Forgiveness, like not forgiving, depends on separation. There are many ways to work with forgiveness and these many ways have been communicated and recycled endlessly in self-help and personal growth literature and methods. The reason that forgiveness is dependent on separation is surely clear: while I hold on to blame and hatred I can never be healthy in my inner world. I will take those people who have hurt me, wronged me, and done bad thing to me into my dream world. They will also be lurking in my subconscious throughout the waking day. I will encounter those who I blame in my friends, relatives, colleagues, and others. In fact any "others" could potentially be beings who I despise through my lack of forgiveness, through my holding onto guilt and blame.
Crisis provokes us often to go beyond ourselves. There are many stories too numerous to mention about how the human heart overcomes vengeance and bitterness in times of trauma, injustice, and horror. The 9/11 attacks, the two world wars, numerous incidents of families of victims confronting the murderers and rapists of their loved ones, attest to this extraordinary ability of human beings to love one another in the most adverse circumstances.
Conversely, some of us never forget a slight affront, relatively minor incidents of insult, inconsideration, and abuse, however long ago, however much the other may have tried to make up for it.
What is the opposite of forgive? I tend to use the term unforgiveness: what does this imply? Condemn, accuse, blame, punish, judge, and perhaps in these words, these antonyms of forgiveness, we have a key: when we are unable or unwilling to forgive we have to live with these - blame, punishment, judgment, accusation, and so on - and so our inner world becomes filled with negative feelings, poisonous, venomous emotions that infect our inner life. Very few follow the example of Nelson Mandela who, on leaving his incarceration of 27 years for opposing apartheid, wrote these words:
As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I would still be in prison.
Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for 27 years for opposing the cruel regime of apartheid, tortured and mistreated and denied freedom for almost three decades of his life. He has become a preeminent example of forgiveness, refusing to hold on to blame and bitterness even in the first steps he took away from his incarceration.
The serial killer Gary Ridgway was known as the Green Valley Killer. He murdered and raped between fifty and a hundred young women. On sentencing him in 2003, the families of his victims were allowed to address him in court. We can only imagine the expressions of anger and grief. Throughout the release of emotions Ridgway remained stony silent and appeared unremorseful, until Robert Rule, the father of one of the victims, Linda Rule, spoke to him and this is what he said:
Mr Ridgway, there are people here who hate you. I am not one of them. You've made it difficult to live up to what I believe and that is what God says to do and that is to forgive. You are forgiven, sir.
His words finally elicited an emotional response from Ridgeway who appeared visibly moved.
The Models that Shaped out Attitude to Forgiveness
For many of us injustice incites and justifies unforgiveness. We can forgive unless the cruelty and the callousness is such that we can't. As we look back at the examples of our parents and other relatives we can ask, How did my family react to injustice? Were they inclined to blame and punish? Did they seek vengeance... inside or outside the family... or both? How did family members handle guilt and shame? What defensive behavior was used, for example, denial, transference, compensation, regression, acting out, or dissociation?
The examples and models of others, our early years learning to be a part of a peer group, provided us with a blueprint for how we respond to insult and offense, blame and guilt, the feeling that we have a right to harbor anger and resentment - all these and more contribute to the present situation of ourselves and our clients with regard to forgiveness.
For more about Richard Harvey and his grounding-breaking approach to depth psychotherapy, Sacred Attention Therapy (SAT), please visit this page on the Center for Human Awakening's website... https://www.centerforhumanawakening.com/SAT-Online-Training.html.
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