Hi,
I belong to a wonderful online group for coaches called The New Coach Connection.
One member recently posed questions on how and why to forgive.
I answered on the community site and I thought I’d also answer here to see if it helps.
I have a mission to transform 1000 people’s lives by the end of this year by helping them (you) move out of unforgiveness and into experiencing more loving and peace inside.
So—I believe forgiving/ forgiveness is for the person doing the forgiving.
I define forgiveness as letting go of the resentments that have been weighing you down with anger, regret, remorse and feelings of revenge.
From that heavy place it’s almost impossible to let love in or out. In that way,
unforgiveness is selfish because your loved ones and your potential loved ones won’t receive your loving.
There’s that remarkable saying that Unforgiveness is like taking poison and hoping the other person will die. I agree.
> Why does our pain, hurt, anger, block us from forgiving?
According to Eckhart Tolle (Power of Now and A New Earth), when you’re in your pain, hurt and anger-you’re not in your heart-where you experience forgiveness. Your painbody is ruling the show. It’s like you are looking at the person or event through that lens of anger-so you aren’t open enough to see all perspectives.You can’t see your “enemy’s” perspective so it’s hard to move into a place of compassion, where forgiveness lives.
> Why do we need to build an intention to forgive – before we actually act on forgiving?
I believe spontaneous forgiveness can happen. I live an intentional life and it helps me, but sometimes if something is too hard for a client to set an intention around because of the resistance present I ask them to set an intention not having to do with the specific incident but about accepting and embracing more loving or peace in their life. Forgiveness is a natural byproduct of this, even if it is self-forgiveness.
That said, I have found in years teaching about forgiveness that people can only forgive to the point that they have forgiven themselves. Often with something they judge as terrible they must forgive how they’ve betrayed themselves (with their decisions or choices) before or concurrently with forgiving someone else.
Ex. In 1995 my father shot and killed my mother and married her sister. I couldn’t truly forgive my father (why would I want to) until I forgave myself for the judgments I held against myself (I felt I betrayed myself by trusting and loving my father and therefore could never trust myself to make a wise decision again). I started to forgive my father during a 2 year Master’s Program in Spiritual Psychology where I learned the tools I needed to love and forgive myself.
It’s like the instructions on an airplane: You must give yourself oxygen before you give it to your child when the air pressure drops in a plane. My take on that is that you can’t really forgive someone else unless you forgive yourself first. Often times, we don’t realize we have something to forgive ourselves for at first. My work is in helping uncover whatever is preventing you from experiencing more peace.
> Why do we take time to forgive?
Forgiveness is a journey, not an event. As you uncover new layers of yourself by moving into acceptance and more self-love you can deepen in the amount of forgiveness you can experience.
> Why can’t we forgive spontaneously?
I believe it is possible, especially if you have a Spiritual belief system in place, as I do, where I believe in a good, fair and kind world, in which everything is connected and a reflection of this one good power.
Not all of my clients believe this, but I hold this as true and therefore hold in that loving place.
I personally believe ultimately there is nothing to forgive (Radical Forgiveness believes this too). That’s hard for some people to understand. And that’s for another conversation but it has to do with my belief that there is more than one perspective about everything. What’s unforgivable to one person, doesn’t matter to another.
Think for yourself of a time you absolutely thought you were right about something and someone else was wrong and then how it shifted.
Ex. My brother and i have different fathers. It was my father who killed our mother. My brother and I stopped speaking for 6 years after our mom was killed by my dad because my brother wanted to take my father to court immediately and I couldn’t face it. I was in denial. I hated my brother. I felt, as my older and only brother, he abandoned me. And he didn’t let me see his son during this time…Well when I started taking responsibility for my life years later and moved out of denial into acceptance of what was I made the decision to take my father to court. I used the forgiveness tools I now teach to identify the judgments against my brother and forgive them (even though I thought I was right for years and had people agreeing with me). When I did the inner work I moved into self-loathing for my own part in our separation and I judged myself as abandoning my brother. From doing this work I recognized the oneness between my brother and I, how his anger toward me was a projection of my own internalized anger toward myself for trusting my father and I applied self forgiveness to forgive myself and eventually reconcile with my brother.
Another year later I had another deepening of forgiveness with my dad..and then my aunt…
> How does one bring himself to forgiveness?
I believe setting an intention to forgive is a first choice. If you’re not ready then setting an intention to experience more peace and loving in your life. (I have worked with clients that have experienced extreme abuse and experienced shifts-so I know this is possible)
> Can we still love someone, after forgiving him?
I forgave my father and when I truly forgave him (and myself) I was able to love him while at the same time make a decision to never see him again. That was the way I set a healthy boundary. And when he died in 2004 I was at peace because I had reconciled those unforgiving parts inside me long before his death.
Hope this helps.
