Miracles transcend the body.

There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not "harder" or "bigger" than another.

Principles of Miracles

Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement.

"Easier to forgive someone if you get even with them first."

you  see a lot of third world debts that uh if the   third world better countries have to pay uh their  foreign debts under as the world economy slows   down they're going to be subject to austerity to  the world banks and the imf's austerity programs   00:35:01 and they're going to be kept in poverty uh is it  really right that they should be kept in poverty   just to enrich the bondholders of the one percent  the one percent will say yes that's why we're   the one percent so that we can impoverish  other people that's our liberty our liberty   is the right to impoverish other people and reduce  them to dependency uh that will happen if you do   not write down the debts uh it's already happening  in the united states to the student debt uh crisis   00:35:30 where students uh have to pay so much money uh as  they fall behind on their student debts that they   can't afford to take out mortgages to buy homes  uh and you're having the home ownership rates   plunge in the united states that's the result of  leaving the debts in place uh the mortgage steps   uh uh are causing shrinkage so there is no way  to get out of this economic polarization without   00:35:54 a debt write down and that's something that  is too radical and uh uh when we talked about   when i was referring to what china's doing i'm  referring to what it's doing today and tomorrow   about uh the uh real estate company evergreen  uh uh china has a choice is it going to leave   evergreen's real estate debts in place and every  grand uh as a real estate company is two to three   00:36:21 percent of the entire chinese economy if it  pays the foreign creditors and the domestic   one percent of china it's going to impoverish the  uh the employees of evergrand it's going to make   housing prices more and more expensive in china  china has had a debt finance housing boom uh   if you leave the debts in place then uh you're  you're going to impoverish china and obviously   00:36:47 china is going to say i'm we're not going to put  the creditors first we're not going to do what   the west does and say the sanctity of debt service  debts are uh that you owe or sacred uh it's worth   sacrificing the economy it's worth plunging the  economy into poverty just to preserve the wealth   of the one percent i think china's uh is going to  make the opposite decision and say we're not going   00:37:12 to commit political suicide we're going to operate  for it's a socialist economy and when it comes to   debt and credit thank god we have our banking in  the public domain and since the public domain the   people's bank of china is the creditor they can  afford to write down the debt without having any   political backlash because it's cancelling that  so do itself uh which is a great advantage uh and   00:37:38 it's also uh as for the private bond holders uh  it's going to say well sorry bondholders you made   loans to a company that was way over leveraged  uh already uh the american bond rating companies   have reduced their bond rating to chunk so you  knew what you were buying if you continued to hold   bonds that uh fitch and other bond raiders moody's  all say or junk and you lose your money well   00:38:03 you took the risk you got a high rate of  interest now you're you're paying the price   that's how markets work uh and uh that really  uh is the argument and i think uh you have to   uh obviously what i'm suggesting is a radical  step just as you're suggesting of taxing wealth   would require the radical step of closing down  offshore banking centers of simply negating uh if   00:38:28 banks would simply erase all of the deposits  they have from the offshore banking centers from   the cayman islands from from panama from uh from  liberia to all the places that began by to be set   up by the mining companies the oil companies  and then were set up beginning in the 1960s   essentially by the cia to finance  the vietnam war by making america   like england the home for criminal capital  for flight capital all this uh all this flight   00:38:57 capital and the kleptocracy that you mentioned  in russia all this really should be wiped out   and if you leave this capital if you leave this  one percent in place the economy is going to be   sacrificed and shrinking is it worth shrinking  the economy just to leave the one percent in place   and if you challenge them that's pretty radical  that's really what i think marx would say today

Miracles represent freedom from fear. "Atoning" means "undoing." The undoing of fear is an essential part of the atonement value of miracles.

You would think it would be a good thing for the young readers of Teen Vogue to learn forgiveness and mercy, but for the New Puritans, there is no statute of limitations.

Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects.

I'm not a fan of listing exceptions functions can throw, especially here in Python, where it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong.

Repeating Courses (Grade Forgiveness) Undergraduate

The remedy which the tradition of Western thought has proposed for the unpredictability and irreversibility of action has consisted in abstaining from action altogether, in the withdrawal from the sphere of interaction with others, in the hope that one’s freedom and integrity could thereby be preserved. Platonism, Stoicism and Christianity elevated the sphere of contemplation above the sphere of action, precisely because in the former one could be free from the entanglements and frustrations of action. Arendt’s proposal, by contrast, is not to turn one’s back on the realm of human affairs, but to rely on two faculties inherent in action itself, the faculty of forgiving and the faculty of promising. These two faculties are closely connected, the former mitigating the irreversibility of action by absolving the actor from the unintended consequences of his or her deeds, the latter moderating the uncertainty of its outcome by binding actors to certain courses of action and thereby setting some limit to the unpredictability of the future. Both faculties are, in this respect, connected to temporality: from the standpoint of the present forgiving looks backward to what has happened and absolves the actor from what was unintentionally done, while promising looks forward as it seeks to establish islands of security in an otherwise uncertain and unpredictable future.

