{"id":3431,"date":"2017-05-16T11:01:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T11:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/?p=3431"},"modified":"2017-05-16T03:21:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T03:21:59","slug":"forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/2017\/05\/16\/forgiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, I wrote about forgiveness<\/a>, and how important it was in my achieving a deeper understanding of meditation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Forgiveness is an interesting topic, going back millenia. Sun Tzu wrote about it in the context of magnanimity: “Treat the captives well, and care for them. This is called “winning a battle and becoming stronger.” <\/p>\n

One could also argue that all of Ancient Greek literature is a lesson on why forgiveness is so important<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In some readings, forgiveness was one of the virtues of Hinduism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and many other religious and cultural traditions also have many things to say about the importance of forgiveness[1].<\/p>\n

However, one could argue that forgiveness is most important and truly central to Christianity<\/a>. The oft-cited Parable of the Prodigal Son<\/a> speaks of the power of love to enable forgiveness (and also apparently of the importance of emotional conversation between parents and children, but I digress).<\/p>\n

The reason I mention all of this is to give context for forgiveness. When I was growing up, it was a common concept[2], but I don’t really think I internalized it. It’s from my undergrad thesis adviser<\/a> that I take my canonical example of forgiving the people working for you, and making a daily or weekly clean slate, so that you can do your best work[3].<\/p>\n

I took this example with me, and I think helped a lot as I led teams in a variety of ways. But I had never really thought about forgiving myself.<\/p>\n

I mentioned earlier that if you want to truly relax, to meditate, to be in your body<\/a>, inside yourself, you need to have a safe space inside yourself.<\/p>\n

But if you have not forgiven yourself, if you are constantly criticizing yourself on the inside, you do not have that safe space, and are prone to self-medicate in various ways[4]<\/p>\n

I cannot tell you how to forgive yourself. The power of much of organized religion is that it promises to give you that forgiveness that you cannot achieve yourself<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I can tell you something of why it is important, and how I got there. All of this arose when I was involved in a dispute. Emotions were running high, and it was distracting me from everything that I find important. Somewhere around then, G suggested that I forgive them. It’s similar to letting something go, to letting the emotions roll over you<\/a>. This helped my isolate my emotions (my reaction) from what was happening outside me. I understood that I could not control what happened outside me, but I could control myself.<\/p>\n

This helped a lot, but it was still predicated on controlling myself, not fully trusting my emotions. Still avoiding my inner thoughts because they were still not a safe space.<\/p>\n

This last breakthrough came through a guided meditation, where I was already in a physical and mental safe space, where I was given the permission to forgive myself. I am not going to give you that permission, because I cannot. Only you can give yourself that permission. But know that you have the power to do so, somewhere inside yourself.<\/p>\n

“Give a person forgiveness, and they will forever be asking you for such. Teach a person to forgive themself, and they shall become more serene than you can possibly imagine.”<\/p>\n

[1]You could even argue that the Babylonian code of laws was an early attempt at forgiveness, where ‘eye for an eye’ was more forgiving than a centuries-long blood feud. Note that this link to an article on this topic is rather lurid and not for the squeamish: [link<\/a>]<\/p>\n

[2]I even went to church for a while when I was younger, and I always enjoyed the construction of the line ‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’.<\/p>\n

[3]I will likely write more about this. I think it’s super-important.<\/p>\n

[4]Any distraction will do. Not sleeping, workoholism, Oblivion<\/a>, and running are among the more socially acceptable ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, I wrote about forgiveness, and how important it was in my achieving a deeper understanding of meditation. Forgiveness is an interesting topic, going back millenia. Sun Tzu wrote about it in the context of magnanimity: “Treat the captives well, and care for them. This is called “winning a battle and becoming stronger.” One could … Continue reading Forgiveness<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3438,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431\/revisions\/3438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}