FORGIVENESS & HEALING
When life feels as though it has fallen apart, through illness, trauma, the loss of a loved one, or any other tragic event in our personal or collective world, there is a strong, instinctual need to understand why.
Our reasoning mind wants an explanation and a good one at that because without an explanation, it makes us feel powerless.
But so long as we hold onto this need to know why, we hold onto our wounds, keeping us attached to emotions such as resentment, pride and anger, and feelings of abandonment, humiliation or having lost something or been cheated.
In order to truly heal, a deeper level of surrender is required, of which the act of forgiveness forms a significant part – forgiveness of self, another or a situation.
Most of us struggle with forgiveness because it goes against the nature of the so called 'reasonable' mind! At a deeper level, forgiveness doesn’t make emotional sense to us, nor does it appeal to our pride, even though it might sound appealing. Forgiveness seems to go against the logic of justice, as if we are letting the person who wronged us off the hook. But from the perspective of the mind alone, we may never be able to come to terms with forgiveness because by its very nature, the mind is aligned with strategies of justification and self preservation.
Forgiveness, therefore, is an act that requires us to go beyond the reasoning mind. It means entering into a level of perception where we begin to comprehend that individual justice can never really exist in the way that we want, and when understood from this lens, events and relationships begin to take on a more impersonal quality.
The reality is that mostly people’s actions are driven by forces that have nothing to do with us, even though we may be in the firing line, or we might happen to hurt those in our way, even though we love them deeply. For example, if we get angry with someone and then try to explain why afterwards, very often we try to justify our actions by bringing in all sorts of reasons including parts of our childhood, past experiences and history.
In other words, in seeking forgiveness from another, we try to explain, without even knowing it, the impersonal nature of the act in question, which, in truth, was a complex web of reasons that we don’t fully understand. And when we look at it from this context, we begin to see that that each action we or another initiate is never in isolation but part of a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual continuum.
In her book ‘Defy Gravity’ Caroline Myss describes forgiveness as........
'a transcendent force that releases you from far more than the individual with whom you have a painful history. Forgiveness is the acceptance of a higher principle of divine justice as the organising element behind the events of our life’.
And when it comes to healing, forgiveness is necessary because it requires us to surrender the ego’s need to have life fall into place around a personal version of justice. Remember that healing is not just about physical recovery, it is a deep and often mysterious process of inner growth and transformation. It’s about aligning with yourself on the inside - body, heart, mind and soul - and accepting the mysteries of life without the constant need to know why things happen as they do.
But how do we reach this level of surrender? Below I have outlined five steps that can help you on your path to forgiveness and deeper levels of surrender and healing:
Identify the areas of your life in need of forgiveness. Who or what do you need to forgive, including yourself. Very often, forgiveness of the self is the hardest of all.
Identify the part of you that encourages you to feel sorry for yourself AND / OR provides you with a list of reasons to go on believing that your life will never improve or only bad things happen to you. This is the voice of the VICTIM that can destroy all hope and lead you into despair, and endless cycles of depression.
Assess your beliefs around reward and punishment. Do you believe that because you’re a good person, bad things shouldn’t happen? Where did this belief come from? This kind of thinking is a belief system, not a TRUTH.
Every day, make a decision to appreciate something in your life, and appreciate it all day long. Pull it into your daily activities and make it a prayer. Prayer is the path to surrender.
In order to break through the boundaries of the unreasonable reasoning mind with its endless justifications and hurt pride, forgiveness requires us to turn to something greater than ourselves, whether you want to call that God, Grace or the Universe. Assess your willingness to turn towards this higher power, without judgement, but with honesty, and be willing to meet yourself exactly where you are.