It’s easy to become frustrated with our process of forgiveness and personal growth. Often we feel that we’ve forgiven someone we were carrying resentment and anger towards and feel it’s not necessary to speak to or see that person. Yet when we think of them or see them we are uncomfortable and our resentment is aroused. This is not forgiveness, rather we are deluding ourselves into believing we have forgiven when we have not – we are simply justifying and rationalizing our avoidance behavior. When this happens, what’s going on with us? The problem as I see it, is that we’ve never fully completed the process of forgiveness.
There are two important steps in moving past this catch-22. First is recognizing that if you still hold judgments about people or events, you will continue to have emotional reactions every time you think about them. Second, if you haven’t come to a place of gratitude for those experiences or people coming into your life, you will continue to harbor resentment because you still believe those events shouldn’t have happened.
The truth is whatever happened – happened, and you cannot change that. Either you’ve learned something important from the event or you haven’t. If you did learn something then how can you have anything but gratitude for it, even if what occurred was painful? Every event that occurs in our lives helps us become the person we are evolving into. It assists us in growing and expanding our consciousness and in our understanding of others. It challenges us to practice compassion by exposing us to situations that put our spiritual beliefs to the test. Sure it’s great to believe in unconditional love, peace and forgiveness – but when people start doing and saying things that go against our belief system, then what happens to all our lofty spiritual ideals?
Let’s say for example, that your mother-in-law tells you that you are a bad mother and insists on saying unkind things about you in front of your children. You become furious every time she criticizes you in front of your children, and you feel like she is trying to turn them against you. As a result you constantly feel like you must defend yourself in her presence. As many times as you try to forgive her you cannot.
In your journal you write everything you feel about her and you realize you believe you are under attack by someone who wants to undermine your relationship with your children and who hates you. Once you recognize these statements are lies, that you are not under attack and that she does not hate you, forgiveness is on its way. Your statements are simply the result of you believing that the world revolves around you and that her actions are personal. Her actions are not personal, nor are they about you even though they involve you. She is feeling challenged and scared and her actions are the result of that fear. If you have the clarity to understand this, your reactions and behavior will be totally different.
Your salvation is in understanding that as unpleasant as this situation may be, she is a gift in your life as she is teaching you many things about your self-worth, personal importance and ability to respect and understand points of view that are not aligned with yours.
Rather than feeling like you must defend yourself in her presence, you will be able to speak directly to what she is afraid of and forgive her fearful actions. She may feel that you disrespect her point of view and that you don’t value her presence in your life. Or she may feel that you have usurped her position in the family and she is no longer valuable. Maybe she even feels like you have taken her son away from her and she is lonely and frightened. Perhaps her way of obtaining attention is through constant conflict. There are many psychological reasons for her behavior, none of them having anything to do with you. The deep understanding of this fact will give you emotional immunity from all situations in your life. It will allow you to take actions that are not defensive, but instead address the real issues and do not perpetuate conflict.
This is just one example that mirrors most conflicts we have in life. Once we move past our judgment of others according to our fear-based points of view, we can see their pain and problems clearly and can forgive them. Then we can have gratitude for our newfound understanding of human psychology and not loose our peace and happiness. I encourage you to journal your judgments and feelings next time you are challenged by forgiveness. See what happens to the conflicts in your life and your process of forgiveness as a result of my suggestions.
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Sheri Rosenthal DPM and Susyn Reeve M.Ed. are co-authors of WITH Forgiveness - Are You Ready? and co-creators of the WITH Forgiveness program at www.withforgivenessmovie.com. They both enjoy giving workshops, lectures and taking folks on spiritual journeys (you can see them at www.journeysofthespirit.com ), and being extremely happy! You can reach them at www.withforgiveness.com.
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