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The Healing Power
of Forgiveness
Saleem Rana
Forgiveness breaks
all bounds of repression and depression. It liberates the psyche from
bondage to the past.
In fact, I would rank forgiveness as the essence of psychotherapy.
As human beings all our limitations arise from our psychic wounding.
This wound has been either intentional or accidental, but it drains our
vitality. In fact, if it has been grievous enough, it runs our whole
life, and ruins it.
We are creatures designed to absorb and transmit love, and when an
unloving act is foisted on us, when someone or something casts a shadow
on our capacity to love, we bleed.
War zones, jails, and insane asylums are where the wounded gather. This
is where society sends its broken souls. Those who regain their capacity
to love will emerge from these places of grief. Those who remain bitter
will forever be incarcerated in them, whether or not they have been
physically freed.
Those who are whole and well are dedicated to their capacity to love.
They cannot kill, hurt, injure or maim another because they have not
lost their capacity to see themselves as the other. Ideals do not sway
them to injure others, no matter how vaulted the traditions in which
those ideals are espoused. No ideal transcends their ideal to be of love
and service to their brethren.
The cure for overcoming psychic wounding is to forgive. When we forgive,
we pardon; we express mercy; and we liberate our own kindness.
When you forgive, you give forth your power of love to heal the image,
memory, or person that distorted your self-image and gave you the false
belief that you have been diminished, disempowered, and disenfranchised.
It is the wounded who strike out and wound others. It is the shadow of
their own pain that they cast upon others. It is their unlovingness that
they extend out of their crippled psyche. They become conduits for the
poison that they themselves despise.
All forms of malice, ill-will and cruelty, euphemized in the name of
some lofty ideal, come forth from those who speak in the names of
righteousness; the crucifixion of Christ could not have come about
except for the distorted sense of what is right by the persecutors.
If an act is unloving, no ideal can justify it, for to wound another is
to wound ourselves. We create pathos in our wake. We spill grief before
us.
How to forgive the unforgivable? How to release the sword of ill-will
thrust into our hearts? How to break free of the resentment that has
bound our tormentors these many years?
You do it by simply understanding that to for give is a healing for you.
It is breaking the karmic bonds. It is an act of self-loving.
Forgiveness heals pity, brings reconciliation to that which is broken
within, and makes healing possible.
An act of forgiveness can be silent. In fact, it has little to do with
the other person. They may or may not feel the psychic release as you
drop your smoldering anger, nourished over more years than you care to
remember.
When you forgive, you release...you release yourself. You release your
attachment to pain. You release your aversion to the act done to you.
And when you do this, something magical happens. You set yourself free.
It is never about whether the other person or event deserves your
forgiveness. It is about your going free from your own web of
negativity. When you forgive, you staunch the bleeding. When you
forgive, you open up your heart and regain your capacity to love. And
when you learn to love, your life opens up like a glorious dream. The
question, ultimately, is never whether you should or should not
forgive...instead the question is always this: do you deserve to be
happy right now by letting it go.
Article Source:
www.articlerich.com
Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy. His articles on the
internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world.
Discover how to create a remarkable life
Copyright 2005 Saleem Rana. Please feel free to pass this article on to
your friends, or use it in your ezine or newsletter. It's a shareware
article.
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