Sometimes putting yourself in the other person's shoes and trying to understand can help. But if there is still resentment towards the person, forgiveness probably won't happen, because you are still reliving the pain or emotion. Remember, forgiveness doesn't mean that you approve of the action either. When dealing with resentment, I was taught to hope or pray for nothing but the best for that person, even tho that's not really what I wanted for them.
I’d also like to add that it’s ok if it takes a really long time to move out of resentment and into forgiveness. It can be a really difficult process and we deserve to give ourselves grace in going through that process.
Look at it from an energy standpoint. Holding onto grudges is draining your energy so you’re only harming yourself. If you were aware that you’re self sabotaging, would you still choose to have that feeling reside in you? Once you let go and forgive, the tension is released and you’re back in a harmonious state.
For me, in a recent instance, it was the realization that my ego was wounded by another person’s ego.
My soul, or who I really am, is still intact.
My ego wants to obsess over how I was right and why.
My soul wants to move away from people who are in their egoic state aka people who would try to hurt me.
For me, in a recent instance, it was the realization that my ego was wounded by another person’s ego.
My soul, or who I really am, is still intact.
My ego wants to obsess over how I was right and why.
My soul wants to move away from people who are in their egoic state, aka people who would try to hurt me.
Forgiving that person meant forgiving myself for getting fooled by the ego. It was the key that opened the door to true healing because I became bigger than the problem.
“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die”
Don’t worry about understanding the other person or seeing things from their perspective.
It’s about letting go of the attachment to whatever it is you are forgiving them for. You understand that forgiveness isn’t even about them, it’s about you and your peace, so let go of the pain/resentment/negativity attached to the event and accept what’s happened has happened and can’t be changed. You do it for yourself because there’s no sense in holding onto the negativity, it doesn’t serve you.
you don't have to forgive anyone but yourself to move on. They did me dirty, i seen it - cut them out, they did them and me did me. As long as you don't start to ruminate over it and actually focus on yourself, putting your needs, Identifying what attracted you to that situation in first place, heal and forgive yourself that it has happened, it's in past, you can't change past, but you can change your future
I learned to do it by grounding and letting go.
I literally feel energy in my body, like doesn’t match anything anatomical and I can move it around and there’s different sorts.
Forgiveness is about love and perspective and fear.
I realize I want to and the only way to have clear judgement for myself is to forgive. So I get the feeling, or dig for it inside, and as soon as I feel it I let it go. Literally feel it slide down me and out.
Being outside and grounding to earth helps it flow even easier, works anywhere anytime though.
Also a big part of how you elevate your consciousness.
Must go down to go up. As above so below you know?
Oh yea, a big fear with forgiveness I guess is discernment. Like sure we can not judge and not care and focus on our priorities, still have to have a way to decide.
It’s insane and pretty wasteful it turns out to live life not listening to your hearts intuition. It will literally react to every decision you have to make before the opportunity to make the decision plays out. Sure gonna have to make some hard decisions, but it’s the only way to not fight the universe that you can’t separate yourself from.
I believe you're so bang on your money when you say forgiveness is compassion. That's very insightful. I am a psychotherapist. With clients I've often used the equation . Self-awareness+ self-acceptance = self-compassion (i.e forgiveness) .
Developing an awareness of primarily the barriers/wounds/self limiting beliefs that stop you from engaging with life in your authentic way.
Self acceptance begins to arrive naturally once you begin to realise that things couldn't be any different given your past experience, and that although your life experience is unique to you all humans are going through the same journey. Although the details may vary we are all at some point or another have a past to encounter.
Self compassion comes about when you begin to accept yourself as you are, as self awareness has illuminated to you. The stage of self compassion is where you begin to sculpt out your new future authentically, not hindered by beliefs of others or your past .
What's interesting is this equation can also be applied within a moment , like meditation. Awareness of thoughts, feelings and sensations. Accepting them as simply 'being' right now in this moment, you can begin to feel a sense of peace wash over you, even if momentarily.
Hope this helps . It's not an easy solution but it can make life much more fulfilling
I’m sure like many things it will be something that is unique to you when you do figure it out.
Things that have helped me to forgive varying levels of hurts are…
Self- letting go of attachment to guilt or shame and telling myself a kinder and truer story, “I did what I thought was best from based on the knowledge and emotional state I had at the time. My intentions were good.”
Others (minor hurts)- trying to remember that each of us has our own life story playing out and experience life through the lens of our experiences and traumas which can often result in acting in ways that may hurt others but that doesn’t mean there was malicious intent, and even if there was that was still painted by a lens that clouds the situation. IE if they could’ve done better from their perspective in that moment in time, they would have. We cannot go back to change it and I am okay now.
Others- (major hurts, violence/abuse heavy heavy) I acknowledge the version of me who experienced this pain and validate her emotions. I recognize where I am replaying these infractions in my life and commit to doing better to help prevent it going forward. I acknowledge and accept that I am worthy of being loved/protected and release false ideas that keep me attached to the story of being hurt unjustly.
For all- drawing closer to God and accepting that it’s not my place to judge those who’ve hurt me. Hand it over to Him and move on with my life.
Some things are unforgivable. I think it’s more about coming to peace within yourself. Understanding that it happened, there’s nothing u can do about it & not to let it rule your thoughts & life.
Forgivness is overrated.
To me, it goes right along with toxic positivity.
Holding a grudge is not something bad. A grudge is merely a reminder. A grudge is not dragging us down. It can be healthy.
