The Pursuit of Happiness Part 2 – The joy of forgiving and forgetting.

Part 2 – The joy of forgiving and forgetting.

In the first part we learned how to be free to choose anything from all possibilities, regardless of what the outcome of the choice may be, and that the past and future has no meaning for us.

We thus progress on this road to become free, to delete the past, and for that matter also the future’s pain that the past may have caused us.

We carry wounds we sustained during skirmishes and encounters in die emotional, physical and spiritual domains; injuries sustained in interpersonal relationships, from encounters with violent people, and from our wrong choices.

These may vary from us being attacked physically, being abused emotionally and verbally, being humiliated in public, being bereft of our dignity and being scarred from encounters in the spiritual domain. All these are serious acts of war in the physical and meta-physical domains.

It may range from us inflicting wounds on others, us being wounded by others or self inflicted wounds. It leaves scars of different kinds and takes different forms and shapes.

These scars exist in our conscious and subconscious minds and memories, and lies and grows there, and is even nurtured there until they are addressed properly or manifests in us doing some acts of violence. They just do not go away with time, like sticky notes, and have a tendency to build up hate, fear and dismay in our inner beings.

WWII was instigated by the rejection of one man by society, who then went on to poison the minds of masses, and then going on a killing spree to poison, mutilate and kill millions more around the world. A very small cause can have devastating effects – also in our lives.

There are many ways to address this, depending on how deep and serious the wounds are. Confession, forgiveness, psychotherapy and hypnosis are some of the ways of healing those wounds and removing them from our memories.

We only seem to forget them once they have been properly addressed, and most of them, if properly addressed, makes us strong, invulnerable and wise. It may then even inspire us to go on and reach unbelievable acts of courage, resilience and faith – and even fame.

I am only addressing the most basic ways of addressing these in this piece. Serious cases of psychological disorders will need other remedies as well, but sometimes go away even by applying the most basic steps mentioned here.  

 

Please forgive us our sins ...

When we have wronged someone, it is our responsibility as conscious and responsible human beings to go to that person, do confession, acknowledge the wrong we did and ask for forgiveness.

In ninety nine percent of those cases we will be forgiven, because to err is human and to forgive is divine. That incident then becomes a milestone in our pilgrimage and we and that person will be healed, because both of us sustained wounds in such a case. Whether we are the perpetrator or the victim.

Ask any murderer if he or she can forget or brush away the feelings of guilt and horror of the act of killing someone, as it is conjured up regularly in his or her emotion and mind for decades to come or forever. The book and film 'Crime and Punishment' by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a must read or must see for all of us who wish to follow this path less-travelled.

 

...  and please forgive those who have sinned against us ...

People who have sinned against us have sustained a wound, and they are mostly too ashamed, haughty or scared to admit or address it.

We can go to them and tell them that they have wronged us and scarred us. Even without a confession from them, we can tell them that we have forgiven them and bear them no ill will. In this process we will heal them and wipe that pain from their memories and from ours. That way we can set them free.

 

Lastly we need to forgive ourselves for those self inflicted wounds. This may be the hardest of the three ways of forgiveness, as most of us can never forgive ourselves. Some of us must go through psychotherapy by specialists to address this.

At the root of this is our pride, dignity and delusion, which we should be able to address once we come to the realization that we are frail human beings with faults and infirmities.

Some of us, like myself, get healing from doing penance. This might also just work for some of my readers.

You might want to read my article on the joy of doing penance here:

https://pkodendaal.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-joy-of-doing-penance.html

 

Next time:

Part 3 - Inspire or shun negative people.