Dare To Be Aware | Alternative Lifestyle

Forgiveness - What is it?

By Viola Woolcott

Forgiveness is accepting the actions of yourself or others which you feel were harmful or maybe negative based on your own personal perceptions.

The three areas of forgiveness are:
>> Forgiveness of others
>> Others forgiving us
>> Forgiving ourselves

At times it can be extremely hard to let go of being disappointed, upset or even angry at someone else.

Even though anger is a healthy emotion, which can be held on for a long time, it hides emotions like fear. As it is an uncomfortable feeling, it can also be totally avoided or entirely suppressed. Obviously that doesn’t make the anger disappear. Expressing anger in an inappropriate way causes greater pain. Responding with anger over a situation usually covers up some kind of fear and it is not the final emotional stage we find ourselves in when we are upset with someone. In order to understand ourselves, we need to look underneath any anger where we will find additional fears. That’s the only way to find true healing of our relationship to others.

How often has someone upset you? Caused you to be angry? Every event in our lives give us the opportunity for growth and by appreciating every single situation in our lives as perfect, we are living in the moment. At times it will be hard to do, but I promise you, it is worth a try! Try not to categorise and situation or event as either “good” or “bad”, as in the universal sense they are neither, as they are all part of the same. Positive or negative cause and effect depends on our actions.

If someone ‘wrongs’ us, what happens? Maybe if you been lied to about an important issue… a family member hurt your feelings… a friend betrayed you… or it could just be a personality trait you don’t approve of in someone you know.

Depending on our perception of a situation we can hold grudges and find it hard to forgive others. But it may seem less important seeing the behaviour of others as their fear issue. We would only bring harm to ourselves if we hang on to the anger another person brings and the other person which does not cause someone else pain can cause us countless suffering.

We are all living beings. We learn, experience and grow every single day. Even if others have good intentions, they may still not give you what you want, what you desire and what you need of them. It is normal to have an initial reaction of anger or frustration, but what you do with it, how you handle it is your choice and ONLY your choice.

How many times has it happened that we done something wrong? Something we did we wish we didn’t have? Deceive someone? Not being there for a friend in need? Or we did something we wish we could take back? How many times do we wish to be forgiven? And of course, our truest intention is not to cause someone pain and hurt. There have been and there will be times in our lives we face with regret. Times of regret and guilt are the cause for powerful blocks to be at peace and to be happy. There will always be situations we like to be forgiven for and others want to be forgiven for. And there will always be times when we are not forgiven, even though we know that we have done our utmost to rectify past behaviours. We can find empathy for someone who chooses to hold onto a grudge, as knowing what we know, we can offer forgiveness since we know that it would otherwise hurt them eventually.

We also have to realise that we must forgive ourselves first before we can receive forgiveness of another. Quite often self-forgiveness is left out completely of life’s equation and very rarely do we give ourselves permission to have negative results in our lives. No one is perfect and we learn our life lesson’s through “trial and error“. We will overlook the path of self-forgiveness, if we choose to continue to judge ourselves and in return we will suffer pain that lingers on for years. Wouldn’t you feel that you could have done better once it becomes a habit that surrounds every situation?

People judge themselves even for the smallest of things like forgetting an appointment or to call someone we promised. We just don’t allow ourselves to be human and a lot of the times we are our own worst enemy. By forgiving yourself whatever it is we judge as inferior within ourselves will set the many ties free that bind us from experiencing greater happiness.

The key to understanding our true selves is self-acceptance. After all, we are all human beings with flaws, so allow and accept yourself to be who and what you are.

To view life with full altruism we have to forgive ourselves and/or others, or we sit in self-judgement. By forgiving ourselves our imperfections, we will be able to do so with others more fully.

Filed under: Mind | Body | Spirit on January 11th, 2008