Forgiving is the pathway to happiness and the quickest way to undo suffering and pain.*
Diane’s story in the last chapter shows how quickly we can change something in ourselves when we become aware of it. This is important to realize, because we often hide the anger we feel from others as well as ourselves. That hidden anger becomes the thing that makes it so difficult for us to forgive. And our lack of forgiveness can eat us alive, creating tension that limits our relationships and attacks our bodies.
In this chapter, I’d like to explore some examples in which people have brought grievances from the past into their awareness and released them. It is my hope that these true stories might be helpful models that will guide others toward letting go of the past through forgiveness.
Healing the Scars of Religion
Many people throughout the world have been turned away from anything that resembles religion or God because of painful experiences they have had as children. In many ways, God gets a bad rap in our culture and is blamed for just about everything imaginable. We see this even in the policies of insurance companies that exclude payment for damages or injuries caused by “acts of God”—which usually means natural catastrophes such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires caused by lightning. It is time for us to stop blaming God for all the terrible things that happen to us.
Recently we were having dinner with a woman who described herself as a “recovering Catholic.” She told me that she had been raised in an orphanage and that she perceived this as a horrible experience about which she still felt much anger. She went on to describe in considerable detail some of the abuses she had suffered.
As an adult, she found herself repeating the same victim role again and again with pain and self-pity. She discovered that she was imprisoned by her own anger and by the rage she felt about being abandoned by her mother. Rather than protecting her from the past, her anger had become her jailer, causing her to repeat the past. She got angry every time she heard the words religion or God, seeing them as the cause of her pain.
In the past two years, however, she had begun to explore a spiritual path. She became increasingly aware of how she was blaming both God and religion for her feelings of abandonment and abuse. The more aware she became of this, the more she was able to see how she was responsible for holding on to the pain she was still feeling.
This woman has done a great deal of forgiving. Each day she feels greater freedom from the pain and anger associated with her past. There is a sparkle in her eye that was never there before, and she is beginning to experience happiness and even joy for the first time in her life. She no longer blames her parents or the church for her feelings. She is letting go of the painful perceptions that imprisoned her.
Make no mistake, however. She is not condoning the behavior of her parents or the people at the orphanage where she was sent to live. She in no way agrees that their behavior was OK. She finally realizes that it was only her own thoughts which were keeping her in agony. Forgiveness literally showed her the way to freedom.
This woman shares much with so many people I have known who, after healing past grievances, not only are able to experience once again the comfort of a spiritual connection with a Higher Power but even return to their original place of worship. Unfortunately, there are others who let their fights with God and religion dominate their lives with feelings of anger and lack of trust. We can discover in our feelings of blame a signal to awaken to the ways we have been clinging to past grievances and move forward to forgive them. By forgiving our misperceptions of God and by releasing God from blame, we open up new vistas for our personal fulfillment.
Forgiving Loved Ones Who Have Died
When someone close and dear to our heart dies, there can be a flood of emotions. The feelings of grief associated with losing that person’s physical presence can be immense. Some of us deny our loss and grief by shedding no tears. Others may experience tears for months or even years.
Sometimes when a loved one dies after a prolonged and painful illness, family members and friends may feel relieved. Your ego may tell you that you should feel guilty for this feeling and that a “good person” would not have such emotions.
The loss of a loved one may cause us to feel angry at God and the world. We may or may not be aware of this anger. The ego may tell us that we should feel guilty about being angry.
I met a wonderful woman named Minnie at a workshop in Hawaii. Minnie told me that she was eighty-one years old and had not been able to stop crying for the past two years. It started when her son died at the age of forty-five. She had felt depressed and abandoned ever since.
A week before she came to the workshop, Minnie’s counselor had told her that it was “time to stop crying and get on with your life.”
Hearing these words, a little voice within my heart told me exactly what I was to say to Minnie. First, I reminded her that I was a doctor, and I told her that I was going to write a prescription for her. Her face brightened and she nodded. Then I took out a piece of paper and wrote, “It is all right for you to cry as much as you want and as often as you want, for the rest of your life.” I signed my name and handed it to her.
Minnie’s face lit up with a smile that went from ear to ear. It became clear to me that if I were to help her, all I had to do was give her my unconditional love and acceptance. She did not have to change for me to love her. I shared with her my personal belief that there really are no scripts for how a person should mourn or face death.
Many of the communication problems we have in life are the result of our having scripts that we want others to follow. Tearing up our scripts is a way to become happy.