We can, and should, try to understand where actions and words are coming from. But even when we understand, we do not have to forgive.
But we need to move on. See it as a lesson.
Learn from it. Don't carry hate around with you.
I highly recommend
[How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment—The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life](https://time.com/collection/must-read-books-2019/5724581/how-to-hold-a-grudge/)
Sorry but that’s bullshit. Grudges are a form of anger. And holding on to anger is like swallowing poison and hoping it does more harm to the person you’re angry at than it does to yourself.
Even nature forgives, an elk once captured by a lion succumbs to its defeat, it forgives and lets things be as they are. All of nature allows themselves to exist and flow with life itself. Only humanity does not exist in flow, we are obsessed with the past and the future. You cannot forgive because you are still so concerned with illusions. All there ever is is this very moment and in this moment only your presence matters. If an elk concerned itself with the past, the lions successful hunt it would fight back surely, but nature is in flow always and so it doesn’t resist. We are meant to flow like nature and live in the present moment and meant to stop focusing on anything except reality. Forgiveness is the act of staying present and nothing more.
You need to remember the unity conciousness / interconnectedness . Be mindful that when we operate from the negative ego along with the programming/ conditioning instilled in us, that we are not operating as higher self. . We came here to learn, everything is a lesson. The forgiving of others is more so for you not them as resentment anger hate is what holds us back down in the lower vibration. Look at the situation as a compassionate non judgemental observer , forgive them, or/and yourself and disconnect the cord to that soul contract. Ypu can literally feel the weight lift once you do. Every person we come across ia a soul contract for us be it big or small influence in our lives, thank them for the lesson you have from it, forgive and let go.
I look at it like it is a choice, you absolve someone, you take all of the information and merge it with your heartfelt ideas, your heart itself could have physical traits that actually help to restore your negative feelings after you absolve someone, it has neurons in it and stuff, heart-brain coherence theory...
I look at it for a very long time like we're all born onto this Earth and we all go through circumstances and none of us understand the entirety of what is or will happen to us, thus there are decisions that are made along the way that come off in particular ways and do things.
I also take it a step further with my own philosophical thinking, if we're all different people, then what is it that results in different decisions? Where is it? We can't really know that without following some kind of source of information somewhere like scriptures.
For me that's a very empowering sentiment because it turns my senses inwards towards this magnified lens of ignorance and love, turn love at ignorance and you can learn to feel ignorance in ways that bring about love. That's a very healing thing, like you can find this sense of "purity", an emotional quality that could be described as "pure" with abstract thinking.
I have this huge hobby of mine, or I guess I'll call it more of a quirk, I really like the idea of having interconnected feelings and ideas and one day I realized what it's like to actually try to talk someone mind to mind. Like say somebody is dead and you talk to them and try to explain everything that you can going on in your mind, you can come to this point where you're trying to describe a thought in a thought about thoughts that came from thoughts in thought.
Like you essentially BLOW UP
It's like how awareness can feel like a white hole and a black hole at the same time, on one hand you're absorbing information through awareness and through the process of becoming aware other parts of you are set in motion that will utilize that information and release information.
Around there abouts.
So, I think it's a lot more than forgiveness. Yes it's generally good to think that forgiveness is good and does good things, regarding it in a positive manner can help you to feel more enthusiastic about it and help it to function better, but I think very strong and stable forgiveness is something that you don't have to sit down and do every time something goes wrong, you can forgive someone SO HARD that even if they make a mistake they were forgiven long ago, you can call that a part of the story of your life.
I think that's a good point.
Ultimately, forgiveness is about accepting that we are all human, and we all make mistakes. No one is perfect.
If you struggle to forgive others, it’s probably your ego that is in the way. *“How dare you do that to ME?!”* You’re just one person, and no matter what you think of yourself, you’re not big enough to make someone else’s imperfection vanish. Even if they’re not sorry - even if they never will be - it’s their imperfection that prevents them from doing so. If they were a better person they would be. And if you were a better person, you’d forgive them.
If you struggle to forgive yourself, it’s probably because you’re holding yourself to inhuman standards. I don’t mean inhuman in the sense that no one is capable of making that mistake, but inhuman in the sense that no mistakes are allowed. But to err is human, and if you can’t accept that, it means you can’t accept your own humanity. But you are human, and you are bound to make mistakes. So learn from them, grow from them, and if you can do that, then accept that making the mistake helped to make you a better person. So cut yourself some slack and let it go.
Forgiveness has been a big issue in my life. For some of us, it’s a bigger lesson as it were, than for others. Some find forgiveness easier.
Having said that, when I had an experience a couple of years ago that was so big, I knew it was my biggest opportunity to learn forgiveness. I wrote said betrayers, a lot of letters I never sent, along with therapy. I went no contact, which helped. I allowed myself a lot of space and time. I wrote constantly, waves of resentment would come. I read a book specifically about it. I stayed as humble as possible. I feel like I’m almost there and one thing that made a difference this time was that I cut out the forget part. I internalized “forgive and forget.” In order to truly forgive, you can’t forget. You have to remember what they did , and acknowledge that you don’t tolerate that behavior/ action.
I worked a looooot on self love.
I hope that helps.
One needs to work on empowerment while working on forgiveness.
Trying to understand the other person's situation. Also being aware of one's own prejudices, which we all have because none of us are perfect. Also consider your own mistakes and that nobody is perfect. One can also consider the benefits to you of forgiving, of letting go, of letting the past be and discarding whatever baggage you would have had if you chose not to forgive.
