RE: Foregiveness, enough in itself?
I had no idea, Oh the poor man, the poor boy, what a mess.
Leo
Once you know that story it puts all other transgressions into perspective.
Sadly,
Sharonx
Edit - completely messed up the quote box!
RE: Foregiveness, enough in itself?
Eagle, I agree with you that forgiveness often begins with the self. It is the self-realisation that you may have committed a transgression and the coming to terms with that.
Also how much easier is it to blame someone else/circumstances/whatever rather than accept our own role in events?
How often do we NEED to be forgiven for our own peace rather than for the benefit of the person against whom we transgressed?
think I've lost the plot here..... perhaps another small glass of vino?!
Love
Glen
RE: Foregiveness, enough in itself?
ORIGINAL: Eagle
My experience of forgiveness is that it begins with forgiving myself for whatever choices I have made in my life. When I have forgiven myself, then there is little left to forgive anyone else for (ie the wrongs that I may perceive as having been done against me initially, are dissipated once I take responsbility for my part in what happened).
That may be so for the general give and take of human relationships where we unintentionally tread on someone's toes and they hurt us, but it cannot apply to other situations surely? You would never suggest that if a stranger stabs someone in the back or someone abuses a child or rapes someone that the victim can have any responsibility for that. If someone is actively trying to harm those who have done nothing to them, they alone are responsible for the evil that they do.
I do think it unreasonable to see it as a failing that someone doesn't forgive those who are actively trying to destroy them and succeeding. One shouldn't, of course, be going around burdened by resentment, as someone said, but neither do you have to be worrying about forgiving those who don't regret trying to destroy you - you don't have a responsibility to people like that. There does seem to have been a rather distorted notion of forgiveness that has crept into our culture recently, that one has an obligation to forgive no matter what and it seems to set up a very unfair and inconsistent notion of morality.
RE: Foregiveness, enough in itself?
Hi MarchHare
I don't know whether someone who is the victim of an attack has attracted that into their lives in some way - I can only talk from my own experience. What I do see is that something may happen whereby the 'victim' would not be seen to have responsibility for what happened, and they may still hold that responsibility for themselves - when my younger sister died, I saw that members of my family blamed themselves for what happened. If they forgave themselves for the part they thought they played in that situation, then they would see that there was noone to blame - that it was just an accident. I do believe that we attract into our lives the things that we need to learn about and the learning I gained from my sister's death was about how to communicate what is going on inside me with other people - firstly by completely shutting down (along with my whole family) and then finding a way out of that.
If the lesson comes in a painful way, then the self forgiveness can also be about bringing the lesson in in that way, rather than choosing an easier way to learn it.
And I agree with you, that it is pointless to have an obligation to forgive others - true forgiveness cannot be forced and there is no point in saying 'I'm sorry' if it isn't true. And pretending to forgive someone only ends up with more of the same negative energy!!!
RE: Foregiveness, enough in itself?
MarchHare,
Exactly.
This is precisely why the act of forgiveness must be 'earned.' Forgiving is a sacred act, and mustn't be wasted on people who will not learn by their actions, and have no knowledge of what forgiveness really means. More importantly, if someone does not want to be forgiven, even when forgiveness takes place without the perpetrator's knowledge, that burden will never be laid down, because it just becomes forgetting (qv) and not absolution.
Patsy.
[&:]