Forgiveness

Dr Bernie Siegel – Oh, Nelson Mandela, “If I don’t forgive those who put me in prison I’m still in prison” say but when you can forgive you walk away you’re free and so the peace comes when you can let go. 

Alexi Panos – I had an interesting journey through forgiveness where I thought it was will I forgive you because what you did was wrong to me but that in and of itself denotes that something was wrong and I’m better or I’m right and what I’m learning as I keep kind of being on my journey and going through this whole work in progress called life is right and wrong is just a construct it’s based on my upbringing. Well, I believe it’s right because of my agreement based on my parents, based on their parents, based on their parents and for you, it’d be the same thing. You’ve got your sense of right and wrong and I was raped at the age of 20 at gunpoint and had a very traumatic experience around that and forgiveness started as let me forgive this person for what they did. They didn’t know what they were doing and that forgiveness journey took me down the road to realizing compassion. When I actually thought about what that human being might have been going through or have been through as a child to commit an act like that to another human being, my heart burst like it just I cried for him I did my own catharsis where I cried for myself prior but I cried for him. I was so sad at the pain that he must have experienced as a young boy or as a teenager or as a young man that he could do that to somebody else. So forgiveness for me is now a process of understanding our own humanity and knowing that you know any of us were not far away from committing heinous acts you know, we’ve all had those moments where we’re so flustered or so angry or so passionate about something that something could happen and to recognize the humanity in it and to have compassion and empathy for what somebody else might have been through themselves for me is what the forgiveness process is about.

Jerry Jampolsky – Forgiveness has nothing to do with chasing the other person. I think this is where most people get caught on it because I forget that person’s gonna attack there again we’re going to predict that. And again this works. If you see no more value in hurting another person or making them suffer if you believe that in my own defenceless my safety lies and the world’s laws as you know someone’s attacking you attack them back. So we don’t believe that person’s attacking it. We believe any person is fearful and they’re even giving a call of help for love and it doesn’t look like them then we say, Well, then they’re giving a call of help for love so we can get more love to that person. You refused to see the other prisoners hurting us because that’s only an ego view.

Colin Tipping – That’s traditional forgiveness to seeing them seeing them as better than we thought they were or bringing compassion to a situation and seeing them differently and recognizing that we saw them falsely, Yes that’s psychological perception but what we’re talking about is to be able to perceive a different reality altogether to see the perfection of everything the way it is as it is that’s the ship.

Colin Tipping –  I found out when I started to research it that people who experience cancer many many of them have a tendency to have a problem with forgiveness. Their modus operandi in dealing with their emotions is to suppress them and repress them, deny them intensely and so it goes deep into the psyche and deep into the body and then they pretend that it’s okay that you know they don’t feel anything they numb out or they get addicted to something in order to stay numbed out and medicate it.

Carol Howe –  Forgiveness is releasing so much of this stuff in our minds that is just, it’s just simply inaccurate but we’ve never questioned it. If you don’t question it then you’ll never find out that it’s inaccurate so forgiveness is realizing, I’m holding on to grievances, I am holding on to making someone else responsible for my upset or my pain or my lack or whatever else”. It’s a very immature perspective to have and forgiveness is really releasing these thoughts and ideas and accusations in my own mind out of enlightened self-interest because as long as I hang on to them I will perpetuate the idea that I’m small and lacking an unworthy and a victim it’s just a pointless closed loop to stay in when I have the option of breaking out so to speak and ultimately finding myself in a much better-closed loop where I’m fine everybody else is fine everybody’s deserving everybody makes mistakes but everybody’s inherently lovable etc. 

