We All Need Forgiveness, Especially Now

With last week's fabulous solar eclipse we entered the next phase of the Earth's  cosmic journey round the Sun. We perceive that the days are growing shorter and that the weather is changing. Falling leaves, ripening grain, early morning mists and a new crispness in the air alert us to the changing season.

If we are sensitive we will detect the inner promptings that encourage us to begin anew in our personal work. The time is propitious for new beginnings, but to experience the benefit we first have to make peace with our past.

We're now in the month of Ellul in the Jewish calendar, which encourages us to take a spiritual inventory before the Jewish New Year begins.

Though we don't celebrate a new year at this time in the secular calendar, nor in the Christian one, we do respond to the new energies which are beginning to influence us at the end of summer. Schools, colleges and universities begin a new scholastic year, while Work groups all over the world return to regular meetings.

In the agricultural year, farmers in the northern hemisphere are now in the midst of harvesting all the crops that were sown in spring; in the same way, in the spiritual sphere, we take an inventory of all we've gleaned from the previous year, to see where our pilgrimage has led us and what we've learned on the way.

An important part of this season is to seek forgiveness for the wrongs we've done to others.

We've been looking at the psychological and spiritual implications around forgiving others. We've seen that forgiveness is absolutely essential for our spiritual growth, and is commanded by Jesus Christ, the Head of Conscious Humanity.

Now, in Ellul, and approaching the Christian season of Michaelmass, it's time to see where we ourselves also need to be forgiven.

In the Jewish tradition, Ellul is the month when we begin to take stock of our spiritual "goods", as it were, and one of the most important aspects of doing this is very similar to the Twelve Step Inventory: we are obliged to look honestly and fearlessly at ourselves, as AA puts it, and to see the many occasions when we've caused harm to another person.

And then we have to ask that person's forgiveness.

Unless we've done so, the Bible, the Jewish and the Christian traditions, which of course stem from the same source, tell us we have no right to expect God to forgive us. It's in the Lord's Prayer, composed by Jesus, who says we must ask God to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who've trespassed against us".

This part of the prayer concerns our sins against God, and our forgiveness of others, but Jesus goes further when He tells us that if anyone has any cause to be angry with us, we must at least make the attempt to be reconciled with them before we dare to approach God.

In Jewish law, which is the background from which Jesus teaches us, every Orthodox Jew must honestly account for the misdeeds they've performed that have harmed people. He or she must then seek out the person they harmed and offer them a complete and sincere apology. If amends or restitution are called for, they must be given. Only then is the person spiritually clean, and able to stand before God.

AA asks us to do exactly the same when we make our personal inventory. We are told to apologize and make amends to every single person we have hurt before we can make any further spiritual progress and consolidate our recovery.

Although the major inventory is part of the Steps, and must be carried out sooner or later in regard to our entire lives before recovery, a lesser inventory - but one which is just as important - must be carried out daily. We have to review our behaviour every day, and be quick to apologize and make our amends when we see where we have hurt another person.

It's easy to say, but very hard to actually do. We may have overlooked or attempted to explain away some of the harm we've done from day to day, but eventually we must come to grips with it. We can't continue to self-justify, because this works against our conscience, however deeply we may attempt to bury it. And if we continue to go against our conscience we will ultimately kill our own Essence. A huge amount of progress depends on this continual honesty and willingness to acknowledge when we are in the wrong.

As the AA Big Book points out, it's no good just mumbling an apology; we actually have to make amends. That could mean writing to the person we've harmed and asking them to forgive us; it could involve phoning them, or meeting them face to face, and spelling out our apology, asking them how we may make amends for the harm we've done.

Sometimes we can't contact people we've hurt. They may have moved and not left a forwarding address, or they may have died, or have cut themselves off from us because of the way we have hurt them. And it could be that to contact them might do more harm than good. If, for example, we have had an affair with a married person and harmed their spouse, then to apologize to the spouse for the harm we've caused them and their marriage could very well bring up painful and angry feelings for the injured person, and this will not help to make amends.

In such cases we still need to make amends in some way, however, and perhaps the best way is to stop the behaviour that has caused the damage, while holding ourselves ready to apologize if the injured person should get in touch with us.

