Forgiveness
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How To Forgive
Every day we open our eyes, and a new search begins. Some know what they are searching for; some don’t.
Some are lucky to find what they are looking for and to start the next search.
Some never find anything.
Therefore they don’t know what they are searching for.
Forgiveness
has a grandiose meaning for those who carry their wounds for years.
As I lost my mother at an early age, my life was heavily bounded by questions like why, why me. After I’d moved from my parents home and started to live on my own, I still was so painfully angry with my stepmother and father, so profoundly, that that anger reflected back onto me with the double strength and it was me who suffered the most.
I read a lot of books, talked to a lot of people looking for the way how to forgive. You know how hard it can be to forgive. I was eager to find the key and couldn’t for a long time.
Actually for 50 years.
Every time as I’d found the solution that sounded so reasonable, I realized, that this particular solution didn’t feel right at all. Life went on, and I was a captive of my own anger.
And now I know the answer.
It came to me by chance, as all the good things come to us unexpectedly, at the moment as we are least prepared.
I am sharing it here to help all the people, who are carrying pain in their hearts, trying to forgive and not being able to. I am showing you the way I had to go to find the truth. The way full of stones and controversies hoping to save you the effort and to help you to find such a simple truthas a Forgiveness.
F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby
"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
One of the essential things to learn about life is – never to judge.
We are all unique creatures, and every one of us lives in his/her own world with its own good and wrong. How is it possible to judge something we can’t see, can’t comprehend.
Sometimes you hear: “Don’t be angry with him/her. He/she doesn’t know it better.
The world’s bestseller author and one of the greatest modern writers Paulo Coelho in his novel “The Winner stands alone” speaks not of a person or people but of a world/ worlds.
So how we even dare to criticize the worlds, we don’t see, don’t know or understand. Even more than that – be angry with.
Anger - Apocalipsis of a soul.
Do you know that anger comes mostly from fear?
Fear to lose, fear to be hurt, fear not being understood. Mostly it comes from fear to lose.
Unfortunately in our modern society, where competition is rated so high, where new technologies dominate our everyday life, unfortunately, children are not taught to communicate.
We program our standard replies in our smartphones; we add our signatures automatically at the end of our emails, we forget how to write by hand.
We forget how to think, how to talk, how to feel and how to communicate our feelings.
Today we see in the bestselling lists books like “How to Speak How to Listen”, “How to read a book.”
How is it possible in our fast full of technologies world to take time to look inside our own selves, to see, to comprehend and to put the emotions, feelings into words.
We do need to learn how to do it because forgiveness is a beautiful relieving feeling, we have after a row of powerful, captivating emotions like hurt, anger, pain, the sense of the unjust.
Here is a little help
Once I read: if you think of the wrong has been done to you and don’t feel pain, that means you have forgiven.
You know what? It still hurts when I think of several things, happened in my life occasionally. I know that it will always hurt thinking of certain people I knew. That was the wrong solution.
Today I know how to put aside all the pain.
You will know it too.
Some time ago I came across a very informative book by Gary Chapman “Anger – Handling a Powerful Emotion.”
I hoped to find a secret of keeping under control the emotions I had. What a useless thing to be busy with.
Nobody can control emotions. We can learn to control our behavior. We can learn how to hide feelings. How to seem happy, while on the inside we burst into tears. We can learn to conceal annoyance behind the pleasant smile. How to talk friendly with somebody we can’t stand. But emotions or feelings? I don’t know the way to control them.
Is It a commitment???
You see somebody just for some minutes and feel a strong connection to his/her soul. You see somebody for some minutes and know, that he/she could never be your friend. These are emotions/feelings, and we can do nothing to control them.
You know for sure this one. You are furious, and somebody is telling you: “don’t be angry…” These words make you enraged, and there is no way to control these intense emotions.
Gary Chapman a well known Christian priest and the author of the bestselling book “5 love languages” advises using something like a formula. He says:
“Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment. It is a choice to show mercy, not to hold the offense up against the offender.”
This one doesn’t help at all, does it? If we lived in a perfect world, then maybe…
"Anger was designed to be a visitor, never a resident, in the human heart".