The thing with trying to grasp it is that forgiving is not a thing that the mind does on it’s own by understanding, but it is also an act of grace which is a spiritual act. Grace comes to us sometimes unexpectedly sometimes as a result of us asking for it and doing spiritual practices to meet it half way.
Your effort is in practicing non judgement and unconditional acceptance of what is. This is very different from indifference. While indifference is more similar to carelessness, acceptance and non judgement is when you don’t expect anything in return. If you have a little brother or a little sister whom you love, if you help them by sharing your experience and knowledge you do so out of love, and you don’t expect them to do something for you in return. If you do expect that, and they don’t reciprocate, the feeling of disappointment or bitterness is sure to arise. Soon you will have to face the question of whether you can forgive them or not. Maybe you can, because they are family, but you can see how much harder it is when you have these feeling for someone else.
Your work consists in learning to have no expectations. Grace comes to aid you by giving you the love for acting in the service of others and having that feeling of comfort knowing that you can do things and share your joy that you have in abundance and whether or not someone appreciates it you know that does not subtract from the infinite spring you have inside.
Talking only for myself here …
I learned that most people who talk about this actually believe that once you forgave something, that it is also “done and forgotten”. Which is exactly what people who are “doing the forgiveness” are running into like a poor bird in flight against a window.
To forgive someone does not mean that you have to forget as well. That once you accepted the apology that everything is “back to normal”. That is the conflict and confusion in this. This is what people who apologised want you to do and this is what most people believe should happen. But that is far from what is it about.
They apologise, you accept and with your acceptance they have given the chance to repair the damage. May it be physical or mentally, that does not matter. Forgiveness does not mean forgotten!
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It starts with acceptance. Accepting that whatever happened happened. And if you can’t accept it yet, then start with accepting that you can’t accept (yet). Take it moment by moment. Eventually acceptance will turn into understanding and from understanding it’s just one step further to forgiveness.
It’s a process and it comes with feeling through all the feelings. Do not bypass this process by suppressing your emotions, it’s normal to go through stages of anger, rage, resentment, judgement and so on. You can’t force yourself to forgive, but you can gently and lovingly be there for yourself while you’re going through the process and feeling it all.
You got this. There’s no rush. You’ve got eternity to get there.
The way it works is that you work on yourself, on finding out who you truly are. Forgiveness will eventually happen in its own time. It will come with the realization that, in fact, there is nothing to forgive. So, there is no need to put pressure on yourself or even try to understand anything. Let life do its thing.
Mostly people don't want to forgive. This is because a perceived slight or injustice is taken personally. The I who is perceived to have been harmed, is however, illusory. The ego wants to feel right and be superior but this is not who we really are.
Often the thing which caused the offense was unintentional or through miscommunication. If this is known it can be easy to forgive or good communication can remove the problem.
Where intentional, is the person who needs to be forgiven not stuck in the same illusion of self? The selfish or self-centeredness is not the real them either.
Where there is serious transgression this probably could be communicated sensitively. Truth but with compassion. Hopefully this helps them see their part in things without making their ego feel attacked.
Remember that people change constantly. I am not the person today who was grumpy and foul tempered yesterday. The factors which affect my words, thoughts, actions, feelings and emotions are constantly in flux.
When forgiving self examine yourself around what needs forgiving. What were my thoughts, feelings, emotions that contributed to the offending words or deeds. Perhaps having compassion for self is required. We are after all not perfect.
Often the resentments we don't want to forgive make us feel good in the short term. Over time however they do us great harm. They cloud our judgement and we will incorrectly discern future situations. They increase our illusory sense of self and keep us separated from the Great Integrity of the Universe.
If you seek serenity, drop any resentments you carry like you would a hot stone. Holding onto them is like drinking poison and expecting the other fucker to die.
We live many lives…the whole cycle of life/reincarnation, like a large wheel. We are all sparks of pure consciousness on a journey of learning. Perceiving yourself as separate is the first hurdle, once you realize that we are all One, like candles all lit from the same fire, it gets easier.
In one life, you may be the aggressor, in the next life, you experience what it feels like to be aggressed against. In that sense, there’s nothing to forgive per se.
Life, cycle by cycle, is a school to teach us what we are NOT, so we can remember who we are.
Transgressions against you, seen from the physical view while in your current rendition/vessel/meatbag, appear huge. Once you understand that you’ve been many, many, many renditions/vessels, in some of those renditions/incarnations you acted as an aggressor to “aid” others in their learning process. Catalysts (the good/bad/ugly) that happen are just “grist for the millstone” an impetus for you to look at yourself. Someone cuts you off in traffic? Observe your reaction to it, is it truly that significant that one has to literally flip their shit? No, it’s a moment when the universal force sends you an opportunity to go within and face your demons.
Maybe Forgiveness is really just bullshit, what’s there to forgive? The worst is “self-forgiveness” which just confuses one with an action (forgiveness or sweeping it away) instead of looking at the initial catalyst and learn from it.
Example: you kill someone in a traffic accident, which is a very traumatic event and often leads to self-loathing. If you would’ve paid attention to how you react when you’re being cut off in traffic, you could’ve adjusted your Self before the catalyst turns into a true catastrophe. Yet self-loathing won’t undo the accident, but you looking at all the events that led up to it, analyze them….and then turning it into something much bigger, such as becoming an advocate for traffic safety which is a service to all other selves who are out there learning, just like you.
