I’ve always felt that we don’t forgive other for their sake, but for ours; just like we hurt mostly ourselves with our anger. Terri has written a beautiful post on this.
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I think forgiveness is necessary not because the other person deserves it, but because WE do. So many people destroy their lives and their health because they refuse to let go of past hurts. Accumulated bitternes and anger inside the psyche are catastrophic. Unfortunately I had been tormented by this situation myself for the first 4 decades of my life. In the end, a friend recommended a gem of a book called Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tippin. It came with exercises I had to do which I wound up doing with my spirit screaming otherwise and my eyes streaming with tears but I pressed on and then stepped back and watched as miracles happened. Being safely on the other side now, I would recommend it to anyone who has problems forgiving. It is the only thing that can give people peace and change lives radically.
A wonderful way of putting it!
Thanks for the book recommendation. If you ever want to share your experience on a guest post, I’d love to host it! 🙂
Thank you for sharing this, Nicholas, and for giving me an opportunity to check out Terri’s blog. 🙂
Aw, that’s so sweet of you. Thanks! 🙂
Forgiveness is hard not because somebody once upon a time had hurt us physically or emotionally. It is difficult because someone broke the unwritten laws of our society.The laws that we all have learned to live by. We cannot accept that this someone can live outside the grid (We even might be jealous of him being able to do it).
We forgive when the violator is so powerful that we cannot touch him and consequently these society’s laws change or become obsolete.
Hi George, and welcome. It’s great to see you here!
In my experience, anger stems from pain. When someone hurts us, we get angry. It all probably started back when animals attacked us and we needed the adrenaline to fight or flee, but the mind makes no distinction between physical and emotional pain, reacting the same way with both.
What I’m pointing out is that, by holding on to our pain and anger, the only person we end up hurting is ourself. We don’t really hurt the object of our anger, but do poison our body and soul. Because of the way our body influences our feelings (according to NLP, anyway), this is a vicious circle: the more we hurt, the tighter our muscles contract and the more toxins we release, until we get panic attacks and stress ourselves to an early grave.
Forgiveness is the only way to break this downward spiral. That’s what people should realize: by holding on to their anger, they allow the person who hurt them once, to do so on a permanent basis. Why give them such a tremendous power over us? *That* is, to me, the greatest power of forgiveness: the right to reclaim our health (physical and emotional) from our tormentors.
That’s a philosophy presented in an excellent way in your Pearseus series!
Aw, that’s so sweet of you to say! I do know it’s a huge theme in Pearseus, but I can only hope to have done it justice.