by catfancier42 » Sat Oct 15, 2016 5:57 pm
Forgiveness can be a confusing concept. Here's my current understanding:
There is only one moment in life in which you actually live: the present. All the choices you make in life, the changes, everything in which you have actual say or influence over how life unfolds, all that happens right here, right now. The past is past and can only be remembered and possibly reinterpreted, not undone or otherwise changed. The future is not yet written and can only be imagined and planned for. Life itself--whether you are remembering the past, occupied with the present moment, or planning for the future--all of it happens in one single moment: the present moment.
So, Carla, this moment is all you have. What are you doing with it? Forgiveness is a tool for a particular sort of problem. It addresses the problem people have when their present moment becomes dominated by some painful past event. In your scenario, you were fired from the job you loved for reasons you deem unfair. This was a painful past event. But what you are doing now is worse: rather than experiencing the pain of losing your job and then moving on, you are instead choosing to continually relive what happened to you. Your present moment has been taken over by your past pain. So what are you actually doing here? By continuing to bring the pain of the past into the present, you are extending your own torment! And this is where forgiveness comes into play.
Forgiveness is a tool designed to help you move on from the pain you suffered in the past and return to living more fully and freely in the present. As you can now see, its primary purpose is to help you, not the person you are forgiving. Here are some steps you might take in actually going about doing it:
1. Acknowledge that what happened in the past cannot be changed. You cannot go back in time and avoid being fired from your job.
2. Realize that the only moment you have any control over in life is the present moment. If you are going to move forward with your life, you are going to have to do it in the here and now.
3. Choose to begin living in the present moment instead of the past. Ask yourself questions like, What is something positive I can do right now? Go outside and just sit somewhere that you can practice watching life unfold as it happens, maybe in a park or something where you can watch nature instead of people (which may encourage a relapse into negativity.). The idea here is that your brain has a habit: looking into the past and dragging up painful memories. You want to gradually replace that habit with a new one: being attuned to the present moment and taking positive actions in it that will promote a better future.
4. Gradually attempt to reframe what happened to you in the past. I waited to put this step here because it helps to put a little distance between yourself and the painful events in your past before trying to do it. What does reframing your past mean? It means taking your present wisdom and insight and applying it to a painful past event in a way that transforms it and helps you heal. For instance, let's say you were to become a more self-aware person in the present, more mindful of your faults as they actually are, rather than what you had previously just assumed them to be. Well, when you bring that awareness to your past, you might better notice the ways in which your behavior encouraged the event of your getting fired. And if you are able to become okay with idea of being human being with both strengths and weaknesses, you might be able to look back and better understand why your managers acted as they did. Not only will you be able to see both the good and the bad in their actions, but rather than treating them as horrible demons you will begin to see them as fellow people just like yourself: people who have reasons for why they do what they do, however poorly conceived, and even if what they do isn't always the right thing. All of this helps you to come to terms with your past experience. By seeing it more clearly and in a healthier, more realistic context, a lot of your negative feelings will be able to resolve and let go. You no longer have reason to feel them.
As you can see, forgiveness is not easy! Which is why it is so easy to struggle with it. Yet I think it is safe to say that the alternative of continually reliving your past pain is much worse. Not only do you have the pain itself, but all the delusion about reality that goes with it. I believe this is something of what Jesus points to in his instruction to remove the log from your own eye before picking at the speck in your neighbor's. When you remove the log, then and only then do you see clearly enough to get at your neighbor's speck. It is only by going through the process of forgiveness that we have the humanity and humility necessary to even begin to accurately ascertain the faults of someone else.
So, realize that you will not forgive in a day. It is a process that of necessity takes time, and it is vital to be patient, kind, and understanding with yourself as you go through it. But if you are committed to moving forward in life, forgiveness is the only way to do that 100%. If we are bound in the past, how can we live fully in the present?
Note: It can be important to distinguish between two thinking states when practicing forgiveness: active thinking and re-active thinking. In active thinking you are in the driver's seat of your brain, so to speak, actively thinking about what you choose and choosing how to think about what you are thinking about. But in re-active thinking you are swept up, as it were, in the raging sea of your own thoughts. There is no self-awareness in re-active thinking; you are simply lost in the narratives and emotions of the thought stream. Part of cultivating living in the present moment is the gradual transition from predominately re-active thinking to more and more active thinking. When you struggle with unforgiveness, what tends to happen is that you get swept up in painful past memories and experience all the emotions associated with them, over and over again, without any real feeling of control. In order to forgive, you will be learning to be present with your thoughts without getting lost in them; that is, you will be learning to think more actively. By engaging in active thinking with past painful memories, you are able to explore and learn from them rather than simply getting swept up in them yet again.
Wow. I posted more than I intended. I realize that my explanation of forgiveness may be rather complicated. I would encourage you to just use whatever you can understand and that seems useful to you. Maybe the rest will make sense later? Or perhaps someone with clearer explanations will come along!
