I’m trying to remember all the quips I’ve heard about forgiveness over my years as a healer and patient—
“Holding something against another is like letting them live rent free in your home.”
“Why forgive when the one who’s offended has not apologized let alone asked for forgiveness.”
“Forgive because it is the spiritual thing to do.”
“When you wonder how to proceed, ask yourself if you’d be able to look yourself in the mirror ten years from now and still wink.”
Somewhere along my way, I don’t remember when, I dropped any ambitions I had about forgiving people. I found it to be a bit of useless pursuit, what might be kin to trying to bring back dead loved ones. I think it was even slightly damaging because if I had leaped to forgiveness before it had naturally evolved, I would take the negative feelings out on myself instead of the one who I felt them about.
It was the best move I could have made—aborting the forgiveness project. I no longer held myself to be “somewhere I wasn’t” and I could contend with the raw, honest, and sometimes spiritually stigmatized feelings like anger and even rage.
It wasn’t long before taking Nature’s way on forgiveness—which is not to push—that life got really sane. I wasn’t trying to be someone I wasn’t. I may have looked “less evolved” or even less kind, but at least I was one person inside.
Then, it wasn’t long before it started, the spontaneous tears of forgiveness for ex-boyfriends, parents, and friends would periodically push up through the least unexpected moments, days when I’d just be walking along, sun shining, and pow!!—I’d find my eyes welled-up, heart flooded open, and an uncommon expansive…you guessed it…sense of forgiveness for that person. Wasn’t even looking for it.
I still have a ways to go, but I gotta’ admit, I like myself a lot more when I’m not racing ahead of my own nature.
Enjoy more by watching today’s episode of The Sahius.
