By Gonny 
Imagine you have a collegue who is very strong-willed. Opinionated, stubborn, angry perhaps. Someone who always seems to push back, to insist, to remain exactly as they are, no matter how often you try to meet them halfway.
You notice something in yourself: irritation, tension, a quiet complaint forming almost automatically.
“Why can’t they just be a little different?”
At some point, you remember forgiveness. You turn inward, you soften your judgment and tell yourself you are willing to see differently. You release some of the charge and it feels sincere.
And then, monday, you go to work and ofcourse you meet your collegue again…..and :
They are… exactly the same. 
And a new thought appears, perhaps almost unnoticed at first:
“Did I really forgive? Because nothing changed.”
This is a very common misunderstanding.
We assume that forgiveness should produce a visible result. That something out there should shift. That the other person should become less stubborn, more flexible, easier to be with. Otherwise, what was the point?
But forgiveness was never meant to change behavior. It was never designed to fix personalities or edit character traits.
Forgiveness addresses something else entirely.
Complaining, irritation, and judgment do not arise because someone is difficult. They arise because a certain experience is active in the Mind. Often: ‘an idea of lack’….a sense that something is missing, that love, understanding, or harmony is not available here.
From within that experience, the world appears in a matching way.
A collegue shows up as angry, stubborn….a situation feels unfair….an interaction carries friction.
The Mind then tries to solve the discomfort of feeling lack by projecting it outward, placing the cause outside itself, so the little “I” can remain innocent and at peace:
“If they were different, I would be at peace.”
Forgiveness does not negotiate with that logic, and it does not argue with it. It simply withdraws b e l i e f from it.
It says: “ My peace is not dependent on this form, and neither on its changing.”
At this point, forgiveness is no longer about what you do, but about how you choose to see.
Forgiveness, in this sense, is a decision. Not a moral act, but a shift in perception.
It is the willingness to stop looking with the ego’s eyes (the part of the mind that interprets everything in terms of lack, threat, and defense) and to allow the Right Mind, what A Course in Miracles calls the Holy Spirit, to reinterpret the experience.
The situation does not need to change, the form does not need to improve….only the interpreter changes.
And here is the crucial point.
The other person is not a separate inner center that must now undergo their own transformation. They are part of the experienced world. A figure within perception. When forgiveness happens, what changes is not them, but the way the experience is held.
So your friend may remain strong-willed. They may continue to speak the same way, think the same way, insist in the same manner.
And yet something is different.
You are no longer waiting for them to change so you can relax.
You are no longer measuring your inner work by their outer behavior.
You are no longer secretly disappointed when they stay the same.
That release is the forgiveness.
Forgiveness is complete the moment the demand for a different outcome dissolves.
There is often no dramatic feeling attached to this. No spiritual victory. No clear sign that you “did it right.” Sometimes there is only a simple recognition: this no longer needs to be fought.
And in that recognition, the experience finishes itself.
Awareness has had the experience it set out to have. The idea of lack has been seen, felt, and understood. There is no need to repeat it through complaint or tension.
Sometimes the form changes afterward. Sometimes it does not.
But the form was never the measure.
The completion is felt in the absence of inner resistance.
And in that sense, forgiveness is not about fixing relationships.
It is about releasing the belief that peace depends on fixing anything at all.
That is why it can feel strange at first. We are so used to looking for results. But forgiveness is not confirmed by improvement. It is confirmed by ease.
When that ease is present, the experience is complete.
And nothing else is required.
With love and light,
G.