Gary Renard – The first step is you got to stop yourself. It’s like Jim Carrey in the movie there somebody stopped me you know, you got to stop yourself from thinking with the ego. Now the ego wants this whole thing to be real because there’s something that most people don’t know about the ego. The ego likes this idea of separation, the ego wants to keep it going it’s a game that the eagle wants to maintain because, for one thing, it feels special. You know, it feels important to have an individual identity and a personal existence and all these special relationships and goals and dreams and desires and accomplishments and possessions that all feels really cool to the ego and the ego wants to keep it going but all it does is it keeps you stuck here and you know you live what seems to be a lifetime which is really a dream these are kind of like serial dreams that we have over and over again so  you have this in between time and actually all your time is spent in dreaming the whole thing is a dream until you wake up and when you wake up that’s enlightenment and you no longer asleep you’re no longer in the dream  yeah you may appear to be here for a while but you realize that’s all it is, is false appearance and illusion and what you’re doing is you’re going home and  that’s a whole different discussion but when it comes to the forgiveness that gets you to that point of enlightenment the first step is you’ve got to stop reacting with the ego and if you can do that and you can get very good at doing that all it takes is practice. 

You know, if you want to be good at forgiveness you practice every day, you want to be a good piano player you practice every day. Well, spirituality is no different and if you can practice every day you can get into the habit of thinking with the right part of your mind instead of the wrong part of your mind and you can stop yourself so when that guy cuts you off in traffic or that politician comes on the TV screen you can’t stand and you want to go ehh (angry) you know ehh (angry), instead of doing that you go to do that and you stop yourself that’s the first step and if you can do that then you can take the second step and the second step is you switch you know, from looking at the world and looking at that politician or the guy that just cut you off, looking at it with the right card of your mind instead of the wrong part of your mind and the right part of the mind will say, “Look if you forgive you’ll see this differently you’ll feel better you’ll be happier you can take stress out of your life”

You know I’ve been doing this particular kind of forgiveness for 23 years and I don’t feel one day older today than I did 23 years ago when I first started doing this. I’m 65 years old I don’t feel it you know I don’t feel like anything’s changed and it’s really stress that gets people it leads to all kinds of illnesses and problems and  you know bad thought processes that even lead some people God forbid to suicide. That can all be undone through a discipline and that second step is switching to that right part of the mind and the right part of the mind has a totally different story about what’s going on in the world and instead of being a victim you can be at cause and there’s no power in being a victim you know there’s no power in being at the effect of the world but there’s probably a power if it’s coming from you instead of at you. So the second step is you switch to the right part of your mind and the third step is knowing that because there’s only one of us your mind is going to interpret whatever you think to be about you, you’re going to change what you think about the world and about those people. 

The wrong part of your mind thinks in terms of separation and division the ego loves conflict, the ego loves judgment why, how can you keep the game going without judgment you know how and what causes judgment. You got to make it real in order for  you know judgment to prevail but if you switch to the right part of your mind and you’re forgiving and you’re becoming more calm. Then you can take a step which is the third step and I think it takes a while to get into the habit of doing it. You want to think of that person as not the false Image that you’re seeing yeah, you’re still going to live a normal life if you’re smart I hope that you don’t become so spiritual that you can’t carry on a normal conversation with people because I meet spiritual people all the time and I swear sometimes they don’t know how to carry on a normal conversation and have a normal life and be happy which is why I tell people look  don’t forget how to be normal you know it’s okay to have your life you don’t have to give up anything  this is not a sacrificial form of spirituality. 

It’s not talking about giving up anything in your life it’s just talking about  looking at it differently. It’s like “A Course of Miracles” would say, now you’re above the battleground you know, now you’re looking at it from a place where you’re not stuck in i and you’re not at the effect of it. And instead, you can think of people as well. You know okay, they think that they’re individual bodies separate and that all this is real but you know what I know better and I know that this is just a projection you know just like the Hindus said thousands of years ago in the Vedanta, this is not real at all and I’m going to think of them not as being that separate individual that they think they are. I’m going to look at them and think about them as being what they really are which is the wholeness of oneness perfect oneness the source you know where you came from you are exactly the same as your source this is something that is immortal. It’s invulnerable, it’s something that can’t be threatened by anything in this world. It’s something that can’t even be touched by anything in this world it’s possible to get in touch with that and live like that instead of this temporary thing that by definition is going to be dead eventually anyway that’s not real. 

