Forgiveness – A Spirit of Clarification
Here’s toward conceptualizing forgiveness – after giving it some thought while looking over comments to the last couple threads.
To forgive is to let go of a form of anger – specifically, resentment. Even more specifically, the resentment we feel toward someone who has wronged us is a deep and long-lasting blame. Blame is based on judgment: he or she shouldn’t have done that because they should have known better; or because it was unjust; or because, in the same situation, I wouldn’t have done that…
In most cases where we struggle with the issue of how to forgive someone, the primary motive is our own peace of mind, not how to help the person who has wronged us. This is because the odds are that we, as the wronged party, remain disturbed over the incident long after the person who wronged us has moved on.
Forgiveness is related to love. To understand just how, we’d need to know just what we mean by love – a big topic. But to briefly mention one angle on this, we can easily see that forgiveness is related to self love when we realize that to forgive someone else is to promote our own mental health and spiritual peace.
A love-related question: in letting go of resentment toward someone, is the resentment necessarily replaced by positive feelings of warmth and affection?
Next up – unless your comments lead me to post something else: What makes it so hard to forgive? Can we get more specific about this?
To forgive is to let go of a form of anger – specifically, resentment. Even more specifically, the resentment we feel toward someone who has wronged us is a deep and long-lasting blame. Blame is based on judgment: he or she shouldn’t have done that because they should have known better; or because it was unjust; or because, in the same situation, I wouldn’t have done that…
In most cases where we struggle with the issue of how to forgive someone, the primary motive is our own peace of mind, not how to help the person who has wronged us. This is because the odds are that we, as the wronged party, remain disturbed over the incident long after the person who wronged us has moved on.
Forgiveness is related to love. To understand just how, we’d need to know just what we mean by love – a big topic. But to briefly mention one angle on this, we can easily see that forgiveness is related to self love when we realize that to forgive someone else is to promote our own mental health and spiritual peace.
A love-related question: in letting go of resentment toward someone, is the resentment necessarily replaced by positive feelings of warmth and affection?
Next up – unless your comments lead me to post something else: What makes it so hard to forgive? Can we get more specific about this?
Posted by Paul at 11:14 PM Permalink
22 Comments:
so you can rest in peace..
i guess ;)
A built-in impulse that tries to prevent us being hurt again. I'm not disagreeing with most of what you say about forgiveness, but here we are talking about nursing a grudge excessively, to our own detriment.
Yes, learning how to forgive is as you say is for our own mental health and spiritual peace. And I think it involves learning how to feel secure generally; knowing our own strength. Winston Churchill said something like the winner in a war ought to be magnanimous.
It's hard to forgive when we still feel like a loser.
As to my status as former Canadian Prime Minister, I think you could only ascertain this from how extensive my knowledge of Canada is.
For example, I know they have lots lots of pine trees. Also, Montreol is the capital, unless it's Toronto. Well, those are a couple of the big cities anyway...
VINCENT: "It's hard to forgive when we still feel like a loser."
I think you may have hit on something central to how hard it can be to forgive. If we have something to forgive, then we're in exactly the position of feeling like a loser.
The other person has managed to do something to hurt us; the other person has gotten one over on us.
The ego really hates it when that happens...
I think Vincent makes a good point.
What did someone ask Christ once?
How many times should you forgive your brother? And Christ's answer was "seven times seven". Always.
Easier said than done.
If someone has hurt me I have to do something with that anger before I can take a step back and hopefully find the best way of dealing with the situation.
I was interested in what you said about getting out of the way for something more generous, would you say that's how you can forgive something so difficult? Where does the anger go then?
As far as where anger goes. Anger is an emotion and is morally neutral. Feeling anger is a natural response. Acting on your anger in such a way that is harmful is where life gets screwed up.
To answer a question that you posed in your blog as to whether letting go of resentment, and forgiving someone, was then replaced by feelings of love and warmth? I cannot speak for others, but as for me, forgiveness just meant releasing the man who killed my sister. I cannot say that I love him, but at least I do not hate him anymore. I simply feel neutral when his name comes up.
I understand the value to all of letting go of hate and anger. I understand the value of not judging.
But in religious conversations it always seems as though there is more to this kernal that letting go and not judging.
And that's where I find zeros. It doesn't resonate, make sense, elicit any kind of understanding from me. It seems as though the situation is somehow being made much bigger than it is, and I am unable to grasp what this "other" is that everyone is focused on.
It also seems like much of this philosophy has its roots in small, geographically contained communities. Living an urban life, one is free to literally "move on" - the likelihood of re-engaging with someone who has hurt me is nil - unless I seek it out. And why would I bother?
