Forgiveness, a Misunderstood and Under-appreciated Spiritual Principle

Why do we need to forgive?

Forgiveness holds the promise that we will find the peace that we all really want. It promises our release from the hold that another's attitudes and actions have over us. It awakes us to the truth of our own goodness and loveableness. It holds the sure promise that we will be able to increasingly unburden ourselves from the emotional turmoil and move on to feeling better about ourselves and life.

Where do the anger, hurt, resentment come from?

• You find yourself obsessing about the incident—replaying it over and over in your head—sometimes with things you wish you had said or done when it happened.
• When you chose not to forgive someone, you become stuck in a struggle, saying I'm going to hold on to the anger, resentment, sense of betrayal and bitterness forever. I'll take this one to the grave. In other words, you say, I'm going to tie myself to this person and give them free rent in my brain forever.
• It's not possible to be truly present and available to relationships until you heal the hurts and upsets of the past.
• When you blame other people for your unhappiness, you give them total power over your life and happiness and serenity, you make yourself a victim.
• Not only do these feelings take a dramatic toll on our emotional well-being, research has shown they can powerfully and negatively impact our physical well-being as well.

Harold S. Kushner in a lecture on Forgiveness told this story:

A woman in my congregation came to see me. She is a single mother, divorced, working to support herself and three young children. She said to me, “Since my husband walked out on us, every month is a struggle to pay our bills. I have to tell my kids we have no money to go to the movies, while he's living it up with his new wife in another state. How can you tell me to forgive him?” I answered her, “I'm not asking you to forgive him because what he did was acceptable. It wasn't; it was mean and selfish, I'm asking you to forgive because he doesn't deserve the power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter, angry woman. I'd like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. You're not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you're hurting yourself.”

What FORGIVENESS is NOT

• Forgetting/Denial: It doesn't mean forgetting what happened. You can remember and forgive. You don't have to say, “Oh, well,” or make excuses for the person. While you can't erase the past, you can learn from it and move on.
• Condoning: “It wasn't really that bad—they probably won't do it again.” We are hurt and it is painful and the hurt does affect our lives.
• Excusing or Absolution: It isn't pretending everything is fine when it isn't. We don't have the ability to absolve a person of responsibility for their actions. Forgiveness doesn't let anyone off the hook.
• Condemning: “I'm going to let them know just how much they hurt me—how I'd never do anything like that to them....” This attitude implies an attitude of moral superiority that separates you from people.
• Seeking justice or compensation: Not a quid pro quo deal—don't get payment first, an apology or restitution and then you forgive.
• A sign of weakness: We learn that we don't need our anger and hatred to protect ourselves. Forgiveness doesn't depend on who hurt us, what they did, or whether they're sorry or not.
• Reconciliation: Forgiveness does not mean that you have to let the person back into your life—especially if they are offenders guilty of sexual or verbal abuse. Even if they aren't an abuser, you can choose not to have that person in your life.

• Recognize they wronged you and how.
• Apologize for the offense and promise not to do it again.
• Demonstrate they will not do it again.

How can you forgive the unforgivable?

...Forgiving happens inside us. It represents a letting go of the sense of grievance, and perhaps most importantly a letting go of the role of victim. For a Jew to forgive the Nazis would not mean saying to them “What you did was understandable, I can understand what led you to do it and I don't hate you for it.” It would mean saying “What you did was thoroughly despicable and puts you outside the category of decent human beings. But I refuse to give you the power to define me as a victim. I refuse to let your blind hatred define the shape and content of my Jewishness. I don't hate you; I reject you.” And then the Nazi would remain chained to his past and to his conscience, but the Jew would be free.

What does forgiveness look like?

• Forgiveness is realistic: It doesn't deny, minimize or justify what others have done to us or the pain we have suffered. It does allow us to look squarely at old wounds and scars and see them for what they are. It allows us to see how much energy we've wasted and how much we've damaged ourselves by not forgiving.
• Forgiveness is a sign of positive self-esteem. It allows us to put the past into its proper perspective. We are no long victims. We claim the right to stop hurting.
• Forgiveness is Letting go of the past: While it doesn't erase what happened, it does allow us to lessen and hopefully eliminate the pain of the past. More importantly, the pain from the past no longer determines how we are going to live today.
• Forgiveness is letting go of the fantasy that we can punish those who hurt us. We no longer want to get even, make them suffer or “even the score” because we accept that even if we could get even, it wouldn't make the pain go away. Rather we can achieve inner peace when we let go of the past and forget dreams of vengeance.
• Forgiveness is moving on: We achieve peace when we realize that all the energy we spent on hanging on to the past is better spent on improving our present lives and our future.

