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Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast.

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Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.

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Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

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New concepts can be very difficult for us to accept after believing the exact opposite for

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so many years. If you grew up constantly being called ugly, for example, 

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and then somebody comes along and calls you beautiful, you are more likely to think 

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they are lying, crazy, or both, than you are to believe them and accept it as true.

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That's why when a friend said something to me recently that was so far removed from

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the narrative with which I grew up, it took a long time for me to digest and accept as an

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alternate reality to the one I previously believed. I grew up hearing many variations of

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this old joke about this little boy who gets 

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slapped across the face by his father first thing in the morning.

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And when the child asks: What was that for?

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The dad says: Oh, I'm sure you'll do something later today to deserve it.

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That so-called joke is not just a sign of 

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old times when beating your children was acceptable, it is also an extension of many 

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people's deeply-held religious belief that they are born sinners awaiting judgment.

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Even Buddhism implies we deserve whatever happens in our lives, so there is potential to

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feel like a screw-up no matter where you go for comfort.

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You can imagine my surprise after a lifetime of guilt, shame, and believing the best we can

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hope for is forgiveness, when I heard my friend say: You are already forgiven.

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My mind was blown.

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I thought the only thing we deserve is that preemptive slap across the face.

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And what about the negative self-talk about how terrible we are?

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Does this mean we can let that go, too?

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It is much easier for me to forgive others than it is to forgive myself.

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So, believing I am already forgiven is a life-changing paradigm shift.

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It required that I switch my thinking from: Who in their right mind would forgive me? 

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To: Who in their right mind wouldn't?

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I've been punishing myself over the years for so many missteps, it is strange to

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wrap my head around the notion that I am not only forgiven for the past,

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but I am already forgiven for what I haven't even done yet. We are talking about

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the opposite of a slap across the face, we are talking about unconditional love,

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which is a foreign language to many of us who have gone our entire lives never 

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experiencing that level of acceptance from anyone, including ourselves.

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For centuries, philosophers, poets and songwriters have been trying to define Love,

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and I really think the Dalai Lama nailed it when he said: 

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Love is the absence of judgment.

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It's that simple.

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Love is the absence of judgment.

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If you think about what is standing between you and being able to 

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love the person in front of you, it's judgment. And once you remove that judgment, 

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all that's left is love, even if the person in front of you is you.

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What would your life look like if you accepted that you are already forgiven?

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During our in-person and online Buddhist Boot Camp discussions about these

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podcast episodes, we even discovered a flaw in the notion of already being forgiven:

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it still suggests we are inherently bad people who can do good things.

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So, I'm working on truly flipping the script into one of two possibilities:

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the first is that we are actually all inherently good, but can sometimes do bad,

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or as Rumi suggested, beyond wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field...

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I will meet you there.

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This concept of unconditional love feels strange but liberating.

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I wonder if I would even be able to recognize and accept love if someone offered it to me.

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Would you?

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Perhaps we need to unconditionally love ourselves first, so we can lead by example.

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A life with no shame, no guilt, and no slap across the face.

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Already forgiven, already good, already loved.

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What a wonderful life this could be if we let go of the narratives that no longer serve us.

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Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Buddhist Boot Camp, Faithfully Religionless,

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and The Opposite of Namaste.

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For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com,

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where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project,

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watch Timber's inspiring TED-Talk, and join our monthly mailing list.

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We hope you have enjoyed this episode 

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and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions.

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Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