Dear Tom:

I don’t think it is necessary or even a good idea that you forgive this woman. You can move on while not forgiving her, if you consider that there are a few women out there who will not misuse you and avail yourself to meet women, evaluate their trustworthiness- or lack on- and make your choice to get closer or withdraw, accordingly.

Is this woman the first person in your life to have misused you, manipulated you?

anita

My observation has been that people use the word forgiveness without really understanding what they mean by it.   (Often, we use words forgetting that they are place holders for an idea or process and not the thing itself – we mistake the map for the territory. )

I have done a fair amount of study on the idea of forgiveness which is a process and turns out more often then not has very little to do with the person that hurt us. Forgiveness is a process of letting go of our grasping on to pain of the experience and not a process of forgetting (though there is an aspect of forgetting as in making the choice to not to dwell).

Forgiveness also does not remove accountability, responsibility – break the law of karma/action – as in cause and effect.  If you steal from me I can forgive, let go of the pain, let go of vengeance, free myself from dwelling, wish you well… however you’re still going to jail. Not out of anger or hate but Love. If our actions had no consequence there would be no meaning, purpose or Love.

A result of authentically working through the process of forgiveness allows a person to detach the emotions from the memory (detachment is not interference or stoicism). When remembering a hurtful experience (re–membering is a act of recreating) we may re-memeber sadness however we do not become sad. I feel sad vice I am sad. In this way or fixation on the memory fads. We learn what we can learn from the experience and move on with our lives as those that hurt us move on with theirs.

What does forgiveness mean to you?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Peter.

Correction on my initial post – detachment is not indifference or stoicism

Just another note on forgiveness

When a person says they will never forgive, perhaps because they associate forgiveness with letting someone off the hook… The danger is that subconsciously they may be saying “I refuse to let go of the pain that was done to me. As long as I hold onto the hurt… I hurt and punish the one that hurt me… and I blame myself…

Anita is right, you don’t need to consciously go through the process of forgiveness. It may not even be advisable if you are unclear as to what forgiveness means. Anita will help you learn what you need to learn from the experience and so hopefully move on… which can also be an important part of the forgiveness process.

It is my hope that when you do find your way past the experience that hate and anger your feel will have dissipated as the danger is to become bitter.

Joseph Campbell Tells the following story. It may not appear to be about forgiveness however it does I think point to why the process of forgiveness is important to becoming.

A samurai warrior had the duty to avenge the murder of his overlord. After some time, he found and cornered the man who had murdered his overlord. As he was about to deal with him with his samurai sword, when this man in the corner, in the passion of terror, spat in his face. In this moment the samurai sheathed the sword and walked away. Why did he do that?

Because he was made angry, and if he had killed that man then, it would have been a personal act, of another kind of act, that’s not what he had come to do.

The samurai’s mission was not simply to kill the murderer, but to honor his master and fulfill his duty. Killing the murderer out of anger would not have fulfilled the intrinsic call of his duty. To an observer, whether he killed the culprit motivated by honor or anger, it wouldn’t have mattered. The murderer would be dead either way.

But to the samurai, his own motivation made all the difference. He needed a crystal clear answer for why he was taking action, and a reactive response out of anger would not only be dishonorable, it would negate the reason for his quest.

You can choose your response. You can observe an unhelpful emotion take hold, but you don’t have to react. You always can choose to act in a way that honors the vision of the person you truly want to be.

Nothing is just a means to an end. Every action is an end in itself. The path is the destination, right? It’s the journey that matters.