Perhaps you carry an old hurt with you, and whenever you think of that person, something in you tightens. You may have resolved to let go many times, and still the resentment returns. That is deeply human, for forgiveness is one of the hardest and at the same time most liberating themes there is.
“A Course in Miracles” says that forgiveness is the key to happiness. A miracle, in this understanding, is a shift in perception, the moment in which a burdening thought makes way for a more loving one. This is exactly what happens in forgiveness.
Forgiveness is for you, not for the other person
The greatest misunderstanding about forgiveness is that it is a gift to the other person. In truth, you do it for yourself. As long as you hold on to the resentment, you bind your own energy to a past situation, and the hurt keeps working in your life, day after day. When you forgive, you are not declaring the other person right, you are giving yourself your freedom back.
A subtle distinction helps here, namely the one between a person and their behaviour. You may clearly recognise a behaviour as hurtful and still release the person behind it from your judgment. And you may see mistakes, your own as well as those of others, for what they are in a deeper sense: opportunities to grow.
What forgiveness is not
Forgiveness does not mean that what happened was okay. Nor does it mean that you must return to a situation that is not good for you. You can forgive and hold clear boundaries at the same time, because forgiveness happens within you and does not even need the other person. Some people we forgive never know about it, and still everything changes.
The deeper view: love was missing
The yoga teacher Babaji describes forgiveness not as the standpoint that I am right and the other person is wrong, but as the realisation that love was missing in the situation. He says that life is for giving love, and that is exactly what lies within the word itself: for-giving.
And there is something comforting in this view. In our deepest being we are more than our body and our story, and this inner core cannot be hurt. When you become aware of this in a quiet moment and inwardly state that the other person cannot touch your true being, you come back into your own power.
A simple practice for the moment
Take a quiet moment and think of the person you would like to forgive. Notice briefly what tightens in you, and keep breathing calmly. Then inwardly separate the person from their behaviour, and tell yourself that you do not have to approve of the behaviour in order to release the resentment. To close, you can set the intention to take back the energy that was bound there, for it belongs to you.
If you repeat this practice for a while, you will notice that the charge softens and more peace settles in.
When forgiveness does not want to come
Perhaps you sense that you want to forgive and still cannot. That is not a weakness, for often an old imprint holds the hurt in the subconscious, and the mind alone cannot reach it there. This is exactly what I work with in my sessions, for example with Resonance Repatterning, so that the old charge may release and forgiveness becomes easier by itself. You can read how such imprints keep working in relationships in my article on relationship patterns.
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