Forgiveness

I’ve been doing the Course in Miracles for a few months now, and so have some of my friends. A lot of the work is about forgiveness. And we've been hearing about it on Sundays lately.

Did I hear a groan? A scream “No!” from somebody?

Forgiveness is Not Condoning Bad Behavior

If you’ve done forgiveness work before, you probably know that forgiveness does NOT mean condoning bad behavior or staying in a bad situation such as domestic abuse. If you are in that situation, get help. If you don’t know where, in the USA, dial 211 on your phone for resources.

You Mean I'm Still Not Done?

When doing a forgiveness practice recently, I found myself forgiving my x-husband and myself - for the umpteenth time - for it not working out. And I found myself asking “Really? Still?! It’s been more than 20 years! WHEN will I be done with this?”

And then I had an image of that resentment as a ball and chain around my ankle. A weight I had been dragging around. Even though it doesn’t weigh a fraction of what it did 20 years ago, it’s still there: invisible, weighty, dragging me down from time to time. Really? Still? After all the work I’ve done on this? Can I just be done with it?

I felt the full truth of it: For me, forgiveness is the opposite of holding on. It’s the opposite of holding a grudge. It’s giving up the idea that the past can be better than it was.

Wow. What do I do with that?

It happened. It was not fun. I was miserable. I was unable to communicate, no matter how many ways I tried, in any way to make things better. At one point I told a friend that it was as though we sat across from one another, but I was blind and he was deaf. He could not hear a word I said. I could not see that he was using sign language. And for whatever reason, touch was not used as an alternative.

So that’s how it was. I cannot go back and change that. I cannot use the tools I have learned since then to go back and fix anything or make it right. I can’t do a thing about it. That’s the way it happened. That’s the first step - acceptance. What happened, happened. It’s done.

The next step for me: What do I want to do about it?

If you’re lucky, you sit down with yourself, by yourself, and ask yourself that question. And if you can’t answer it, you talk to someone who can help you get clarity. I didn’t do that. My inner voice kept telling me to go spend a month away. Had I done that, I might have gained some much-needed perspective. And I might have seen another way. At the least, I would know more clearly what I wanted.

The third step for me is the hardest - letting go

Somewhere, someone explained an easy way to let go. Imagine that you are holding a pen in your hand. If I ask you to drop it, you need to open your hand and let it go. Gravity will take it from your hand. Of course, some things seem to be stuck to me with Velcro.

So here’s another way to do it is this: Hold your hand, palm up, with the  pen in your fist. Now open your hand. That is also letting go. It’s still there. But having looked at it, accepted that it is there in my palm, I am no longer holding on to it. It rests there. And when I am ready, I can turn my hand over and let it drop. Or I can set it down gently. The pen doesn’t go away, but it’s no longer occupying my fist, making my hand unavailable for anything else. That is how forgiving someone frees myself.

And if I find that pen in my hand again later, it’s easier each time to open my hand and set it down.
I like that.

How Do You Know When You've Forgiven Someone?

Our Rev. Edward says you know you've forgiven someone when you grant them safe passage through your mind. Check his blog article on Kindness Is My Religion.

To me, it feels like floating on the river's current instead of fighting it. I have more energy, and I have a much better time while I'm there! I trust that the river knows what it's doing.

 

 Can't Forgive Yourself?

If you have trouble forgiving yourself, here’s an article and clip from Good Will Hunting that you might enjoy.

How About You?

Have you forgiven and moved on from something that held you back?