Aug 15 2007
Five Uplifting Days: Day 3 – The Power of Forgiveness
Most of us have had someone in our life that has “done us wrong.”
Some wrongs are so profound, are a betrayal of our deepest trust that we feel we can never forgive them.
In fact, we may hold onto the betrayal as a strange badge of honor or define ourselves by it. We may use it to gain sympathy or believe that nurturing the resentment and blame makes us stronger.
Forgetting is not the same as forgiving. When we forget a wrong all we’ve done is added it to the famous “emotional baggage” we’ve heard so much about.
We forget and forget and never forgive and we end up dragging more and more baggage around with us.
I don’t think it’s easy to forgive. It’s difficult enough to forget a pain much less forgive one. When someone hurts us, we need time to heal.
What most of us don’t realize is that we won’t fully be healed; we won’t fully be released from our pain until we forgive.
Forgiveness releases us from pain and the burden of resentment and hatred.
Forgiveness has the power to transform both the forgiver and the forgiven.
In the book, “The Power of Focus” by authors Canfield, Hansen, and Hewitt:
“To release yourself totally from the baggage of the past, you must learn to forgive. Read it again: YOU MUST LEARN TO FORGIVE. There are two sides to this. First, you need to forgive the people who obstructed you in the past – parents, friends, relatives or teachers. In fact, anyone who undermined or abused your confidence verbally, physically or mentally. No matter how traumatic the experience, to be free you must forgive them. This may not be easy, but it’s essential if you want peace of mind and a happier future.”
We may succeed in forgetting but unless we forgive, we end up dragging the weight of resent or hatred around.
I’m not the only one who thinks of resentment as a weight. Emotionally, it feels like a weight.
Forgiveness has the power to transform both the forgiver and the forgiven.
I’ve been thinking about Jill of Twipply Skwood comments in a prior post about parents doing the best they can.
I believe that the majority of parents out there are doing the best they can and that their hearts are in the right place. I also know that broken adults generally end up raising broken children.
From my own experience as well as hearing about the painful childhoods of others, there are many adults out there who look fine but who are deaf to the cries of their inner child.
These broken adults drag the weight of blame and resentment of their parents around them from relationship to relationship.
Forgiveness has the power to transform both the forgiver and the forgiven.
My parents did the best they could. Nothing they did they did out of malice. I probably had your standard dysfunctional childhood. Which means that I had issues. It’s been a very long road I’ve traveled and at certain points I’ve managed to travel lighter and lighter as I let go of my emotional baggage.
One day I realized that I had to forgive my parents. I had forgotten much but I realized that I hadn’t truly forgiven them. I had excused them, their youth, their ignorance, the fact that yes, they were doing the best they could. But I hadn’t forgiven them.
One day, I just let it go. I opened my heart and forgave them.
When you forgive someone, the energy between you and the forgiven, changes.
The energy YOU have vibrates at a higher level. If you’re not familiar with energy and vibration (I’m just learning about it myself) the concept is that as you work on your awareness, personal development and spirituality towards raising your consciousness, your energy begins to vibrate at a higher level.
To give you some idea, Jesus Christ, Buddha, and Gandhi would all be considered high-vibration.
I believe in this energy because I experienced it. When I forgave my parents my energy changed. I felt open and my love for them was without judgment and I accepted them.
My father speaks more openly than he used to and my mom, who’s much more expressive than my dad, mentioned the energy change right away, “I could feel it – you weren’t angry.”
Forgiveness has the power to transform both the forgiver and the forgiven.
Intentionally or not, we have also wronged others. We may regret our actions and apologize; we may even make profound changes in our lives to show our regret. When we ask for forgiveness and it’s not given, we also carry a burden. When we are forgiven it frees us as well. We can heal.
More thoughts on forgiveness from “The Power of Focus”:
“Second, forgive yourself. Silence forever those negative thoughts of guilt. The past is history. You will never be able to change it. Instead, accept the fact that whatever you did, your choices were based on your level of knowledge and awareness at the time. The same goes for your parents. Don’t blame them for your upbringing – the did what the did based on their circumstances, belief systems and parenting ability.
Look at the word forgiveness. In the center are four letters, give. There’s a clue. You must give to be free. The biggest gift you have to offer is love. Remember you can’t give what you don’t already have. If you don’t have love within you, how can you give it? It starts with forgiving yourself. You must move past the “It’s not my fault,” and the “Poor me” syndromes, or you’ll never enjoy real love in your heart. This takes a special type of awareness. It’s living at a higher level. To do this effectively requires detaching yourself from the past events of you life, so you can be free to give without conditions.”
Forgiveness has the power to transform both the forgiver and the forgiven.
If you would like to learn more about forgiveness, you may want to visit A Course In Miracles:
“a unique, universal, self-study spiritual thought system that teaches the way to Love and Inner Peace is through forgiveness.”
Note: These photos are from the trip to Lantau Island I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Walking The Hero’s Path.
From Wikipedia:
“The Tian Tan Buddha appears serene and dignified. His right hand is raised, representing the removal of affliction. His left hand rests on his lap in a gesture of giving (dhana).”
I thought the images of the Tian Tan Buddha appropriate. When we forgive, we let go of pain. We are removing an affliction.
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A deep thinker you are indeed. I agree with what you have spelled out here, but am new to the “vibration” theory. I think of vibration as getting a “Kit & Kaboodle” of calls at work
I forgot where I read or saw this, but it said that forgiveness eventually lets you move on. That, when you don’t forgive, whatever you’re trying to let go of will always be there until you do. The thing is that people shouldn’t relate forgiving to forgetting. Everyone should forgive, but if we forget than it’ll happen again.
For example, concentration camp survivors have forgiven what has happened to them, but will never forget. If we forget that tragedy then history will repeat itself.
My parents transferred my brother and I to a different high school for our junior and senior year and we really never forgave them and held it against them for quite some time. We got in a fight about it one day and I didn’t even talk to our dad for over 3 months, until I totaled our car going to school one day. I’ve forgiven him and everything’s good, but in a way deep down inside I won’t forget that our parents transferred us against our will.
Eric (I do like “Speedcat”!): The vibration theory is interesting and I’ve come across it in several books. Even if you don’t believe in vibration, I do think that there are people that energize you and people who drain you.
I’ve also noticed how some people I just like immediately and feel very relaxed with – usually it’s because I don’t feel that they are in any way judging me. Those people have “good vibes”!
Gregg: I don’t try to forget the things my parents have done but I’ll be reminded of events by others. Sometimes my parents themselves have forgotten or totally gloss over some event.
One thing about forgiveness, at least for me, is after I dealt with the pain and then forgave the person who caused it, I may remember the pain but I no longer feel it. I can even discuss it with the person and it has no emotional content. Which is great because then we can both learn from it.
Did your parents ever apologize or at least give them their reasonings?
That part you said about your mom being able to feel the change sort of reminds me of when I’ve talked about being able to feel someone withdraw during a conversation – I hadn’t thought of it as energy, but it sort of makes sense in that it is something palpable.
Jill: I think that most people, even those who think that the idea of people have positive or negative energy is a bunch of hooey know people who make them feel energized and those who make them feel drained.
I mean, how do you explain charisma or the “something about that person just feels WRONG” feeling? Granted some people are drawn to people that may give other the heebie-jeebies!
Of course, the closer we are to someone, the more we can detect changes in their mood.
In my own case, when I have let go of resentments, I do feel lighter and better. It may take me a while to let go and some resentments I really do want to let go of and they just hang and hang around until I finally figure out the root cause.