Forgiveness, most agree, is the right thing to do. It’s also an inner ability to access certain resources and cultivate the strength and courage needed to choose to take the higher road. Arguably, it’s a key aspect of your human potential, essentially, who you are.
There are at least 7 reasons why forgiveness is your true nature:
1. It increases your knowledge and understanding, growing wisdom in how life works, or doesn’t work, to realize more happiness, health, harmony in your relationships.
Forgiving a person who hurt you is a challenging task. Like going to the gym, taking the high road is never easy. It is good to accept this up front. It may even be daunting for some, or seemingly impossible for others.
The choice to forgive releases the power of love in the form of acceptance, which allows the physiological state of your mind and body to return to its natural state of restoring balance. Not forgiving, in contrast, means one misses out on the multifaceted benefits that come from taking the high road. It causes suffering and literally gives power to the person who wronged to keep you from feeling fully alive.
On the other hand, forgiving too quickly and easily is not healthy. Author and psychologist Dr. Janis Spring distinguishes between “cheap” and “genuine” forgiveness (the former is unhealthy, whereas the latter is healthy), and states that “acceptance” is a form of forgiveness needed in cases where the wrongdoer is a repeat offender.
2. It keeps you alive and healthy, protecting you from physical and mental illness and disease.
Compassion is the governing emotion and force when your brain and body are in parasympathetic division of the autonomic system. In this mode, healthful hormones nourish the cells of your body, your frontal cortex is engaged, your mind and body work together, and you have access to inner resources such as possibility thinking and creativity, and high frequency emotions, such as gratitude, curiosity, love, joy, enthusiasm, and so on.
In contrast, when fear is the governing emotion, and the brain and body are in survival mode (sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system), the subconscious mind of the body activates mostly pre-programmed reactions, defense strategies of thought and behavior, and the like. Even worse, stress hormones released can have a toxic effect on your physical body, in cases where prolonged.
Studies repeatedly show that not forgiving is associated with disturbances, both emotional ones, such as intense anger, depression, powerlessness, and physical, such as coronary heart disease, sleep or immune system problems. In contrast, forgiving is associated with health benefits to include sound sleep, mental health, and a longer life span.
3. It stems from your deepest core values, inner core-emotion drives to matter and connect to your self and life in meaningful ways.
We are hardwired with unstoppable core emotion-drives to matter and meaningfully contribute in relation to our self and life around us. While these can become so hidden or masked by our fear-instincts as to appear non-existent to us and others, they remain key driving forces, reminders of our true nature (though they only manifest outcomes to the extent we nurture and cultivate them.
Forgiveness reminds us that we are relational beings, that our brain forms literal structures, or neural pathways, in our brain, for the persons we are in closest relationship with. The pain of not forgiving prompts us to look for healing and inner work, to face our fears and learn new and optional ways of relating and handing our most uncomfortable emotions. Not forgiving is a form of avoiding pain, and pain avoidance is the root of all emotional suffering.
4. It fosters your personal and relational growth and transformation.
When we hold on to hurts and disappointments, regardless how “justified” we may be, deep down, we allow deep emotion-laden pockets of accrued bitterness, rage or hatred to build inside of us. Hating or resenting, as explained by American existential psychologist Rollo May, is a superficial way of soothing our pain and preserving our sense of personal power and dignity that gives away our power instead, declaring, “You have conquered me, but I reserve the right to hate you.”
Forgiveness is not forgetting. We remember what others have done to hurt us. If we stay together, it is not because there is a lapse in our memory. It is not because we forget, it is because we want to restore our capacity to love, which arguably is the essence of who we are.
Forgive and forget is a myth. It is not about forgetting. It is about fully accepting what happened happened, and the past cannot be changed. If it is still occurring, it is about accepting you cannot change other people, and your attempts to change their actions, thoughts, feelings are the root cause of much suffering for many. You always have a choice, and accepting that you cannot change the past or another person allows you to own the power you have within you to change, for example, to change how you respond, think or feel in ways that best protect your happiness, which is no small matter! Like eating nutritious food, rather than junk, protecting our happiness is a vital responsibility in the care of our self, mind, body and emotion (spirit).