You know whatever is temporary and transitory is not real but what is real is permanent you know something that will never fade away never die you know, God never dies, Spirit never dies it needed to you because you’re exactly the same as your source and that’s what’s possible for you to get in touch with and live that way. You can go through life fearlessly in the attitude that there’s nothing here that can hurt me not really because what I am is nothing less than God and I know that’ll sound arrogant to some people, oh, um I might as well say I am God to say that  um the same as God but that’s not really arrogance. What is arrogance is the thing that you can be separate from your source and to think that you can be separate from God that is the arrogance of the ego that believes in separation and wants to keep it going.

Colin Tipping – It’s when you are in a more reflective frame of mind more analytical frame of mind where you look at what happened and you begin to ask yourself some questions what might the person do that, how can I understand what happened if I put myself in their shoes okay? Um were they wounded where they just acting out something on me and I just happen to be the person that they wanted to use to act out their wound could that be, have been in it, was I taking it too personally maybe it wasn’t even about me it’s about them really. So we’re looking at it much more reflectively and also bringing what I would call the best of human qualities to the situation, compassion, mercy, understanding, tolerance. 

The pain should be acknowledged and felt but the other stuff is optional that’s suffering. Pain is pain all the interpretations and other stuff is suffering and that’s optional.

Skipp Townsend – We have what we call a forgiveness letter so we take the most traumatic experience that the individual’s ever gone through and we ask them to write a letter of forgiveness. Forgiven the person for whatever it is something as horrible as might have killed my mom or some of the girls have been raped or we have one guy who was shot in the head about four or five times they pronounced him dead twice and he’s still alive we asked him to forgive and forgiveness is major it’s a major part it’s sort of like what I want to say is the highlight but in the forgiveness letter which is much more important is an apology. So the first paragraph is forgiveness for whatever happened but the second paragraph is an apology says, “I apologize for whatever my thoughts whatever my bitter reaction whatever it was that I intended to do or wanted to do for retribution for retaliation there was something that I felt and I apologize for that I might want to hurt your family I might want to kill you I might have wanted to just pour acid on you”. 

Whatever it is burn your house whatever it is we have them apologize for their thoughts and that’s really the cleansing so the forgiveness is something that brings up deeply rooted issues that might make a person cry and relive a situation and that’s like that kryptonite. We’re going to get them to talk through it but the real healing comes when they apologize for the actions that they wanted to do in retaliation for what was done to them. So now this becomes really personal and it’s a like a relief like I don’t want to do that anymore I don’t want to kill you anymore I don’t want to hurt your family anymore and then there’s always a message no matter what happens to me in life there’s a teachable moment. 

So the last paragraph is, “And I thank you, I thank you for whatever message I learned not to walk the streets at night not to drive that kind of car whatever it is that might have come up that I can say you know what I learned a valuable lesson to value my friends or take better care of my mom whatever the situation is I need to thank you for allowing that lesson to be learned” and we find that this is the way to help people heal but also this is the way I find that most people leave my class.

Colin Tipping – We call it the reframe. It’s where we look at this story and say, Yes, it happened it hurt in the human, from a human perspective it was not good, shouldn’t happen really it’s a pity that it did happen but if we look at it from a spiritual standpoint maybe there was a reason why it happened maybe we actually brought it into our experience ourselves for a reason. Now this is at the soul level now.

DAN MILLMAN – I always found it hubris to walk around bestowing forgiveness on people saying, I will forgive you for that wrong you did me and I will forgive you for that wrong you didn’t give me to me the more I’ve understood myself and seen myself realistically. I think my primary business is not forgiving others it’s asking forgiveness for the unkind things I’ve done for the ignorant things I’ve done as well-intentioned as it may have been for the lazy things I’ve done for the times I’ve lied in my life or stolen things even stealing people’s time by demanding attention so the more we see ourselves realistically we realize we have a lot to be forgiven for and that may be just as useful as going around forgiving other people.

