Forgiveness practice : some thoughts

I know forgiveness is a challenging issue, most especially when we have been deeply hurt by someone. Forgiveness may feel like letting someone off the hook for abuse or may seem to be something that will make us more vulnerable to attack in the future, but what I am experiencing as I conduct my own meditative forgiveness practice is that forgiveness actually opens the channel of my heart to flow freely so the flow of love and self love is not so stoppered up in resistance. And forgiveness and acceptance to me seem to be implicitly interwoven in our lives and hearts. For accepting a thing as having happened says it could not have happened any different at the time as we could not always have knowledge of consequences prior to certain actions having been taken. And it also says that people (or we) are as they actually they (or we) are or were at that particularly space and time. That said forgiveness does not negate the use of boundaries up with people to prevent contact with certain actions if that is our desire and in our own best interests.

Forgiveness may actually help us feel the full depth of the hurt more than not forgiving and remaining dissociated or defended. One of the reasons dissociation is so powerful in trauma is that it forms a self protective function and we cannot force ourselves to forgive either without going through the entire gamut of feelings associated with abuse, betray or hurt. But in the end the consequences of holding onto resentment and non acceptance is that we stay stuck in something that can often only end up hurting us.

Today I did a powerful forgiveness practice. I started with myself and then I extended the forgiveness to those who have hurt me in the past. I actually felt my entire being flooded with love and surrender at the time. I could accept all the pain in and then set it free and move forward to go on with my day.

Lately I am realising the way I so often beat myself up for what, at the time, was beyond my control. I think even when it comes to defensive reactions we have to have those defences in place as long as they serve us and this is not about being ‘good’ but about being authentic and true to the core of our deepest selves. A healing process will slowly over time help us to see where defences may have served us well as self protections and there are times self protection is right and necessary for us, something abusers would rather we do not do. There are times defences keep us trapped and blocked in old non regenerative cycles.

Only we can know what defences serve us and whether or not we are ready able and willing to forgive or if that is even necessary for us. Some of us may feel we are not and that forgiveness will not serve us, and that is okay too. But for me forgiveness seems to set me free when I practice it and is closely tied to the concept of accepting life on life’s terms, not always designed to give us what we long for from others but freeing us up to go on a new journey to find that sense of inner peace and wholeness from within.