From the Moderator

[Guest guest]

Jai Guru Datta,

 

Hi folks, this is something that I found that I

thought

some members of the list would like.

Satish

 

 

Some Notes on Forgiveness as an Act of Love

 

A.Some of the Subtle Qualities of Forgiveness

 

1.Forgiveness as an act of love is felt, not achieved.

It can be given,

but it cannot be bestowed as an act of triumph over

another person,

which would be to humiliate the other person. A

definition: Forgiveness

is the means to release yourself and others from an

experience of hurt,

injury, wounding, suffering, humiliation or pain that

has already

passed.

 

2.Forgiveness contains an element of magic. It cannot

be controlled,

but, under certain conditions it will appear. When it

appears, we feel it

in our body. Something that is almost a ‘thing’,

leaves the body.

Muscular tension that we have come to live with

habitually is eased. We are

less vulnerable to infections as well as more serious

illness. The

immune system improves. The face relaxes. Food tastes

better. Depression

diminishes. We feel lighter, physically lighter. There

is also a change

in our emotions. Anger changes to sorrow or regret.

Rage flattens out.

We become more available to other people, and more

available to

ourselves. Yet, we think about ourselves less.

 

B.Forgiveness is not Rational

1.When someone has harmed us – has hurt us, offended

us, wounded us,

abused us, there is no reason why we should let that

offense go. There is

no reason that we should hope that the other person

will wake up and

see what was done to us. There is no reason that we

should have any

compassion for that person. Because forgiveness is not

rational there is no

easy way to put forgiveness into practice. It is an

act that says: “I

will go on loving the life in you, or the divine in

you, or the soul in

you, even when I totally abhor what you have done”

Here, we can begin

to see that forgiveness is a spiritual act, and

something even more. It

is difficult to come into because it requires a

movement in

consciousness, a vertical movement into a new level of

consciousness. It often

takes so long for forgiveness to occur because, as

long as we are working

toward that end, we are involved into an initiation

into a higher

consciousness. Forgiveness, it has to be seen, is not

a one-time, one-moment

act, but is a spiritual path.

 

C.Forgiving is not Condoning

1. Forgiving is very disturbing. There is not a speck

of sentimentality

to it. Forgiveness in no way justifies the actions

that brought about a

wounding. We do not have to seek out those who harmed

us to let them

know we forgive.

2.We do not forgive out of weakness; nor, are we

saying that what was

done no longer matters. I do not deny, minimize, or

make excuses for

what was done. In fact, I may see what the person who

has harmed did even

more vividly and have stronger feelings against it.

3.The intention to forgive sets two things in motion:

l. I have come to

understand that I can learn from my suffering; 2. I am

willing to

acknowledge that you are no less and no more deserving

of love than I am.

For the rational mind, these two things are crazy. How

can someone who

may be evil be as deserving of love as someone who is

good? There is,

however, good evidence that the person who has harmed

may well not be able

to feel love, or to feel at all. Here, though, is

where we have to take

particular care in our experiential description of

forgiveness. Because

those who do serious harm often do not feel love and

do not feel, there

is a strong tendency these days to, in effect, condone

their actions by

saying that they acted out of a pathology, a

psychological illness. We

will look more closely into this form of condoning in

a moment.

 

D.The Incubaton Period in Forgivness

l. The first entry into forgiveness often seems way

beyond us. We know

we need to be able to forget about the matter some.

Not completely, but

enough so that it is not on our mind every moment. We

also know that we

have to come to be able to not actively wish the other

person harm.

And, we have to be able to feel we can be patient with

ourselves. Waiting

is crucial in forgiveness. Events have to settle, so

that we can return

to them in a different way.

2.Allowing events to settle also means that they can

move from the head

to the heart. This is extremely important because the

act of

forgiveness can only take place from here. It is,

however, not just a feeling. It

is a spiritual act, the healing power of love. It

cannot be muddled up

with judgment concerning who is right and who is

wrong. False

forgiveness does not bring healing. It adds to the

original injury. It

intensifies the negative bond we have with the person

that has harmed us.

