Understanding Forgiveness

THE PERFECT WAY THROUGH AN IMPERFECT WORLD

The case for doing regular self-forgiveness:

• In the course of being together, each of you regularly makes choices which impact your relationship and lives.
  
  
• Each choice made and the expected results and impact are based entirely on what you knew and was aware of at the time of making the choice.
  
  
• The actual results though, are often different than the expected results.
  
  
• In retrospect, you may realize that had you known better (or more or differently), you would have made a modified or completely different choice.
  
  
• You and your partner are each human.
  
  
• There is a tendency for a human to look back at a choice that brought an undesirable result, and label it as a 'mistake' forgetting that the choice was based upon what was known at the time.
  
  
• There is a tendency for a human look back and label the choice as 'bad' or that it caused bad to be done or to label him/herself as bad for making the choice. Painful and stressful feelings including sadness and anger often follow these labels, also known as negative judgments.
  
  
• Some of these are against others. Most are against ourselves. These judgments are like conclusions because they wrap up what happened and seal it as a forever-like truth. This is significant because it's not that we just make judgments and let them go, we freeze it in time so that it continues to color the situation and the people involved. The case has been adjudicated by the higher court. We continue to 'hold' the judgment against the other person or ourselves.
  
  
• The truth is that there is no bad and no one is bad. This is because the universe is based upon good and so, when we know better we always do better. We always do what we do given what we know at the time. Human choices are typically predicated on parts of the picture not the whole.
  
  
• Notwithstanding we can neatly understand how all this happens, still there are unpleasant and negative feelings and emotions involved and we want to do something about that.
  
  
• What?
  
  
• In going back a few points, we remember that all of this happens because the judgment is ongoing. It continues to hold against the person or oneself. There is an energy which keeps the judgment alive. Okay, how do we delete this? Stop it? By stopping it. By stopping giving yourself to it. For go it. Give it up. FOR-GIVE it!
  
  
• Use Forgiveness then, to let go of judgment. That simple. That logical.
  
  
• But, you say, couldn't we just not judge in the first place and therefore not have anything to forgive? Sure, if we didn't judge, there would not be any judgments that need to be let go of.