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Forgiveness is a topic that is spoken about often, but very difficult to truly understand. I recently have encountered a situation where someone I love has been treating me differently, treating me without respect and with a very cold shoulder. I believe I understand where a lot of it is stemming from as we had a difficult conversation about some things a few weeks ago. But as the cold shoulder treatment and some outright painful and confusing remarks have been made to me, I have found myself feeling angry and feeling that this treatment is unjustified. As I focused on my confusion and negative feelings, many different painful feelings from the past surfaced, from a time when this person created a similar though more damaging and potentially lethal situation.
This has brought up a lot of deep, buried resentments for me, things that I thought I had gotten over. These buried hurts have gotten me thinking about forgiveness. For the past few years, I thought I had forgiven my loved one for the damage, pain, and fear that her choices caused for me and other members of our family. I had not even been conscious of some of the feelings that I had had at the time, and had buried when the situation changed. Now that things have stirred the pot again, I am experiencing many lumps of sludge being brought to the surface within myself. While I moved on with my life after the situation worked itself to a conclusion, I “let it go” so to speak, and have had a good relationship with her since, but I realize now that I never truly forgave my loved one for the choices that she made that brought those problems and damages into our lives. So what does it mean to forgive? And why is it so important to ourselves and our consciousness that we forgive fully?
I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine, who was also a minister, showed an amazing example of forgiveness. She had been a hospital chaplain for many years, and worked with a number of other clergy, including some nuns who became her very close friends. She moved from chaplaincy into being the minister of a church for a number of years. During that time, one of her friends, a nun who ran a halfway house for people recovering from drug addiction, was murdered when she walked in on one of her clients rummage through her room to steal money for drugs. He was high at the time, having relapsed, and was not fully aware of what he was doing. The next Sunday, my friends told us what had happened, and asked us all to pray for her woman’s family, church, and community. She also specifically asked us to pray for the man who murdered her. She spoke of the pain that man was in, and the utter devastation that he felt about what he did to this person who had helped him and shown him so much love. She did not ask us to pray for his soul, or salvation, or any of the other godly things you often hear ministers ask you to pray for when speaking of a criminal. She asked us to pray for him, for him as a person, as a hurting human being who is deserving, not just of the love and forgiveness of God but deserving of the love and forgiveness of the people that he hurt in his act of killing this wonderful person. She was able to love him through her grief, even though he was the cause of it, and see the hurting, whole, and deserving human being that her was. It was not until that day that I understood that it is not enough to pray for someone’s soul and to ask for God to forgive them for the wrongs that they have done. Forgiveness is about truly caring about the person who needs forgiveness, acknowledging the pain they caused and loving them, not just in spite of it, but loving them through the pain. Forgiveness is a gift you give both to the person who hurt you and to yourself so that you can continue to move forward and grow ever closer to your Source and true self.
Often we say that we forgive a person that has wronged us in some way. But years later something comes up that brings out all of the feelings, and we realize that we went through the motions of forgiving, but never actually were able to let go of the pain. Holding onto pain that has been festering unattended and unacknowledged for years creates an abscess that holds you back and blocks you in emotional and spiritual ways. It has been holding you back from becoming aware of your highest consciousness, from connecting with the God consciousness that you have been given. Forgiveness is about more than lip service and making the other person feel better, it is about finding a way to understand what has happened to you, and finding a way to release the pain, the hurt, the anger, and the resentment. I don’t believe that is necessary to express all of what you are feeling to the other person, especially so long after events occurred and you had expressed forgiveness in the past. To bring it up again may create new problems in your relationship. But you do need to express and explore what you are feeling to yourself and your Higher Power so that you can find a way to release it, and be free to grow spiritually.
Instead of brooding over what caused the pain and anger, and the particulars of what happened, focus on what you felt and why you felt it. Ask yourself if it is worth hanging on to those feelings, valid as they may be given the situation. While it was not your choices originally that caused the damage, it now IS your choice about whether you want to hang on to the feelings that resulted from that damage. Remember that all of your feelings are valid; they are your real, emotional reaction to what happened. And now you can choose to hold on to them, or to release them. They are the result of something that happened in the past, which is something you cannot change at this point in time. You can learn from the past so that you do not inadvertently repeat it, and you can choose to release your pain and anger. This can be a difficult process, but techniques like EFT and other meridian tapping methods can be very beneficial. Seeking out counseling with a therapist or clergy member can be extremely beneficial as they are great sounding board to help you discover and release those abscessed sores in your mind and spirit. Just as you would seek medical guidance, whether naturopathic or pharmaceutically based, to treat a physical abscess, it is right to reach out and seek spiritual and mental guidance to treat this type of spiritual abscess.
Forgiveness is not a surface level action. It is a deeply spiritual purging that releases both the one who has hurt you and the one who has been hurt. We teach our children to say “I’m Sorry” when they have done something wrong, and “I forgive you” when someone apologizes for what they have done. But it’s not just the words; it is the internal process that is behind the words that is important. Forgiving is not just a verbal Band-Aid to help you and the other person feel better on the surface, it is a deeply important area of spiritual, mental, and emotional growth. When you truly forgive, especially on old buried hurt, it unblocks more of the barrier we have between yourself and the truly Powerful Consciousness from which we all emanate.