He, being a Christian quotes the bible and says things like: “In your anger do not sin”: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26-27 NIV).
I love this passage: “Solomon warned that “anger resides in the lap of fools” (Ecclesiastes 7:9 NIV). The key word is “resides”, the fool lets the anger abide in him. The implication is that those who are wise will see that anger is quickly removed.
Anger was designed to be a visitor, never a resident, in the human heart”.
Doesn't Solve The Problem.
It’s a very nice theory, isn’t it?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t help and doesn’t solve the problem.
We may theorize hours long and still feel anger, still unable to forgive.
Some advice I actually tried to call in life and use it in my daily life.
This is it:
When someone wreaks evil upon the individual who wronged them, he has usurped the prerogative of God. The Scriptures say, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19 KJV). When we seek to impose judgment upon those who have wronged us, we will inevitably make things worse.”
Vengeance Is Mine.
Further on:
“Wrongs are not forgotten until they are resolved.”
…”I want to begin by reminding you about two basic fundamental characteristics of God. God is loving, and God is just. God cares about the well-being of His creatures, but God is also just and ultimately will bring all men to justice…..
…”vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” It’s never our job to vindicate ourselves by making people pay for the wrong they’ve done towards us.
The essence of the next pages is that we should pass on our anger and pain to God and rely on his Judgement. “Let God fight your battles”. Garry even suggests to write down all the wrongs people have done to us and share this list with the God.
I tried to persuade myself, that there is no use to be angry if almighty would judge on my behalf.
You know what, I didn’t work for me at all.
If you are lucky and have a great power of persuasion yourself, then it could work for you. Just try and see…
Here is a German Version.
Die fünf Sprachen der Liebe – Wie Kommunikation in der Ehe gelingt.
Solution...
Finally, I’m coming to the strangely easy solution of mine.
Some days ago I was reading something, and there was a therapist talking with a patient about romance, finding the right partner for life and old baggage that we all carry with us for so many years.
The dialog went on approximately like that:
“- I need to resolve the problem and to understand why do I attract and am attracted to the pathological narcissists.
– Well, tell me about your father. How was it with him?
– Yes, my father was of the same kind.
– So, you just have to forgive your father.
– It’s very hard to do. I was hurt by him so much. If I forgive him, he’ll be off the hook-
– No, You will be off the hook.”
So set yourself free, pull out that hook from your heart and start living.
They went on talking, but for me, it was like lightning. That was so simple and easy to fulfill.
See, we hold on to the anger with some people because they had caused us pain. But they most likely don’t even know that they caused so much pain to us. And evidently, they don’t care.
They were off the hook at the very moment as they did us wrong. What happened is, we got ourselves stuck with anger, meaning pain for so long.
In my teens I was a passionate fisher, maybe that is why I could see in my imagination this huge fish hanging on the big sharp hook, suffering from stress and pain. And I literally could see how free that fish became, as a fisher pulled out the hook and set it free.
How deep can we breath when we let go the anger and pain! It feels like you see the light after long years of darkness.
Here is the secret:
As soon as you set yourself free, as you’ve understood, that it was you, who was on the hook for so long. If it helps, just think of the universe, which is loving and just, which will fight your battles in any way. As soon as it happens, you wouldn’t care anymore. And precisely that will be the worst punishment ever for those, who did you wrong.
Withdrawal of Love.
The most beneficial knowledge is: the only possible and the most painful punishment for the wrongs is not to care, be happy and withdraw the love, attention and your thoughts.
“Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it…Don’t allow his anger to become your anger.”
― Bohdi Sanders, Warrior Wisdom: Ageless Wisdom for the Modern Warrior
How to follow this advice? It’s not possible if you care. Just don’t. Step aside and think how insecure and inadequate must someone be, how powerless and weak must he/she be trying to hurt you. And then pull out that hook from your mind, from your heart.
Something beautiful in the end: I call it withdrawing love...
“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you might come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
-Once you have it, do your best to see, to value and to cherish it. Because maybe you’ll never have it again.
-Once you gave it to someone, know for sure, that withdrawing of that gift would be the worst deprivation ever.
Deprive your thoughts of the wrongs and be free again.
Have fun and be happy!
Lord, bless us all!
