Forgiveness by Gerald G. Jampolsky M.D

Author:Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2007-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Forgiveness creates a world where we do not withhold our love from anyone.*

It becomes easier to forgive when we choose to no longer believe we are victims.

Forgiveness is a continuous process, not something we do just once or twice.

Six

Miracles of Forgiveness

* * *

Forgiving is the pathway to happiness and the quickest way to undo suffering and pain.*

* * *

Diane’s story in the last chapter shows how quickly we can change something in ourselves when we become aware of it. This is important to realize, because we often hide the anger we feel from others as well as ourselves. That hidden anger becomes the thing that makes it so difficult for us to forgive. And our lack of forgiveness can eat us alive, creating tension that limits our relationships and attacks our bodies.

In this chapter, I’d like to explore some examples in which people have brought grievances from the past into their awareness and released them. It is my hope that these true stories might be helpful models that will guide others toward letting go of the past through forgiveness.

Healing the Scars of Religion

Many people throughout the world have been turned away from anything that resembles religion or God because of painful experiences they have had as children. In many ways, God gets a bad rap in our culture and is blamed for just about everything imaginable. We see this even in the policies of insurance companies that exclude payment for damages or injuries caused by “acts of God”—which usually means natural catastrophes such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires caused by lightning. It is time for us to stop blaming God for all the terrible things that happen to us.

Recently we were having dinner with a woman who described herself as a “recovering Catholic.” She told me that she had been raised in an orphanage and that she perceived this as a horrible experience about which she still felt much anger. She went on to describe in considerable detail some of the abuses she had suffered.

As an adult, she found herself repeating the same victim role again and again with pain and self-pity. She discovered that she was imprisoned by her own anger and by the rage she felt about being abandoned by her mother. Rather than protecting her from the past, her anger had become her jailer, causing her to repeat the past. She got angry every time she heard the words religion or God, seeing them as the cause of her pain.

In the past two years, however, she had begun to explore a spiritual path. She became increasingly aware of how she was blaming both God and religion for her feelings of abandonment and abuse. The more aware she became of this, the more she was able to see how she was responsible for holding on to the pain she was still feeling.

This woman has done a great deal of forgiving. Each day she feels greater freedom from the pain and anger associated with her past.

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