When someone has died we need to pray for them, and when it's someone we've harmed we can ask God to heal them and us, and bring about reconciliation in the spiritual realm.

But there is to be no dodging of this responsibility. If the person to whom we need to make amends is at all available, we are obliged to do all we can to show them our sincere regret and make them a full and frank apology for what we have done.

As the Big Book also points out, making an inventory and seeing where we have gone wrong is not about the harm others have done to us. In previous posts we've seen how important it is to forgive, but here we are considering how we ourselves need to be forgiven. We clean up our own side of the street, and leave the rest to our Higher Power.

Then, in the next phase of the cosmic cycle, we will be ready to start again, with fresh energy and in a determined spirit.

Forgive, Yes, But Forget? Not Always

We've looked at some problems relating to forgiveness, and we've established that forgiveness is an extremely important spiritual process. If we hold on to old resentments and past hurts, we can't make any progress. Those I's will interfere and hold us back, sapping our energy and creating long-term stress. They can even make us ill.

So, we need to forgive. Not too quickly, as I explained in the previous post, because that can be a spiritual bypass, a way of avoiding the hurt we have experienced and of denigrating ourselves; we are important, just as important as the person who's hurt us, and we need to be kind to ourselves by understanding when we have been wronged. Denial is no help, and will only ensure that the harm continues.

Should we always forget?

Yes, if the harm is relatively trivial, or if the relationship we have with the person who hurt us is too important and too positive to allow a passing injury to cancel all the good.

I'm thinking of here of minor injuries, such as your spouse's forgetting - again! - to take out the trash, or to call you to say when she'll be home. They are inconvenient, but not really important. Compared with the love you bear each other, they are really nothing, but they happen and we all need to acknowledge that fact. If something is causing problems between you, speak to the other person about it and let them know. And then forget it. Yes, it may happen again, but so what? It's really unimportant in the great scheme of things, and you don't want a good relationship to turn sour because you're obsessing over small things.

After all, you doubtless cause them similar minor problems! And if you want them to forgive you, you also have to forgive them.

What about the major hurts, though? Suppose our spouse has been unfaithful? Or a colleague has stolen money from our purse? Or you discover that someone you thought was a friend has been gossiping maliciously about you to others?

These are real injuries, and if we decide that the relationship is worth saving we will have to confront the person with our hurt and angry feelings. Yes, it will be difficult, and the other person may not respond. If we don't confront, however, we will allow those feelings to fester and spoil the relationship anyway. And we may decide that the infidelity, or the theft, or the betrayal are simply too much to overlook, that we don't want to be close to someone who can cause us such pain.

We know we have to forgive. The Work tells us so; the Head of Conscious Humanity, Jesus Christ, commands us to, and reinforces those instructions in the words of the Lord's Prayer: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and AA and NA make forgiveness part of the Twelve Steps.

In these serious cases, however, we may actually forgive, but be left with a feeling of cautiousness that is actually very helpful. The straying spouse may stray once more, and we may find we need to leave the relationship to save our sanity. The colleague's continuing petty thefts may indicate an addiction problem. Our friend may in fact be a "toxic person" who is not a real friend at all, and in this case we need to end that relationship.

When we do so, when we end a long-term relationship of any kind, we are bound to feel hurt, and some of us - women, particularly - will feel guilty. As we saw in last week's post, many women have been raised ro believe that we should just "put up or shut up", keep taking any amount of abuse, because that is our duty as a woman. We are there to serve others, but we ourselves are worthless.

It's absolutely vital not to internalize this guilt, if it arises. We need to see it as what it is; a self-defeating, harmful attitude composed of several petty I's who are located in the negative emotional centre, and who have no right to speak for us. We observe ourselves, hear these messages, and then detach from them.

We are worthwhile, valuable people. If those around us treat us badly, we have every right to end our relationship with them. Doing so could save our life.

At the same time, we don't want to end a relationship in bitterness and recrimination. Depending on the emotional maturity of the other person, this may be extremely difficult. We can maintain a firm refusal to engage any further in that relationship, at the same time making it clear that we have forgiven the injury and have let it go; of course, this is much harder than it sounds, but it is perfectly possible and really necessary for our own sanity and peace of mind.

