This Tuesday evening, the moderator chose the topic, "Forgiveness";list 5 ways/incidents in which you forgive yourself and list 5 ways/incidents in which you forgive others. One may or may not share these with the group.
On Thursday afternoon, the moderator chose a quote from the book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz:
"Be Impeccable With Your Word.
When you hear an opinion and believe it, you make an agreement and it becomes part of your belief system. The only thing that can break this agreement is to make a new one based on truth. Only the truth has the power to set you free."
Peace and Love
13 comments:
With enough time and perhaps space, almost anything can be forgiven. Oh, and I'm not telling :-)
Hi Marc,
Thanks for your input here.
Forgiveness is for giving.
Forgivensess begins, I believe, with acceptance. Realising that the actions that offended you were not personal. Forgiveness allows us to reclaim our personal power. I once heard someone say that not forgiving someone is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. It eats away at you and builds resentment, anger, pain... Forgiveness isn't really for the other person, it's for YOU. I have managed to forgive someone of something I didn't think was forgiveable, or even something that I could forget. Then I realised that what had happened wasn't because of me. I had the power to free myself and not live my life as an open wound. I could let it go, because even though this had happened, I was not going to allow it to change me as a loving person.
T
Good point Tanya. Once we learn to accept and forgive those things which hurt or offended us, they can be turned around and used as powerful tools. I don't mean to use against someone else but to turn them around and use those things in a creative and passionate way to make something beautiful, something wonderful out of those lessons. Of course that cant hap[pen until once we do forgive and accept those things.
Also, you're absolutely right about our anger and not forgiving someone often hurts us more than it hurts anyone else.
Tanya,
Thankyou for ALL you have shared with me.
I love forgiveness successes because it inspires me to keep doing it.
On my llst....I have myself as someone I need to forgive in various scenarios.
Either way....forgiveness ie for giving and I agree with you and Marc that it is to ourselves that we are giving.
When I take the time to sit, and comtemplate and in my minds eye forgive people in my past....I get a ruxh of energy come back to me.
I have to say I dont know for sure if I ever forgave or just now that I have a full life didnt remember to forgive until now. I had something happen when I was 19 and I should be forgiving myself for stepping into that car with this friend. But I think I will see about doing so ten years later. I should say eleven years down the road. Its hard to forgive your friends for what happened but sometimes you have and never talk to them again.
I am with Joy there. It took me about 6 years to come to a place of forgiveness for one person and I am still working, 20 years down the road, on forgiving my mother. I understand her better, but the forgiveness part of that equation is proving difficult.
And yes, like Joy says, it is a private thing. Sometimes we can forgive in an instant. Sometimes it takes much much longer.
This is so relevant for me right now. We need to forgive ourselves first before we can forgive others. It's not easy but daily practice helps.
Well, forgiveness is an interesting thing...
I am a big believer in apologizing and atonement. About ten years ago I went to everybody I knew and anything...that had weighed on me I apologized...no one in my life was left out (I was a crazy teen) and the thing I learned is...that atonement is for the one who is apologizing...the people I apologized too didn't seem to even notice.And then even after I apologized...some of these same folks would make cracks about the very thing I had apologized about!
It was a very humbling situation for me...because I thought if I apologized I was forgiven...NO I had forgiven MYSELF...other peoples journeys and feelings are not for us to control.
So even if you forgive yourself, be prepared to face others who may not be going at the same speed as you.
As for forgiving...yes, I know it is important. I can not think of many people I haven't forgiven or situations I have made peace with or resolved.
There is one...where I was terribly violated in the past year. A stalker (Healing Room knows their identity) and it has been awful ordeal...scary and depressing...and very difficult to consider to forgive.
But on the other hand..I have mostly laughed at this stalker now and have moved on from feeling anger. It was the anger that would get to me.
I also think there is a slight nuance between forgiving and still knowing right from wrong. It is important to not be so insipid that we forgive and then let go of our own code of morals.
It is the natural human emotion for "pay back" and "revenge" and for rejecting assholes in the world.
We can forgive and also protect ourselves from assholes....and admit that they stille xist in the world but we will rise above or not let them get the real heart of us.
Candy Minx you said that so much better than I could have if I would have had that thought. It makes lots of sense. I still have people throwing stuff I did in my face when I was teen even now I am 30 years old. I have done my time with these people but they just dont want to forgive. Well some day maybe they will. Hope things get better with that stalker thing.
THR I wonder what that guy would do if I could find him and say I am sorry and forgive him for what he did to me when I was 19. I wonder if he would fall off his chair. I dont know because I dont know where him and his family are right now so I cant but I can forgive him in my heart and move on with the rest of my life. Sometimes that is how it works. It sucks but that is life sometimes.
Speaking of....
This is nice to see, huh?
Which brings up another point also. It is certainly much easier to forgive others when they have apologized and especially when they have somehow made it right.
Same for ourselves. When we know that we have done whatever we can to correct our own wrongs and that we are doing everything we can to not cause harm, it certainly leaves as much room as possible for forgiveness.
Hi Marc,
Even if Bush apologises and I feel forgiveness it doesn't mean I agree with him or would vote for him (if I could). It means that I don't carry around emotional poison in myself about him.
I actually have done very little apologising or asking for forgiveness in this work. For me, its more about letting go of habits of thought and ingrained patterns of beliefs that go against myself. Its very internal work.
In my current close relationships I try and apologise as soon as I notice the poison come out of myself. and then let it go completely.
Post a Comment