 

E.Responsibility and The Forgiveness Process

1.The process gets going when a new understanding of

responsibility

arises. We cannot forgive as long as all we see are

the failings and

faults of others. We have to first own up to who we

are. This is the entry

into the initiation process, for forgiveness begins in

self-knowledge.

2.Right here, however, is where we, these days, can

get off the track.

Because we can come to the point of understanding that

those who have

harmed us lack empathy, probably lack an inner sense

of security,

probably were brought up without love or

understanding, and were themselves

harmed by violence, hatred, and fear, it may seem that

the person is not

to blame for what happened. This is the kind of

prevalent condoning

that goes on in a superficially psychological culture.

3.The superficially psychological culture does not

recognize how choice

works. There are innumerable choice points in life,

moments when we

know, without question, that we are choosing between

treating someone with

care and harming them. When we choose harm, we also

dull ourselves a

little bit. And, unless some kind of conscious work

goes on to undo this

dulling, it will work at making us unconscious of our

actions. When

this happens, as it does, does this mean that such a

person is

psychologically ill and not responsible? Regardless of

how we were treated in our

upbringing – whether our parents were consistently

loving or not, the

conscious choices we make in each moment are the

crucial factor. People

who do harm cannot be condoned for their actions by

saying: it was

their shadow side; they are stuck at a schizoid level;

they are

unintegrated; they are sociopathic; they were harmed

by their parents and are

passing the pathology down the family line. It is

highly arguable, though,

that people who do harm to others are unconscious of

what they are

doing. The sadistic side of a person is satisfied only

when they can see

exactly what they are doing and witness the effect of

their behavior on

another. Or, they feel the feeling of

self-righteousness for what they

have done, if not sadism.

4.When we condone what someone has done through the

available

superficial psychological culture, then we are

colluding with the perpetrators.

We play into the notion that their behavior was

inevitable, stemming

from a history that cannot be changed. But, this

superficial

psychologizing misses the fact that, unless one is

genuinely psychotic or

psychopathic, one can witness what one does and its

effects. We remain

responsible for our actions, whoever our parents were

and what they did.

5.We need some other framework for speaking of why

people do harm to

others than that given by the superficial

psychological culture. In

pervious times, the framework was sin. We cannot

re-introduce that framework

without a complete re-visioning of sin because the

arbiters of what

counts as sin – the clergy, have used this category to

their own purposes;

organized religion has used the notion of sin to

commit its own sins

without shame. The additional difficulty is that it is

now completely

possible to commit our sins without being held

accountable.

6.Regardless of the psychological circumstances,

harming others carries

a moral element. It is an act of the individual spirit

against the

spirit. That is what is central here -–to recognize

that we can use the

most central aspect of our being against another. That

is the central harm

of harming others; it is not the physical hurt, the

embarrassment, not

even the abuse per se. It is that we use our spirit to

commit harm to

another. If doing harm did not have this level to it,

then it would all

be a matter of psychological imbalance. It is not.

Thus, in a new,

theological psychology, it would be important to be

able to work out how

acts of harm toward others can be healed in only two

ways: 1.

Forgiveness; 2. And/or acknowledgment by the

wrongdoer, followed by remorse,

reparation, and petitions for forgiveness. It must be

emphasized strongly,

however, that for healing to occur, only the first,

that is forgiveness

is needed. The second contains all sorts of matter

that have to be

completely re-visioned; we need a new, theological

psychology of remorse,

of reparation, of petition and atonement. For example,

remorse can be

healthy, but it is often unhealthy because it brings

guilt and shame

rather than an awareness of the person who they

harmed. Instead it gets

stuck at the level of oneself.

7.What is creative responsibility?

 

F.What Forgiveness Does

1.A description of the experience: “It was an absolute

release. It was

forgiveness. I experienced it like a liquid feeling

that embalmed me,

like grace pouring over me. You can’t make that

happen. I felt like I

was being anointed.

I’m able to see that I learned a lot…..I felt a real

advance of my soul

and I thought that if I die tomorrow, I have resolved

this one."

2.The opposite of forgiveness is self-destructiveness.

