Forgiveness: On Forgiveness

By Charles Eisenstein

Think of forgive as meaning "fore-give"-to give first. Because when you forgive, you really are giving something away. And only afterward, after having relinquished all expectation of return, will you get anything back. Here's a small example. Suppose last night the baby wakes up and I take care of him for a couple hours while my wife sleeps. I feel tired today and part of me is resentful. Maybe she didn't even know I was up with the baby. Here is this fact, "I was up with the baby and it made me tired." Now my rational mind starts to think of ways to benefit. It's payoff time! How much mileage can I get out of it? A little extra time to myself today, maybe? Some sympathy? Getting my way with something? Feeling legitimate in not washing the dishes?

Forgiving Patsy for making me take the baby (whether she consciously did or not) means relinquishing all these benefits. For nothing. The rational mind, out to protect what it sees as my self-interest, rebels. It tries to weasel out of it. It thinks, "Okay, I'll forgive her, and then she'll really owe me one because not only did I take the baby last night, I forgave her too!" This is not true forgiveness. Forgiving cannot be used to obligate someone. It must be total.

Now a big example. Your spouse cheats on you. You are gravely hurt. But Oh, what a weapon you have now! What benefits can you get? It is a wound to brandish, and everyone treats you with kid gloves. And your spouse, if you decide to stay together, has to be extra-nice for a long time. You get your way in old stalemated issues. If you truly and fully forgive, you are "giving" all of that away.

It is very difficult. When you have been gravely wounded, your ego struggles and squirms to get some benefits, to hold onto it, to not for-give it away. If you are clever and subtle enough, you might pretend to forgive, you might indulge in ostentatious martyrdom, try to use guilt to your advantage.

But the advantages we get from holding on to our wounds, from not forgiving, are quite transitory. We use the wound as an excuse not to create a new world for ourselves, we become dependent on it and live in the past. According to the timid calculus of the rational mind, perhaps we are benefiting, but on the soul level we know we need to forgive.

But what if you are still angry, and you just don't feel like forgiving someone? Maybe you say, "I'm not ready to forgive." You can't force it. If you say "I forgive you" without really meaning it, chances are your statement is just another machination of your ego in seeking some gain. "If he knows I forgive him, then he'll really feel sorry, hah!" What to do then, if you do not feel able to forgive?

The first thing to do is honestly acknowledge the benefits you are getting from not forgiving. Just be aware of them. In time, you may find that they are not consistent with the person you want to be. You may find they are not really benefits. Then forgiveness will be natural.

The second thing to do is to put yourself into the other person's world. People usually have convincing internal justifications for what they do, reasons that are compelling to them. Just as your own reasons and justifications are compelling to you. Think about the whole event or relationship as a pattern transcending the two individual points of view. What is the higher purpose of your role in the pattern? What is it about yourself that drew you to the pattern? Realize that if you do not forgive, and let go of the continuing benefits of the pattern, that it will repeat itself. Because on a certain level you want it, you want those benefits. A word of warning, do not obsess too much about the higher purpose of everything that happens to you; sometimes it is beyond your ken. Sometimes it is obvious; sometimes you'll have to wait.

These practices will set the stage for forgiveness. Then at some point, when you are prepared, you must consciously relinquish all the benefits of the wound. You must take a leap of faith. And Behold, you'll discover an unanticipated lightness of being. Each time you forgive, you make it easier to forgive again at that level. Never will it become automatic though. Always a new leap of faith will be required, as your ego replaces grosser benefits with subtler ones. It is just doing its job, good old ego, looking out for number one. Give your ego a pat on the head!

Forgiveness is a Tao in and of itself. Start down this path, and you will discover old hurts, grievances long forgotten, or wounds that you were too callous to even feel. Each has its comforts, its security, its familiarity. Every time you let one go, you free up energy and heighten your sensitivity enough to become aware of even deeper levels. And in the agents of these hurts, more and more you begin to recognize your Self.

Eventually you reach the elemental tragedy of our humanness: the separation from the One, the expulsion from the Womb, from the Garden.

Who to forgive for this, the original outrage? It can only be yourself, the author of your journey.

At this point, my words can give only an oblique hint at what you'll discover farther down the Way of forgiveness. I hope they do not mislead. Anyway, you don't have to take my word for it. The results of forgiveness speak for themselves.