Forgiveness III

Self Forgiveness

James Dempsey
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This is part III in this series on Forgiveness.  In my first blog (“Is Forgiveness a Selfish Act?”) we discussed the WHY of forgiveness.  If you would like to review it click here.

In it, we talked about why forgiveness is good for a person, and how letting go of anger and hurt over past wrongs is less a virtue than it is self-preservation.  When Jesus tells us to forgive our enemies, it isn’t because they deserve it as much as WE DO. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could forgive others because we are virtuous?  That is all well and good, but I personally found the virtue angle much less compelling than knowing that there was something in it for me.  What is in it for me?  In Aramaic, the word forgive literally means “to untie.”  I can untie myself from the bonds that tie me to the hurt my transgressor causes me.

The benefits of forgiveness are enormous.  Dwelling upon a wrong that has been done to you, especially long after the fact, is very damaging.  That realization, you know, that the transgressor most likely hasn’t thought about YOU or said incident in (maybe) years, is really telling.  As mentioned in my first article, forgiveness is self preservation at its best.

My 2nd article on Forgiveness, “Letting Go,” is here.

In that article we discuss HOW to forgive.  We walk through a step by step process that we can use as an actual method to forgive.  At the end of this current article I will also provide a few more links to other articles on the subject.

In the course of the last few months I have talked to dozens of people on the subject of forgiveness.  It is actually interesting on how nuanced the subject is.  Most folks talk about forgiving family members, ex-lovers, and co-workers (most notably, bosses).  We have discussed how easy or difficult it is to forgive each, and why.

Then I asked each of these people the big question:

“Who is it you find the most difficult person to forgive?”

I have had people give me all kinds of answers, but the response I got most often was very telling.  “The person I find most difficult to forgive is myself.”  I said that this answer was telling, but not surprising, because that is my answer to that question too.

Why is self-forgiveness so difficult??

There are a myriad of answers to this question, but I have found one common denominator most oft repeated among most folks – of varied religious backgrounds, both east and west- is that most of these traditions are very liberal when applying the concept of guilt. The brush of guilt was used in my church to cover a good deal of territory, some deserved, some not.  Catholic guilt,  Jewish guilt,  Greek guilt,  Japanese guilt, and  Chinese guilt are all terms I have heard in the course of these discussions. The people using these terms all looked at me with the look that said, “You know what I mean?”

I could always say, “Yes, I know what you mean.”

We also talked, in the “letting Go” post, about how one is rarely a 100% innocent victim.  It is also, in my experience, very true.  The nuns at school, as well as my mom, would always look to turn my victimhood on its little head and point it all back at me, if they could do that.  I watched them all do that with others too, and my own culture is not alone in this.

Self-forgiveness is very important then because, as mentioned in the above piece, it is also the first step in forgiving others.  My own ability to ask for and feel the relief of forgiveness is a big help in sending that feeling out to those who I NEED to forgive.  The world is getting smaller every day and there are still tribes all over the planet fighting 2,000 year old wars with their “born,” or natural, enemies.  As it literally shrinks to the size of your pocket smart phone, and the need to get along with our neighbors increases, our need to forgive ourselves as well as others others becomes more important every day.

Here are links to a few more articles on the subject:

http://www.wikihow.com/Forgive

http://learningtoforgive.com/9-steps/

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-11454/10-ways-to-forgive-yourself-let-go-of-the-past.html