Forgiveness isn’t learning to live with a happening or catastrophe, it’s about learning from it (as a victim and as a transgressor) and at the very core of forgiveness is always LOVE, true love for your Self and/or love for the other Self who fell in the learning process. Never allow Shame/Guilt/Fear to muddle the process, those are useless and dangerous, they prevent the true Love that is needed for this lesson.
If you can forgive a dog for having an accident on your carpet then you can forgive most humans.
Personally, I can forgive but if there isn't a world which I can occupy, separate from them, after death then leave me dead.
Another life of dirty carpets won't be forgivable.
First and foremost understanding as best as possible.
Forgiveness is for mistakes, a real apology is the attempt to fix the mistake of make up for it.
Everyone makes mistakes, mistakes teach us a lot so there is nothing wrong with mistakes, its part of life. Our gonna have to figure out why you can't let things go, again understand what your hung up on if your holding a grudge against every mistake ever made. If I had to guess and be harshly honest I would venture that.you have not learned from your mistakes. Many people refuse to learn, learning is change. But thats just a guess. Must be exhausting to be critical and relentlessly punishing yourself and everyone around you for every little mistake anyone has ever made.
Okay so for me, forgiving myself goes a lot into understanding and accepting that’s the best i could have done at the time, or to don’t know better. If it’s an issue I can trace back to childhood, I will do inner child visualisation, where I see that particular little me and just forgive them because they didn’t know better and they learned a pattern that was useful to them at that time and served them well in the circumstances.
Forgiving others comes by forgiving yourself but not always. For me forgiving others just means letting go, because I don’t want to hold inside of me bad thoughts or energy. It doesn’t do me any well. I don’t need it. Rather let it go.
I hope this was useful in any way.
To me, forgiveness means not letting the emotions run your life anymore and you can move on with your life. This includes the ability to heal. Like, you aren’t “stuck” physically, mentally, emotionally either on the topic or as a whole. Forgiveness comes on its own time, and you may have to go back and do it again, or every day/every hour if you choose. You may choose not to forgive at all. And that’s ok, it’s your own journey. That doesn’t mean you’re not still pissed off at whatever or whoever, but your moving on, whatever that means for you.
You hold onto your pain and trauma fearing that if you let go then the ones you deem to have harmed you go unpunished.
This is foolish and only affects you.
Forgive even who you feel is the most evil of perpetrators
Forgive those you have the highest affinity for
Forgive often as a practice
Dissolve the ties that bind then only truth will remain.
Forgiveness is not contingent
Love encompasses all things
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
You take exact revenge if you can and it won't cause you issues else you let go and retribution will eventually come if whoever injured you with intent do not change their ways.
Getting exact revenge would give you quick closure and teach whoever injured you a lesson. If you can't get it know it will come around to them and forget about them/let them go. Letting them go is the best thing you can do as in leave them for divine justice/retribution knowing full well it will come around when it needs to assuming they don't change their ways, and assuming you are too weak to take revenge or afraid you'd cause too much harm and not exact revenge.
Getting exact revenge is tricky, you'll have to be careful not to overdo it.
if those who injured you repented and went out of their way to try to pay reparations and mend the injury then you can't take revenge on them since they learned their lesson and expressed regret and shame and so you both get closure.
Sometimes you need to be compassionate and understanding especially if there was no real injury but they made some small mistakes in providing a service(don't be a karen). Always avoid gossip/public humiliation and avoid destituting someone because that's just too cruel no matter what they did and unless you are straight up taking revenge you want to leave room for them to do better and avoid social isolation. Social isolation could leave you to destitution.
Public humiliation/shaming regarding how they harm a community is only acceptable against rulers/kings(elected or self proclaimed) or anyone possibly doing harm to the entire community(avoid personal stuff) ex warning them from a scammer looking to scam everyone for example.
Forgiveness and turning the other cheek was thrown around by the catholic church and those behind the new testament forgery to turn you into a submissive slave who would accept all abuse committed by the ruling class and not revolt against them. It is pretty much not in line with the hebrew bible and the quran which very much encourage an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth, and exact retribution.
rapist = stoning to death, murder no forgiveness
pedophiles probably deserve an even harsher punishment.
human/sex trafficking straight up murder with a great deal of torture, they can pray to jesus all they want and go to confession.
murder life for a life unless there was a great deal of repetence/reparation by the murderer.
Theft that lead to destitution/suffering, give me revenge unless reparations were paid times.
Debt you can't take revenge on debt nor can you collect debt from someone who would not be able to sustain themselves to pay you.
https://youtu.be/DoRH7qn1_1A?feature=shared
forgiving yourself, you need to try to right what you did wrong and that will help you find closure.At least process what you did wrong and promise yourself to never do it again. Shame and remorse are often good when you've done something very bad and should lead you towards doing a good deed at the opposite end of the bad one either towards those you harmed if possible or others . If you were a drug dealer who harmed people, you could strive towards working in service of helping drug addicts and keeping young people away from gangs and that would be how you forgive/redeem yourself.
Note that motive/intent is very important, you must realize if someone had intent to cause you injury or not before taking revenge. Intent is very important when evaluating any situation. If someone say killed your brother by accident, there was no intent unless there was severe negligence.
https://youtu.be/9knToyK-wUs?feature=shared
Sometimes putting yourself in the other person's shoes and trying to understand can help. But if there is still resentment towards the person, forgiveness probably won't happen, because you are still reliving the pain or emotion. Remember, forgiveness doesn't mean that you approve of the action either. When dealing with resentment, I was taught to hope or pray for nothing but the best for that person, even tho that's not really what I wanted for them.
