Forgiveness
“Forgiveness has the power to ripen forces of purity such as love,
and affirms the qualities of patience and compassion. It creates the space
for renewals, and a life free from bondage to the past.” These words,
from Sharon Salzberg in her book Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art
Of Happiness (1995), offer us a taste of what true forgiveness can give
to the world. Forgiveness can release us of our bonds to past experiences
and beliefs, allowing us to step fully into the moment and in this way,
to truly live life. As many of us have experienced, however, forgiveness
can be a great challenge to embrace. Sharon Salzberg notes that surrendering
into forgiveness is often harder than holding onto resentment, anger,
sadness, or victimization. This is because it is a type of death. To surrender
and let go of feelings we’ve perhaps held onto for the majority
of our lives can mean a death of certain aspects of our old selves. Sharon
Salzberg states, “We must be able to say, ‘I am not that person
anymore, and you are not that person anymore.’” By exploring
the art of forgiveness, we are giving ourselves the tools to be reborn.
We are taking a pause from the rest of our daily experiences and focusing
our attentions on forgiveness.
In looking at why this choice is such an important one, I would like to share a traditional folktale that is found in Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With The Heart Of A Buddha (2003). This folktale says that a man lived who became very scared of his shadow. He was so scared that he attempted to run away from it. He ran faster and faster, but could not release himself from it. This man believed that if he could only be away from this shadow, he would indeed be happy. He became very upset after running for a long time, becoming exhausted without any progress made. The man was finally so exhausted that he fell to the ground dead. This is a story of our shadow selves, the parts of ourselves that we want to keep in the dark and not see.
We learn from a very young age what is acceptable and what is not. The emotions that we have learned are not suitable to express are fear and anger. When we do feel these emotions, we often create negative beliefs about our self-worth, such as thoughts of not being lovable or good enough. We keep ourselves busy by doing many activities so that we never have to face these parts of ourselves. Tara Brach says, “The more deeply we feel flawed and unlovable, the more desperately we run from the clutches of the shadow. Yet by running from what we fear, we feed the inner darkness. Whenever we reject a part of our being, we are confirming to ourselves our fundamental unworthiness.”
In order for the pattern of running from our shadow selves to cease, we need to take moments of stillness to truly be with ourselves. It is when we pause from the activities of our lives that we begin the process of forgiveness. This is a time of listening to the rejected parts of ourselves and surrendering to our experiences of life. As we continue to take moments to pause from activities, we can become more conscious beings throughout our entire lives. In the book A Gradual Awakening (1979), Stephen Levine says, “When we can surrender into the moment without any attachment anywhere, so that anything that arises is seen with a soft, non-judging mind, we experience our completeness. We can be with our loneliness, or our fear, or even our self-consciousness in a very complete way. We can see that these are just passing states of mind, and, though they may be painful to acknowledge, the recognition of their presence is the truth and the truth is beautiful.” Let us step further into the truth of who we are by looking more deeply into the art of forgiveness.