This person

says:

“For me, being in a state of unforgiveness was very

self-destructive.

It made me want to destroy my own life. It was a

crisis really that

threw me head-long into despair and I was in that

space for five or six

years. I couldn’t go on like that. In that time, I got

diabetes. I’d given

up hope. The opposite of forgiveness for me is

self-destructiveness."

"I have become sharper than I was. I can be very

analytical, almost

harsh. I’m no longer idealizing nor am I projecting

pain outwards and

blaming. ….At a daily level, if something irritates

me, I am not as

forgiving. Having experienced forgiveness does not

mean I have ceased to be

judgemental!”

3.Forgiveness brings us into life and we realize that

we do not come

into this world entitled to anything. At the very

heart of forgiveness is

an inability to forgive life itself for not giving us

what we think we

deserve. Whatever we receive beyond life itself is a

luxury. We give up

the fantasy that we can order the world to be as we

would like it; we

find the means within ourselves to make up for what is

lacking, rather

than blaming others. When we are not forgiving life

for not giving us

what we want, we open up a sense of emptiness,

deprivation, leading into

depression.

4.The growth movement concept --- where you are

expected to make life

as you want it through the power of affirmations,

visualizations,

expecting mysterious changes through someone offering

those possibilities is

very egocentric.

 

G.Giving up is not Surrendering

1.The art part of forgiveness is to give up our

fantasies of what life

is supposed to be without surrendering ourselves to

whatever comes to

us in life. How to do this? What is the practice?

a)Withdraw your attention from the person who has hurt

you and return

it to yourself and whoever else is in your care;

b)Take your attention from the past and bring it into

the present

moment.

c)Give up the illusion that your suffering will

ultimately affect the

person who has harmed you and teach any meaningful

lesson to that

person; abandon that person to his/her own fate and

abandon the desire to

change that fate.

2.Giving up is more a certain kind of forgetting. For

many, this

forgetting actually has to precede forgiveness.

Forgetting here does not mean

never remembering or pretending nothing happened. It

means living

without those events being in your mind almost every

second. This forgetting

process prepares the ground for giving up our

fantasies of what life is

supposed to be. This forgetting means we can wake up

and not be

immediately hounded by what happened to us; sometimes

going an hour or a week

without them; being relatively secure that painful

memories won’t

intrude; being able to go to sleep. This kind of

forgetting allows a

psychological scab to form over an open emotional

wound, a healthy thing. It

is healthy because it restores our senses, which are

quite disturbed

when we are harmed physically or emotionally or

psychologically. And it

allows the return of a capacity of attention to the

world.

 

H.The Central Core of Forgiveness

1.Forgiveness does not involve condoning,

trivializing, minimizing,

ignoring, or pretending to forget what has been done.

It does not withdraw

blame. It does, however, make us more clear that we

cannot absent

ourselves from the events that happened. Anger is not

necessarily given up,

but vengeance is. We often talk about forgiveness in

such a way that it

sounds like we are giving something away when we

forgive or that we

accept something when someone forgives us. Forgiveness

does not take

anything away; it restores us to our spirit, from

which we have become

unbound.

When our spirit is again with us, we realize something

concerning the

one who has harmed us: You are the same as me. This

sameness is a

sameness in spirit only. We are both embodied

spirit-beings. You are the same

in your unchanging spirit as I am in my unchanging

spirit. As a

spirit-being you have the same fears of suffering

loss, the same need for

respect, the same yearning for acceptance and love.

Our connections with

others, paradoxically, are more close the less

personal they are. As long

as my connection with one who has harmed me is wholly

personal --- if I

think I am supposed to love this person because he or

she is a parent,

a lover, a wife, husband, friend, employer who has

harmed me, then I am

bound to that person. And, as long as I cannot

relinquish the anger,

the rage, the memories, then I am negatively bound to

this person. And,

if I wholly forget what has happened, it will come out

in a bodily way,

a symptom. Forgiveness is the extraordinary capacity

to be close to

another, to one who has harmed us because it is a

closeness of spirit.

 

By Robert Sardello and Cheryl Sanders

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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