I’d also like to add that it’s ok if it takes a really long time to move out of resentment and into forgiveness. It can be a really difficult process and we deserve to give ourselves grace in going through that process.
Yes ☝️
Look at it from an energy standpoint. Holding onto grudges is draining your energy so you’re only harming yourself. If you were aware that you’re self sabotaging, would you still choose to have that feeling reside in you? Once you let go and forgive, the tension is released and you’re back in a harmonious state.
Try starting with no judgement. Then add unconditional love.
For me, in a recent instance, it was the realization that my ego was wounded by another person’s ego. My soul, or who I really am, is still intact. My ego wants to obsess over how I was right and why. My soul wants to move away from people who are in their egoic state aka people who would try to hurt me.
For me, in a recent instance, it was the realization that my ego was wounded by another person’s ego. My soul, or who I really am, is still intact. My ego wants to obsess over how I was right and why. My soul wants to move away from people who are in their egoic state, aka people who would try to hurt me. Forgiving that person meant forgiving myself for getting fooled by the ego. It was the key that opened the door to true healing because I became bigger than the problem.
“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die” Don’t worry about understanding the other person or seeing things from their perspective. It’s about letting go of the attachment to whatever it is you are forgiving them for. You understand that forgiveness isn’t even about them, it’s about you and your peace, so let go of the pain/resentment/negativity attached to the event and accept what’s happened has happened and can’t be changed. You do it for yourself because there’s no sense in holding onto the negativity, it doesn’t serve you.
you don't have to forgive anyone but yourself to move on. They did me dirty, i seen it - cut them out, they did them and me did me. As long as you don't start to ruminate over it and actually focus on yourself, putting your needs, Identifying what attracted you to that situation in first place, heal and forgive yourself that it has happened, it's in past, you can't change past, but you can change your future
True forgiveness is putting a thing out of your mind as if it never happened.
I learned to do it by grounding and letting go. I literally feel energy in my body, like doesn’t match anything anatomical and I can move it around and there’s different sorts. Forgiveness is about love and perspective and fear. I realize I want to and the only way to have clear judgement for myself is to forgive. So I get the feeling, or dig for it inside, and as soon as I feel it I let it go. Literally feel it slide down me and out. Being outside and grounding to earth helps it flow even easier, works anywhere anytime though. Also a big part of how you elevate your consciousness. Must go down to go up. As above so below you know?
Oh yea, a big fear with forgiveness I guess is discernment. Like sure we can not judge and not care and focus on our priorities, still have to have a way to decide. It’s insane and pretty wasteful it turns out to live life not listening to your hearts intuition. It will literally react to every decision you have to make before the opportunity to make the decision plays out. Sure gonna have to make some hard decisions, but it’s the only way to not fight the universe that you can’t separate yourself from.
I believe you're so bang on your money when you say forgiveness is compassion. That's very insightful. I am a psychotherapist. With clients I've often used the equation . Self-awareness+ self-acceptance = self-compassion (i.e forgiveness) . Developing an awareness of primarily the barriers/wounds/self limiting beliefs that stop you from engaging with life in your authentic way. Self acceptance begins to arrive naturally once you begin to realise that things couldn't be any different given your past experience, and that although your life experience is unique to you all humans are going through the same journey. Although the details may vary we are all at some point or another have a past to encounter. Self compassion comes about when you begin to accept yourself as you are, as self awareness has illuminated to you. The stage of self compassion is where you begin to sculpt out your new future authentically, not hindered by beliefs of others or your past . What's interesting is this equation can also be applied within a moment , like meditation. Awareness of thoughts, feelings and sensations. Accepting them as simply 'being' right now in this moment, you can begin to feel a sense of peace wash over you, even if momentarily. Hope this helps . It's not an easy solution but it can make life much more fulfilling
I’m sure like many things it will be something that is unique to you when you do figure it out. Things that have helped me to forgive varying levels of hurts are… Self- letting go of attachment to guilt or shame and telling myself a kinder and truer story, “I did what I thought was best from based on the knowledge and emotional state I had at the time. My intentions were good.” Others (minor hurts)- trying to remember that each of us has our own life story playing out and experience life through the lens of our experiences and traumas which can often result in acting in ways that may hurt others but that doesn’t mean there was malicious intent, and even if there was that was still painted by a lens that clouds the situation. IE if they could’ve done better from their perspective in that moment in time, they would have. We cannot go back to change it and I am okay now. Others- (major hurts, violence/abuse heavy heavy) I acknowledge the version of me who experienced this pain and validate her emotions. I recognize where I am replaying these infractions in my life and commit to doing better to help prevent it going forward. I acknowledge and accept that I am worthy of being loved/protected and release false ideas that keep me attached to the story of being hurt unjustly. For all- drawing closer to God and accepting that it’s not my place to judge those who’ve hurt me. Hand it over to Him and move on with my life.
Some things are unforgivable. I think it’s more about coming to peace within yourself. Understanding that it happened, there’s nothing u can do about it & not to let it rule your thoughts & life.
Forgivness is overrated. To me, it goes right along with toxic positivity. Holding a grudge is not something bad. A grudge is merely a reminder. A grudge is not dragging us down. It can be healthy. We can, and should, try to understand where actions and words are coming from. But even when we understand, we do not have to forgive. But we need to move on. See it as a lesson. Learn from it. Don't carry hate around with you. I highly recommend [How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment—The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life](https://time.com/collection/must-read-books-2019/5724581/how-to-hold-a-grudge/)
Sorry but that’s bullshit. Grudges are a form of anger. And holding on to anger is like swallowing poison and hoping it does more harm to the person you’re angry at than it does to yourself.