Steps to Forgiveness (from the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance)

1. Confront your emotional pain—your shock, fear, anger, and grief. You may need to choose a person who can truly empathize with you, yet who can be objective and help you shift your perceptions from blaming to healing and with whom you can process your fear, anger, grief and pain.
2. Recognize that to continue to dwell on anger and resentment can destroy your physical health and cause you great mental suffering.
3. Understand that forgiveness does not condone or approve or forget the harmful acts. Forgiveness does not mean that you will continue to let yourself be abused.
4. Recognize that you are the only one who can heal the hurt that's going on inside you.
5. Be willing to ask yourself if you had any part in what happened.
6. See the situation as an opportunity for healing and spiritual growth.
7. Start releasing anger, sadness, grief and fear. Give up expecting things from other people that they don't choose to give you.

A few years ago, I was experiencing angry feelings with my father for not loving me the way I wanted him to. I thought my expectations were minimal and quite reasonable. I was seeing a therapist and talked on and on about my disappointments giving her example after example of how he had let me down. One day, she asked me, “Janet, how old is your father?” “83”, I replied. She took me by the hand, said gently, “I don't think he's going to change.” That day she got through to me, and I was able to spend the next few years until his death accepting him as he was, rather than being hurt and angry about what he wasn't.

8. Decide to forgive, even if this decision is half-hearted at first. Even being willing to entertain the idea that you might forgive is a start.
9. Be willing to find a new way of thinking about the person who wronged you. If it feels safe, be willing to stand in another persons' shoes and imagine what they might be feeling in the situation.
10. Be aware that being a forgiving person is a courageous act on your part. It has nothing to do with the other person admitting they were wrong. You can liberate yourself no matter what the other person does or even if they are dead.
11. Be willing to do whatever it takes to forgive. Read stories and books about forgiveness, write in journals, go to a therapist—do whatever ever it takes to heal the wound.

• Make a list of everyone against whom you hold a resentment.
• Pick the easiest person to start with.
• Every day for 2 weeks, wish for that person everything that you want for yourself—such as health, happiness, prosperity and peace.
• Write their name down on a piece of paper and put it in a box of some kind set aside for this purpose. Release yourself from the need for retribution and turn your anger and the person over to the universe deal with. It's no longer your job to punish that person.

I spent about 20 years being angry, extremely angry, at my mother who died in a car accident when I was 20. While at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin—a UU summer retreat place—I took a workshop on Family Relationships taught by a gifted therapist. My anger bubbled out on several occasions during the workshop. On the last day, she said privately to me, “For your own sake, it's time for you to let go of your anger at your mother.” I guess after all those years of stoking the fires and holding onto the resentments, I was ready to see it go. Before I left to come home, I went down to the Lake. I walked around for a while, and then picked up a small rock. I said, out loud, “I'm going to leave my anger here for this year. If I need to pick it up again next year I can.” Then I threw the rock into the lake. That act freed me and the next year I didn't need to pick it up. The anger still comes back in spurts from time to time, and I have to remind myself that I left my resentments in Lake Geneva and I don't need to pick them up. Come up with a ritual of your own for letting go of resentment. A popular one is to write the person's name on a piece of paper and burn it.

In May, many of us attended a retreat at Rising Phoenix. There is going to be another one the weekend of October 31 and I urge everyone who can, to attend. At the retreat, we were each given a random word on which to meditate. Mine was ‘forgiveness’. My first reaction was disappointment. I've done so much work in this area—amazingly I had no one left on my list I had to forgive. Our leader, suggested that if we were stuck, we could look our word up in the dictionary—so I did. It said, “To renounce anger or resentment against; to excuse for a fault or offense; to absolve from payment.” I sat down to think—Who do I still hold responsible for faults, weaknesses, mistakes, and errors? Who do I identify as deserving blame or guilt? Who do I criticize excessively and from whom do I exact payment for these faults? In that meditation, I realized the one I need most to forgive today is ME.

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