not even a little,

not even a little...

there's just no evidence of it left.

I can remember it, but it's laughable.

And that is, laughter is good between friends.

And that's, Armin, why I say

no one, no one

can separate me from them.

I'm the only one that can separate me

from another human being.

And if I am not connected,

then that's on me.

I look at what I'm thinking and believing,

I questioned that, I turn it around,

opposites, for those of you the don't know,

the work's always free at thework.com.

And I turn it around,

and I meet you again.

And if I've done anything to hurt you

out of that unkind mind,

the next time I see you I admit it,

I apologize.

And all the bread crumbs are gone.

All those oast bread crumbs, Hansel and Gretel,

where they left all the bread crumbs.

So my life is about picking up those bread crumbs,

all of them that appear,

and then if I drop another one, pick it up.

That way people can live in the present

without a past.

- Yeah, wonderful.

I was just gonna say it's an inside job,

which it is, taking all those Post-its,

those sticky notes away.

And I really liked what you said

about maybe, possibly hurting someone else

by this attacking and awful mind of mine.

So then it also,

well, it also starts with an inside job,

like admitting.

First I admit it to myself

that I might have done something.

But then I admit it to him or her,

and that's like,

that's a huge honesty.

- Well, it's very humbling.

- Oh yeah.

- It's quite a turnaround for the ego.

And if it's not sincere, I certainly wouldn't do it.

But if I'm thinking,

so I want until I am,

and admit it and apologize and I make it right

where I can, like if I've gossiped about you,

I've said something unkind about you,

if I've influenced someone negatively on you,

then that's just my crazy.

And I need to make that right and go back to those people

and say, you know, I was nuts.

And this man is a kind man,

a good man.

I'd be telling the truth,

because I have really done my work.

- So the hardest part probably is

giving up the perceived need to be right

or to attack or to, also to separate.

Well, separation is probably an effect

of wanting to be right and wanting to judge.

Probably not wanting to feel how hard it hurts.

- Yes.

And also if I want to be right,

that's my first clue, there's an attachment there,

that's my first clue, that you know,

it's time for me to identify what I'm thinking

and believing about this other human being.

And write those thoughts down,

those judgments and assumptions

and question them and turn them around.

And that's the only way I know

to turn my life around

and to see people as they really are

as opposed to who I believed them to be

prior to investigation.

No enemy,

no enemy,

no enemy,

no enemy.

If I have an enemy that's on me,

not the other way around.

So we're talking about complete forgiveness here,

total forgiveness.

- Yeah, yeah.

Which is a process obviously, because it takes time,

but...

- It sure does.

- Yes.

Of course.

But it's a process that you can complete, right?

- Yes, it is.

- And that's the good news.

- And you know, it's,

I never know myself if it's completed.

That's the beautiful thing about life,

it will show me what I've missed.

That's what life's all about.

The enlightened mind.

The enlightened mind has nothing to forgive.

It's beyond judgment.

- And well, I'm guessing another effect...

- Or the kind of judgment we're talking about

that would leave need for forgiveness.

- Mm-hm.

And I'm guessing, like the self image,

how I conceive myself also changes

bit by bit when I'm doing this work, right?

- Oh my goodness, yes.

My identity...

My identity is sitting with this person

I'm putting Post-its on,

and my identity is I'm the one that knows.

And I know that you're unkind, you're unfair,

you don't like me.

You're just placating me.

You know, et cetera, et cetera.

And I do the work and those Post-its

are off of you, they're gone.

And I'm connected.

I'm connected.

My true nature is available,

and so yours is available.

But this identity I had, I'm the one that's right,

that's hard.

That's really hard.

It takes defense.

It takes a life of defending.

And defense is the first act of war.

So there's the clue for that.

- Yeah.

- This being right

is being...

It is a being identified.

And unquestioned mind.

I have no way of knowing,

you know, when I'm right about another human being.

It's enough to know what's right for me in my life.

It's a full time job.

But I have to like me

to deal with me.

And if I don't like you I don't like me.

So you're the key to my own heart.

- Yeah.

Wonderful.

So the things that seem to happen to us,

like if we put it up a notch,

you said, like, you have this image of someone

who hasn't done anything to you,

but let's say someone does something to you.

For example, calls you names

or neglects you

or you understand where I'm getting,

who slaps you.

- Yeah, yeah.

If someone slaps me, what I love about that

is it's over.

I mean it's over.

Now if he's going to slap me,

am I okay in this moment?

Like here's my face and here's his hand,

am I okay in this moment?

Am I still okay?

Am I still okay?

And then that happens,

and without a past, am I okay?