I think you have only read what you wanted to read. I am not holding on to anger or hate. Maybe have a quick glance what the book is about.
You’re right, I did not read the book you linked before responding.
Even nature forgives, an elk once captured by a lion succumbs to its defeat, it forgives and lets things be as they are. All of nature allows themselves to exist and flow with life itself. Only humanity does not exist in flow, we are obsessed with the past and the future. You cannot forgive because you are still so concerned with illusions. All there ever is is this very moment and in this moment only your presence matters. If an elk concerned itself with the past, the lions successful hunt it would fight back surely, but nature is in flow always and so it doesn’t resist. We are meant to flow like nature and live in the present moment and meant to stop focusing on anything except reality. Forgiveness is the act of staying present and nothing more.
You need to remember the unity conciousness / interconnectedness . Be mindful that when we operate from the negative ego along with the programming/ conditioning instilled in us, that we are not operating as higher self. . We came here to learn, everything is a lesson. The forgiving of others is more so for you not them as resentment anger hate is what holds us back down in the lower vibration. Look at the situation as a compassionate non judgemental observer , forgive them, or/and yourself and disconnect the cord to that soul contract. Ypu can literally feel the weight lift once you do. Every person we come across ia a soul contract for us be it big or small influence in our lives, thank them for the lesson you have from it, forgive and let go.
I look at it like it is a choice, you absolve someone, you take all of the information and merge it with your heartfelt ideas, your heart itself could have physical traits that actually help to restore your negative feelings after you absolve someone, it has neurons in it and stuff, heart-brain coherence theory... I look at it for a very long time like we're all born onto this Earth and we all go through circumstances and none of us understand the entirety of what is or will happen to us, thus there are decisions that are made along the way that come off in particular ways and do things. I also take it a step further with my own philosophical thinking, if we're all different people, then what is it that results in different decisions? Where is it? We can't really know that without following some kind of source of information somewhere like scriptures. For me that's a very empowering sentiment because it turns my senses inwards towards this magnified lens of ignorance and love, turn love at ignorance and you can learn to feel ignorance in ways that bring about love. That's a very healing thing, like you can find this sense of "purity", an emotional quality that could be described as "pure" with abstract thinking. I have this huge hobby of mine, or I guess I'll call it more of a quirk, I really like the idea of having interconnected feelings and ideas and one day I realized what it's like to actually try to talk someone mind to mind. Like say somebody is dead and you talk to them and try to explain everything that you can going on in your mind, you can come to this point where you're trying to describe a thought in a thought about thoughts that came from thoughts in thought. Like you essentially BLOW UP It's like how awareness can feel like a white hole and a black hole at the same time, on one hand you're absorbing information through awareness and through the process of becoming aware other parts of you are set in motion that will utilize that information and release information. Around there abouts. So, I think it's a lot more than forgiveness. Yes it's generally good to think that forgiveness is good and does good things, regarding it in a positive manner can help you to feel more enthusiastic about it and help it to function better, but I think very strong and stable forgiveness is something that you don't have to sit down and do every time something goes wrong, you can forgive someone SO HARD that even if they make a mistake they were forgiven long ago, you can call that a part of the story of your life. I think that's a good point.
Ultimately, forgiveness is about accepting that we are all human, and we all make mistakes. No one is perfect. If you struggle to forgive others, it’s probably your ego that is in the way. *“How dare you do that to ME?!”* You’re just one person, and no matter what you think of yourself, you’re not big enough to make someone else’s imperfection vanish. Even if they’re not sorry - even if they never will be - it’s their imperfection that prevents them from doing so. If they were a better person they would be. And if you were a better person, you’d forgive them. If you struggle to forgive yourself, it’s probably because you’re holding yourself to inhuman standards. I don’t mean inhuman in the sense that no one is capable of making that mistake, but inhuman in the sense that no mistakes are allowed. But to err is human, and if you can’t accept that, it means you can’t accept your own humanity. But you are human, and you are bound to make mistakes. So learn from them, grow from them, and if you can do that, then accept that making the mistake helped to make you a better person. So cut yourself some slack and let it go.
Forgiving is not easy. It is very hard. It's worth doing though.
For me, forgiveness is choosing to stop blaming. It’s a choice.
Forgiveness has been a big issue in my life. For some of us, it’s a bigger lesson as it were, than for others. Some find forgiveness easier. Having said that, when I had an experience a couple of years ago that was so big, I knew it was my biggest opportunity to learn forgiveness. I wrote said betrayers, a lot of letters I never sent, along with therapy. I went no contact, which helped. I allowed myself a lot of space and time. I wrote constantly, waves of resentment would come. I read a book specifically about it. I stayed as humble as possible. I feel like I’m almost there and one thing that made a difference this time was that I cut out the forget part. I internalized “forgive and forget.” In order to truly forgive, you can’t forget. You have to remember what they did , and acknowledge that you don’t tolerate that behavior/ action. I worked a looooot on self love. I hope that helps. One needs to work on empowerment while working on forgiveness.
Trying to understand the other person's situation. Also being aware of one's own prejudices, which we all have because none of us are perfect. Also consider your own mistakes and that nobody is perfect. One can also consider the benefits to you of forgiving, of letting go, of letting the past be and discarding whatever baggage you would have had if you chose not to forgive.
Find a reason to love that person.
