[Venus007]

What are your thoughts on forgiveness?
Forgiveness is very tightly tied to the idea of acceptance. There is nothing I can do to change the past or the things I perceive as negative that happened to me. I can only accept that they happened, attempt to integrate them into myself and move on. This is a process and in some examples it has and does take many years in my life to process and to move to acceptance. I have to practice mindfulness and to consistently put down the anger, resentment, bitterness, etc that being harmed has caused me, it is something I have to do daily, hell hourly in some cases. I have to return and return and return to opening my hand, to not clinging to my ego and my ego’s pain, I am strong enough and expansive enough to release the pain of my harm and forgive my antagonist.

What does forgiveness mean to you?
Releasing to verifying levels of success, the anger and resentment surrounding instances where in my estimation I have been wronged. Forgiveness does not mean condoning the behavior that occurred, nor does it necessarily mean that the individual who wronged me will be allowed back into my life if they are toxic.

What does it feel like to you?
Sometimes forgiveness feels like a betrayal to my ego. Sometimes it feels like a bitter, hard thing. Sometimes it feels like a release of a weight pressing down on me. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like anything.


Do you have methods or rituals of forgiveness?
I have a few as out of necessity I have had to practice much forgiveness in my life.
One is to write an event that I experienced that I need to extend forgiveness for down from my antagonist’s eyes. This helps me see what they were experiencing.

I also say “I forgive you” to people who apologize to me. I am trying to move away from the nondescript and relatively meaningless (to me) “that’s okay” because sometimes it is most certainly NOT ok. To use the words in a formal way helps me process, saying “I forgive you” or “I grant you forgiveness” adds a gravitas that sometimes is called for.

For big things and deep past wounds a formal ritual I practice for viewing with compassion for the person who wronged me is to visualize the person who wronged me as a child before life and time corrupted them and caused them to harm me. I do this visualization while looking into the flame of a white candle for many nights starting at the new moon and lasting until the full moon. Then I write a letter to the person who wronged me expressing my forgiveness and compassion (even if that forgiveness and compassion is small, hard and rudimentary). I then take the candle, the letter and anything else I think I need to include and throw it into a moving body of water and walk away without turning back or I burn it completely.


Do you feel there are times when forgiveness is not an option?
I feel that there are times when my ego throws a fit about the harm that came to me because it doesn’t want to release its pain, but ultimately I must practice forgiveness for myself. If I choose not to forgive and to hoard the wrongs against me I am poisoning myself. In order for me to move on and not give those who harmed me any more power in my life I need to remove them as they harmed me from my mind and from my heart, I must let them go from me. They are not treasure to be kept or goodness to be savored but rough lessons to be learned. By choosing not to forgive I am allowing those who harmed me continuing power and pain in my life and to me that is not acceptable.

Do you forgive frequently or rarely?
Frequently

Do you forgive yourself?
This is a hard one for me. I have to practice letting go of things that I am inclined to be unforgiving of, daily, and hourly. I must practice the same compassion and unattachment for myself that I extend to others, this can be a pisser.

Do you seek forgiveness for things you regret?
For things I regret I try to make amends and I express to the individual I have wronged my apology. I cannot cause someone else to confer grace or forgiveness to me, I can only (and am only responsible for by the way) being honest about what I did to them that hurt them and being sincerely remorseful or regretful about the wrong doing. It is their business to choose or not choose forgiveness for me and I cannot cause that to happen.

If you have kids or have young people in your life, what do/would you teach them about forgiveness?
That although it is hard it leads to freedom from past injuries and that to refuse forgiveness can make them soul-sick. I would also teach them any techniques that work for me.

Any other thoughts on forgiveness?
Forgiveness is not the same as condoning what then individual did to you that wronged you. There are ways I have been harmed in my life that were empirically wrong and could be called evil. My forgiveness does nothing to diminish that, it only releases me, my soul, my ego, myself from squirreling away the resentment and ongoing pain from that injustice so I may move forward and not define myself by the ill that happened to me but by the substance of my life that is greater than an event (or series of events).