What Forgiveness Really Means
I’ve always had trouble with the issues surrounding forgiveness. Why would I ever forgive the people who’ve wronged me, or done me terrible harm? Like the man who assaulted me in Bali, or my ex-husband, or my business partner, who tried to discredit me and stole tens of thousands of dollars from me. The list could go on, but the details aren’t important. You have your own list of egregious wrongs, I'm sure. Throughout our lives, great wisdom always whispers, “forgive” in our ears. We often choose to ignore it, because we prefer to hold on to our pain. Every spiritual and religious manifesto speaks of forgiveness and its importance in our growth and soul development. It's an extremely powerful force, if you will allow it into your life, however, you will need to let some things go, which may be so embedded in you, that you're literally holding on to them, whether subconsciously, or consciously.
My resistance to this healing has come from a lifelong, and common misunderstanding of the word. Forgiveness has always implied to me “acceptance”, but how could I accept these hurtful and malicious others have committed? How can I say, “that’s okay”. The truth is, forgiveness is not about saying, “what you did to me was okay”. It’s about releasing the negative energy which you are affected by when you don’t express forgiveness. The older you get, the heavier that burden becomes. In childhood, perhaps bullies harassed you in grade school. Maybe a parent or step parent was neglectful or abusive. As young adults, a romantic relationship may spur and hurtful things are said, and hurtful things done. As the years progress, there may be issues with co-workers, or our government, or neighbors, in-laws etc. As you grow older, you will not only grow heavier, but you will attract heaviness and negativity. That pebble of hurt inside of you will become a boulder and will chip away at your natural joy and peace.
Forgiveness is a release of this hurt, anger, and negative emotion. It clears the space inside of your heart for a positive flow of blessings. Because the more space you hold for pain, the less space you have for joy.
I met a spiritual teacher, Zachary Owen Heidemann, from Enhance Life Quality, at Karmafest and he offered guidance in understanding forgiveness. These are his words:
"Forgiveness is is one of my favorite subjects. I love forgiveness. In a way, all forms of creation are forgiveness. They are creative energy that was given forward or created into the world. It is the natural flow and order of everything. To not forgive is like closing off our heart, it is painful to both us and those who would receive our love or forgiveness. One of the most powerful truths shared with me recently is the belief that everything that is wrong with the world, comes from a lack of love. from closing off the heart. Forgiveness is the opposite of closing the heart, it is opening the heart. This can be a very difficult process when we have been wounded or cannot trust someone we are forgiving. But the important thing to remember is that everything playing out on the silver screen of creation all around us, is a placeholder and a reflection of a relationship that is occurring deep inside of us. Whatever we cannot forgive in another is a sign to what we need to be forgiving in and with ourselves first.
Forgiveness doesn't mean bad behavior is OK. Quite contrary, forgiveness often comes with healthy boundaries that say "this was not OK, and it will never be allowed to happen again", which is another reason why withholding forgiveness only hurts ourselves and our world, because these healthy boundaries never get created, and in their place are unhealthy boundaries and unhealthy or unhealed relationships that can't heal without the boundaries. We have to remove the arrow before the wound can heal, and removing the arrow gently but firmly without a doubt saying the healthy boundary is the arrow not being inside of me is the process of forgiveness.
I liked when Buddha would teach "One who is shot with an arrow may beat his chest in anger and sorrow, lament and shout how unfair it is to be shot with an arrow, rushing around with the arrow inside him, while another who is shot with an arrow may simply accept it and immediately begin to remove the arrow and apply healing methods. Who do you think suffers more?" and of course all the monks would agree that the one who is angry and shouting and running around screaming how unfair everything is actually suffers far more than the one who accepts, and sets right to the task of removing the arrow and healing the wound.
To me, forgiveness is much like this process of removing the arrows that wound our heart when we leave it open so that a powerful wholesome unconditional love may pour out through ourselves and into our world, healing ourselves, all those who receive our love and our world and creating a better place to be.
It is painful to not forgive, just as it is painful to not allow ourselves to love fully for whatever silly reasons we decide to close and protect our heart. To me one of the greatest enlightening realizations is the truth that closing the heart off does not ever actually protect it from pain, we just have the misconception it somehow protects us, but in reality we suffer just as much if not more pain from closing off our hearts, because not only do we suffer from not giving our love, but others suffer from not receiving our love and we all suffer from not reciprocating the love in wholesome and sustainable ways.
There is no denying it can be and often is a lot of work. and some of it is super hard. but with the right mindset, the proper alignment of our free will and perception, we can choose and genuinely believe and experience the truth that the work is play, and enjoyable too. play becomes work as work becomes play, pain becomes pleasure as pleasure becomes pain, and we learn to skillfully embrace all of our challenges as blessings as well, everything starts really shifting into place and into reality our dreams we do create."
Zachary Owen Heidemann
If you have suffered from serious trauma, it may be beneficial to you to search out some assistance from a healer or spiritual guide to start the process. The release itself is very powerful and letting go of the trapped emotions surrounding trauma may sometimes mean reliving it.
If you feel comfortable trying some meditations on your own, I love a a powerful ceremony shared with me, called Golden Alter Release. It combines many healing modalities, including imaging, and color therapy, and can be found in a book titled "Hyperspace Helper", by Janet and Stewart Swerdlow. Here is a link to purchase the book online: https://www.amazon.com/Hyperspace-Helper-User-Friendly-Guide/dp/097401441.
It's worth every penny in my opinion. There are also many guided meditations on Youtube which can be easily accessed for free. Take a moment and consider what internal ( and subsequently external, I promise!) life would look and feel like were you to let go of some of that pain and anger, and empty that space of the heaviness.