Ending relationships is often a very sad and difficult process. Whether it be a long-standing friendship with someone who has perhaps become mentally ill and is now abusive, or whether it's the breakup of a marriage or similar partnership, the ending is a bereavement that must be mourned. Mourning is not a negative emotion. We feel sad and hurt, but we also know that we have to protect ourselves. We wish the other person no harm, and we're told we must pray for them, so that is what we do.

And if we can't bring ourselves to forgive, or to mourn without bitterness, we need to pray - to ask our Higher Power for the willingness to forgive and then to let go of the relationship.

Over the course of our lifetime we are bound to have relationships with people who hurt us and let us down. Life is a pain factory, Gurdjieff tells us, and in order to grow spiritually we have to purify our negative emotional centre. Ending toxic relationships is necessary for our personal wellbeing, but letting go of the guilt afterwards is often very hard work. Yet it is work for which we should thank the "toxic person", because through these efforts we will acquire new strength.

Whenever such a situation has arisen in my own life, I've ended the relationship, and when I've worked through the period of mourning which always follows, I visualize the other person as wrapped in light, and I trust them to the care of God. I  see them enfolded in love and mercy, and I wish them well.

And I often have to do this not just once, but many times over, until the hurt and injury has been thoroughly worked through. Each time, I hand the person over to the loving care of God. This way I find brings peace of mind and soul, and I trust the other person may also benefit.

Forgiving may be hard, but not to do so may cost us our life.

Forgiving too quickly can be a spiritual bypass

Yes, Jesus Christ, the Head of Conscious Humanity, does tell us we absolutely must forgive others who have wronged us. Doing good to our enemies is what C. S. Lewis calls one of the "house rules" common to all denominations. And it's also mandated by the Work, because holding on to resentment is a negative emotion, and one that will hold us back from making any spiritual progress.

AA too tells us to watch out for resentment, because it can precipitate a relapse.

So we've looked in the previous post at the need to forgive, and although it's very, very difficult in many cases, we've managed to release our old angers and resentments, and let go of the whole bundle. (Hint: if we can't quite get there, we need to ask our Higher Power to give us the willingness to forgive).

But paradoxically, forgiving too easily or too quickly constitutes what a counsellor friend calls a "spiritual bypass".

He means that we leap over the anger or the resentment without processing it, and although we may say - and mean it - that we've forgiven the person concerned, we haven't really done that at all. We've just stuffed the anger deeper into our unconscious, where it festers, sometimes for years. And we do this because acknowledging the reality of how we've been treated and how we've allowed ourselves to be abused is too painful to contemplate.  Often, it takes professional help to see this and to accompany us through the difficult journey to understanding and eventual forgiveness.

Let me give you an example of a client who did just that, performed a "spiritual bypass", and the problems it caused her. She was typical of so many women who've been raised to be submissive and always "nice", especially to men, so that she didn't feel she had the right to be treated respectfully. Additionally, her mother, a Christian who hadn't fully understood the Gospel about forgiveness, had drilled into her daughter the need to be a doormat for others - this, the mother insisted, was what Jesus had told us to do.

Of course, He said nothing of the kind!

He tells us, as does the entire Jewish tradition, to "love our neighbour as our self".

That presupposes that we have the right, and actually do, love ourselves - that we have, as the modern buzzword puts it, compassion for ourselves. We really do need to love ourselves, and it's the prerequisite for any real forgiveness to take place.

If we don't love ourselves, we can't love others. All we can do is become codependent, putting up with abuse of all kinds because we don't believe we are valuable people. And that is what had happened to my client, whom I'll call Carol (not her real name, of course).

Carol had been raised to regard all women as inferior to men. That no matter what she did, however high her college marks were, or her achievements at work, this was all secondary to her real role in life, which was to look after her husband.

Yes, taking care of our family is very important indeed. But again, we must have a healthy level of self-esteem before we can do this. In Carol's case, because she despised her own sex, she tolerated a level of emotional abuse from her husband that other people would have found intolerable.


