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.

And I began to shift gears slightly. I began, even, to be seen as someone who was rebelling against the teachings of my Essene elders. For I began to move away from striving for God, from striving for perfection, and began to cultivate within myself the process of allowing. I discovered that if I looked upon my perceptions, my feelings, my behavior, exactly as they were, without overshadowing them with my own interpretations — if I could teach myself to embrace things with innocence — veils began to be dissolved from my mind. For when I was nine years old, I had already learned to be fearful of thinking, or speaking, or acting, in a way that was not in conformity to the prevailing wisdom of that time, even within the Essene community, which had already become rather rigidified. There was already much dogma. And dogma always leads to bickering.