The River Remembers Nothing

Watch a river after a storm.

Debris floats past. Branches, mud, the detritus of upstream violence. The water doesn't grip these things. The water doesn't hold them close. The water doesn't build a dam from accumulated grievances. It simply carries them forward and releases them to the sea. The river flows on, clear again within hours.

Yogi Ramacharaka understood forgiveness as the fundamental law of spiritual health. Like the river, you must release what passes through you, or you stagnate.

"The soul that sees the hand of the Law back of every event ceases to hate, to blame, or to condemn," he wrote. When you grasp that everything unfolds through cause and effect, that no one truly "wrongs" another outside the cosmic plan of growth, resentment dissolves naturally.

Your parents hurt you. Others betrayed you. You've wounded yourself through countless foolish choices. These are facts, like debris in a river after rain.