ABOUT “WHEN YOU CAN’T FORGIVE” - A comment from Peg Barry
Peg Barry is one of my loyal readers. She is not a blogger. She is the President of Barry Personnel Services, Inc. in Chicago. A successful entrepreneur who just celebrated 25 years in business.
She wrote a comment that I think is so valuable on my article “WHEN YOU CAN’T FORGIVE” that I decided to feature it on my site. I did not want it to get lost with other comments. I hope you will benefit from it as many have.
Thanks, Peg. Here’s your comment.
“Exceptional advice. All my life I heard, “You must forgive” but NO ONE every explained HOW. I think they didn’t know themselves. Used to bug the hell out of me
… Think about it– did anyone every give you the tools on just HOW to forgive? If they did, please share that info with the planet because outside of this brilliant article, nothing gets the job fully finished. Yeah, you can burn a candle and say “I forgive you” a million times but it doesn’t really work What do you do and how do you do it? Just HOW can you forgive? I know that without these tools, forgiveness can not be fully and totally accomplished.
I’m sure of this because I tried so hard and for so long. It - they still hung on — The dictionary says forgiveness is “to grant pardon for an offense”
Well, my friends. I used every little trick in the book and nothing ever completely worked until I did began to become aware and then the awareness became understanding. First the light and then the dawn.
For instance, you have a problem with your mother. She may even be dead for 20 years but “it” - the old pull to bad memory is still there.
Imagine her as a 6 month old baby and image her mother and father, and her grandmother and grandfather and the village that they came from.
Imagine their religious environment and its often limiting constraints and that neighborhood and those relatives. Perhaps there was poverty or abuse.
Could she, based on her “stuff” do any better than she did at the time?
Work (ahh, the real 4 letter word) at becoming aware of her life — aware of her plight. Step out of your narcissism and “see”.
And remember, a person can not give what they do not have. That is what brings the understanding and the final letting go
You souls reading this blog are so much more enlightened than people were even just 10 years ago.
We have the blessing of knowledge that was just slightly coming in the 60’s.
Well, kids, it’s here now and full-blown and ready for anyone who wants to self-heal.
I always say that today - “If you don’t get better - it’s because you don’t want to get better this lifetime.” I wish I knew then what I know now.
I am blessed to have this simple information at my fingertips and I am using it. I am pardoning myself for my offense of not taking better care of myself.
I want to be aware and understand so that I can truly forgive and let go and not be pulled back into those haunting memories. Forgiveness is the greatest gift you can give yourself.
I’m telling you it works if you have the self-love to go there.
Just do it. Do it in this lifetime.”
A comment by Peg Barry posted to
www.personal-growth-with-corinne-edwards.com/when-you-cant-forgive/
I think “letting go” and forgiving are two different things. Many religious people have been coerced to “forgive” those who offend them, and to accept a “forgiveness by proxy.”
Here is how that proxy works. Imagine that I commit some terrible crime against you and do it without any remorse whatsoever. A third party, unknown personally to both of us, says, “I forgive you for doing this unspeakable evil, you are now pure.” It is not his place to make this absolution, yet such a proxy is the mainstay of at least one world religion.
We are under no obligation to forgive, but we can make our lives less bothersome by letting go.
Read “god is not great - and how religion poisons everything” by Christopher Hitchens if you want to learn even stranger ideas from most of the world religions. I’m keeping it simple - just what has worked for me. I don’t plan on saving the world. I’d rather light one candle than curse the darkness - I believe that came from a Maryknoll priest.
Great blog you have here, Corinne. I’m glad I discovered it.
Forgiveness, to me, is one of the fundamental paradoxes of the human condition. In essence, we have to do a kindness to the person who wronged us in order to do a kindness to our self. That’s a difficult thing, and one that I still haven’t gotten my head around entirely. The best exercise I have found for this involves mentally stepping outside of your own body and viewing the moment of the offense from the perspective of the offender. This is very similar to what you suggest, just a little more concrete. Hope it’s helpful.
Dear All -
Lots of thoughts here on this explosive topic.
Thanks to Never The Same River Twice for the expansion of my idea. You are right. “Viewing” the moment of the offense from the prospect of the offender is what I was getting at.
It is a very helpful suggestion to say it in different words.
How about putting up a link to the original article? I’m sure it’s somewhere in the blog, but it would be helpful to readers to have the link right here in this article. (I found it by googling the title, but not everybody will think of that.)
I found you via the excellent interview with the Wapnicks about A Course In Miracles, which I have on DVD.
Ooops, there it was: *under* the article.