LIFE – Let It Flow Easy!!
Its one of the critical things we have to deal with and embrace if we want to live a life of gratitude, love and trust. We need to understand the why and the how.
Forgiveness is not easy to understand and therefore difficult to practice. I have always heard this being said – “Forgive and Forget, move on”. And then one day when we were discussing forgiveness, my teacher told me, “Forgive but never forget and don’t be attached”, left me thoroughly confused. As we continued, all my teacher said “Fore-give. Give it to yourself first.”
I was supposed to then unlearn how I had been conditioned to think about forgiveness and contemplate, understand and practice something the meaning of which I did not understand fully. It was like a Zen koan – A kōan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used by Zen teachers to provoke the “great doubt” and to practice or test a student’s progress in Zen.
As I read more, listened more, and experienced more, I developed my own understanding of what Forgiveness in many spiritual and religious practices were meant to give. In the end its all there for us to experience the beauty and vastness of love, trust and the flow of life which we see around us all the time.
One of the most transformative statement is of Wayne Dyer when he saw a sign in an AA meeting that read “there are no justified resentments.” But what touched me the most was the story of Immaculee Ilibagiza in her book “Left to Tell” where she recounts her experience amidst Rwanda genocide where her family and friends were all viciously murdered. And how her deep, spiritual journey in the bathroom where she was trapped with other 7 women had transformed her, led her to have the heart to be able to forgive the very people who murdered her family and friends. She said “The love of a single heart can make a world of difference.” Another story that leaves a mark on your heart is that of Victor Frankl. “Man’s search for Meaning” is one of the great recount of real life experience during the Second World War which reminds us about love and caring, courage and how we give suffering a meaning by choosing how we respond to it. There are many such inspiring real life stories which are of the very common people like you and me.
Hurt, pain, anger, resentment is what we carry within even though once the real time experience ceases. We carry that pain within us while going through the daily motions of life as such. At times we also project that pain, sense of hurt and grief in our present situations. It gradually then becomes a chronic pain or perhaps a more appropriate word is suffering. The pain then truly becomes suffering. Often we carry those scars with a sense of false pride and take decisions consciously or sub-consciously to either do something or not do something ever again. Like, I will never trust anyone now, or I will never ever fall in love etc etc. These are the very walls or chains that become our bondage. They restrict us from experiencing life – moment by moment. The past dictates our connection with the “pre-sent/ present (like a gift)” moment. I wonder if there is really any freedom in living life with those very invisible chains. We truly become prisoners of our own mind. This is the precise reason why we need to practice forgiveness.
But how do we practice – the journey is not for the faint hearted for one has to be relentlessly practicing it day in day out. On days when we fall back into the victim mode, we have to nurture ourselves and then get up, wipe off the dust and start again.
Step 1: Acknowledge the pain – acknowledge the event that has caused pain and hurt. Acknowledge the feelings. Acknowledgement leads to acceptance. Acceptance of what is in itself takes a while. There is absolutely no rush in getting to the state of acceptance. We have to practice this state with a lot of self-love and compassion. This is the time when we absolutely refrain from judging ourselves or be harsh even if this process takes time.
Step 2: Once acceptance settles in, it tends to make us feel less anxious. Less angry. Less hostile. Less resentful. At this stage it is important to understand the feelings and thoughts behind the whole process of feeling like a victim. It is at this stage that that we bring in the first level of practicing forgiveness. We give it to ourselves. We forgive ourselves for feeling like a victim. We forgive ourselves for carrying the pain. We practice self love and self compassion. We don’t forget the event, but we release ourselves of our attachment to the pain of the event. As Masters have said, you can’t change the past, but you can change the way you look at it.
Step 3: As we take more and more steps of releasing ourselves from the prison of victimhood, its important to delve deeper and bring our attention to the hurt or pain we may have caused to another being ( of all kinds – humans or animals or plants) either through words (written or spoken) or actions, intentionally or unintentionally done. Cause surely this would have happened. This is the second level of forgiveness. We again give this to ourselves. If we need to seek a sincere apology from the person whom we cause hurt or pain, we do. Irrespective of whether the person chooses to forgive us or not.
Step 4: This is the hardest – but it becomes easier as we progress. We practice forgiveness towards the person who caused us pain or hurt us. We release them from being the prisoner in our minds. We stop dragging them wherever we go. We look at their actions from their lens of ignorance and send them love and healing. Step by step, day after day we practice this. There is a real life story where a woman in the United States eventually ends up living next door to the juvenile who murdered her son. Inspire yourself with these today to practice forgiveness with love and compassion.
https://www1.cbn.com/700club/forgiving-your-sons-killer
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_qSnMMhKKa/?igshid=1116ifasg6nw1
And if the above is hard to digest just remind yourself of what Mark Twain said – “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”