Forgiveness

by Rev. Deanne Dolly Hollander, C.M.
Summerland's Lakeview Spiritualist Church, Madison Wisconsin

As we read through and think about the Declaration of Principals, you may be struck by number seven, which states, We affirm the moral responsibility of individuals and that we make our own happiness or unhappiness as we obey or disobey Nature's physical and spiritual laws.

Wow! It is our responsibility to find a way to make us happy or sad. No one else is going to do it for or to us. What a revelation at this time when most of us think all our problems are because someone else has done something to us. We hear all the excuses: It isn't my fault; it is the government, my parents, a friend who hurt me, the stock market, the past president, the new president, whatever. The list goes on and on.

If the seventh declaration is the truth, and we affirm that it is, then it is up to you and me to do whatever we need to do to make us happy. The alternative, making ourselves sad or unhappy, doesn't make sense, so we seem to have little choice.

Okay, what is one of the main things that stand in our way of being happy most of the time? If you really check your memory, you may find that it is a thing that someone has done that we have allowed to hurt us in one way or another. We trusted them and they betrayed our trust in some way. That is what often bothers us the most. We say allow because we do have a choice, though it often seems like we don't.

Usually we react to whatever stimuli is given to us, rather than look at the issues and respond. There is a vast difference between reacting and responding. When you react, you simply let whatever emotion comes forward for you to be how you react.

When you respond, you take the time to feel and think things through, and then you choose how you wish to respond. You may even take into account who, what and where.

A simple way to understand the difference is in the way we respond to a very young child as opposed to another adult. If a very young child spills something on you, you understand that it was probably not intentional and instantly forgive the child as you clean up the mess. If it is an adult, and especially one you may not care for, you will often look for a reason, rather than see it as an accident. If we are indeed adults in all ways, we need to look at events first as something that just happens, and only if there is a pattern or reason, do we then look for ulterior motives.

Many of us, who were abused in some way as children, had things done by those who were supposed to take care of us. Does this have to ruin your whole life? No. It does not. If you continue to dwell on these events, it will eventually act like a poison to taint your entire life. If you are one of the unfortunate ones who were victims of crime or abuse, then you have a more difficult issue to look at. But regardless of the issue, small or large, we need to look at and then to find out how to remove this hurt. Striking out at the abuser years later, is not the answer. It might make us feel justified for one short moment in time, but it doesn't solve anything other than making us feel powerful for a short time as we showed them. It doesn't heal the hurt and may make it worse, as confrontation doesn't solve anything for most of us.

Since revenge usually isn't appropriate in this day and age, that only leaves either forgetting the hurt of perhaps forgiving it. Maybe both. However, that is a big challenge for most of us, and while forgive and forget sound wonderful, it isn't always possible or the wisest course of action in some instances.

If you read James Van Praagh's newest book, Unfinished Business, you will find a chapter on forgiveness. It is amazing how the Law of Attraction and perhaps several other laws manage to bring the book we need, at the time we need it.

In chapter five he says, Besides love, forgiveness is the most powerful spiritual tool we posses. We indeed to change our destiny, the world, and ourselves by choosing to forgive. Then a few sentences later he continues, So, what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves. It is a conscious choice to not get caught up in resentment or thoughts of revenge against another. We energetically unbind ourselves from thoughts and feelings that attach us to the offense. By choosing to forgive, we do not minimize the responsibility of the offender or justify the wrong, rather we free ourselves of our own negative thoughts.

It seems that he is saying that the longer we hold on to the resentment and the pain of the hurt we have suffered, the longer we are not whole and can not be truly happy and our path will be littered with stones and obstructions left over from things we should have forgiven perhaps years ago. We are not healed. We are not whole. We cannot be the loving spiritual beings we want to be, all because someone, somewhere and at sometime, hurt us and we carry that hurt and resentment around with us.

Some of us have hurts that go back to childhood and we are told that we were cheated out of a happy childhood. Perhaps most of us, no matter how hard our childhoods were looking back, were not aware that we should have been unhappy, as these experts say we were. We were kids, and lived in the now and just accepted what happened as the way grownups were, and still enjoyed our childhoods. There are, of course, horrible examples where this is not true, but most of us were not in that small minority of abused kids, though we are constantly told now that we are and that we are all dysfunctional. It is one of the popular myths of this age and keeps many of us from growing up and accepting that our parents or other adults were not perfect any more than we are as adults.

As we look back on it now, at a time when many counselors and advocates are telling us about our bad childhoods, we may look at this differently. We are constantly bombarded with Heal the Child Within, and It is Never Too Late for a Happy Childhood and other workshops we can pay large fees to attend. Other than the children who were indeed abused, mistreated or abandoned, most of us had childhoods that followed a pretty normal path, with maybe a bump here and there. Did we get everything we wanted? Of course not! Did Grandma like your sister better than you? Sure, that happened to some of us. Did we have a few times at Christmas where Santa couldn't bring us the toy we wanted? Sure, but looking back and wanting to blame your problems today on not getting a Chatty Cathy Doll when you were seven or not getting the two wheeled bike for your tenth birthday, doesn't mean you had an unhappy childhood.

