Imagining Forgiveness

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