I have been thinking a lot about forgiveness. A lot. It isn’t so much that I have been recently aggrieved by someone and needing to exercise my forgiveness muscles. It’s more that from time to time I become aware that I am still nursing old wounds that I thought long since healed. I have come to recognize that when I accidentally prod an old wound and find a twinge of pain still there it means that more forgiveness is needed. I believe that forgiveness is a process: there is no “one and done” here, like once you say “I forgive so and so person for what they did to me,” then that’s the conclusion of the matter and you’re all finished. Forgiveness happens in stages, in layers. The deeper the injury, the more the layers there are, as best I can tell.
Like many people, I have been on the receiving end of painful experiences inflicted on me by other people. Depending on the degree or severity of the experience and the duration of it, I could be forgiving some people for things that happened years ago. It still surprises me when I bump into things I thought I had gotten over. Something unexpectedly touches that tender place and I find that it still hurts just a little, even if it’s mostly phantom pain by now. And each time I encounter another little piece of unresolved hurt, I earnestly focus my prayers, thoughts, and intentions on offering forgiveness to the person or persons I associate with the injury. This includes in some cases forgiving myself for pain I’ve caused other people. Whatever the situation, I lift it up, examine and acknowledge what I’m feeling and, to the best of my ability, let it go until it shows itself again, at which time I repeat the process.
These days, almost every morning I offer metta–lovingkindness meditations. I “pray,” that is, I offer good wishes to a variety of categories of people, naming some people in each category. I begin with myself (because we need to apply lovingkindness to ourselves as well as to others), and cycle through: family and loved ones, acquaintances and people I am neutral about, “enemies” which for me refers to people with whom I struggle, whom I dislike or have issues with, and finally for all beings on the planet (which for me includes all living things.) It is during my prayers for my “enemies,” the people with whom I struggle, that I spend time thinking about and practicing forgiveness. As I proceed through each category of people I name names, but especially so when I am praying for my enemies.
I don’t have a long list of enemies, but as I say their names aloud I am reminded that some of the people I name I have not been in contact with for years–at least two of them I haven’t seen in 20 years. And yet I name them. Why? Because when I first started a metta practice and naming my “enemies” I realized I was still carrying “stuff” from people who injured me mentally and emotionally all those years ago. And while I don’t consciously think about these people hardly ever, when I began to name the people with whom I struggle, their names came easily to me. It really shocked me because I thought I had long ago let go of the impact they’d had on my life. And yet, there they were. And so I offer the same good wishes for them as I do for myself, my loved ones, my acquaintances, etc.: may they be peaceful and happy, may they be safe and protected from harm. May they be healthy and strong in body, mind and spirit, may they live with joy, ease and wellbeing. May all of their sorrows, grief and sadness be held with great compassion. May their good fortune continue and grow. May they learn to see the arising and passing of all things with equanimity and balance. And so forth.
My hope is that as I pray for them, as I offer good wishes for them perhaps I am releasing a little more of whatever anger or hurt I am holding on toward them. I find myself truly wishing for good things to happen in and for their lives. Forgiveness is as much for the person doing the forgiving as it is for the one being forgiven. Anger, pain, hatred all keep us in prisons of our own making. Coming to a place of true forgiveness offers liberation from those prisons, freeing those who harmed us and freeing us. I am grateful for every layer of forgiveness I offer, and for the forgiveness extended to me for the times I have hurt or inflicted pain on someone else. It reminds me that I hold within myself a great deal of power to heal others and be healed simply by extending forgiveness to others.
One of his followers asked Jesus, “How many times should I forgive my brother or sister, seven times?” And Jesus answered him, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven.” Really? That’s a lot of forgiving. The number of times I need to extend forgiveness to folks must number in the millions. Given the mathematics I reckon that forgiving is a lifelong process. I have my work cut out for me, but it’s good work and I’m committed to it. May we all learn to give and receive the gift of forgiveness. So be it!
