Forgiveness is essential for our spiritual healing. When we are willing to be forgiven, and to forgive, we are saying that there is something bigger in our lives than our hurt. When we don’t forgive, we tend to give the bulk of our attention to how we have been hurt. We focus on the things that are painful. Clearly our wounds need attention. But when we concentrate on our hurt, we learn to see the brokenness, losses, or injures we have been given as the most important things in our lives. We cultivate an attention to these wounds in such a way that over time they come to occupy the most important place in our heart.Our wound lives at the center of our heart. And this poisons our heart. We cannot love. We cannot move forward. We are in a state of profound dis-ease.
Miguel Ruiz, the author of the “Four Agreements” reminds us of our need to forgive, for our own spiritual sake, in his book “The Mastery of Love”. He writes. “There is no other way but forgiveness to clean the wounds of all the poison. You must forgive those who hurt you, even if whatever they did to you is unforgiveable in your mind. You will forgive them not because they deserve to be forgiven (I might add any more than your deserve to be forgiven), but because you don’t want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you remember what they did."
>This is a hard task… forgiving other. Maybe almost as difficult as forgiving ourselves.
I don't think I have enough ego to have a big problem with forgiveness. That seems to be the job of someone bigger than me.
ReplyDeleteThe hardest part of forgiveness is longing for people to understand HOW what they have done hurt me. Sometimes they do, though seldom, but why, when you think about it, should they? They did what they did from their own needs and mine just happened to get in the way.
So mainly I just try to get over that. And in most of the cases where I have been hurt, I played into it in some way.
And failure to forgive yourself? The biggest ego trip of all.
For me the hardest part of forgiveness is the actual change in my heart. I want to forgive but the reality of it is not so easily forthcoming.....I am so glad there is power of God available to help with the healing of the hurt after I have obediently chosen to forgive. Ephesians 3:16, 2 Cor 3:17. I love how seeking God's healing presence actually brings a peace that is not in my head but in my heart. When I need to forgive, my heart needs to be transformed and I have discovered I am not so good at it I truly need help.
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