Blaming all of these things for your unhappiness today and being resentful just means you are still a child and haven't reached adulthood yet. True adults do not blame others for their problems. They look at the problem; try to see where they needed to change their attitudes and then do it. Remember, We make our own happiness or unhappiness. Of course there are times that something unhappy or uncomfortable did happen to us, and we don't hide it or deny that it happened. It just means we need to deal with the issue and get on with our lives. It is not your claim to fame.

When we are considered adults and go out and work with others, we find new places and new people who can hurt us. It may be that the person, who hurt us, never intended what happened to hurt us. It may simply have been that the evil person who hurt us, was simply having a bad day, or had been hurt themselves and was striking out and we happened to be the closest person. We really don't know what the motive was behind the event, we only remember what happened. We only know our response or our reaction to it. Even if the person who hurt you or me meant to hurt us, why are we still giving them the power to hurt us days, weeks and years after the event? Be aware that we are doing exactly that. We are giving them the power to hurt us, time and time again, because we can't forgive and let it go.

When we say forgive, we don't mean forgive and forget and go out and hug that person and say that all is forgiven and let's go back to the way we were. We don't put ourselves back into the victim place, where we were when we were hurt. We just allow the vibration of hurt and pain to be released and let it go so that we are healed. This is a gift to us. This is a way for us to choose our own happiness and a way to take charge or control of our own feelings. Some say to forget what happened. Perhaps we should do that if we know that what happened was not intentional and a habit with the person.

However, sometimes a person hurts people over and over again and is never faced with what they are doing. If we forgive and forget and put ourselves back into that same situation, no one learns. Perhaps these people who hurt others are just ill people or sociopaths, which is a person who doesn't really feel the same way we do, feels no guilt and no emotional attachment to their actions, and therefore can't understand the hurt others feel. It is believed that about 4% of our population, worldwide, are sociopaths. That is one person in every twenty-five. These are not mass murderers, just people who have a mental defect that allows them to not feel what the rest of us feel if we hurt someone. You probably know four or five of these people and don't even know it. Do we forgive that person? Sure, but then be wary. That is part of making our own happiness or unhappiness. Making our happiness or unhappiness doesn't mean we have to be trusting of everyone, especially when we know they don't deserve our trust. We simply need to recognize and be wary of the harmful among us.

The saddest thing about this is that you can't warn others about the harmful among us as you are then seen as vindictive or a troublemaker. You can drop gentle hints, but if the others don't understand, there is little you can do. It should be enough for those who know you to wonder why you won't associate with someone. If they know and trust you, that should be warning enough if they listen to their own inner voices. These unfortunate people, who feel no remorse, will show themselves to you in little ways and if we are aware, our own inner voices will tell us to be careful. Don't listen to the words, watch the actions. For more information on this topic, please check out The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, PhD.

As we give the gift of forgiveness to ourselves, an amazing thing happens. After a little bit, we forgive the person we were so unhappy with and move on. As our vibration changes, we allow that vibration to be sent out to others and soon they will, at some level, understand that the energy between the two of you has changed. Will they understand why? Probably not, but they will sense that you no longer fear, hate, distrust or are resentful of the other. The main thing to remember is that once you have forgiven yourself and the other person, all of your IOU's to each other are finished and you need not be part of each other's lives and lessons, unless you wish to be.

If you are ready to forgive or ask forgiveness for something you or another has done, there is a very simple technique. Many of us cannot or will not want to deal directly with the other person. However, because we are all energetically connected, you can send what a very wise metaphysical teacher mentioned many years ago called a "soul message." To do this, you find a time, usually later in the evening, when you are relaxed and comfortable and go into a gentle meditative state. You think of the person you need to forgive or who you would like forgiveness from, and then gently say out loud, something like this:

I understand that you are dealing with things in the best way that you know how, with the tools you have, and I forgive you for what you have done that I see as hurtful. I ask your forgiveness for anything I may have done that caused you pain. I release all energy that stands as a wall between us.

Use your own words to simply say that you understand that they may not have intended to hurt you, and then forgive them and ask for forgiveness back. The first few times you do this, you may be saying this through gritted teeth and may not really mean it. However, as you continue to try to remove these obstacles to your own healing, you will gradually find that it becomes easier and easier and that your words and intent change. If you should see this person after you have been working on this for a while, you may feel a subtle change in them. No longer to they need to play the part they have played in your life, as you released the anger and hurt. Because you have changed, so can they. You give both of you a gift. Will it bring you back to a loving relationship? Maybe, maybe not. The wonderful part of this is that you can do this with anyone, past or present, those in the physical body and those who are in spirit. You can heal any relationship you want to heal, but you must first start the process and follow it through.

It doesn't matter if the other person feels any better about the situation or not, this is for you. You may never see this person again and that is also fine. This is you, following our seventh declaration, making your own happiness as you forgive and move on.

As you forgive what has happened and find your own place of power and love, you will raise the vibration of all around you. If each of us could forgive those who we see as having wronged us, we could change the vibration of everyone. This is your gift to you and that is all it ever has to be. For when you are at peace with your life, you will send out peace and love to those you meet, and very few people will ever be a problem to you, for you will attract like energies to you. Like attracts like. That is the Law of Attraction and one of the greatest secrets of all time.