Tagged: “break free from the past”

When I examine the effects of the injustice that happened to me, I get angry at myself for not realizing the connection all these years between what happened to me back then and my built-up anger and fatigue now.  Should I forgive myself for missing all of this?

We forgive ourselves when we do moral wrong, when we break our own standards.  It seems to me that you were not acting unjustly at all.  You simply did not know the connection between the past hurts against you and your challenges at present.  This is the case for very many people because forgiveness, current effects, and past trauma rarely are discussed in contemporary society.  I recommend that you practice gentleness toward yourself rather than forgive yourself.

After all, would you forgive yourself for not knowing other issues that are hidden from most people in society?  In the 1940’s for example, people did not have the precise knowledge of the connection between cigarette smoking and certain health problems.  Those people who were smoking back then were not saying to themselves, “The science shows that I am harming myself in very specific ways.  I will continue to smoke anyway.”  This would not have been the case for a very large part of the population.

It is similar now with the links among past trauma, current effects such as anger and fatigue, and forgiveness.  Not knowing is not necessarily an injustice and so I think you can go in peace……and start the forgiveness process now if you are ready.  In some cases, we deny reality and choose to not know what is good.  This issue is different from yours and this example would suggest that self-forgiveness would be appropriate as a person keeps pushing away what should be known as morally good.

If the other does not want to be forgiven, should I then not forgive?

Suppose someone said to you, “Please do not be fair to me.  Under no circumstances, you are not to exercise justice to me.”  Would you not be fair?  Isn’t it your choice to be fair, regardless of the other person’s request?  It is the same with forgiveness.  You can forgive from the heart, as a free-will decision.  You need not verbally proclaim your forgiveness toward the other if this person insists, but your forgiving always is your choice.  The key issue here is how you forgive, and that can be done silently, from the heart and in actions that do not proclaim forgiveness.

How can I forgive a God I no longer believe in?  I have a lot of anger toward this non-existent deity.

It seems to me that you do, in fact, believe in God and this is hidden from you right now.  Why do I say this?  You cannot have anger toward a person who does not exist.  How can a person who does not exist be unfair to you and therefore hurt you?  It is similar with God.  How can you have “a lot of anger” for a deity when you claim the deity does not exist?  Your emotions suggest to me that you do see God as real.  If this is true, then you need to ask questions such as this: Is God perfect, all holy?  If so, then God cannot be unjust to you.  Perhaps it is people who have hurt you and you are passing this now to God (“God should have prevented this,” as one example).  If this is your mode of thinking, then I recommend a deeper dive into theology so that you can address the issue of why God allows suffering in this world; why God allows others to be unfair to you.  In other words, it may be the rigors of this world and hurtful people at whom you are angry.

When going back to the unjust event, do I have to feel the feelings from that point in time?  I might be re-traumatized if I feel those feelings again.

The forgiveness process does not ask you to go back and re-experience your feelings from the past.  Instead, the point of thinking back in time is to ask this question: Was I treated unjustly and how unjustly was I treated?  We need to ascertain this because forgiveness starts with true injustice.  Sometimes, for example, a person might think that Mom was terribly unfair 20 years ago, only to look back and conclude that there was a misunderstanding based on the person’s views as a child.  When the person does conclude that, indeed, there was injustice, the process shifts to the effects of that injustice on the person now.  How has this injustice affected your current feelings, your level of fatigue, your ability to trust others in general?  So, in response to your question, you are not asked to feel the feelings from the past.

So, Then, What Has Changed in These Past 10 Years?

I re-read one of our posts here at the International Forgiveness Institute.  It was dated February 29, 2012. What surprised me is this: It was as if I were reading a contemporary news item from 2022.

As you read the 10-year-old essay below, consider asking yourself this: Has anything changed for forgiveness within societies in that timespan? What must we do so that in 2032 the news is not a repetition of the past 20 years?

Here is that essay from 2012:

Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker Movement is alleged to have said that a good society is one in which it is easy to be good. I write this blog post today as I reflect on some recent news stories (posted in our Forgiveness News section of this website). We have the shooting of innocent teenagers in Ohio and we have the murder of a 4-year-old.  Anger can sometimes be deadly for the other person who just happens to be in the angry one’s way.

I wonder what those outcomes would have been had those with the weapons been bathed in forgiveness education from age 5 though 18. I wonder what those outcomes would have been had the weapon-carriers, as they grew up, practiced forgiveness in the home. I wonder.

The wounds in the world are deep and everlasting, it seems. What we do here at the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc. (helping people if they so choose to learn to forgive and then practice forgiveness) will never be out of date. Yet, my big worry (yes, it is a big worry) is this: Will there be sufficient laborers in the forgiveness vineyard to bring the virtue of forgiveness to children so that they can become fortified against the grave injustices that come to too many too often as adults?

I worry about those 6-year-olds, sitting now in classrooms, learning their mandated ABCs, without also learning the ABCs of how to deal with injustice. You see, society is not emphasizing forgiveness. We are not being taught forgiveness on a regular basis. We are in a society where it is not easy to be a good forgiver. And so too many of those who are bullied in school do not even think to forgive those who perpetrate the bullying. In Ohio this week, one bullied student’s response was a gun and then murder.

So much pain in the world and yet too many societies do not have the vision and the resources to bring forgiveness education far and wide. Question for those who are listening: The next time a city wishes to build a $250 million complex for athletics or entertainment or whatever, who has the persuasive skills and accompanying wisdom and courage to ask that one half of one percent of that be siphoned off to forgiveness education? If we could go back and ask the deceased students in Ohio or the innocent 4-year-old what is the higher priority….what do you think they would say to us?

Society, what do you think?

Robert