What is Forgiveness?
I was watching Deepak Chopra on Bill O’Reilly and the notion of forgivness came up for me. We hear the phrase – I forgive you – all the time and yet, I notice in many of these situations, there appears to be residual angst in the consciousness of those forgiving.
Wikipedia – Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of ceasing to feel resentment, indignation or anger for a perceived offense, difference or mistake, and ceasing to demand punishment or restitution.
Hillary Rodham Clinton: In the Bible it says they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive, and he said 70 times 7. Well, I want you all to know that I’m keeping a chart.
Martin Luther King, jr.: We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
Forgiveness involves both the heart and the mind. In my experience, the heart opens so wide, it can hold the entire situation, all the pain, suffering and betrayal. In this extraordinary vastness a magical openness and acceptance and kindness arise that frees the heart of anguish.
The effect on the mind is like erasing a slate – beginner’s mind. The past is still the past – events happened. But the past no longer defines me or the other. Not only is the other truly forgiven, the other is free to emerge in a whole new light in my world.
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4 responses to “Forgiveness”
Just out of curiosity, how would you define true strength?
I think one could say that strength is fundamentally expansiveness. Strength shows up in our experience as vitality, aliveness, discrimination, and other ways, but if you look into the experience, there is usually an expansive quality there. Our capacities expand beyond the contained limits of the ego as well as the known world of the soul.
Strength moves, supports and protects the soul as she moves into deeper revelation of her nature.
Hi John,
In terms of forgiveness, I agree with your ideas on an open, all encompassing heart. What a beautiful thing that is to behold and experience. Beyond beautiful. In my opinion it is our only hope for growth, spirituality, psychological well being, nurturance, change. It’s pretty much everything.
But the use of the mind, I’m not so sure about. I don’t think it “erases” very well. I find it works much better to tap into one’s highest mind to really think about the situation, pain, hurt. A deeper understanding can often follow, so the problem, pain, hurt kind of ripens and changes and falls away on it’s own like fruit falling from a tree. Then this often acrobatic mind over matter thing is no longer required. Instead you have walked into a different place, you have more of yourself to live your life with…
I have lived in an ashram, studied several authors (I love Suzuki as well), and bounced around in life. Perhaps you can guess what I was hinting at in my thoughts on using one’s mind. I am a psychotherapist now, and have had a lot of my own psychotherapy. I know a lot of people go “uck pooey!” when they hear the work “psychotherapy”. And I agree, in many, perhaps most, cases. But there is a small group of analytic therapist in the SF and the Berkeley area that are working, in my opinion, with this “higher mind”, ie thinking with an open, all encompassing heart. (What other kind of intelligence really matters? So these concepts of “heart” and “mind” are perhaps really one and the same thing, or useless on their own.) And that is where I am putting my heart and mind, my time, my money, my soul, my profession, my life energy. I love it. (And all professions can run on this same energy supply.)
Please respond if you like at my email address. (One of your friend’s friends told my about your web page. It is very impressive.)
Nancy – I think the mind has gotten a bad rap. The mind/heart split is as prevalent as the mind/body split in our culture – maybe more. The challenge in working the “higher mind” always rests with the issue of identity.
Having said that, I think we see the situation more or less in the same light. The dominant organ of perception in the act of forgiveness is the heart. When the mind is informed and influenced by the heart’s perception, the history is no longer part of the identification and the mind is freed from future reactivity around the situation.