The Gift of Forgiveness

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."
~ Lewis B. Smedes

Most of us carry around anger, resentment, jealousy, or some other negative emotion directed to others.  Some of these have been around for years or are directed towards someone no longer in your life.  All those negative emotions hang around your neck and weigh you down.  Unless dealt with, they will eventually start to broadly affect the quality of your life and that of those around you.  Love, Compassion and the rest of the higher vibrational emotions are constrained by the baser ones.  We cannot fly if we are chained down.

"When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free."
~ Catherine Ponder

It is easy to identify the big heavy chains from major emotional traumas in our lives. What is less easy to see is how the fine threads of everyday frustrations join together like strands in a rope.  Forgiveness is the act of unchaining yourself from thoughts and feelings that bind you to an offense, imagined or real, committed against you.  It is a commitment to a process of growth and change.  Forgiveness is a creative act.  It changes us from prisoners of the past.  We become liberated people at peace with our memories.  There is no future in the past.  The first step is to recognize the value of forgiveness and the positive impact it can have in our lives.  When we forgive, we release the control and power of the offending person and stop playing the victim.  We no longer define our lives by how we have been hurt and instead can define ourselves by how we have grown.

"Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were. "
~ Cherie Carter-Scott

Life either expands or contracts in direct proportion to your courage to forgive.  Forgiveness is the most important single process that brings peace and harmony to our life.  Forgiveness has two parts.  The smaller part is to release others.  The greater part is to release yourself for allowing yourself to be bound to negative emotions.

Only when we unchain ourselves can we fly.

"To err is human, to forgive divine."
~ William Shakespeare

Forgiveness is not only a gift we give to others.

Forgiveness is a gift we give to ourselves.

See Also

Sufi Tales – Dervish Ethics

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
~ Mahatma Gandhi

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Music: Enya, Pax Deorum

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