Who among us does not need to forgive one or both of our parents? Forgiving our mothers and fathers, and healing our own core wounds, is essential, foundational work for all of us.

Look At Us Now Mother is an award-winning film in which filmmaker Gayle Kirschenbaum shares her own courageous journey of forgiveness with her mother. Each time this film is shown, it receives rave reviews and more importantly, helps viewers find the impulse to forgive within themselves.  

The Path of Forgiveness is happy to be partnering with Gayle to spread the word about this film and support her mission of helping others forgive and heal. I believe this is a personal documentary that can help millions of people. 

Gayle is currently raising money through a Kickstarter campaign so the film can be widely distributed. She needs the support of those of us who care about forgiveness. I encourage you to watch two short video clips. One explains the Kickstarter campaign and the other is the official trailer for the film.

Please contribute if you can and share this message with others!

Do you believe you deserve grace, that you are worthy of grace?

Mel Villiers recently sent me a thought-provoking article entitled Amazing Grace:  How Unconditional Forgiveness Assists Recovery written by Rita Milios. It focuses on why unconditional forgiveness, and particularly, self-forgiveness, is essential in any type of addiction recovery, because without it, we believe we are underserving of grace:

Understanding that you, too, like everyone else, are entitled to be granted grace – an ability to receive an unmerited favor from your Higher Power to assist you when you cannot assist yourself – this is perhaps the most powerful insight you can gain from a Twelve Step program. In Step Seven it is written that “We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.”

 Milios says learning that you are deserving of grace is a turning point:

Coming to believe and accept that you are worthy of grace can be a real turning point in your recovery. Shame, guilt and remorse often hinder the progress of recovering individuals. Forgiveness is recognized as a key factor in working the Steps. Unconditional forgiveness is a deeper, more compassionate forgiveness of self and others that can only come from connecting with your Higher Power and asking for its grace. But when you do, you free yourself from the self-destructive spiral of feeling unworthy and then seeking relief from the pain through the use of drugs or alcohol. If you unconditionally forgive yourself as well as others, you can experience both health and emotional healing.

Clients frequently tell me they do not feel worthy, that they have never felt worthy.  Buddhist teacher Tara Brach call this “the trance of unworthiness” which many of us fall into at an early age.

When unworthiness surfaces in forgiveness work, it is identified as a core wound, the healing of which is pivotal. As healing occurs, positive changes, often seemingly miraculous, soon follow. It makes sense. How can we receive life’s abundant blessings, if we do not believe we are worthy and deserving? 

As long as we believe ourselves to be unworthy, nothing can change. As Mel Villiers says:

The inability to forgive means that we are constantly stuck in the past, running over old ground, and unable to develop as people. This is especially true when we cannot forgive ourselves. If we have done something which we feel is shameful or wrong, we cannot cut ourselves off as we might had someone shamed or wronged us. If we cannot treat ourselves with a degree of compassion then we will forever be re-hashing that old ground, and damaging our psyches in the process. . . . Self-forgiveness and self-compassion are not the same as arrogance and narcissism. They are positive attributes which will help us to become the kind of people we would like to be.

Anytime you find yourself mired in a troubling relationship, it’s useful to examine your role in creating and/or maintaining the situation, even if you are certain the other person is to blame.

To discover your part, look no farther than your own thoughts and beliefs — the story you tell others – and most importantly, yourself – about what happened to you and what it means.

Our stories are powerful beyond measure. They filter what we see, feel and experience. They can imprison us, and they can also set us free.

In our twelve-step forgiveness process, we examine these stories, deconstruct them, and ultimately, rewrite them. It’s in the deconstruction process that we begin to see that our grievance stories – the ones connected to painful relationships and situations – are invariably based on false assumptions and interpretations. Perhaps they were valid at one time, but when held up to the light of day, it becomes abundantly clear that they no longer serve us.

Recently, I asked one of my clients if he was ready to let go of his old story. There was a long pause. His grievance story has threaded through his entire life, from childhood to the present. He’d been working on it for awhile, chipping away at important aspects of it. Yet I sensed something was holding him back. Finally he responded softly: Who will I be without my story?

This was a light-bulb moment for both of us. Our stories – even when based on false assumptions and interpretations – are a part of us. They are known to us, familiar. On some level, they have protected us, enabling us to survive and make sense of difficult circumstances. Letting go of the old story means stepping into the unknown.

