What is forgiveness?
I mean, what is it really?
I think it is an action of the heart.
It is a choice - something we can do, just like letting go of our keys when we place them on a table.
It's just that, sometimes, we have to practice and put those keys down a thousand thousand times over the course of weeks or months or years.
They say that to know what forgiveness is, we must first understand what it is not.
Forgiveness is not saying that what was done to you was in any way moral or acceptable or okay. It does not clear those who caused you harm of responsibility for their actions. Nor does it require or imply that, having forgiven, we must reconcile and spend time with those we’ve pardoned. That is a separate choice, a separate fork in the road, entirely up to us and only to be made after forgiveness has been granted.
Forgiveness is an action of the heart chosen after the pain of the transgression has been fully tasted - it is chosen so that we can be free.
Before we have forgiven, we are still slaves, we remain in bondage.
But slaves of what? Our anger? No - basic, primal and raw anger is a kind of pain and pain is natural. It is even good - pain serves to alert and to protect us.
Before we have forgiven, we are enslaved by what the Buddha referred to as the poison of aversion or aggression. In its more intense form, we call it hatred. It is the tight grasp with which we hold onto this burning, churning, acidic poison that keeps us from knowing joy, from tasting genuine liberty.
This grasping narrows our vision to a single fiery point, pinning us to our indignation, to our desire for the other to know our pain with their own skin and eyes and heart.
The choice to forgive, on the other hand, opens the dam to the waters of light.
Each spiritual tradition may describe this in a different way. The Christians might say that forgiveness allows the Holy Spirit to enter our hearts and the Kingdom of Heaven to be revealed. The Taoists may speak of the natural flow of qi and the harmonizing of heaven and earth. On the road of the Buddha, we might speak of removing the poison of aversion and how this leads to insight, wisdom, clear seeing and the joy of liberation.
No matter what poetry the different sages use to reach us, ultimately, when we release hatred and ill-will, we inherit the beauty of the entire earth. Our eyes open, our vision widens and we can again perceive all that is good and miraculous and wondrous and limitlessly bountiful on this planet. We see the beauty in the eyes of animals and children and our friends. We hear the song of birds - our senses are fully returned to us and the waters of life flow through our being.
This is why the wise ones of old have taught us to forgive. The original harm done by the person who harmed us is enough. We do not want the aggressor to also take from us our senses and vast portions of our ability to perceive beauty and goodness. We do not want our connection to the present, which is the source of all wisdom and joy, to be stolen from us as well.
When we enter the visionary realm, we are sometimes challenged to fully experience any pain and anger we have hidden from and to let go of our attachment to the hurt, to forgive profoundly, in the very marrow of our bones.
It is like a jeweled door that we come up against. We are shown directly how to craft the key of forgiveness and that, without it, we cannot pass through to the place where knowledge, power, wisdom, joy and love are found.
The work around forgiveness that we do during our everyday life will help us pass this gate in the lands of vision. The journey in that kingdom will help us to forgive when we return from the mountaintop to the valley of our homes.
In understanding what anger and forgiveness are and how they relate to one another, we establish a fertile ground where the seed of forgiveness may be planted. The process of it flowering partially comes from our cultivation of this ground. A part of this process, however, is organic and can only be rushed so much, just like the blooming of a flower. And so, we must have patience with our anger, so that we fully hear its message through the vehicle of fire and pain. And we must have patience with the fruit of all that pain, which is forgiveness and release.
When that shift comes, it is a great joy. But after the initial big waves of forgiveness, of letting go, of stepping into freedom, waves of anger will come again. We must engage in the practice of experiencing the anger fully time and again, and of then asking ourselves if we want to forgive once more and, if that is our choice, of forgiving.
It takes time. It is a training. Gradually, slowly, as we take care of the anger and choose forgiveness over and over and over and over and over again, the waves will diminish in their intensity and we will grow more and more free. The chains will dissolve and we will step into absolute liberty.
In doing so, we will create the antidote to the poison of aggression and hatred within us. We will create peace.
If enough of us can engage in this process, hatred and violence will diminish across the earth. We will gain greater access to inspiration and vision in our everyday lives, as well as in the lands of seeing in a sacred way. Wisdom and insight will arise within us with far greater frequency. With access to inspiration and vision, we will be able to move towards harmony with nature, animals, plants, trees, oceans and all of reality and preserve our lives on this beautiful planet.
We will then survive, and flourish, and join each other in the whirling dance.