This is Part 1 in a series on forgiveness. Today, I will tackle what forgiveness is and start to talk about why to forgive. I hope you will learn something valuable and encouraging from this series that causes you to not only rethink the practice of forgiveness but to consider making forgiveness a vital part of your daily, even hourly routine.
Most people don't understand the word "forgiveness." It doesn't mean to pardon, to give amnesty, nor does it mean to forget. It means “to give as before.”
And the thing you are giving is love. Love is meant to flow out of you freely, and if it doesn't flow out of you freely and naturally, it has to go in other directions. If you struggle with freedom in your life, you may need to work on forgiveness.
Forgiveness is being able to love people regardless of whom they are or how they behaved. Forgiveness doesn’t require atonement or an apology. You don't have to like someone in order to forgive. Like is a preference. Love is bigger than liking people. It's about opening your heart with the out flow valve.
We often erroneously think forgiveness is about letting someone’s love, personality, behavior or attention in. Nope.
Frustrated love is a dis-ease. It manifests physically as all kinds of things: sometimes as malady. It's not worth it to withhold our love.
This is why they say unforgiveness is like swallowing the poison and expecting the other person to die. If you can't let love flow out, you hurt yourself.
Other people may not deserve your attention, your time, your money or your mind. They may not deserve the opportunity to reach your heart through the "in" valve. But if you can say, "I love you as I love and honor all mankind. I love you as a living, human organism full of hope that wherever you are, even if I can't see it, you are expressing some sort of microscopic evolution for humanity. This evolution may even be my own having been exposed to you and henceforth able to allow my love to flow to you regardless of your behavior toward me," well, you've opened yourself up to receiving love on a cosmic level, to the ultimate fueling station of the influx of love from the kind of people worthy of a self-loving, self-honoring human being.
You don't have to dwell on a person’s wrongdoing or rightdoing to automatically send or express love when you think of them. And that is probably the most misunderstood crux of forgiveness. It's letting go of that obsessive, repulsive and compulsive need to fixate on how someone behaved in the past or how to judge or compartmentalize them, and just allow yourself to feel love flowing in a natural pattern as a human or any living being enters your mind.
The hardest person to forgive is yourself. When you master forgiveness for yourself, you will master forgiveness for all others. Often we hold anger or resentment for others because we haven’t acknowledged the forgiveness for ourselves for allowing them to hurt us. We are afraid that if we forgive ourselves, we will somehow be vulnerable and allow others to hurt us again. In fact, loving ourselves makes us more invulnerable and more apt to hold ourselves to a higher standard. Punishing ourselves with unforgiveness is what creates the low self-esteem that leads to vulnerability.
The bottom line is that it doesn't matter if anyone deserves love. You deserve to be able to love unconditionally whenever you choose. This is the ultimate freedom.
If you truly want to be free, release the love you are holding within. Let it flow. Every other area of your life will naturally improve with the daily practice of forgiveness.
The world deserves your shining example.
So show it to them!
I saw a quote somewhere, I think Anne Lamott sharedit but it isn't hers - forgiveness is giving up any chance for a different past.
When people were pissing me off and doing hateful things during the Covoodoo fest, I just forgave them instantly and that part went away. Doesn't mean I trust them, though; they can go hoe their own rows without me unless they want to engage in a little self-awareness. But that's between them and their God, not me.
Love, live and forgive.