FORGIVENESS – DivorceDish

Forgiveness assumptions

Humans are forgiving machines. We all forgive easily and often.

Forgiveness is an ancient concept that relates to expiation of wrongdoing. We are not talking here about debt forgiveness or other meanings of the term. Also, giving forgiveness also does not mean you must enter into a relationship with the forgiven.

Our issues around forgiveness usually focus on a very small group of people or entities to whom we deny our forgiveness (by ‘entities’ I mean groups, authority figures, government, big corporations, etc.).

Denial of forgiveness is an act of the will that must be regularly reinforced – it takes energy!

Why do we deny forgiveness?

It gives a feeling of power over another.

It allows us to avoid embarrassment over our behavior around an incident.

Because a bad person needs to be kept at arm’s length (anger is fueled by the denial).

Because we all have an ethical part of us that cries out for justice. Withholding forgiveness is sometimes our only way to deliver some justice to a perpetrator.

It would be dangerous to enter into relationship with that person (personal safety).

Because we feel incapable of ever forgiving such terrible behavior. That mountain is too high to climb.

Why do we deny forgiveness? – deeper scoop

Allows us to adopt the role of victim in the emotional sense of that word.

Denial of forgiveness is a shield against very unwanted or intolerable feelings (around what has been lost, our weakness or shame in allowing it to happen, or many other feelings).

The messages created by the terrible behavior serve to justify who I am or how I act.

Consequences of denying forgiveness

Keeps us emotionally tethered to the age when the offense took place.
Keeps us out of relationship with the person (or with similar people, or with humanity in general).
Keeps certain feelings and self-knowledge/truth hidden away.
Drags down our health and our spirit.

So what is forgiveness really?

Feeling ALL my feelings around an event or person.
Immersion in/drowning in/playing out each feeling until I am done with it/own it/transform it/learn/grow.
Consciously acting in an opposite manner to the messages created in me by the other’s terrible behavior.
Being a victim in the emotional sense is a shield against certain feelings and this shield must be lowered to complete the above.

“Forgiveness is like setting a prisoner free and then realizing, the prisoner was you” Lewis B. Smedes

Step by step method

Meditate on the actions of the unforgiven in my life until I realize that even though they impacted me greatly, their actions had nothing whatsoever to do with me. Their actions were entirely about them and where they were at.
Allow the tidal wave of feelings to drown me. Resolve to stay drowned. (Another way to do this: expand each feeling, making it bigger and bigger inside you until it pops.) Repeat until I know I am done. Do not wallow in any feeling just for the sake (or love) of self-punishment.
Search for deeper feelings, like rejection, unworthiness, fear or helplessness, that I may be resistant to accepting. Go to step 2.
Meditate on the messages I received from the unforgiven by their behavior. Act in conscious opposition to those messages (for example, if someone’s perpetration resulted in my silence, my opposite action is to speak up or to refuse to be silenced).
Ho’oponopono is the Hawaiian practice of forgiveness. It is very powerful and deepening if you can practice it from a deeply genuine and sincere place. An easy guide to Ho’oponopono here: http://www.laughteronlineuniversity.com/practice-hooponopono-four-simple-steps/

I conclude ‘forgiveness’ is something I do routinely. But for a very few people or groups there is a mechanism I use to keep hard-to-take feelings away from me and a mechanism where I can take a lousy situation and use it to create anger/power that I can use as fuel in my life, which I call ‘denial of forgiveness’.

Perhaps a better phrase than “denial of forgiveness” is something else reflecting what I am really doing. To paraphrase Jack Kornfield’s definition of forgiveness: “finally giving up all hope for a better past.” For me, it boils down to moving from resisting who I am and what has happened, to accepting everything that has happened, while putting my energy into preventing it from ever happening again (rather than putting my energy into denial of forgiveness).

Another way to work with forgiveness is to look at my feelings around wanting to forgive the other person, then look at my feelings around resisting forgiving them and then feel how it feels to both want to forgive AND resist forgiving them at the same time. Once I can hold both of those at the same time, the deeper work is to realize both the wanting and the resisting are my creations. Once I let go of those creations, I can shift from being stuck to looking at: What relationship do I really want with this person or entity?

As a final option for you: Forgiveness is more straight forward when we realize that the True Self cannot be harmed. (The 3 Temptations).

MARITAL CHOICES

How people choose their first partner (I don’t think all of these apply in later life):

Men choose women who are sexy, women choose men who will be successful*
We look for someone who will nurture and love us the way our parents taught us to receive love and nurturing**
We look for a suitable partner to complement and assist us in taking on the challenges of life, who will be a good parent to our children
Unconsciously, we look for someone who will wound us the way we were wounded as a child***
Our souls crave growth. So we choose a partner whose needs we CANNOT meet without growing in some major way. (now you see why marriage is such a diabolical, and delightful, prospect!)
We choose a partner we believe we can experience true love with
We look for a partner with whom, and in whom, we can experience the Divine

* And studies show the opposite is also true (as in, women choose men who are sexy and men choose women who will be successful)

** Search ‘the five love languages’ to understand how you were taught

*** We do this so we can ‘repeat the trauma of our childhood in the drama of our relationships’ and thereby search until we find a way out, rescuing our inner child in the process. This is one of the ways our deepest wounds magnetize us to each other. No wonder couples fight!

“Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
Leonard Cohen