Our stories become part of our identity. They don’t define who we are, but they do define who we think we are. As I told my client, the key is to remember your true identity, who you really are.

Yes, the old story has been a familiar cocoon. But forgiveness enables us to transcend the old story, so we can emerge as the glorious butterfly, spreading our wings in the full realization of our potential.

Ram Dass is probably best known for his LSD experiments with Timothy Leary at Harvard in the 60s, and as the author of the classic “Be Here Now.” Less known is the fact that he was also my first spiritual teacher. A friend gave me his book, The Only Dance There Is. Then I heard him speaking in Washington D.C. and I was hooked by his sharp wit and brilliant perspectives on life and illusion.

Here are some excerpts of what Ram Dass had to say about forgiveness in an interview entitled Forgiveness – Bridge Between Self and Soul:

[Forgiveness is] a step on a ladder that goes from dualism into non-dualism. Because as you forgive or allow or acknowledge or say “Of course you’re human” or “We all do that” or something, you open your heart again . . . . 

[E]very time you close off something with judgment, it’s as if you take a bit of energy and you lock it away and make it unavailable to you. Until pretty soon you are exhausted. You don’t have any energy, because you are so busy. . . .

I often visualize it as having little doors inside your head. You’re holding a grudge — and so every time you think of that person your heart closes down. It’s as if you’ve got a little room with a guard at it that doesn’t allow you to flow freely. And they’re all the no’s of life — the no, no, no, no, no. . . . And it costs more than it’s worth. Even though you are right, righteousness ultimately starves you to death.

Righteousness is not liberation. It is known as the golden chain. You’re wonderful and you’re absolutely right, but you’re dead. I mean you’re dead to the living spirit. And finally, you want to be free more than you want to be right.

In short, you can either be right or you can be happy. 

Forgiveness Resources

Twenty Seven and A Half Years – An inspiring story sent to me from David Walrath about Gregory Bright, a man who forgave after being imprisoned for 27 1/2 years for crimes he did not commit. Bright says: I couldn’t change the things I had to forgive, but I could change if I forgave. To hold a grudge is self-destruction, but forgiveness is a strength. It’s a process of humbling myself and leaning on the truth, and in all things the truth is far better than a lie. 

The Radical Power of Humility – Lulu Perault shared this lovely article on the power and importance of humility and three important doorways humility can open. Includes this forgiveness prayer, practiced each year on a special holy day by the Jain community: If I have caused you offense in any way, knowingly or unknowingly, in thought, word or deed, then I seek your forgiveness.

This is an excellent forgiveness talk given by renown Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Here are some of the highlights. Quoting Rumi, Kornfield illustrates one of my favorite forgiveness themes, that our greatest pain can be the doorway to great healing:  

Don’t reject your grief and loneliness
Let them seize in you
Like few ingredients can

Kornfield points out that we become very loyal to our stories, yet most of them are reruns! He says we each have an underlying capacity for love and freedom that is untouched by what happens to us. This is our true nature and the shift of identity back to our true nature is the invitation of forgiveness work. Last but not least, he shares this from the Bhagavad Gita:

                      If you want to see the brave,
                           look for those who can return love for hatred, 
                       If you want to see the heroic,  
                          look for those who can forgive.

 I encourage you to check out the accompanying article entitled the Ancient Heart of Forgiveness.

Thanks Eric Boehm for sending this.

New and Improved Forgiveness Challenge – A new Tutu Global Forgiveness Challenge starts at the beginning of August.  This online program is free of charge.

A month or so ago I was feeling particularly miserable. I had been working hard on several projects, with little to show for it. My mind supplied all kinds of reasons that added insult to injury: I am a failure. Not good enough. Not worthy. Unlovable. Uggh. I desperately needed to find the exit from my own negative thinking. But how? How do you shift gears when you are stuck inside your own personal hell?

Until we awaken from our habitual patterns, our life experiences are defined by our mind and ego.  Our thoughts, beliefs and stories, which are often quite negative, give us a limited version of who we are, and this becomes our identity. This limited self is the part that suffers, rages, resents, hurts, blames and needs to be right. But the limited self is not who we really are. Who we really are, our true essence, is connected to the infinite and universal lifeforce. 

