Forgiveness Can Set You Free

Mar 31, 2010 by Peggy Nolan

What’s with this forgiveness crap? I don’t want to forgive her for doing that! Why should I forgive her? She’s never going to apologize for what she did…

Sound familiar?

Even though I know forgiveness is for the forgivee, I still struggle with the act of forgiveness. Why? Because my ego wants to hold a grudge. My ego wants to hold onto the story of the grievance. My ego wants others to join my cause and rally around me. My ego wants to incorporate the grievance into every cell of my being.

How does my ego serve me by doing this? It doesn’t. If holding a grudge or a grievance doesn’t help me, it certainly doesn’t help you either.

My job is to release the attachment my ego has to the grievance. This doesn’t absolve the person who behaved inappropriately. But it does allow me to let go of what her behavior did to me. By letting go I am free of the turmoil, the drama, and the chaos.

I have forgiven Richard’s ex-wife for her behavior regarding our vacation in Florida, for sticking her fingers in Richard’s face, and for the mean things she said about me. I have released myself from the attachment to the “problems” she stirred up. I recognize that she is a hurt person and hurt people hurt people.

In Yoga Sutra I.33, Swami Satchidananda translates it as this: “By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard for the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness.” (Seriously, these are the four keys in dealing with people!)

I can’t tell you how many conversations I had inside my head with the Ex-Wife that kept my mind-stuff in a disturbed state of chaos! Most of them caused my heart to race, adrenaline to flow through my blood stream, and my inner warrior usually ended up rearranging her nose in each imagined conversation.

How often do you keep yourself in a state of internal chaos because of your thoughts and imagined conversations with your husband’s ex-wife?

Forgiveness was my ticket out of chaos. I forgave her because she sees the world through a vastly different prism than I do. Her grievances and grudges are her story and she holds onto them. Letting my grivevances with her go allowed me to arrive back to my natural state of “undisturbed calmness.”

Are you ready to experience undisturbed calmness?

I can honestly tell you how much happier I am on the inside just by revisting the key behavior to cultivate when dealing with a person who may or may not realize her behavior is “wicked.” I dedicated the last week of  my morning yoga practice to forgiveness and softening my heart.

Not for her.

For ME.

Today, I reclaim my equanamity and my peace and poise of mind.

What about you? Are you ready to reclaim your peace and poise of mind? Is there something you can forgive today?