 Re: Forgiveness
Welcome to alt.yoga,
>I know in sahaja yoga it is very important that you forgive people but I =
=E2=80=A8>am having a hard time forgiving all those who hurt me when I was =
a young child. =E2=80=A8>How can I find the strength to forgive them
Forgiving others in not possible because we have no control over them
in any way. So we can=E2=80=99t =E2=80=9Cdo=E2=80=9D anything to anyone out=
side of
ourselves. Their feelings, actions and reactions are their
responsibility alone.
We can however learn to forgive ourselves. Forgiveness is something
internal a person who has been harmed must do. It is a letting go, in a
deep and genuine way, of holding anyone responsible for the pain you
feel inside.
You see, your pain is your own. You created it, you sustain it, you
must let it go. This isn=E2=80=99t to say that someone did not hurt you,
obviously they did. It is to say that the pain you feel, the
resentment, the anger, the desire to strike back, these are all
manufactured by you internally by what you say to yourself about what
happened. No one outside of you has any control over how you feel
inside, what you tell yourself and what you want to do about it. These
are %100 your responsibility.
You must learn that you are the creator of your pain. Learn how you
create your pain and why and you must learn to let go and forgive
yourself. Then you will be able to forgive others. Eventually you will
learn to not hold on to peoples faults at all, so there won=E2=80=99t even =
be
a reason to have to forgive them. This is not easy and it why it is
addressed in yoga and indeed in every moral system.
This is an idea that helped me start to learn the how, what and why of
forgiving myself and others. My recovery sponsor once said to me,
=E2=80=9CJared, you know what? At any given moment people do the very best
they can with what they have and when they can do better, they will do
better. And that includes you! So let yourself off the hook. Accept
your mistakes, your weakness, your failings as part of your growth.
Look at them as things you needed to learn and then forgive yourself
and move on=E2=80=9D. Letting go of my critical/negative opinions and
thoughts about myself was/is the hardest thing I have ever done. But as
I gain skill and experience with letting go of the painful thoughts and
feeling I have about myself, my ability to let go of those thoughts
about others quickly also increases. I look forward to a day when those
thoughts no longer arise about me or anyone else.
Another idea which has been very helpful for me is, that God is
everywhere present. God is in me, in you, in every human being on this
planet in equal measure and always has been and always will be. If I
find a fault in myself or another then I am finding fault in God and
this doesn=E2=80=99t make any sense. I may not know why things appear to me
to be bad, evil or sad. I may not know why a person does something
which is/appears hurtful to me. But I do know that God is not any of
these things. So when I am angry, resentful, sad, I remind myself that
there is only God and God is good. If I see or feel something that
appears bad, then it is because I am afraid and creating that idea in
my imagination. Because the Truth is, the Reality is, there is only
God, in the here and now; no past, no future.
Hope this was helpful=E2=80=A6 I realize this may sound like an odd bunch of
nonsense, but it really does work this way. We must all learn to let go
of our faulty ideas and forgive ourselves. There is no other type of
forgiveness :-)
Jared
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