Is that the difference that I'm missing? The tactics needed to maintain equilibrium and calm within a self-contained community?
And along the same lines as your citation but even more broadly:
"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous… Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:44-48)."
To me, religion at its best calls people in the direction of perfection – with the understanding that it’s a path, a direction, a way, and that nobody fully “arrives.” As far as I can tell, enlightenment as an unchanging end-state isn’t a realistic idea.
HAZZBUZZ: Yes - and another way to put that is to say that holding onto negative self-judgment is no more helpful than hanging onto resentment. Anger is an understandable first reaction to being wronged – and if the wrong is substantial enough, getting past that anger can be an extended process, a stage.
Yes, something more generous – a connection to life that’s larger and more comprehensive than our connection to ourselves alone. As to the anger, it’s simply repressed (OK, so it’s April 2nd but I didn’t get to make a joke yesterday…)
When that larger connection is made you start to see through the anger; after a while, it can mostly or completely disappear. This isn't to say that life can't go on to hit you even harder with something else, and get you angry again - but prior success helps deal with the new issue.
I found the following two books helpful. “Meditation” refers to practices including but not limited to sitting meditation; people need to find what works best for them individually.
Goldstein, Joseph and Jack Kornfield. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation. Boston: Shambhala, 1987.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1975.
BOSPHORUS, HOMESPUN, and HAYDEN: thanks for stopping by with great comments, will have to catch up tomorrow -
As these topics seem to be more self-centered (not necessarily in a malignant sort of way), it leads the conversation, in my mind, to the ego - self-identity, self-awareness, et al. The more I think about your question, "Why is it so hard to forgive," the more I think it is because we are somewhat selfish. In some ways, not forgiving, or at least feeling "righteous indignation," feeds our ego in the sense that it justifies our self-worth for a time. We focus on our own importance in the thoughts we give toward unforgiveness.
Maybe this is a sort of addiction of the human psyche for which we all need some form of treatment? Or better yet, reparations! Where's that number for my Congressman? Someone will have to pay for doing this to me...
:)
often we forgive people cause we love them.....
i have in past forgive people because of my love and care for them. some repeated their mistakes...... and after smtym that positive feeling gradually changed into indifference........not resentment!
Good description of the process of forgiveness.
HOMESPUN HEALER: Makes sense to me. Sorry to hear of this, but also thank you for the real life example. Those help. There can be a tendency to think things through based only or mainly on what one has happened to personally experience oneself.
HAYDEN, TIMJAMZ and VINCENT: Good points – I’m going to postpone what I thought was going to be my next post to post something on issues that I think your comments point to when taken together…
“Post-pone…” That’s a really good word in this context.
MY THOUGHTS: That sounds right to me – that we can forgive people because we love them. For example, if there’s a strong, positive relationship between the two people prior to the wrong being committed. However, that sort of situation would need to be emphatically distinguished from dysfunctional relationships where there’s an abusive pattern in which the victim repeatedly “forgives” the abuser to perpetuate the cycle of abuse.
It sounds like you may have in mind situations where it’s at least as important for the person being forgiven to receive forgiveness as it is for the forgiver to give it. Those situations seem to occur less frequently in adult to adult relationships than situations where being forgiven doesn’t matter much or at all to the wrongdoer but forgiving the wrongdoer matters a lot to the wronged individual so that he or she can stop being preoccupied with the matter.
If the person who hurts me is someone I still love, then it's much more difficult. I need to get to a place of understanding - assuming I want to let go of the anger and still be around them, that is. I don't have to condone what they do/did, but I do have to get to a place of some understanding and acceptance before I can go on.
Of course, if the understanding uncovers the likely assumption that they'll do it again, then I need to again reconsider separating myself from them in order to protect myself.
All of this is very abstract - it so much matters what the type or nature of the injury is.
HAYDEN: All the different variables involved can make the particulars of forgiveness issues complicated, even if it should turn out that the solution is basically the same.
Just in this comment, you cite: whether the two people involved love each other to begin with; what kind of injury is involved; whether or not the individuals continue to have contact; and whether the harm-doer is perceived as likely to do it again…
I think not. I have to forgive my exhusband for something pretty much on a daily basis ... there are NO feelings of warmth & affection attached to that forgiveness. It must simply be done so I don't live in perpetual anger concerning his increasingly asinine habits.
I wonder if "forgiveness" is even exactly the right word for this sort of thing. Seems more like maybe coping...
Post a Comment