“The journey to release all grudges, and to let go of the fantasy of what might have been is one of the most difficult spiritual challenges we will ever face. But I promise you, it is also the most rewarding because the other side of forgiveness is freedom.” Oprah Winfrey
As souls on this human journey, we are all, at some time in our life, going to find ourselves in situations where we feel we have been wronged. This can range from the minor – someone stole your lunch, to the traumatic – a scam took your life savings, a brutal divorce, even abuse.
Forgiveness is not about forgetting what someone has done to you, or condoning or putting up with bad behaviour. Forgiveness is about maintaining your peace and it is the thing that gives you the ability to move forward in your life as you let go of the past and your past hurts. Forgiveness is one of the ultimate pathways to healing, both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Opportunities for growth come in many forms, most commonly, uncomfortable forms. When we find ourselves in situations that conjure up feelings of anger, betrayal, abandonment, grief, fear etc we have created an opportunity for deeper healing. Teachers will come in all forms – parents, siblings, friends, partners, colleagues etc.
Firstly, when we find ourselves in these situations we must honour the feelings that we are having, allow ourselves to be with the anger, betrayal, abandonment etc. Emotions are energy in motion, the more we can feel them (and not suppress them), the more we can allow them to move through us. We need time and space to process what we have been through, and this takes the time it takes. We cannot jump straight from ordeal to forgiveness, but it is important to understand that if you want to heal, you must forgive.
The only meaning of anything in our past, whatever it is that we have been through, is that it got us here, and that experience needs to be honoured. Forgiveness doesn’t just extend to someone or something that has done you wrong. The most important person to forgive is ourselves for all we think we did and did not do. When we forgive we acknowledge that we are always just doing our best.
As Marianne Williamson explains in ‘A return to Love’, “our job is to constantly strive for a greater capacity for love and forgiveness within ourselves.”
When I think about how we can truly heal ourselves, where we can shift our physical ailments and emotional/mental blocks-it is these two things it comes down to. Love and Forgiveness. It’s not about getting the process done perfectly, but just about a willingness to show up and take part in the process, so that healing can naturally unfold.
I would like to finish with a beautiful story of forgiveness. Dr Edith Eder, a Hungarian Jew and beloved psychotherapist, now in her 90’s, went through the horror of Hitlers Auschwitz, where along with one sister, were the only members of her family to survive. Edith wrote the most beautiful book on her experience, how she survived, the impact it had on her life and eventually how she forgave.
Decades later, when she forgave Hitler, Edith explains “It is too easy to make a prison out of our pain, out of our past. So I stood on the site of Hitler’s former home and forgave him. This had nothing to do with Hitler. It was something I did for me. I was letting go, releasing the part of myself that had spent most of my life exerting mental and emotional energy to keep Hitler in chains. As long as I was holding onto that rage, I was in chains with him, locked in the damaging past, locked in my grief. To forgive is to grieve- for what happened, for what didn’t happen- and to give up the need for a different past. To accept life as it was and as it is.
I do not of course mean that it was acceptable for Hitler to murder 6 million people. Just that it happened, and I do not want that fact to destroy the life that I had clung to and fought for against all odds.” [The Choice by Edith Eder]