It became very clear to me that each of us is capable of creating our own personal hell, but we can also create own personal heaven. It requires to awaken from the trance of our negative patterns, to stop identifying with our false self and start identifying with our true self:

1.  Realize that you have slipped back into an old
     pattern of negative thoughts and feelings.

2.  Remember these old patterns, no matter how familiar and
     compelling, are not the truth and do not serve you.

3.  Reconnect with love, your true essence, as quickly as
       possible. 

I just finished reading a great book called Peace at Work: The HR Manager’s Guide to Workplace Mediation written by my dear friend John Ford.

John’s experience and wisdom as a mediator shine through this book from beginning to end. I particularly enjoyed his excellent section on forgiveness, which does a nice job of connecting the dots between conflict and forgiveness:

There are moments that truly inspire and move us as mediators, not just because we have arrived at a creative solution, but also because of the way the participants have embraced the conflict as an opportunity for insight, learning and change. Through the gift of their conflict, they have found peace and acceptance through the transformative process of forgiveness.

The deepest level of forgiveness is the acceptance of life as it is. Then comes forgiving ourselves for expecting life to be different, and finally we get to where most of us start, forgiving the other person for what they did.

When we accept what has happened, including the range of associated emotions we have experienced, we express gratitude for life and stop wishing the situation were different from the way it is. This arises from a deep and profound insight into reality. It is what Byron Katie encourages us to do in her book, Loving What Is. Any pain/discomfort we experience offers us the opportunity to heal our emotional pain – the baggage and the shadows that we still own.

Conflict is an invitation to go within, to unlock the pain of the past, and to heal. And, as Kenneth Cloke wisely reminds us, the conflict has within it the kernels for what we need to learn. When we forgive ourselves, we show compassion for and understanding of ourselves, and trust that we did our best. We stop being insensitive and hard on ourselves, and take into account our challenging life circumstances.  We are no longer our own worst critic. When we forgive the other person who apparently caused us harm, we make peace in the world. It is always worth pondering the miracle that when two people forgive each other on their own, they can completely resolve a conflict.

Forgiveness does not mean we forget, or that we condone. We do not even need an apology in order to forgive, although a sincere apology is a powerful force in its own right. When we forgive each other, we realize that the other person has also suffered and has found a way to forgive. In that sense, nothing is unforgiveable.  Rather, forgiveness is a gift we give to others and to ourselves. We take back our power reconnect with our original positive intention, and repackage our past.

Fred Luskin, a pioneer in the field of forgiveness, sees it as a decision we take to duce the negative impact of our grievance. He suggests that forgiveness is the reversal of the grievance process. When we experience the pain or suffering, we take it personally and blame others for how we feel.  We tell ourselves a story in which we are the victim. We are aggrieved.

When we forgive, we undo this grievance process. Instead of taking things personally, we recognize that things happen, but that these things (the ten percent) are seldom as problematic as our own reaction (the ninety percent). So, when we forgive, we take responsibility for our own feelings. We retell our story, no longer as a victim, but with a deeper understanding of the significance of the event to our lives.

Ultimately, forgiveness represents a conflict resolution path that we can take on our own, to make peace with what has happened and to chart a happier future.

If you happen to be an HR Manager, I highly recommend Peace at Work, but this book would be valuable to anyone who wants to learn about mediation and/or conflict resolution.

The book is available on Amazon.com but John is generously making the e-book available to us for free!

To get a free copy of Peace at Work, use this link.

This is another great article that fleshes out the distinction between suffering and pain. The author, Dr. Steven Stosny, says “to ease your suffering, listen to your pain.”

As a life-saving alarm system, pain keeps us focused on distress, for the purpose of relieving it. Pain motivates behavior that will help heal, repair, or improve. A pain in your foot, for example, will motivate you to take the rock off it, get more comfortable shoes, soak it in a tub of warm water, or visit a podiatrist.

If we do not act on the motivation to heal-repair-improve (or fail in our attempts to do so), the alarm of pain intensifies and generalizes. The toothache becomes facial pain; the sore foot seems to throb along the whole side of the body.

When pain intensifies and generalizes over time, it becomes suffering. Suffering is repeated failure to act successfully on the natural motivation of pain to do something that will heal, repair, or improve.

Like its physical counterpart, normal psychological pain (that which is not due to brain disease or severe emotional disorder) is localized in the beginning, usually in the form of guilt, shame, or anxiety about something specific. But when it comes to emotional pain, the behavior choices that will heal, repair, or improve are more ambiguous. Psychological pain is, therefore, more conducive to suffering.

