Suddenly, I’m realising something powerful about forgiveness; being that forgiveness has absolutely nothing to do with the one who I deem to have harmed me.
I used to ask God to help me to forgive the other person in an attempt to let things go and find inner peace. But this is a very challenging thing to do in the face of cruelty or insensitivity, seemingly directed at me. My angry, protective parts do not want me to forgive them at all! After all, the other person has wounded me! Or so I think.
However, I have now started a very helpful process where I am taking these wounded parts of mine to the Holy Spirit, after an argument with someone or after someone has attacked me in some way. But this time I hold space for the possibility that perhaps it is I who have hurt myself and I begin to have a hunt around for how I can forgive myself for it.
If I am upset with another, then I am realising, there is something within me that actually requires healing and forgiveness. It’s not out there at all.
So, now, when I go to my inner sanctum and sit on my virtual park bench in nature, I ask the Holy Spirit, “Why does this grievance bother me?” I then quickly come face to face with the core issue. It is usually something to the effect of, “What they did makes me feel unworthy or unseen or unloved”. I have come to realise that this unworthiness is the part of me that needs healing, this is the part of me that I am projecting out into the world and another being around me is reflecting back to me.
Normally, my response is to be angry or upset with them. But I am the one who thinks I am unworthy. I am the one who is not seeing my True Nature. I am the one who is being unloving to myself. It follows then that what I really need to do is to forgive myself for believing that I am unworthy or unloveable and forgive myself for having had to live that reality that proves this false belief, when the love of God is right there for me to bask in instead.
In a way, all the other party has done in our altercation is to bring to my attention a part of myself that requires healing.
So, in essence, the one who has hurt me has alerted me to how I am hurting myself. So that I can heal it. This means the grievance is rather an act of love from the other party and there was no attack to me at all.
