forgiveness

When you forgive, you in no way change the past - but you sure do change the future.

-osho-

One of the biggest myths about forgiveness is the belief that someone must first be sorry. Why should someone have to be sorry for us to forgive them? Naturally it is much easier to forgive people who are totally repentant and committed to reform, but this is not a requirement. Such a conditional attitude towards forgiveness completely misses the point. We must learn to forgive people who are not sorry, people who are convinced they are in the right, and people who may even think that we are the ones who should be sorry.

Many people object to forgiving an unrepentant person because they feel that this somehow excuses the original action. They feel that if the person does not unreservedly acknowledge that their action is wrong, then forgiveness is granting them permission to do it again. If we are holding back our forgiveness out of such fear, we must realize that forgiveness does not mean automatically giving someone another chance and letting them back into our lives. For example, if in a  given situation say  with your  friend  we can forgive them and still choose to end our  friendship . The difference is that we would not be ending the friendship due to anger and a lack of forgiveness, but rather from the awareness it is flawed and that we would be better off apart.

Over  a  period  of  time  I  have  understood and  realised that  whatever harm someone has caused us, they have caused more harm to themselves. Nobody wants to be miserable, and if they hurt others then misery is what they will get. Thus, we forgive people because we know that  most of  the  time they act out of ignorance. If they are unrepentant, we should hold even more compassion for them, because this same ignorance may cause them to do the same thing again and again.

 Remember, however much they are harming us, they are harming themselves more! but once again, as mentioned before, the choice to distance ourselves from this person is always open 

   I  am not here  to  give  sermon  like Buddhist  monk  but   over  period  of  time I have also realised that  it is beneficially for us to forgive and  move  ahead   as  it brings  us  enormous benefits. According to recent research they  say that  If you can bring yourself to forgive and forget, you are likely to enjoy lower blood pressure a stronger immune system, and a drop in the stress hormones circulating in your blood studies and  you'll reduce the anger, bitterness, resentment, depression  and other negative emotions that accompany the failure to forgive.

  Finally  Forgiveness does not mean you erase the past, or forget what has happened. It doesn’t even mean the other person will change his behaviour which  you  don’t have any  control . All it means is that you are letting go of the anger and pain, and moving on to a better place.

  It is  not  atall  easy but we can learn to do it for  our own  good  which I  am trying to  implement and  given  me  dividends. 

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and  you  will discover that the prisoner was you!!

-         -.