She had to rush home from work to cook a meal every night, even when she worked longer hours than he did. He never once offered to cook for them both, or to wash up, or to carry out any household chores at all; that was "women's work", and beneath his dignity as a man. Because she always had to be available as an unpaid servant, she was never allowed to take a day out with her friends, or a short break to stay with her sister.

Her husband treated their daughter as abusively as he did her mother, because she too was an inferior being, a female, and had no rights compared to those of her brother, who was excused all household chores "because he's a boy".

He constantly insulted his wife and daughter, finding fault with their cooking, their cleaning, their appearance and their attitude. Not once was any praise given, or affection shown.

The daughter voted with her feet as soon as she was old enough to leave, and took a lowly paid job in order to be able to afford her own bedsit.

Carol, however, could not leave, neither could she complain - that would have been "unChristian".

When Carol reached her fifties, careworn and with her self-esteem through the floor, she contracted cancer. It used to be thought that there was a "cancer personality", and although that theory has been much debated, there's no doubt that Carol's own lack of self-esteem exacerbated her illness. She simply fell into a state of denial about it. The strange pains and weaknesses couldn't be important, she told herself, and in any case, she didn't have time to be ill; she had her demanding job, her even more demanding husband and son to take care of, and no time at all to take care of herself.

By the time she was in so much pain that even her husband noticed, and insisted she see a doctor (because any serious illness must be nipped in the bud, in case it got in the way of her housekeeping), it was too late. The cancer was inoperable.

Carol finally came to see me when she had been given only months to live, and then only because her friends and her doctor insisted on it.

She still felt she had no right to be ill, and that her cancer was somehow a punishment for having been a poor wife and mother.

Eventually, we reached some understanding of her situation. She spent the last few weeks of her life partly at home, cared for by nurses and by her own sister, and partly in a very good hospice.

During her remaining time, Carol came to see how she had constantly "forgiven" her abusive husband for insults and demands that he had no right to make. And she had not really forgiven him at all. She had thought so little of herself that she had repressed any anger or resentment, and buried her negative emotions too deep to access - except when it was almost too late.

Her "forgiveness" was not true forgiveness, it was a spiritual bypass.

With the help of sessions with me and jointly with the hospital chaplain, Carol reached a level of understanding that allowed her to released the buried feelings, and to really forgive. She came to see that she had been treated very unfairly, and that her husband had made unreasonable demands throughout the marriage because he knew no better. They were both victims of a cruel, patriarchal upbringing that had served them ill.

I have seen this scenario played out many times in different forms. Sometimes, perhaps most often, it happens with abused women and their abusive husbands. Sometimes the persecutor is an adult child,  often an alcoholic or addict whom the mother is continually rescuing from his spectacular messes, to the detriment of both.

The mother and the abused wife say that they forgive their abusers, but they cannot really do so, because to be able to forgive means that you understand that someone has behaved wrongly towards you. Carol, raised to be a "doormat" (in her own words) could not believe that other people did not have the right to walk all over her. Only when she began to build some self-esteem, and to see herself as a valuable person, loved by God, did she come to see that she had allowed herself to be abused.

If you or someone you know should be in this situation, then before rushing to forgiveness, it's important to realize what has happened, what offences have been committed against you. Once you know, then - and only then - can you for.give

Can You Forgive Someone Who Isn't Sorry?

We're told by Jesus in the Gospels that we must always forgive others who've hurt us. The Lord's Prayer mandates our forgiveness of them to ensure that we ourselves will be forgiven by God for the wrongs we've done. And Jesus places no limit on the number of times that forgiveness must be given - he says "seventy times seven" to indicate that our obligation to forgive is limitless.

And yet, while we can all agree that we need to forgive someone who's sorry, who's apologized, and who is clearly repentant for what they've done, what can we do when the other person isn't sorry?

The problem is compounded if the offender is dead, or mentally ill, or otherwise unavailable. We are certain that they can't feel regret or sorrow for the harm they have done to us, and yet the obligation to forgive is still there.

