Forgiveness is a “gift you give yourself.” Corrosive emotions of anger, resentment, and the desire for revenge are “toxic” to the human body and spirit. Left untended, these fester and grow in the person harboring them, gradually destroying their health, happiness and inner peace. It was Nelson Mandela who wisely noted, during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa that “revenge is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemies.”
Forgiveness is an act of choice and it can mean different things to different people. It is a personal journey that can be agonizingly difficult and costly, but also transformative and healing. It is seldom a single event and more often a process that takes place over time. Forgiveness is an act of liberation that releases the person who has been hurt from the emotional and psychological grip of the perpetrator and lets them move on with their lives. In this way, forgiveness is also an act of self-healing.
Giving and receiving forgiveness may be two sides of the same coin. When we forgive someone for injuring us, we open our heart to allow a space in which a new intentional choice can be made in order to live in peace. Forgiveness does not require that we forget what happened, or condone what was done; we forgive when inner peace is our goal. Likewise, when we forgive ourselves for injuring someone else, it is our open heart that permits us to humbly see our own human frailty, to honestly examine our motives and to make sincere amends.
A unique dimension of forgiveness is its relationship to time; the persons we seek to forgive may have passed away many years before. Their presence and participation is not necessary for the gift of forgiveness to be given. There are many such stories reported in The Forgiveness Project, a UK-based charitable organization which explores forgiveness, reconciliation and conflict resolution through the stories of real-life human experiences (www.theforgivenessproject.com)
Forgiveness and Coherent Heart Rhythms
We are often unaware of how emotions affect our bodies, our thoughts and our responses to events in our lives. The Institute of Heart Math (www.heartmath.org) has for 18 years conducted research on heart-brain communications and found that one of the easiest ways to observe how our feelings affect us is to examine the effects on our heart rhythms. Among the innovative tools and techniques that they have introduced, Heart Math has created a scientifically validated and patented monitoring system with software that tracks and displays heart rhythms on computer monitors. When we feel revengeful, angry or fearful our heart rhythms are jagged like mountain tops, and irregular. When we feel appreciation, gratitude and forgiveness, our rhythms are in a “highly ordered” or coherent pattern. In coherence, the mind, body and emotions all operate in harmony which, in turn, leads to increased mental clarity and focus, improved decision making and a greater sense of well being.
Gratitude
We can be introduced to the power of their hearts through the direct experience of intentional prayer, gratitude, forgiveness and appreciation. Many of the world’s oldest spiritual teachings emphasize gratitude as a transformative spiritual practice that brings awareness of the amazing gifts and blessings present in our lives. We can be led to discover that happiness and inner peace are generated from the inside-out, rather than from the material or external world. And gratitude and forgiveness are two of the quickest and most direct paths to restoring balance and harmony in our lives that, in turn, fosters more gratitude and acceptance
As we give thanks and feel gratitude in our hearts it serves to remind us that each day is a gift unto itself and we are prompted to ask ourselves, “How do I choose to live today? What will I pay attention to today? How shall I choose peace over anger today? How can I help heal myself and others today?”
