Forgiveness as a Spiritual Practice
If you were to choose only one practice that you were going to engage in for the rest of your life, you would do well to consider the Practice of Forgiveness as your life’s path. Taking a regular inventory of how the past hurts and frustrations of your life are affecting you today is a way to clear your heart and soul. Forgiveness allows us to see ourselves as a part of a Greater Purpose. If we commit to forgiving each day the suffering that we have caused and the obstacles others have put into our path, we move easily into deeper compassion and love then we could ever hope to realize without this letting go of the pains of the days.
Probably the most important thing to remember when it comes to forgiveness is that it is not given for the benefit of whomever we are forgiving. Forgiveness is absolutely for our own well being. The person we are forgiving may not even know, or care, if we have forgiven them.
A man I know told a story to me of how he came to the forgiveness of the man who murdered his brother. It took him a number of years before he was able to bring himself to this but eventually he made an appointment to visit the man in prison. When he arrived, and came face to face with his brothers’ killer, he asked the man if he had anything to say. The man told how he had come to cross paths with the brother and what had happened from his perspective. He shared his experience since then, how the event had changed his life, and that he was sorry for his choices the night of the murder.
My friend told how this affected him, how he could feel his heart breaking all over again by hearing the story, and how difficult it was to contain his sorrow. As he allowed himself to feel this he felt something new, a deep compassion for the man sitting in front of him. He could feel how this series of events had impacted another family, and how his heart was hurting for them as well.
After he left, and in the days and weeks that followed, he found that his entire life had softened and that his heart was lighter, less tender. In forgiving this killer, he found that his own heartache softened and he felt the return of a quality of peace that he hadn’t had since before his brothers death.
He didn’t go back to see the killer and has no idea how, or if, being forgiven has had any impact on him at all. What he realized was that it didn’t matter, the weight had been lifted from his own shoulders.
This is what the practice of forgiveness does for us. When we continue to hold onto the past hurts we have experienced we are the ones who are impacted; no one else. If we decide to remain angry, or seek retritbution in some way, inevitibly that choice will hold us prisoner until we are able to release it. Forgiveness is your liferaft to peace and compassion.