Are You Ready To Forgive?

Well aloha, and welcome to today’s conversation starter which is all about readiness to forgive.

I’m calling it a conversation starter because when I first proposed the idea in the forgiveness challenge group that I run, everybody, a lot of people anyway, perked up and said “Yes, yes, please, please, we’d love to talk about this”, so it’s a conversation starter on readiness to forgive.

So why is this important? Well, most of us at some level know that forgiveness is important. When we don’t forgive, when we feel rage or revenge or hatred against somebody who’s done us wrong, it’s not good for us.

It’s not good for the physical body. It’s not good for the emotional body, the mental body, and it’s not good for us spiritually either if we’re spiritually inclined.

And there is a substantial body of research to demonstrate this. It’s not something that we can question any longer. Not forgiving, holding feelings of hatred and revenge and so forth is simply not healthy.

So most of us know that at some level, and even if we don’t, we may have been exposed to the idea of the importance of forgiveness for religious purposes.

So at the temple, at the synagogue, at the church, we may have heard about the importance of forgiveness. And most of us know that forgiveness is important.

And most of us can do it most of the time, but there’s always, not always, but there’s very often that one person, that one person who really sticks very often because what it is they’ve done is just too outrageous.

And sometimes it’s very outrageous. It’s in the league of murder or rape or abuse. It could be bullying. It could be narcissistic parenting.

It could be a whole spectrum of things, but somebody has done something to you or to somebody who you love or in some area that you care about and you just can’t forgive it.

But something inside you tells you you should forgive it. So how do you know when you’re actually ready to forgive? Because forgiveness clearly matters. We need to do it for our health if nothing else, but sometimes we can’t.

So one of the things that I’ve noticed in the work I’ve done with ho’oponopono, the Hawaiian forgiveness process, and with forgiveness in general, is that for many of us we tell ourselves we’re ready to forgive because we know we should forgive; we know that that’s what’s expected.

But when it actually comes to the pop, we can’t. And I see this with ho’oponopono. In ho’oponopono, the process that I teach anyway, what you do is you create a stage, and you put the person or people that you want to forgive on the stage,

and you say to them, “I forgive you”, and most people if they’re ready to give, they can certainly cope with that. And then you say to them, “Please forgive me”.

If you’re doing that process and you suddenly get a deep reaction, either to the language of forgiveness, and I’ve taught people who’ve had that deep reaction. It’s like “I can’t call it forgive; “I can call it letting go, “I can call it many things, but I can’t call it forgive!”

It’s a word; what’s the problem? So if you react to the word itself or if when you’ve got the person or the people on stage, the idea of asking them to forgive you is so abhorrent or is so impossible, then you know that you’re not yet ready to forgive.

Because the truth is when we forgive, when we forgive the transgressor and when we have them forgive us, what we’re having them forgive us for is it could be the fact that we were there at the time, the fact that we reminded them of something.

I remember years ago working with somebody I was assessing and helping out at an event where people which led to a qualification, and I was working a lot with this guy, and he didn’t really wanna do it but the only way he could get his qualification was to actually get 100%.

That’s was what was required of him. And I was working with him and really trying to help him, and he came up to me at the end after, ’cause he kept resubmitting and resubmitting,

he came up to me at the end and he said, he said, “Thank you for your help. “I do understand you were trying to help me, “but you know what the problem was? “You reminded me of my school dinner lady”.

Now I have no way of knowing that I reminded him of his school dinner lady, and it certainly wasn’t my intention to remind him of his school dinner lady,

but something in my tone of voice, something in my manner, triggered him in some way, and his reaction was to resist everything that I was trying to help him with.

And that can happen with anything. It can happen with anybody that we’re trying to forgive. Something in our manner, something in our tone of voice, something in our presence may trigger them.

It’s completely unconscious. We have no idea we’re doing it. We have no intention of doing it, but it triggers them. Sometimes what we’re asking the person to forgive us for is the fact that we spent so long not forgiving them,

or we spent so long going around badmouthing them or we spent so long going around swearing at them, and it may be that’s what we need to be forgiven for.

But if you’re doing that process and you find any resistance, whether the idea of just forgiving, but any resistance around the idea that your transgressor, the person who hurt you or your loved ones should hurt you, that’s a big red flag that you’re not yet ready to forgive.

Now there’s no judgement in not being ready to forgive. It’s not about blame; it’s not about judgement . We are where we are. If you’re ready to forgive, great, and if you’re not ready to forgive, don’t beat yourself up.

Don’t give yourself a load of judgement . Just acknowledge that what it means is there’s work to be done. Maybe it’s work releasing anger in general, suppressed anger in general or sadness in general or hurt.

Maybe it’s looking at, is there a pattern? Was this something that happened to you more than once and it was actually a pattern in your life? And you need to release the pattern ’cause sometimes there’s other work that we need to do before we actually do the forgiving.

What I’d also say is that once we do do the forgiving, the relief, the freedom, the sense of something lifting is absolutely fabulous. And sometimes it just takes a little longer than others.

So I hope this has been interesting. I’d love to hear what you think about the question of readiness to forgive. So do comment beneath this video, or if you’re listening to it, then post a message. That would be lovely.

And look forward to hearing you very soon. And if for any reason, you want help with forgiveness, or readiness to forgive, then do jump on a call with me, SecretArtOfHuna.com/diary,

and you can book an appointment and see if I’m the right person to help you with your forgiveness. Take care, aloha, and I’ll see you again very soon.

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