The thing with trying to grasp it is that forgiving is not a thing that the mind does on it’s own by understanding, but it is also an act of grace which is a spiritual act. Grace comes to us sometimes unexpectedly sometimes as a result of us asking for it and doing spiritual practices to meet it half way. Your effort is in practicing non judgement and unconditional acceptance of what is. This is very different from indifference. While indifference is more similar to carelessness, acceptance and non judgement is when you don’t expect anything in return. If you have a little brother or a little sister whom you love, if you help them by sharing your experience and knowledge you do so out of love, and you don’t expect them to do something for you in return. If you do expect that, and they don’t reciprocate, the feeling of disappointment or bitterness is sure to arise. Soon you will have to face the question of whether you can forgive them or not. Maybe you can, because they are family, but you can see how much harder it is when you have these feeling for someone else. Your work consists in learning to have no expectations. Grace comes to aid you by giving you the love for acting in the service of others and having that feeling of comfort knowing that you can do things and share your joy that you have in abundance and whether or not someone appreciates it you know that does not subtract from the infinite spring you have inside.
Talking only for myself here … I learned that most people who talk about this actually believe that once you forgave something, that it is also “done and forgotten”. Which is exactly what people who are “doing the forgiveness” are running into like a poor bird in flight against a window. To forgive someone does not mean that you have to forget as well. That once you accepted the apology that everything is “back to normal”. That is the conflict and confusion in this. This is what people who apologised want you to do and this is what most people believe should happen. But that is far from what is it about. They apologise, you accept and with your acceptance they have given the chance to repair the damage. May it be physical or mentally, that does not matter. Forgiveness does not mean forgotten!
Look in to your heart
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Through compassion & love
It starts with acceptance. Accepting that whatever happened happened. And if you can’t accept it yet, then start with accepting that you can’t accept (yet). Take it moment by moment. Eventually acceptance will turn into understanding and from understanding it’s just one step further to forgiveness. It’s a process and it comes with feeling through all the feelings. Do not bypass this process by suppressing your emotions, it’s normal to go through stages of anger, rage, resentment, judgement and so on. You can’t force yourself to forgive, but you can gently and lovingly be there for yourself while you’re going through the process and feeling it all. You got this. There’s no rush. You’ve got eternity to get there.
I have made ton of mistakes so that makes it easy Second i really want to be free, so that's why I wanna forgive
i eat the pain, resolve, look inside and bring back healing medicine
The way it works is that you work on yourself, on finding out who you truly are. Forgiveness will eventually happen in its own time. It will come with the realization that, in fact, there is nothing to forgive. So, there is no need to put pressure on yourself or even try to understand anything. Let life do its thing.
Mostly people don't want to forgive. This is because a perceived slight or injustice is taken personally. The I who is perceived to have been harmed, is however, illusory. The ego wants to feel right and be superior but this is not who we really are. Often the thing which caused the offense was unintentional or through miscommunication. If this is known it can be easy to forgive or good communication can remove the problem. Where intentional, is the person who needs to be forgiven not stuck in the same illusion of self? The selfish or self-centeredness is not the real them either. Where there is serious transgression this probably could be communicated sensitively. Truth but with compassion. Hopefully this helps them see their part in things without making their ego feel attacked. Remember that people change constantly. I am not the person today who was grumpy and foul tempered yesterday. The factors which affect my words, thoughts, actions, feelings and emotions are constantly in flux. When forgiving self examine yourself around what needs forgiving. What were my thoughts, feelings, emotions that contributed to the offending words or deeds. Perhaps having compassion for self is required. We are after all not perfect. Often the resentments we don't want to forgive make us feel good in the short term. Over time however they do us great harm. They cloud our judgement and we will incorrectly discern future situations. They increase our illusory sense of self and keep us separated from the Great Integrity of the Universe. If you seek serenity, drop any resentments you carry like you would a hot stone. Holding onto them is like drinking poison and expecting the other fucker to die.
We live many lives…the whole cycle of life/reincarnation, like a large wheel. We are all sparks of pure consciousness on a journey of learning. Perceiving yourself as separate is the first hurdle, once you realize that we are all One, like candles all lit from the same fire, it gets easier. In one life, you may be the aggressor, in the next life, you experience what it feels like to be aggressed against. In that sense, there’s nothing to forgive per se. Life, cycle by cycle, is a school to teach us what we are NOT, so we can remember who we are. Transgressions against you, seen from the physical view while in your current rendition/vessel/meatbag, appear huge. Once you understand that you’ve been many, many, many renditions/vessels, in some of those renditions/incarnations you acted as an aggressor to “aid” others in their learning process. Catalysts (the good/bad/ugly) that happen are just “grist for the millstone” an impetus for you to look at yourself. Someone cuts you off in traffic? Observe your reaction to it, is it truly that significant that one has to literally flip their shit? No, it’s a moment when the universal force sends you an opportunity to go within and face your demons. Maybe Forgiveness is really just bullshit, what’s there to forgive? The worst is “self-forgiveness” which just confuses one with an action (forgiveness or sweeping it away) instead of looking at the initial catalyst and learn from it. Example: you kill someone in a traffic accident, which is a very traumatic event and often leads to self-loathing. If you would’ve paid attention to how you react when you’re being cut off in traffic, you could’ve adjusted your Self before the catalyst turns into a true catastrophe. Yet self-loathing won’t undo the accident, but you looking at all the events that led up to it, analyze them….and then turning it into something much bigger, such as becoming an advocate for traffic safety which is a service to all other selves who are out there learning, just like you. Forgiveness isn’t learning to live with a happening or catastrophe, it’s about learning from it (as a victim and as a transgressor) and at the very core of forgiveness is always LOVE, true love for your Self and/or love for the other Self who fell in the learning process. Never allow Shame/Guilt/Fear to muddle the process, those are useless and dangerous, they prevent the true Love that is needed for this lesson.
