I've been thinking about forgiveness a lot lately. One of my students in Liberation Magic brought it up, I've been sitting with some things I'm hurt about myself, and a few friends have been wrestling with it too. I don't know what it is, it's just in the air right now. This question of: what does it actually mean to forgive?
Forgiveness is usually understood as letting go of the bad blood between you and whoever or whatever wronged you. And that's pretty accurate! But I think there are some other terms that get mixed up in the conversation, and I want to try to untangle them a little.
For me, forgiveness is having done the emotional healing and the spiritual letting-go work so that whatever was hurting you or weighing on you no longer carries an emotional charge. It can no longer hurt you. It can no longer make you feel resentful. That's what forgiveness is.
Forgetting, though? I actually think that's really bad practice. Letting go of the emotional charge that's making you suffer? Yes, absolutely, do that, that's for you, that's for your own wellbeing.
But forgetting that that person screwed you over that one time? Especially if they didn't acknowledge the harm? Especially if they didn't make amends, or at the very least offer an apology? That might not be such a good idea. Because now you know. You know that that person is the kind of person who can do that thing. And while you might not be salty about it anymore, it would be kind of dumb to expect them to behave differently next time.
So I think forgiveness becomes remembering when it turns from a heartbreak into a data point. It's no longer sad, but it's good to know. Maybe the expectations we had of someone weren't realistic. Maybe what we thought we could count on just wasn't available after all.
I'm not saying this to bum you out or make you feel like you can't forgive people. Humans will mess over humans, we just do, it's part of life. But I say this because you deserve a choice in how you approach your relationship to yourself, to others, to forgiveness, and to forgetting.
I'm a huge fan of forgiving so that we can live at peace and feel ease in our inner lives. But forgetting? I think that's setting ourselves up for failure. There's a reason cheesy little sayings become sayings… that whole fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me thing has a really profound spiritual connotation if you actually stop and sit with it. It's describing something spiritually precise. Being fooled twice is the cost of refusing to integrate what you learned the first time, or even of denying it. It's the consequence of abandoning your own knowing.
So this week, I hope you get to forgive anything that's been pending for you, anything you're ready to really transform and let go of. But I also hope you remember how to best take care of yourself. Always.
Courage, truth, and infinite love,
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I don’t believe in magic, but I know that it works!
Magic is not a belief system, it’s a practice that works. Don’t believe me? Come try it out. If it doesn’t work, you lose nothing. But if it does… your dream life is about to begin!
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