GoodKarma.org

After watching the Oprah shows on "The Secret" just recently, I realized that many people often misunderstand what it means to forgive.  Haven't you heard people say something like, "oh I've forgiven him already," but they say it with a tone that you suspect is still filled with anger, resentment, blame, etc.?  And then you just want to drop the subject all together because it doesn't seem like they're at peace with the subject and the conversation could take a very bad turn any second?  I know I've heard poeple talk like that.

I think it was James Arthur Ray (from "The Secret") on Oprah's show who said something like "true forgiveness means saying 'thank you for giving me that experience'."  I like that explanation because anyone who still has feelings of anger or hurt toward someone would not be able to truly say and mean "thank you for doing that to me" - only someone who truly is at peace with the event and where in life it led them, could say "thank you for hurting me at the time, I now forgive you in accepting what you did and how I reacted and it does not affect me in a negative way anymore."

Forgiveness is not about just saying the words, "I forgive" - it's realizing that you were hurt by someone in the past, but now you choose not to let it hurt you anymore.  I think forgiveness and unforgivness is essentially saying, "I choose to feel unaffected or even grateful for the event I once felt wronged by" and "I choose to remain angry about an event I feel wronged by" respectively.  When someone says, "I will never forgive her for that," I find it a little silly because that person who is unforgiven probably does not feel the feelings of hurt and unforgiveness day in and day out, but the person who is doing the unforgiving does - they carry that resentment and pain with them at all times.  So when you decide to forgive someone, you're not doing the other person any favors, you're doing yourself a favor.  It takes a stronger person to forgive the unforgivable than to never forgive the unforgivable - don't you think?  Isn't it so much easier to think "I'll never forgive her" than to say, wow that hurt more than anything else in my life, but I'm not going to let it ruin my future experiences, so I'm going to decide right now to be happy for her and be happy for myself.  But it's also easier to live a life of forgiveness because people in pain live harder lives than people who find the joy in life.  Forgiving doesn't mean you have to keep these people in your life - I believe you should only invite positive people into your life.

I like to relate my life, forgiveness and negative people to the idea of a party where I am the host and the people in my life as my guests.  My life is a party that I'm constantly throwing and the positive people in my life are the ones that I send invitations to attend my party.  Sometimes I get a mean card or hurtful gift from a guest at my party and after I think for a minute I forgive them, but I do not send them another invitation to my party.  If they send me an invitation to their life party, and I believe they may not be negative again, I may accept their invitation and depending on how this new interaction goes, I may or may not resume inviting them to my party.  Does that make sense?  In this way, I forgive those who may have wronged me and I maintain only positive people in my life without forever shutting out once negative people, because people do change!  In this way, I also live positively by the principles of "The Secret" and the Law of Attraction (like attracts like).  I bring more positive people into my life and less negative people and less unforgiving and more forgiving people!

If you want to get even deeper into the concepts of "The Secret" relating to forgiveness and being wronged... "The Secret" essentially says that no one can ever wrong you because you choose how people affect you.  Think of this Buddhist story...

There was a man who heard of Budda and heard that he could not be hurt or insulted by anyone.  The man found this hard to believe and decided to find Budda and test it out.  He threw insult after insult at Budda but nothing seemed to bother him.  Budda finally asked the man if he would answer a question/riddle for him and the man agreed.  So Budda asked, "if someone offers you a gift and you decline to accept it, then who does the gift belong to?"  The man answered, "it belongs to the giver, of course."  So Budda said to him, "then if you offer me a gift and I do not accept it, doesn't that gift belong to you?"

Thus, if someone says or does something mean toward you and you choose not to let it hurt you, it does not hurt you, but only hurts their own character.