"6 Big Fat Lies About Forgiveness"
©2003 Karen Bentley
There's a difference between the more familiar social version of
forgiveness and the less familiar spiritual version of forgiveness.
This is because the purpose of the social version of forgiveness is
to assign or accept blame, whereas the purpose of the spiritual
version of forgiveness is to undo the hate you have in your mind for
self or another. As you can see, these two versions of forgiveness
are not the same. One enables you to feel good, and the other makes
you feel bad.
The social practice of forgiveness leaves you feeling bad because it
does not undo hate. Many times, it makes hate stronger. Therefore, it
does nothing truly useful and it has nothing to do with real
forgiveness. The undoing of hate in the mind is very important
because it's the key to happiness beyond your wildest expectations.
Therefore, the little known and underutilized spiritual practice of
forgiveness is one of the great secrets of life. Keep that in mind as
you reconsider six of the biggest, fattest lies about the social way
in which we forgive.
Lie #1: Saying the words "I forgive you" or "I apologize" is an act
of forgiveness.
This is the biggest lie of all. While saying "I forgive you" or "I
apologize" is a popular social convention for dealing with mistakes,
it does not necessarily end the hate you have in your own mind or the
hate that someone else holds against you. In fact, saying these words
has the opposite effect of making the mistake more real and more
serious rather than minimizing it. Remember when Tanya Harding
publicly apologized to Nancy Kerrigan for having Nancy's knee whacked
just before the winter Olympics in 1994? Even though Tanya said the
right words and appeared to be sincere, the words did nothing to
change Nancy's mind about Tanya's badness or wrongness. It most
likely had the opposite effect of keeping Nancy's grudge alive rather
than undoing it.
This is not to suggest that you should never say "I'm sorry"
or "excuse me for making a mistake." Rather, it's to ask you to
become more conscious of why you are saying these words and what you
are really doing. When you give an apology or demand one from someone
else, you are not choosing to see goodness in self or another.
Instead you are choosing to see the worst. And you get what you see.
Always. Is the worst what you really want, dear reader? The spiritual
practice of forgiveness develops your spiritual vision, which is the
ability to see self or other at the highest possible level.
Lie #2: Forgiveness takes a long time and may involve many steps.
This is another popular social concept which is untrue. Many social
and psychologically-oriented forgiveness practices involve several
steps, stages, or degrees of forgiveness. First you think some more
about the way you've been mistreated. Maybe you write down all the
injustices. Then you get ready to forgive. Then you do this. Then you
do that. Then maybe you write a letter or talk to a counselor about
how badly you've been injured. Then you do something else. Yes, you
can engage in this kind of angst and turmoil for as long as you want.
And there's an advantage to it because your ego-based need for
attention from others is fulfilled. But try to remember that this
need does not make you happy, so ultimately there is no benefit.
Wallowing in misery and delaying your joy is completely unnecessary.
Spiritual forgiveness is not hard, time-consuming, complicated, or
mysterious. It begins with the awareness of hate in your mind and
ends with the tiny willingness to give it up. You practice
forgiveness the very moment you change your mind about yourself or
another being wrong or bad. So here is the question to ask yourself,
dear reader. How long does it take to change your mind? Not even a
second.
Lie #3. Forgiveness only needs to be done once.
In the social version of forgiveness, you say the words "I'm sorry"
or "forgive me" once, and typically the deed is done. However, this
doesn't really work because the human mind is disorganized and
untrained. Thoughts of badness or wrongness keep coming back again
and again. Because the mind is so unruly, it's critical to approach
forgiveness as a form of spiritual fitness, something you do for
yourself on an ongoing basis, rather than a one-time event.
Developing spiritual fitness is the same as developing physical
fitness. You cannot expect to grow a big, beautiful bicep muscle by
doing one repetition of a bicep curl. Likewise, you cannot expect to
develop a mind that's free of hate by one small act of forgiveness.
Here's how it works: A loveless thought about self or another enters
the mind, and you notice it. Now you have a choice. It's always the
same choice. You can keep the thought and indulge it, or you can
change your mind and thereby undo (or transcend) the loveless
thought. The loveless thought gets undone over and over, every time
it presents itself, maybe several times a day. You just keep at it,
like a diet. Eventually the thought is dismantled because there is no
fresh investment of energy to keep it going.
Lie #4. Forgiveness is painful.
It's true that the social version of forgiveness can be very painful
because it always involves assigning ownership for a mistake or
admitting ownership for a mistake. Ugh! Of course that hurts! No
wonder forgiveness has such a bad name! However, the spiritual
version of forgiveness is not painful at all because it is the
complete overlooking of blame. Therefore, real forgiveness results in
joy, not pain.
Lie #5. Forgiveness means that you accept or condone certain acts and
behaviors as okay.
Forgiveness is not the overlooking of a problem. It's the overlooking
of the blame and the judgment of badness or wrongness that typically
accompanies the problem. If, for example, your house is on fire, you
can't overlook it and pretend that nothing's happening. You have to
solve the problem at hand, put the fire out, tend to processing
insurance claims and salvaging your belongings. Your mission is
simply to solve your problems and make life more functional without
the dose of attack, guilt, or blame that usually goes along with it.
In our world, love (or special attention) is given or withheld based
on the performance or non performance of certain desirable behaviors.
But if you give or withdraw your love based on what people do or
don't do for you, then your love is completely and totally
conditional. What you're offering is actually a bargain - not love.
Real love is unconditional and unshakeable. While it is more pleasing
to have people in the world behave the way you want them to behave
and value what you want them to value, love is not dependent on the
behavior or value system of others. Love is dependent on your
decision to be a loving being and that is all.
Lie #6. Forgiveness corrects errors.
The social practice of forgiveness often includes the provision that
someone else must correct an offensive or inappropriate behavior. As
you can by now see, this is yet another condition on love. Therefore,
it cannot be love and must be hate. Since forgiveness is the undoing
of hate, correction of another cannot be a form of forgiveness.
Correction of another is God's job, not ours. Our job is to accept
our brothers and sisters "as they are." The hardest thing we are
asked to do on the spiritual path is to witness a behavioral mistake
in another without judgment or correction. Can you do it? Of course
you can. A more important question is will you do it? Will you refuse
to be shaken by the insanity of another? That is the test of peace
you must pass.
We want the people in our world to conform to our morally correct and
uplifted standards, so it is always a challenge to remember that this
is our fantasy about how the world "should be." This fantasy is the
subtle way in which we all "dream" or "sleep." Because of this,
spiritual forgiveness is a gentle way of awakening. Many of us give
good lip service to wanting to awaken from our dreams and to become
enlightened, but the bottom line is always the same. What we really
want is for our brothers and sisters to awaken so that we don't have
to do the work of being a loving being in the face of constant
lovelessness.
