forgive

I have had to want to forgive a certain person so much that I couldn’t do anything else in my spare time but work on forgiving them. I broke down crying because I couldn’t bear to hitch myself to them any longer by refusing to forgive them.

It has been slow going but I have, until very recently, been setting aside 10 minutes a day to meditate on forgiving this person and releasing them from my lift- thereby releasing myself from the suffering I was causing myself. I finally realised that I was not benefiting from directing my hatred at them and wishing them ill. It was a waste of energy. It is not up to me to make them suffer- if they want to suffer, they will suffer. I don’t need to hurt myself by not forgiving.

I’m not saying I’m finished with this goal but I do feel that I am getting closer to completely forgiving this person. It’s easy to see that they are causing themselves a lot of pain. Sometimes I even feel sorry for them that they would rather be admired for suffering than for being tremendously happy.

I am going to start back up with the forgiveness meditations. I am feeling lighter and happier all of the time, the more I forgive this person and let them go. I can’t believe I couldn’t bring myself to do this sooner but that’s just how I am.

I desperately need to forgive someone for my own good. It’s the person who has done me the most harm in my life. Worse than my sister-in-law outting me and demonizing me to the world at large, worse than my father-in-law ruining my wedding. I need to forgive the person who has ruined me on the reality of friendship. Their actions, my allowing their actions, has soured me on life, against myself.

This is poisoning me. I see it. It appears in my dreams, in my oracle readings, and haunts me during the day. Because I refuse to forgive this person, I’m stifling my own soul, not harming them or getting even. I deserve to be free. If I keep holding on to this, my soul will die and they will win. They don’t deserve to win. They deserve to be free… albeit far, far, far away from me without even a gossamer thread into my life. They get too much out of my hate and self-destruction.

I have a meditation somewhere, a process, a string of rituals. I need to begin this. I need to heal. We both will be free. Maybe then I can regenerate myself.

I have to try.

I’ve managed to forgive one person who has hurt me. Thing is, it was like a “Haha on you!” sort of forgiveness.

I forgave them because it was something that would tick them off, since they’re so silly that they probably never knew that they hurt me and wouldn’t care if they did. But it was totally hilarious to imagine them in front of me, being uncomfortable, while I forgave them and wished them well. I laugh even to write this, actually.

Probably not the ideal method of forgiveness and possibly not what some folks would define as forgiveness but I snort to think about it and it makes me feel better to imagine it- so there ya go.

::snort/chuckle::

I seem to be slowly letting go of what has been the worst betrayal to happen to me in recent memory. I think perhaps one of the greatest misconceptions of forgiveness is that it is a one-shot act and not a process. I know I have kept thinking that forgiveness is- BAM! Ok, you are forgiven and I am free of the hurt. Everything’s good now. So glad I could fire the forgiveness rocket.

I think with forgiveness, especially for devistating acts, there are a lot of steps to go through, like in the grieving process. Hurt, Delusion, Letting Go, Anger/Vengefulness, Resting, Forgiveness. Perhaps there are more steps than that and in a different order but I’m sure there are actual steps to the process. And it’s a loop/cycle like the grieving process- you can go through the steps out of order and any of them more than once.

Hurt- Someone hurts you in some way.

Delusion- Though X has been horrid to me, I really do forgive them right now. No, I don’t need to process and it is the right thing to do, to forgive them right now. So I forgive them already.

Anger/Vengefulness- How could X do that to me? God, I hate them! I wish someone would do the same terrible thing to them! I hope they rot in Hell! They don’t deserve my forgiveness. My forgiveness is too good for them.

Resting/Processing- I need to hold on to this right now; I’m not mad but it’s not time for me to let it all go. I need to see what I can learn from this. I’m going to think about this and decide what to do.

Letting Go- X did a horrible thing to me but I can’t go on forever, holding it inside. It happened but now it’s over. I just can’t keep dwelling on this. It’s over.

Forgiveness- I forgive X for hurting me but I will remember the lesson that this has taught me. Go in peace, X.

At least these are the steps I’ve observed within myself. I do a lot of anger/processing and it can’t be rushed. I’ve needed to forgive myself for needing to process so much more than once. I’ve needed to forgive myself for feeling angry.

I’m still processing but I feel like I’ve really moved forward since the last entry.

No. I don’t care if it would help me and that it doesn’t mean that I am allowing myself to be crapped on.

It is not time yet. I have more angry brooding to do.

I need to forgive more easily. I tend to carry around grudges against people who’ve hurt me in the past as if I have a bottomless back pack on my back expressly for that purpose. Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that all of this is holding me back from where I need to be as a person, so I thought I should more actively persue it, therefore- onto the 43 Things list it goes.

There are several people I can think of who I desperately need to forgive. I don’t want to rush into it but I do need to plot some kind of course for myself. I can’t list them all here but there is a slew of them. And I need to forgive myself- for various reasons, including harming others and for letting myself be harmed, for not being perfect, for hating myself. And for letting others convince me that I should hate myself. :/

I know forgiveness takes time as in home-cooked versus McForgiveness, the sort of forgiveness that people think we ought to have… instant forgiveness. It has occurred to me that I’ve probably held off on some of these cases because there is shez that needs to be worked through- and that’s all well and good. However, I need to move my arse on this.

I know I can do it- because I have recently forgiven one person who did a ton of hurtful things to me and I feel that I’ve truly forgiven them. But there are other instances that are going to take blood, sweat, and tears if I’m going to let them go.