Not Everything Needs to Be Forgiven… Or Does It?
Newsletter Issue #052 | Forgiveness Before Flowers: Preparing the Heart for Gratitude
I was thinking about gratitude, and I realized how important order is in everything.
Feeling grateful is a very high vibration of consciousness. It is a feeling that opens a magical door for the materialization of our desires and intentions. However, I realized that it is also necessary to prepare the ground for that sublime feeling. That preparation of the ground is FORGIVENESS.
Forgiveness is like a big cleaning of the home, and gratitude is when you bring fresh flowers into such a clean and tidy home.
You can also bring flowers into a dirty home where things are not arranged neatly. The flowers will still be beautiful. But do you notice the difference?
Forgiveness is spiritual and energetic hygiene.
Forgiveness is the preparation of our entire being for a more beautiful, complete, and in every sense more successful and meaningful life.
And should everything be forgiven? Is it possible? Does it make sense?
These are questions that most people ask themselves.
My question is: Why NOT?
When I ask this question to my coaching clients, the two most common answers are:
forgiveness would relativize the hurt, diminish its significance and magnitude;
it would open them up to being hurt again in the same way.
If you believe that not everything should be forgiven, what is your reason?
Regarding this first reason, if we think a little deeper, we can conclude that keeping feelings of hurt, disappointment, and pain in our energy body looks like a "monument" (a huge stone) that only creates a burden for us. In this way, we do absolutely nothing good for ourselves.
This is doubly bad. We experienced some injury from someone, and then we cherish, keep, and carry that injury with us throughout life.
We drink poison and expect someone else to die from it.
It doesn't work that way. We are poisoning ourselves.
The second reason makes no sense on a fundamental level, either.
Namely, I am not saying that it is necessary to stay in a relationship with the person who hurt us. It doesn't matter at all. Maybe we will, maybe not. It's secondary.
In order not to repeat the same injury, what we learned from it is IMPORTANT. In what way did that situation change us for the better? How our consciousness developed as a result of that event?
The answers to these questions protect us from repeating the unpleasant experience.
Because if the injury wasn't a trigger for us to transcend, learn something, it doesn't matter if we stay in that relationship or not. Even if we end the relationship with that person and do not transcend the situation, the same hurt will happen to us again. Most often, with a stronger intensity.
Many people have the same story over and over again. Either they haven't been paid for the work they've done, no matter how many times they've changed employers, or they're always in relationships with partners who cheat on them, or they don't have good relationships with their neighbors, no matter how many times they've moved, etc.
Therefore, UNFORGIVENESS does not save us from repeating an unpleasant experience.
A few years ago, I read Neal Donald Walsh's book “Conversations with God.” I was impressed by the story I'm going to share with you today. Ever since I read it, I've been asking myself, "What if it's really like that?"
I will paraphrase the story in a few sentences:
"A soul decided to descend into the material world to experience what it feels like to forgive. She told God what her intention was, and He told her that for this experience, she needed another soul to help her with it. That other soul should create the conditions for forgiveness, that is, she should hurt her in material reality.
After a long search, a soul approached her and told her that she was willing to do her this favor (although no soul is happy to hurt another soul). Finally, she added: “When I hurt you and when you feel that pain, please remember who I am and that I agreed to this out of great love for you.”
Imagine for a moment that this is true. If it is, this changes the entire perception.
What if we really came into material reality for the sake of experience?
What if everyone chose their own topic and the experience they wanted to have?
The awareness of this gives us the freedom to see life from a completely different perspective. It allows us to truly love the whole world.
This thinking brings me back to Christ, who not only said to forgive, but also to love our "enemies."
This instruction of Christ is so lofty that it seems unattainable to the average person. However, if we expand the picture a little in terms of the story I paraphrased, this is completely normal, possible, and natural. Because, in fact, we don't even have enemies at all.
I have always forgiven very easily. I somehow automatically forgive. I was born that way. Thank God for that.
I realized very early on that I was more uncomfortable with the feeling of resentment, anger, and sadness than the actual injury that occurred. That is why I always worked on getting rid of those emotions as soon as possible.
There have been such situations in my life. No one is spared. We came for the experience.
However, I interpreted them as screenshots. I consciously and deliberately decided NOT to develop a film from such screenshots.
I will be glad if you write what your attitude is about forgiveness. Is it possible, difficult, or easy for you to forgive? Why?
If you have questions or specific situations, feel free to write. As always, I will be glad if I can help.
No, not everything needs to be forgiven. An offended person is not obligated to the offender. However I do think an offender is at least obligated to apologize to the offended.
Even if the offense was unintended that obligation should remain.
The one most likely to apologize will develop into the one most likely to forgive.And then the apologizer who forgives becomes internally more at peace with his inner self. One who can apologize will become more likely to forgive even if he has not been apologized too.
I love this article, Mladena! And I especially love the focus on forgiveness as being about the health of the person who is doing the forgiving! I think too many people don't want to forgive someone because they think 'they don't deserve to be forgiven!'
It's not about the person that needs forgiveness, about the people who is forgiving! As you said, if we don't forgive, we carry that negative energy with us, and its consequences weigh on our souls.
It not about 'punishing' someone else, it's about rewarding ourselves. We can forgive AND remember so that we avoid putting ourselves in a similar situation. But it's far healthier to forgive, and our own health is where our focus should be.