In alignment with this month’s theme of decluttering to create spaciousness, this post is about forgiveness. Mainly, it details how we can embark on a journey of practicing forgiveness to explore any resentments, wounds or mistakes we’ve made that are stuck in our hearts and how we can bring these persistent hurts into present moment awareness and work with them, ideally letting them go to create more presence, spaciousness and freedom in our lives. When we’re aware of what is happening within our internal landscape, we can begin to see that there are ways to re-work what has happened in our lives and gain wisdom from a re-visit and re-view of what we may be still holding too tight to, which can be of great benefit to our day-to-day, moment-to-moment wellbeing.
As with everything in life, the hurts that we carry are experienced on a spectrum. These hurts can stem from small events, such as being hard on ourselves for forgetting to call a friend when we said we would or feeling the slight of an acquaintance who didn’t acknowledge us as they walked by us on the street. And, bigger hurts and even significant trauma can be born of very large betrayals, such as an affair our partner had that led to divorce, the job that never materialized because of inner-office politics or the injustice of systemic prejudice at work in society as a whole.
While forgiveness has the power to set ourselves and others free, from the outset, it’s important to note that forgiveness of ourselves and others, depending on the nature of what is involved, can take significant time from which to process and heal. When trauma is deeply painful (born from physical, sexual or emotional trauma or violence, for example), those deep wounds require compassion and deep-hearted attention. Insomuch, for purposes of this post, I encourage you to work with a smaller experience of hurt rather than a significant betrayal and to be mindful of the choice you make in what you’ll work with as you read through this blog and engage in the guided meditation for forgiveness. As with so many learning experiences, when it comes to forgiveness, we start small. Think crawling before walking, walking before running, and running before mountain climbing.
Turning Toward Pain With Mindfulness, Compassion & Curiosity
A forgiveness practice is another area where we practice the basics of mindfulness—turning toward the pain with kindness, compassion and curiosity, rather than turning away from it with anger, numbness or fantasies of punishment. When we focus on being with the pain that we’ve experienced, rather than focusing on what to “do” to the person or the situation that is behind that pain, we move our attention to our own suffering, which offers us the opportunity to explore, heal and, ideally, move through it and set it free with the forgiveness of self or another.
That pain could be a sense of our own embarrassment at a mistake we made that we can’t let go of, perhaps even something that occurred months or even years or decades ago, yet we still hold tight to it and continue to shame ourselves. The pain could also stem from something another person did to us, and we’ve held onto a storyline about how unfair it was and that we were harmed.
However, by engaging in a forgiveness practice, we use curiosity to explore how holding tight to a particular story keeps us chained to the event, the person or the situation. Within this exploration, we may begin to see that continuing to carry wounds keeps us tied to the past and imprisoned in a potentially outdated way of viewing ourselves and others. With that awareness, we then might feel encouraged to open and allow in some space by offering caring and compassion to the situation itself and the pain we continue to feel.
Forgiveness is a practice you can work with on a small scale, anytime and everytime you feel that you may have caused harm—to yourself and/or to others, or when others have caused harm to you. Part of what practicing forgiveness offers is an opportunity to move on with our lives. We can forgive while not forgetting and perhaps even learn something from the pain or disappointment. The true gift of forgiveness, however, is that we don’t stay stuck in the awfulness of any one moment. And, that is quite a gift.
The 12 Principles Of Forgiveness
In Buddhist psychology, forgiveness is understood as a way to end suffering, to bring dignity and harmony to our life. Forgiveness is fundamentally for our own sake and for our own mental health. It is a way to let go of the pain we carry. However, forgiving others and, perhaps especially, forgiving ourselves can be difficult. When we’re in the process of practicing forgiveness, having an outline or some principles to adhere to can be helpful. The 12 principles of forgiveness come from the work of psychologist, NYT bestselling author and renowned meditation teacher Jack Kornfield. You can read these 12 principles and view related content in The Ancient Art of Forgiveness, a Greater Good Magazine article.
A Guided Meditation On Forgiveness
This guided meditation, A Meditation Practice on Forgiveness, is designed to help you work with a minor hurt or disappointment with yourself or with others—one that has stuck in your heartmind and has been difficult for you to let go of. This introductory practice helps you feel into what it could feel like to experience freedom from your pain. We then move into a traditional Buddhist forgiveness meditation practice. This practice can be returned to again and again, inviting you to gently breathe into the area of your heart as you ask for and extend forgiveness.
I’ll leave you with this lovely poem by the late poetry by Pesha Joyce Gertlier.
The Healing Time: Finally on My Way to Yes
Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
holy.
For more on practicing forgiveness, I encourage you to check out another blog post that I wrote on the topic, A Forgiveness Practice: A Gift That Keeps Giving.
Blessings,
Karen
P.S: If you’re interested in starting or deepening your meditation practice and becoming more skillful in navigating the many aspects of life, you might be interested in my monthly newsletter, Grow Your Inner Wisdom—in the midst of it all. This no-cost newsletter includes a note from me discussing a different theme each month; links to the most current, theme-based blogs, which include recorded guided meditations that you can access and enjoy at no cost; important and/or interesting news and information; suggestions on books, articles and podcasts; and a poem or practice to help you feel into and connect with the theme of the month. If you’re interested, you can sign up here now!
I also offer an online, donation-based meditation class/guided practice every other Monday night at 7:30pm EST in a relaxed and warm setting on Zoom. The only requirement is an interest in increasing mindful awareness and skills through practice and growing your inner wisdom. If you’re interested in beginning, reconnecting with or deepening your meditation practice in community, we’d love for you to join us! Get more details and register here.