STEVEO – Yeah, this was really difficult for me. Forgiveness was super difficult um I had  I forgive you written on my bathroom mirror to you know every time in the morning when I brush my teeth like it you know. I had like real problems with guilt and um and forgiving myself and now looking back on it I think it’s kind of silly because there wasn’t anything I did that was really so terrible. I think that where I got really kind of sucked into it and all the self-loathing again is the ego you know like, it’s sort of like to say that you know I don’t think much of myself but I’m all I think about you know? Like where I decided I hated myself it was just me thinking about me you know and being self-absorbed and self-obsessed. When I can look at it at this point and really honestly recognize that it was more of an exercise and just being self-obsessed than accomplishing anything you know? I hadn’t done anything so terrible that I should want to kill myself or anything you know I mean the purpose of the inventory work is to identify which behaviors don’t serve us and to discard them and to move on in a more productive way by taking inventory and sort of putting myself on trial and deciding that I hated myself I wasn’t, that wasn’t recovery that was just self-obsession and self-loathing.

Colin Tapping – Self-forgiveness is accepting ourselves the way we are and recognizing that we’ve done nothing wrong. We’ve committed crimes, misdemeanors in human terms of course we have but in spiritual terms, we did what we had to do. See without, in order to play a victim game which is the game we come into play we have to have perpetrators we can’t be victims without perpetrators.

Dr. Eben Alexander – I think when it comes to parents it’s important to remember our parents have done the best they could do at the time with what they had and of course, most people for their parenting skills they look to their own parents, and they either try to model and emulate what their own parents did if they think they got most of it right or they trying do the opposite which is of course often the case. So always remember that our parents were trying to do their best and remember that they were a reflection of the struggles that they had as a child and that often those kinds of imperfections are not cleared up by the time one becomes a parent so parents are not perfect just like no one is perfect in that sense and I think that as we can come to take that bigger view and really see the love that they manifested and then come to see that there were times when they may not have been so loving and try to open our minds to see how that could have been and enlarge our field of view to where we’re considering what they had gone through as a child because that’s what kind of shaped their abilities as a parent and the more we can kind of expand that and see it .. with all of the features a positive and negative that were involved the more we can come to a place of forgiving our parents  it’s for any kind of lapses.

Dan Millman – We’re all going to die someday conventionally speaking physically the body dies that’s the great equalizer. I believe people are doing the best they can with their own wounds, blind spots suffering. I believe my parents did the best they could raising me and if they were kind or not they were still doing the best they could day by day moment to moment given their own limitations and on blind spots. Just as we did the best we could raising our children making mistakes inevitably but we do the best we can. So to me, forgiveness is the recognition that we’re all doing the best we can within our framework of the world and our past.

Gary Renard – First of all it does begin with baby steps you know, when you sit down on the piano you start off by playing chopsticks you know you don’t start off by playing Mozart you know? And you get better and better as you go along and it is the same with forgiveness you do get better and better at it as you go along you get faster at it, you get to the point where you can do it instantly but at first you’re going to be practising those three steps that I was talking about and as you go along eventually, those three steps for you are going to kind of like blend into one. You’ll just know, it becomes kind of like the Zen concept of just knowing as an unarticulated truth. You don’t have to speak about it. You don’t have to think about it. You just know it and when something happens you forgive it, it’s over in a second but that’s a very advanced state but it comes, it comes with practice. 

I think the real question is how bad do you want it you know,  these words I want the peace of God and there’s the teaching that says to say these words is nothing but to me in these words is everything. How do you show that you mean it with your practice you show, how bad you want it by actually practising and starting to change your experience of life and the only thing that’s going to do that is practice. But if you want to add enough and if you want the results then you will practice just like if you want to be a really great piano player bad enough then you will practice why because you want it and so you know you keep at it. I don’t think that there’s a quality that is more important to spiritual progress than the quality of perseverance you know, you’re going to want it you got to stick with it and you gotta say I don’t care what the world throws at me whatever it is I’m going to forgive it.