Many clients have told me they have found it quite impossible to forgive a really serious offence, including childhood abuse. The abuser may be long dead, and yet the harm they did lives on. I have had a client who seemed to actively enjoy holding on to her unforgiving nature. Her son had married the "wrong person", according to her, and she experienced this as a personal insult. She hated the new wife, and she could never forgive her son.

In this case, nothing I did helped her to let go of her hatred. Indeed, her anger and animosity seemed to give her some sort of pleasure; there was a grim smile as she talked about the family split, and she was clearly identified with her own hateful I's. She absolutely refused to let go of any part of her hatred, and I had to terminate our sessions. I think she was an example of what Gurdjieff calls a "hasnamuss", someone who derives pleasure from willing ill to others.

Sometimes, in cases of abuse or other serious harm, the offender may have apologized, may have shown complete sincerity in their attitude and be truly contrite, and yet the victim stays stuck and cannot move on, because he cannot forgive.

Forgiveness, however, frees us to go on with our lives. It releases us from the chains of misery, and from the truly horrible "inner accounting" we make in respect of those who've harmed us.

A huge amount of psychological energy is bound up in our resentments, our grudges, our internal accounts. They devour our time and attention and distract us from the vital business of personal work on ourselves. We simply can't afford to hold on them.

But it's often so hard to let go! It seems as though, if we were to take the leap of forgiveness, we would be letting that person off the hook, saying to ourselves that what they did was not so bad, after all. And, if we've experienced hurt or shame or abuse, what the other person did was very much not OK, not to be condoned under any circumstances.

The answer is to look at ourselves, rather than at the other person. What harm are we doing to ourselves, by holding on to past hurts and refusing to forgive and let go of them? If we're honest, the pain we cause ourselves through our own lack of forgiveness may be just as bad as the original harm caused by the other. It may even be worse, in a way, because it can endure for many years, as my hate-filled client experienced.

We need to be clear with ourselves, and with others, that just because we may forgive someone, that doesn't mean the hurt they caused was unimportant or in any way to be condoned. If we are talking about abuse, it most certainly is not; but what forgiveness can do is to let ourselves off the hook, as it were, freeing ourselves from the constant pain and tension that holding to resentments will inevitably cause.

The first step is to see that we are indeed suffering because of what we are doing to ourselves, over and above what the other person did to us. We can look honestly at our inner state, and decide that it's time to call a halt to that resentment.  We make a decision to let go of the anger, the internal accounts - and we resolve that we will forgive the other, for our own good.

We can then look at that other, and see them as what they are; a person with their own mental problems, who acted as they did because they are themselves sick in some way, or oblivious of our feelings, or so mechanical that they had no choice in what they did.

An abuser is someone who's been abused. That is a counselling truism, and it is always the case. A victim of abuse does not have to become an abuser, but someone who does abuse others, in whatever way, is a person who in the past has been abused and has internalized the pain to such an extent that they don't even realize its existence.

And for lesser offences, the mechanical nature of the I's in the person who insulted us, or disrespected us, or offended our sensitivities, is easy to see when we look at them without prejudice. Mostly, people hurt us because they cannot help themselves. They are acting mechanically, and unless they are on a spiritual path, or receiving psychological help, they cannot see what they've done, or why they did it.

By not forgiving them, we are hurting only ourselves.

It's extraordinarily liberating to be able to let go of a past wrong. There is a real feeling of relief and an inrush of energy. We are finally free from that other person, and from the hurt they caused. They no longer have the power to harm us, because we have made the decision to detach from that harm.

Someone on a spiritual path will want to go further. We see the plight of the abuser, the offender, how they are locked into a painful situation they cannot change, because they can't see it, and we turn them over to the care of a Higher Power.

This is what Jesus means when talks of forgiveness. Instead of returning evil with evil, we let go, and leave the person in the care of God. We don't wish them harm, we hope they will one day change, but we can do nothing to change them; we are powerless over them.

If one day the offender does become more aware, and sees the harm they've caused us, they may indeed apologize. That would be wonderful, the best possible outcome. But we can't count on it, and so, for own sake, for the purpose of liberating ourselves from the past, we forgive and - one day -forget.