ginnyt wrote:
I have a discussion going on with my neighbor. She says that when you forgive someone it is alright not to forget. I argue that when you truly forgive then you must forget the transgression. What is you opinion? I know that there is no science behind this, just me wondering if I am unusual in my belief.
Thanks
Very late in life I came to the reluctant realization that anytime there is a need to forgive, there is something wrong in me. (I say reluctant because it seemed I thrived on blame and resentment for about a decade.) I do need constant reminders of this axiom but quickly or slowly it proves true every time. I usually don't like this at first because there seems a human need to luxuriate in being wronged, and as I have found, for a number of reasons. Yet all those reasons deal with in some way assuaging or hiding character defects and shortcomings within me. Denial can serve a healthy function: I may not be emotionally ready to handle a flaw or the death of a loved one and the impact could damage my psyche.
Let me leap to the basis of this concept: emotional maturity is when psychological need becomes more a psychological gift. However much we achieve this transformation, in those areas I forget harm done because there was none: it was something in me that needed to be healed or processed. In effect, if I have found wholeness of being, there is no memory to store or forget about any harm done, for no harm can befall me.
Most things I push from my mind act out unconsciously: it is popularly called the Shadow Self. I discovered it is very real and more active than consciousness when there is a life dominated by deep wounds, shame, and guilt. From this I get primarily a reactionary life. It is a rigid lifestyle filled with strict beliefs, judgmentalism, passive-aggression, and blame without thinking. Highly defensive. Yet an ovewhelming vast majority of people operate within this spectrum, to varying degrees, of course.
When I began to see much of the harm I had perceived to be no more than a reaction to some of deep wounds, no ill had been intended, I felt very foolish. But that was good. It made me ask: what other blind spots might I have. I have been steady t work on those things for over thirty years now and I'm just a few watts short of enlightenment today. Just kidding. It appears, at least in my experience, that each age brings a fresh crop of blind spots. Facing old age has its plethora of demons to face or look to ignore and repress.
If I am not attached to what I possess, who can steal from me?
If I am not attached to what I think of myself, who can insult me?
Forgiveness is frequently taught to be for oneself, especially for those deeply damaged, as a way to release from the pain of the past and resulting constraints put on life. This is right and just...but just the beginning of the process. Usually someone needs to get extremely angry before truly opening to this stage of forgiveness. That energy moves them to do something. Only after this do many make the painful realization that how they lived their life, all that hurt and lost opportunities, was actually on them and not the perpetrator. Ow! Yet this is needed to go on.
Talked way too much. I will leave you with this. Every act of forgiveness is the claim of being a victim, and being a victim as an adult is always (Important note: not as a child), 100% of the time, self-imposed.