The good news is that letting go of bitterness becomes easier with practice. It helps to understand that it is not something we do for others, rather something we do for ourselves. It is a sound practice. When someone wrongs us, we offer forgiveness to avoid the harmful and potentially deadly poison of not forgiving.
5. It grows our capacity for compassion for self and others, and life around us.
Forgiveness is a practice, a way of life, that allows you to experience the fullness of your capacity to give and receive love. The practice of forgiveness—as an art, science and power—will help you do so.
“If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.” ~ MOTHER THERESA
Forgiveness however is not something you do for someone else. You forgive to heal your self, to restore the emotional power you need to remain empathically connected to your inner sense of compassion for your self first and foremost, for without your own love-connection to self inside, you cannot connect to the other as a human being. You do so to honor your inner design, as a human being, because love is the essence of who we are as human beings.
You love just because it is who you ultimately are, and therefore in the highest interest of your health and well being. In the words of Alexander Pope, ”To err is human; to forgive, Divine.”
Remaining connected to your compassion is a vital means to protect your happiness. Though it requires much courage to do so, the process is self-reinforcing. The more you practice forgiveness, the more benefits you realize, the more confident you become of your ability to grow your confidence and transform your experiences of pain into assets, rather than shrink and live a life of lies and illusions, in which fear seems larger than life.
6. It teaches us to transform our fears into assets, thus become disinterested in instincts to retaliate or punish, and replace that with a love for to participating with others to create more peace and harmony in and around us.
When we hold on to hurts and disappointments, regardless how “justified” we may be, deep down, we allow deep emotion-laden pockets of accrued bitterness, rage or hatred to build inside of us. Hating or resenting, as explained by American existential psychologist Rollo May, is a superficial way of soothing our pain and preserving our sense of personal power and dignity that gives away our power instead, declaring, “You have conquered me, but I reserve the right to hate you.”
Letting of bitterness is a gift you give to free yourself. In the words of May,
”Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.” ~ ROLLO MAY
Deep down, a refusal to forgive has a positive underlying intention. It is a yearning for empathy from the person who hurt us, a desire for them — to take the highest and most effective road to reconcile the relationship — and thereby heal themselves. Giving ownership to the person who acted hurtfully, rather than being quick to forgive, is genuine forgiveness.
Being quick to forgive, by the way, is not genuine forgiveness because it does not place the burden of reconciliation on the person who acted hurtfully, to allow them to do what is in their highest interest as well, and that is, to take full responsibility to make amends, to reconcile the relationship.
7. It grows your understanding that: the power to dominate, limit and destroy pales in comparison to the miracle-making power to love, inspire creative action, believe in the very best of what it means to be human.
An invitation to forgive is a challenge that calls you to give up life and relationship harming thoughts and judgments about the other, and instead, consciously formulate ones that allow you to stay connected to your infinite capacity for compassion, wisdom and understanding.
“True forgiveness is not an action after the fact; it is an attitude with which you enter each moment.” ~ DAVID RIDGE
When you chose to forgive you stop wasting energy of defense strategies that judge, stew or activate negative thinking-feeling states to rule your mind and body, which can harm your emotional, mental and spiritual growth and well being, and even physical health.
Conceivably, relationships with certain key others in your life (self and loved ones) are a top-notch school that, by design, seeks to stretch the limits of your compassion in order to teach you what you need to know to realize your deepest yearnings for happiness and meaning.
Forgiveness is for the strong, the courageous, those who want to heal and take the road less traveled, and live wholeheartedly and consciously connected to what most brings meaning and the best in life.
In sum, forgiveness is your true nature, a statement you make to yourself, and others, that says you choose to live life fully and wholeheartedly, not half-alive and numb. This statement recognizes that, as human beings, you and your loved ones all have access to the same wondrous strengths and capacities, yet also the same vulnerabilities and lower instincts (when the survival-fear system of the brain and body is triggered).
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