My colleagues and I have developed a nine-step method for forgiving almost any conceivable hurt. We have tested this method through a series of studies with people who had been lied to, cheated, abandoned, beaten, abused, or had their children murdered. They ranged from neglected spouses to the parents of terrorist victims in Northern Ireland.

To become a forgiving person, we have to practice forgiving smaller grievances. Then, when a bigger insult comes, we are ready, willing, and able to deal with it. Alternatively, like Delores, once we learn to forgive a major grievance, we can understand the value of limiting the power that pain and anger hold over us the next time we are hurt.

Delores practiced and saw the value of the old adage that a life well lived is the best revenge.

As the forgiveness training progressed, Delores began to look at her suffering and ask herself what “unenforceable rule” she was trying to enforce. I reminded her that she would not be so upset unless she was trying to change something that was impossible for her to change.

give the next moment a chance. That’s the acceptance, “I’m willing to give the nextmoment achance. I don‘t have to punish you because of what somebody else did.” And it all is,anotherway of putting this, is can I use resilience enough to be able to handle “no” whenit comes byway?

the simple definition that I work with now is that forgiveness is the ability to makepeacewith the word “no.”

Are some offenses so heinous that they ought never to be forgiven? Are there times when justice should trump forgiveness? Justice and forgiveness do clash at times. I do not advocate forgiving under all circumstances (unless a person’s religion dictates it). But I know that a sincere apology, restitution, or a punishment imposed by the proper authorities can often make it easier for victims to grant forgiveness. The big transgressions are not necessarily “unforgivable” because they are big. Instead, big transgressions are often the ones that, if they are ever to be surmounted, must be forgiven.

It’s important to stress again that forgiveness usually takes time. In fact, in a meta-analysis of all research that measured the impact of forgiveness interventions, Nathaniel Wade and I found that a factor as simple as the amount of time someone spent trying to forgive was highly related to the actual degree of forgiveness experienced.

British researchers Peter Woodruff and Tom Farrow are doing some of this important work. Their research suggests that the areas in the brain associated with forgiveness are often deep in the emotional centers, in the region known as the limbic system, rather than in the areas of the cortex usually associated with reasoned judgments. In one study, they asked people to judge the fairness of a transgression and then consider whether to forgive it or empathize with the transgressor. Ten individuals evaluated several social scenarios while the researchers recorded images of their brain activity. Whether people empathized or forgave, similar areas in the emotion centers of the brain lit up. When those same people thought about the fairness of the same transgression, though, the emotion centers stopped being as active. This could be a clue for interventionists. To help people forgive, help them steer clear of dwelling on how fair a transgression was or how just a solution might be. Instead, get people to see things from the other person’s perspective.

the studies suggest that when partners hurt each other, there is often a shift in their goals for their relationship. They might have previously professed undying love and worked hard to cooperate with their partner, but if this partner betrays them, suddenly they become more competitive. They focus on getting even and keeping score instead of enjoying each other. They concentrate on not losing arguments rather than on compromise. They use past transgressions to remind the partner of his or her failings. Forgiveness, assert Fincham and his colleagues, can help restore more benevolent and cooperative goals to relationships.

People are usually more willing to forgive if they sense trust and a willingness to sacrifice from their partner. The authors predicted that forgiving would be associated with greater well-being, especially in relationships of strong rather than weak commitment. They figured that people in highly committed relationships have more to lose if the relationship fails and so would be willing to make certain sacrifices.

Hostility also has been found to be the part of type A behavior that seems to have the most pernicious health effects, such as a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease. Forsaking a grudge may also free a person from hostility and all its unhealthy consequences. It probably isn’t just hostility and stress that link unforgiveness and poor health. According to a review of the literature on forgiveness and health that my colleague Michael Scherer and I published, unforgiveness might compromise the immune system at many levels. For instance, our review suggests that unforgiveness might throw off the production of important hormones and even disrupt the way our cells fight off infections, bacteria, and other physical insults, such as mild periodontal disease.

conducted a national survey of nearly 1,500 Americans, asking the degree to which each person practiced and experienced forgiveness (of others, of self, and even if they thought they had experienced forgiveness by God). Participants also reported on their physical and mental health. Toussaint and his colleagues found that older and middle-aged people forgave others more often than did young adults and also felt more forgiven by God. What’s more, they found a significant relationship between forgiving others and positive health among middle-aged and older Americans.

To ruminate on an old transgression is to practice unforgiveness. Sure enough, in Witvliet’s research, when people recalled a grudge, their physical arousal soared. Their blood pressure and heart rate increased, and they sweated more. Ruminating about their grudges was stressful, and subjects found the rumination unpleasant. It made them feel angry, sad, anxious, and less in control. Witvliet also asked her subjects to try to empathize with their offenders or imagine forgiving them. When they practiced forgiveness, their physical arousal coasted downward. They showed no more of a stress reaction than normal wakefulness produces.

researchers differ about what actually constitutes forgiveness. I’ve come to believe that how we define forgiveness usually depends on context. In cases where we hope to forgive a person with whom we do not want a continuing relationship, we usually define forgiveness as reducing or eliminating resentment and motivations toward revenge. My colleagues Michael McCullough, Kenneth Rachal, and I have defined forgiveness in close relationships to include more than merely getting rid of the negative. The forgiving person becomes less motivated to retaliate against someone who offended him or her and less motivated to remain estranged from that person. Instead, he or she becomes more motivated by feelings of goodwill, despite the offender’s hurtful actions. In a close relationship, we hope, forgiveness will not only move us past negative emotions, but move us toward a net positive feeling. It doesn’t mean forgetting or pardoning an offense.

