Imagining Forgiveness

When working with anger, a common emotion that comes up alongside it is sadness. Grief or sadness can emerge regarding something once experienced that has been lost or over something that one wished for, but never had. Anger over betrayal often involves grief over the loss of the belief in eternal romantic partnership, for instance, or the loss of the belief that someone had your best interests in mind.

Stop for a moment of reflection to do a “grief check-in.” Ask yourself the following questions and write down and perhaps draw symbols of your responses.

 v     What do I feel I lose by letting go of anger?

 v     How do I typically experience sadness?

 v     Have I allowed myself to be aware of sadness?

 v     Have I blamed others or blamed and judged myself (or called myself weak) for feeling sad?

 v     Can I see how I may have fed my anger even more by not allowing myself to grieve over something?

Often a non-forgiving attitude toward oneself or another involves harsh judgment about loss. As you write down/draw these reflections, contemplate that the next time you begin to feel overcome by an angry attitude, you might remind yourself that you actually may be grieving over something.

Take a moment and think about what you dreamt last night. Take one image from your dream and consider your associations to that image. What is the most pressing issue in your life right now? If the image could speak to you, what would it say about this pressing issue in your life?

You need not reflect at length. Simply make a note of your thoughts and come back to them later.

If you don’t remember your dream, close your eyes for a moment. Allow an image to appear. Trust that it arises from the subjective world of your psyche just as surely as your dreams. Ask yourself about your associations to this image. If that image could speak to you right now, what would it say?

Dreams can offer us invaluable insights into the stream of experiences flowing through our lives. We are often so distracted by the demands of the teaming world around us that we shake off our slumber without pausing to let the images linger.

One of the best antidotes for this is to leave a journal by the side of your bed. Before you go to sleep, give yourself the mental suggestion that you will remember your dreams in the morning, long enough to jot them down.

In the morning, write the images down quickly — barely moving, as if that will disturb the images, and perhaps even writing in the dark. Rest assured, it will get easier.

Spend some time during the day communing with the images and allowing your associations to float through your mind and make connections. Forgive yourself gladly, if you can’t do it right away. You will be able to do it. And you’ve made a good start.

Tags: Imagery, inner dialogue, metaphor, working with dreams

Answer the following questions. Write or draw your responses and keep them for reflection.

• Where do I have the sense that my thoughts are coming from right now?
• Where do I have the sense that my feelings are coming from right now?
• Do I believe that I am loved?
• If I am loved, how do I know that? How and where do I feel that in my body?
• If I do not feel love or loved, how do I know that? How and where do I feel that in my body/
• Do I believe that I can feel forgiveness?
• Does forgiveness feel different than love? How and where do I know that in my body?
• Can I feel the pulse of my heart beat? How fast is it? How slow?
• When was the first time that I became aware of my heart beat? How old was I? Where did I believe that my heart beat came from?
• When was the first time that I knew that love exists?
• If I place my hand over my heart and breathe through my belly, what happens? Where does my thinking seem to come from?

Now, take a moment to reflect on your thoughts.

We record our life experiences and the interpreted meanings in our body in ways that reach back to before we could even speak, really before we even came out of the womb. If we did not have the benefit of being securely attached in our relationships with caregivers in early infancy, then life itself may have often felt unfair and overwhelming. We have adjusted in ways that have huge implications for how we hold ourselves as bodily vessels in our everyday lives.

Tags: Forgiveness, forgiveness practices, heart centeredness, heart reflections, power of imagery

Dr. Frederic Luskin, founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, points out, “Nobody’s ever taught us how to forgive. People have taught us how to get angry, how to become depressed, even how not to react with rage when life doesn’t turn out as we want it to, but nobody has taught us how to forgive.”

In fact, many people refuse to forgive others, because they have the mistaken impression that forgiveness implies a kind of tactic approval of the wrong that has been done to them. They assume that forgiveness entails welcoming the forgiven person back into their lives with open arms. And, especially when the wrong has been great, few people are naive enough to do such a thing.

Our strong survival instincts tell us it is foolish and dangerous to embrace a person, when we have evidence that they cannot be trusted. These are the instincts that have kept the human race alive on the planet for centuries and deserve our respect. As I assert in the introduction to my book, forgiveness does not equate with condoning. It does not mean that you must give up appropriate interpersonal boundaries or fail to hold another person responsible for their hurtful acts.

Forgiveness does equate with compassion for yourself and for others, regardless of the events that have occurred. Forgiveness requires a surrendering of our grievances to the perspective of the core Self, the part of all of us that transcends time and place and attachments. It involves a shift in meaning and perspective. It is in our power to forgive, regardless of the wrong that has been done.

Tags: condoning, forgive others, Forgiveness