For many of us, true forgiveness is very much a process over time, a journey of transce-ndence and enlightenment of one
foot in front of the other into unmarked territory.
However, it is often initially discounted and dismissed of its potentially transformative power and offering of true freedom and discovery of ‘more’ in the forms of growth, understanding and the experience of deep and lasting peace, because our minds think it cannot be that simple.
By the time many of us come to even considering it as an option for dealing with the injustices, the frustration, the dilemmas, pain and crisis in our lives we are so backed up into a corner that we have no where else to go. There comes a point in our living where we are just not cut the slack to, as forms of distraction and denial, anaesthetize ourselves against our experiences in the common ways of over eating, drinking alcohol every day in small or large amounts, drugs, over working etc. because they hurt us even more. And one of the big reasons we leave it as a last option or resist earlier on in our journey, is that we feel that to forgive is like we have surrendered our sense of justice around behavior that is being condoned.
In response to that, I offer that the focus of forgiveness is towards the person, not the behavior. People’s behavior which causes us pain is often not from the love within them, it is from their pain. And that behavior will often not be understandable because it is from a place that is not loving. We actually practise forgiveness out of self interest, in that it releases us from the pain first that we too suffer, as a mirror of theirs, in us attracting that kind of experience that feels like punishment. It is a “call to love” not only for them but for us too.
It is not about focusing on letting people off the hook, rather that you make a choice to see beyond the peripheral behavior that is not who they really are and choose to love and forgive the person. “To forgive is to overlook” says A Course in Miracles. For the moment, we just do that and our perception and feelings about their behavior will be handled later -this is a journey and it unfolds. Sometimes we just have to be the bigger person and go beyond their behavior to the person within. Looking past their mistakes, their action of ‘not love”. And very often we are so backed into a corner in not understanding their behavior because their behavior will never make sense because it does not come from the light and love within them.
A Course in Miracles says that ‘It is to be recognised that all things must first be forgiven and then understood.”
It will be an effort and act of courage and faith in the process of forgiveness itself that can feel like the widest chasm to cross, yet the rewards are there beyond your vision at the time you are called to forgive.
My experience is that by focusing on the love, truth and dignity of a person, as the only thing that is real, by choosing to see only that within them, by remembering who they really are, I have remembered it in myself, and discovered the “pearl of great price,” the gift that the other person’s behavior actually offered me. This was the recognition of the truth and value of myself as a mirror of my choice to see the love and truth in them. This can be the healing of not only my experience of a person, but of circumstances, a situation or a memory in my life.
Any event in your life that seemingly initially offers only pain or trauma, hate, abuse or a response of anger, frustration or fear has inherently within in it, the opportunity to provide the experience of what is real, namely, the love, beauty and truth of that person/situation. And yes, it is a stretch, and it does take practise, practise, practise as you fall in and out of choosing this view.Yet each time you fall back into feeling like a victim, you are strengthened by that experience of choosing once again to choose the truth that people are inherently innocent within themselves, it is their pain that causes pain, not guilt.
Krishnamurti said ‘Each experience must free and strengthen you from that experience.”
It is often only in retrospect, that you see the good purpose of experiencing the pain that called for the love of forgiveness to heal it as the only real authentic option, that thus lead you to the miracle of opening you to a much richer, larger world of experience of you, of discovery of the truth in you and the truth in others.
HOW TO FORGIVE
Finding ourselves with nowhere else to go except to be open to forgiving can also open us up to how to forgive. Many of us have no concept of how to forgive - we were never taught it- because so few people actually do have the no-how.
Forgiveness does not come from the ego part of you. (Ego being defined as the accumulation of all the negative thoughts you have about yourself and others and the way the world works that are not true, yet nevertheless, they create an illusion that looks and feels real that is fearful and painful. Until we have some awareness, most of us identify most of the time with this.) Your ego, from the victim/villain point of view, will always self righteously want to argue for the other person’s or your guilt. It will not want to let the other person to ‘get away with it’ or at least your ego demands they apologize or admit they are wrong!! Worse still it often incites you to take revenge and hurt or attack back in some form even if it is only in the form of a snide remark or constantly mentioning what they did to you. This continues to keep you focused on what they did rather than who they are and keeps you locked into judgment and a lack of love.
Forgiveness comes from the Higher Self part of you, the soul level. You as a personality in fact have very little to do with forgiveness and peace at all.
KEYS TO FORGIVENESS
This is an aspect of one of the main 3 keys to forgiveness that I teach - that firstly the only requirement of you personally in order to experience the peace and power of forgiveness is:
1. Your willingness - your "little" willingness - to forgive. You do not have to know “how it all happens” - you just need to be willing to have it happen. That is it. We think we have to do so much work to forgive when really it is personally insulting the degree to which we have to do the work. Forgiveness is actually not our job, it is out of our hands. This is often what our personality has a big struggle with and wants to keep snatching back the responsibility of forgiveness - namely the disproportionate contribution on our part to the process of forgiveness. We make it difficult because we insist that there must be more that we need to do to attain forgiveness. We think we have to do 99% of the work of forgiveness and the rest is then given to the Higher Self when it is actually the other way around! Our responsibly is 1%'s worth of willingness to forgive and then:
2. The surrender of that process to the Higher Power. And that is even more ludicrously (to our ego!) simple by an uncomplicated process of repeating in reference to anything that disturbs your peace: “I am willing to forgive this and I release it to the Higher Power.” Inherently you are surrendering the process to something that is bigger than all of this for healing and resolution.
3. Then it is the third step of the discipline to choose this consistently. Discipline is often viewed as the unmentionable big ‘D’ word. When really, discipline is simply another word for practise.
In my experience I have not seen anyone pass into true peace and release around forgiveness without opening to a greater, more loving part of them and the surrender of their perception of the world of being a victim of people or circumstances, without opening to a deeper experience of their personal relationship to their perception of the infinite love and intelligence of this world which we call God. Not as a mental understanding or a wished for spiritual abstraction, but as a sitting-right-next-to-you-relationship of support, love and communication in having your needs met in response to your prayers and calls for love and help in healing.
The place I have reached now within myself and that may still be down the track for many, is I have decided ahead of time to forgive everything, from the most minute thing like a mosquito bite, right up to the worst nightmare. Because I believe it actually comes down to that, a decision on my part that enables me to be free. A big part of finding personal freedom and peace is about taking 100% responsibility for everything in my life no matter what, even if I do not like it. If it is all my creation and has everything to do with me, then it is up to me to forgive it and release it - not anyone else - and places the power to be released from the pain and prison of any difficult circumstance firmly in my hands. From choosing this stance, I live a very empowered and peaceful life a large percentage of the time, which becomes more peaceful and more empowered and more safe with each time I choose and strengthen this in the face of what is not from love in another or in the world. Where before there was pain, hurt/hate and guilt, now there is, by my hand, my choice, the extension of my love - only love, truth and peace.
"You want to see a miracle? Be the Miracle."
Morgan Freeman as GOD speaking to Jim Carey’s character in the film Bruce Almighty
Julie T. Way is an Adelaide Breathworker and Personal Development Consultant as well as the author of the book Personal Mastery. She is now writing her second book The Miraculous Life and presents a workshop series of that name. She can be contacted on Ph 8443 9162 or julieway@ozemail.com
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