When psychological pain generalizes, it seems to be about the self – a kind of self-ache, if you will. As the alarm of pain intensifies, fixing our focus on distress, we become self-obsessed. Eventually we identify with the pain, in a subtle or overt victim-identity. At that point, we can scarcely perceive the pain of other people, which robs us of the unique power of social healing. Self-obsession makes the alarm of pain louder and more general (mental focus amplifies and magnifies) and isolates us from humane connections that heal.

Anything that numbs or avoids pain undermines its ability to motivate corrective behavior and thereby causes suffering. The most common causes are blame, resentment (expecting someone else to relieve the pain), anger, addictions, and compulsive behavior. All render us powerless to heal, improve, or repair. All cause suffering.

To prevent suffering, we must follow the motivation of pain.

If it’s that simple, why is it so hard? In a word, habit.

Those who suffer have gotten into the habit of numbing or avoiding (through blame, resentment, anger, addictions, or compulsions), the pain-signals that would otherwise motivate healing, repairing, or improving.

It takes mindfulness and emotional reconditioning to break habits.

The first crucial step is to take responsibility for your emotions and pain, so they can work for you instead of against you.

Guilt is about violating your values; the motivation of guilt is to act according to your values, and that is the only thing that will relieve it. Shame is about failure and inadequacy; the motivation is to revaluate, re-conceptualize, and redouble effort to achieve success. Anxiety is a dread of something bad occurring that will exceed or deplete coping skills; the motivation is to learn more about what might happen and develop plans to cope with it.

Painful emotions have a self-healing and self-correcting component. When we take advantage of it, we flourish. When we don’t, we suffer.

After last week’s post, Pain Versus Suffering, I received many comments including this one from Mark Singer (slightly paraphrased):

I’m not sure the concept of suffering means that elimination is the goal. Instead, perhaps. We need pain and we need suffering and both are natural and essential human parts of our psyche. In other words, once a person finds herself in both aspects experiencing them both – then she may then have the opportunity to respond by the use of pain AND suffering in a way that enhances her enlightenment.

I appreciate this perspective. I suppose suffering too has its role to play in the human journey. As the today’s quote points out, it can eventually lead us to forgiveness!

I hope that you don’t suffer but take the pain. You might recognize this lyric, from a song called “I Live” by One Republic. It catches my ear every time. A pearl of wisdom hidden in plain view, right there in pop music!

This is a big one. Understanding the difference between suffering and pain is the key to ending suffering. Yes, ending suffering! I found this great description on acleanmind.org:

There’s more I want to share on this topic, but I’ll save it for next time. for now just remember, pain is your ally, suffering is not.

Forgive an executioner for the Islamic State? Are you kidding me? Forgive a death squad commander? What about a registered sex offender? It might seem implausible, but these three forgiveness stories recently crossed my desk. 

Islamic State – James Foley, an American journalist, was kidnapped by the Islamic State in 2012 and murdered last August. His parents recently announced their intention to forgive “Jihadi John,” the man believed to have killed their son. His mother, Diane Foley, explained: It saddens me, his [Jihadi John’s] continued hatred. He felt wronged, now we hate him – now that just prolongs the hatred …. As a mum I forgive him…. We need to end the hatred.

South Africa – Eugene de Kock was a death squad commander during the apartheid era. He confessed to more than 100 brutal acts of murder and torture and was originally sentenced to 212 years. After spending 20 years in jail, De Kock was recently granted parole.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called the decision to release him represented a milestone on South Africa’s road to reconciliation and healing: I pray that those whom he hurt, those from whom he took loved ones, will find the power within them to forgive him. Forgiving is empowering for the forgiver and the forgiven – and for all the people around them. But we can’t be glib about it; it’s not easy.

Utah – Matt Duhamel, a former TV personality and registered sex offender, recently released an independent film entitled, “The Forgiveness Journey.” Duhamel has been making transformative films since 2012, shortly after his release from prison for. “The Forgiveness Journey” is a documentary on the difficult process of forgiveness, featuring Duhamel and his personal story.  Duhamel and his wife spent over a year and a half interviewing authors, psychologists, religious leaders, and everyday people who have struggled through the process of forgiving.  http://metamorafilms.org/

These stories took place in very different settings, but there are common threads: tremendously painful events, courageous acts of forgiveness, and an overriding desire for healing. They remind us that one of the keys to forgiveness is having the courage to open our hearts to the person who hurt us, despite the pain.  

As Tutu says, we can never be glib about this; forgivenesss is not always easy. But it is always possible.