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Thank you Fr. Perseverabo for your time and thoughts.
There are several layers of forgiveness. This is the direct reflection and realizations from situations stemmed from my own life/experiences/and a hell of a lot of of soul searching. I believe healing is never-ending, and is something I go through daily, just as balance is daily. The way you suggest that saying 'fuck it' is forgiveness-this way actually seems like one is giving up and not forgiveness at all.
It is a pivitol step in moving forward, not necessary wiping the slate clean, but perhaps giving yourself the ability to continue without being trapped in the hate, anger, fear of whatever it is in you that is wounded.
I am not suggesting in this that we allow ourselves to be passive in things that need to be dealt with (such as abuse or neglect etc...) Forgiveness just allows us to deal with it rather that allow time to go on and basically ignore it. If things are not dealt with, people tend to use the trauma as a way of defining who they are and therefore never getting the healing they need. Though they may say they've dealt with it, but if they had, they wouldn't still have a need to cling to all the anger, thus in reality the anger they feel is really at themselves.
***think I am rambling here, thank you again!
I understand what your saying, however I do not think that forgiveness is a requirement. Not in the sense that Beorc stated below, but that it simply is not needed after a certain personal realization about life. If for example one understands and applies the concept that right and wrong, good and bad do not exist beyond our own personal understanding, then one can see a need to accept things for how they are. There is a point where forgiveness does not transcend necessity, and I feel that line is attachment. If you treasure something, it is clear you have an attachment to it. If it is stolen or taken you will be in turmoil (suffering, its the Buddhist in me lol) and your emotional state will require resolution. Forgiveness is more than likely the only way to fully resolve it. But lets say for example you are not attached to this thing, if it is stolen or taken it is of no concern to you. You don't need to forgive because nothing went wrong.
Now please do not assume that I am saying that you simply need to be unattached to everything to remove sorrow. Technically you do, but I think this is virtually impossible if you are not living as a hermit. You will be attached to people, things, items etc and how you deal with it will be important. I however have not dealt with forgiveness for years because my understanding that everything that is simply is. There is no fixing it because it never broke. There is no resolving it because it never became an issue.
If one does not take the view that everything that is, is how it is I can certainly see forgiveness being a very valuable tool, but I don't think it is always practical because it's only needed in conflict. But just because one perceives conflict does not mean it actually is conflict.
Thank you Arcane for your time, sharing what you have, and for your thoughts.
:)
I enjoy this post. I will be unable to follow the underlying message thoroughly as I am a firm believer in balance, hence my occasionally heartless-seeming nature, but I do enjoy the occasional reminders to check the balance in my own life. Balance does not mean that I will do just as much good as bad, but rather, see the good and bad inherent in everything. I see the benefits of forgiving in some situations, and the benefits of not in others.
One Thing I do want to add though, is that I am a believer in metaphysical healing. I have seen it work to many times to maintain my skeptic attitude... though I still don't see it as a science just yet. One of my favorite authors and advocates of this study is a woman by Louise L Hayes. She wrote a small book called heal your body. It is more or less a guide to what is wrong and how to fix it through who you are. I have heard many people try to discredit her, but that is common when people say something new... anything new for that matter... or even if it just has not been heard in a while. She links the inability to forgive or "Deep Hurt. Long standing resentment. Deep secret or grief eating away at the self. Carrying hatreds. 'what's the use?" as per her description... I find such things interesting. Needless to say, it goes alot more in depth in some of her other writings, but a girl friend of mine had cervical cancer. She was always far less of a skeptic than I, and she knew I was rather educated in these sort of healing techniques as a hobbie, despite my very harsh criticism of them. The chemotherapy she was recieving was holding her cancer at bay so to speak, but no real progress. She asked me if I knew anything. I cared deeply for her at the time, so despite my skepticism and pride, I told her about this book a friend gave me. We read through it. When we found cancer, her eyes widened with a look of realization. She confided in me that her father's friend had molested her as a child, multiple times. Bingo, I asked the dumbest question I could "are you okay?" Obviously she was less than thrilled to discuss it, but I suggested meditating on forgiving as the book suggested. Why not? What did she really have to lose? Worst case she gets a few hours of relaxation a week and even that could've helped. There are other details, but this is getting rather long and those are quite personal, so to sum it up, six months later she didn't have signs of cancer. A few signs have cropped up every here and there, and were aren't the friends we used to be, but we send the occasional "hello" texts and there have been no recent signs. Were it not for other events like this (though not a single one involving cancer) I would have wrote is off as hilarious... but after such things, I have paid this book much more respect than many of it's fellow books and abstract claims...
The reason I bring this story up is partially to support the idea of how we can better our selves and how we can work on our morals that seem to fit enlightenment, but also to show that it is quite possible that our thought processes run far deeper than we anticipate... and also that our reality may be far more easily bent than we though as well...
I return to my previous point, I am a balanced person and try to see benefit in even the bad... but all any of us can really do is try to live correctly by our own reasoning, logic, and feeling. This blog post seems to be one hell of a guide to get us off one path and on to the correct... even though we will not make it all the way as a species. If we try, we might make it back to the middle of this ever shifting balance.
Thanks for reading this and for the time. And how you feel, is how you feel...
:)
I understand the logic and good intentions behind this post, and it was well written and well thought out. I simply differ from you philosophically. I personally feel that some things are unforgivable. To forgive someone is to say, "What you did may have been wrong, but I will not hold it against you any longer." It's a way of saying "it's alright."
Sometimes, it's not alright. Sometimes, one can't help but hold a grudge. And some of those grudges, I wouldn't dare suggest that someone should drop. They may be sources of negativity, but, believe it or not, sometimes, having a point to focus and channel your hatred into can be intensely soothing. Certain life events can bring about a great deal of hatred (I am certain you know what I am referring to), and this hatred, generally, will always be there in one form or another. Having an acceptable focus or reservoir to channel that negativity into, as opposed to trying to internalize it, is a very viable release.
I guess I'll just have to say that you'll need to take my word for it.
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