“It is much more agreeable to offend and later ask forgiveness than to be offended and grant forgiveness,” said the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I think many people today are inclined to agree with him.

we’ll see higher rates of forgiveness under those conditions that made forgiving adaptive in our ancestral environments. This means we’ll see more forgiveness in places where people are highly dependent on complex networks of cooperative relationships, policing is reliable, the system of justice is efficient and trustworthy, and social institutions are up to the task of helping truly contrite offenders make amends with the people they’ve harmed.

Why might evolution have outfitted us with such an ability? Biologists have offered several hypotheses. I’m especially fond of the “valuable relationship” hypothesis, espoused by de Waal and many other primatologists. It goes like this: Animals reconcile because it repairs important relationships that have been damaged by aggression. By forgiving and repairing relationships, our ancestors were in a better position to glean the benefits of cooperation between group members—which, in turn, increased their evolutionary fitness.

Chimpanzees aren’t the slightest bit unique in this respect. Other great apes, such as the bonobo and the mountain gorilla, also reconcile. And it gets more interesting still, for reconciliation isn’t even limited to primates. Goats, sheep, dolphins, and hyenas all tend to reconcile after conflicts (rubbing horns, flippers, and fur are common elements of these species’ conciliatory gestures). Of the half-dozen or so non-primates that have been studied, only domestic cats have failed to demonstrate a conciliatory tendency. (If you own a cat, this probably comes as no surprise).

By making our social environments less abundant in the factors that elicit the desire for revenge, and more abundant in the factors that elicit forgiveness. In other words, to increase forgiveness in the world, it doesn’t make sense to try to change human nature. It makes a lot more sense to try to change the world around you.

The desire for revenge isn’t a disease that afflicts a few unfortunate people; rather it’s a universal trait of human nature, crafted by natural selection, that exists today because it helped our ancestors adapt to their environment. But there’s some good news, too. Evolutionary science leads us squarely to the conclusion that the capacity for forgiveness, like the desire for revenge, is also an intrinsic feature of human nature, crafted by natural selection.

Somebody said that forgiveness means giving up allhope of a better past. It’s done, it’s the way that it was.

Forgiveness is often portrayed as a generous gift bestowed on us by someone we offended or as a gift we unconditionally extend to someone who offended us, regardless of an apology. Yet my own analysis has convinced me that forgiveness and apology are inextricably linked.

How is it that something that begins with the impetus of love can turn into hatred?

Beloved friends, these things are of critical importance. For anyone who enters into a so-called “spiritual path” must eventually face and deal with their deep need for forgiveness, which is an expression of the soul’s deep desire to be forgiven. For there is no one who walks this plane who has not been touched by the poison of judgment.

And so, therefore, in this hour, beloved friends, we would wish to share with you the power of forgiveness — how to cultivate it, how to refine it, how to understand the depths of it that can be revealed to you as you forgive seventy-times-seven times, how to bring up within you that which has not yet been forgiven, but perhaps forgotten. We would speak also, in this hour, of what perception is, and what projection is.

And as I grew in age, I began to discover that the old teachers who spoke of the need to, “Forgive seventy times seven,” knew something quite profound that had even become lost within the tradition, the Jewish and Essene traditions, of my day. For, you see, to forgive means “to choose to release another from the perceptions that you’ve been projecting upon them.” It is, therefore, an act of forgiving one’s self of one’s projections. And as we begin to forgive, even unto seventy times seven times, each time you forgive you take yourself deeper into the purity of your own consciousness. You begin to see how profoundly you have been coloring, and therefore affecting, all of your relationships, through the simple act of not being aware of the power of projection.

Therefore, I learned — and learned well — that forgiveness is an essential key to healing. The opposite of forgiveness is judgment, and judgment always creates separation and guilt. Judgment will evoke a sense of guilt in the one who has been judged, unless, of course, they are perfectly awake. But more than this, each time that you judge anything or anyone, you have literally elicited guilt within yourself, because there is a place within you, yet still, that knows the perfect purity of your brother and sister, and sees quite clearly that all things within the human realm are either the extension of Love, or a cry for help and healing.

Therefore, beloved friend, when you judge, you have moved out of alignment with what is true. You have decreed that the innocent are not innocent. And if you would judge another as being without innocence, you have already declared that this is true about you. Therefore, to practice forgiveness actually cultivates the quality of consciousness in which, finally, you come to forgive yourself. And it is, indeed, the forgiven who remember their God.

He ordered that the blazing fire be extinguished as quickly as possible, and that Croesus and those with him be taken down, but despite their efforts they could not master the fire.