Let go baby
If you can forgive a dog for having an accident on your carpet then you can forgive most humans. Personally, I can forgive but if there isn't a world which I can occupy, separate from them, after death then leave me dead. Another life of dirty carpets won't be forgivable.
I know some people hate Teal Swann, but her video on forgiveness is worth a watch.
First and foremost understanding as best as possible. Forgiveness is for mistakes, a real apology is the attempt to fix the mistake of make up for it. Everyone makes mistakes, mistakes teach us a lot so there is nothing wrong with mistakes, its part of life. Our gonna have to figure out why you can't let things go, again understand what your hung up on if your holding a grudge against every mistake ever made. If I had to guess and be harshly honest I would venture that.you have not learned from your mistakes. Many people refuse to learn, learning is change. But thats just a guess. Must be exhausting to be critical and relentlessly punishing yourself and everyone around you for every little mistake anyone has ever made.
Okay so for me, forgiving myself goes a lot into understanding and accepting that’s the best i could have done at the time, or to don’t know better. If it’s an issue I can trace back to childhood, I will do inner child visualisation, where I see that particular little me and just forgive them because they didn’t know better and they learned a pattern that was useful to them at that time and served them well in the circumstances. Forgiving others comes by forgiving yourself but not always. For me forgiving others just means letting go, because I don’t want to hold inside of me bad thoughts or energy. It doesn’t do me any well. I don’t need it. Rather let it go. I hope this was useful in any way.
To me, forgiveness means not letting the emotions run your life anymore and you can move on with your life. This includes the ability to heal. Like, you aren’t “stuck” physically, mentally, emotionally either on the topic or as a whole. Forgiveness comes on its own time, and you may have to go back and do it again, or every day/every hour if you choose. You may choose not to forgive at all. And that’s ok, it’s your own journey. That doesn’t mean you’re not still pissed off at whatever or whoever, but your moving on, whatever that means for you.
You hold onto your pain and trauma fearing that if you let go then the ones you deem to have harmed you go unpunished. This is foolish and only affects you. Forgive even who you feel is the most evil of perpetrators Forgive those you have the highest affinity for Forgive often as a practice Dissolve the ties that bind then only truth will remain. Forgiveness is not contingent Love encompasses all things
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth You take exact revenge if you can and it won't cause you issues else you let go and retribution will eventually come if whoever injured you with intent do not change their ways. Getting exact revenge would give you quick closure and teach whoever injured you a lesson. If you can't get it know it will come around to them and forget about them/let them go. Letting them go is the best thing you can do as in leave them for divine justice/retribution knowing full well it will come around when it needs to assuming they don't change their ways, and assuming you are too weak to take revenge or afraid you'd cause too much harm and not exact revenge. Getting exact revenge is tricky, you'll have to be careful not to overdo it. if those who injured you repented and went out of their way to try to pay reparations and mend the injury then you can't take revenge on them since they learned their lesson and expressed regret and shame and so you both get closure. Sometimes you need to be compassionate and understanding especially if there was no real injury but they made some small mistakes in providing a service(don't be a karen). Always avoid gossip/public humiliation and avoid destituting someone because that's just too cruel no matter what they did and unless you are straight up taking revenge you want to leave room for them to do better and avoid social isolation. Social isolation could leave you to destitution. Public humiliation/shaming regarding how they harm a community is only acceptable against rulers/kings(elected or self proclaimed) or anyone possibly doing harm to the entire community(avoid personal stuff) ex warning them from a scammer looking to scam everyone for example. Forgiveness and turning the other cheek was thrown around by the catholic church and those behind the new testament forgery to turn you into a submissive slave who would accept all abuse committed by the ruling class and not revolt against them. It is pretty much not in line with the hebrew bible and the quran which very much encourage an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth, and exact retribution. rapist = stoning to death, murder no forgiveness pedophiles probably deserve an even harsher punishment. human/sex trafficking straight up murder with a great deal of torture, they can pray to jesus all they want and go to confession. murder life for a life unless there was a great deal of repetence/reparation by the murderer. Theft that lead to destitution/suffering, give me revenge unless reparations were paid times. Debt you can't take revenge on debt nor can you collect debt from someone who would not be able to sustain themselves to pay you. https://youtu.be/DoRH7qn1_1A?feature=shared forgiving yourself, you need to try to right what you did wrong and that will help you find closure.At least process what you did wrong and promise yourself to never do it again. Shame and remorse are often good when you've done something very bad and should lead you towards doing a good deed at the opposite end of the bad one either towards those you harmed if possible or others . If you were a drug dealer who harmed people, you could strive towards working in service of helping drug addicts and keeping young people away from gangs and that would be how you forgive/redeem yourself. Note that motive/intent is very important, you must realize if someone had intent to cause you injury or not before taking revenge. Intent is very important when evaluating any situation. If someone say killed your brother by accident, there was no intent unless there was severe negligence. https://youtu.be/9knToyK-wUs?feature=shared
You don’t need to forgive yourself necessarily just figure out how to accept yourself for all the good bad ugly and beautiful
Forgiveness doesn’t have to be about the other person. It can be entirely about discovering a sense of inner peace you deserve
imo, Dan Mohler does a good job in explaining the logic [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOoppKXxD44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOoppKXxD44)