Minnie was definitely feeling much better. I then asked her if she had a good imagination. She replied that she did. It was during a workshop break, so I looked around the room and found a man who looked to be about forty-five, the age when Minnie’s son had died. I asked this person, whose name was Brad, if he would be willing to volunteer for a few moments to be Minnie’s son, whose name was Franklin. Brad said he would be more than happy to do so.
I explained to Minnie that for the next ten minutes she could use her imagination to make it a reality that her son, Franklin, was actually in Brad’s body at this time. She could say whatever she wanted to tell him, and Franklin would talk with her. She agreed to do it, and I proceeded to ask her if she had ever felt angry at Franklin for leaving her. She paused for a second and then said, “Yes, I certainly have!” She shared some of the feelings she had around the anger.
I coached Brad on what to say. As Franklin, he told Minnie that he was fine and that he was with her in spirit all of the time. He said, “We do not have to be in bodies to communicate. Our minds can communicate without a physical presence.”
Now Franklin, through Brad, went on to say that when we know we are joined as one with God and each other, there is only joy. He assured Minnie that she would never be alone because she could always choose to experience his presence and God’s presence whenever she wished.
Minnie stopped crying almost immediately upon hearing these words. She pressed her head to her son’s (Franklin’s) chest. In a little while she was able to tell him, “I forgive you for dying.”
Minnie’s body energy shifted dramatically. A great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She was all lightness and smiles.
About an hour later, Minnie came over to me and said that she no longer felt like weeping.
“That’s great,” I said. “But it is still just fine for you to cry all you want.”
As the workshop was breaking up later that afternoon, Minnie came up to me and said, “Jerry, someone told me you like to dance. Is that right?”
“I do!” I said, “I love to dance.”
With a gleam in her eye, Minnie told me about a dance that would be taking place. Would I be interested in going?
I told her I would love to. And so we went out dancing and had a great time. Not only was this a wonderful lesson in the power of forgiveness, but it was also another confirmation that giving truly is receiving.
Forgiveness in Our Work Lives
Relationships in the workplace present a special challenge for most employers as well as employees. Jealousies, fear of rejection, fear of being honest, and a host of other problems can occur. Sometimes the stress in our work relationships can result in physical symptoms. It is as if we turn the anger we have toward another person inward, attacking ourselves. Here’s an example:
I was invited to give a lecture to a group in Canada. The woman who was the executive director of the organization to which I would be talking had a severe gallbladder attack, was in great pain, and was not going to be able to attend. In fact, she was waiting for a hospital room to go in for surgery.
Mary could hardly speak to me because of the pain. I asked her if she would like me to give her some relaxation exercises to try. She said she would. After a few minutes, she began to relax and the pain diminished somewhat.
As we talked, she shared what had been going on in her life just before the gallbladder attack. She had worked in a doctor’s office for the last fifteen years. Six months earlier, the physician who was her employer had asked her to take down some paintings his sister had done and find some new ones.
This was good news for Mary, who disliked the old paintings. But they hadn’t been down for long when the doctor’s sister came to town and talked him into putting them back up. Mary was so angry that she quit on the spot.
Until we talked, Mary had made no association between these events, her anger, and her gallbladder attack. Suddenly she made the connection. She said she wanted to honor her anger but definitely didn’t want to hang on to it.
We began doing some forgiveness exercises, and within twenty minutes the pain was gone. She felt well enough to go to the conference the next day, and her doctor agreed that this would be OK.
At the conference, Mary shared her story of how her gallbladder attack was associated with her anger and how her forgiveness released her from the pain she had been experiencing. In the weeks following the conference, she completed her forgiveness with her employer and returned to work with him.
Celestial Amnesia Is Remembering Only Love
In our work lives, it can be extremely helpful to have a forgiveness process that is easy to do whenever we feel the need. You simply imagine that someone has given you a medicine that will give you a selective form of amnesia which lasts for ten minutes. It can be helpful if you imagine that this special medicine is in a glass of water which you drink. During the ten-minute period that this medicine is in effect, you forget all hurtful memories of the past; you remember only memories of love.
By focusing only on this remembered love, most people feel themselves become peaceful and joyful, living very much in the present moment.
No matter where you are, remember that forgiveness offers you peace of mind and everything else you could possibly ever want or hope for. It is an elixir, giving you your wholeness and leading you into the heart of God and into oneness with our Creator.
Forgiveness in Times of Disaster
In 1989, a very destructive earthquake hit San Francisco, and many people lost their homes. One family that lost their home moved across the bay to the Oakland hills. A few years later, a terrible fire swept through this area and their home was destroyed again.
It would be easy for anyone who had experienced such disasters to feel victimized and to get stuck in self-pity. But this family was different. They honored their feelings, and they forgave what seemed to be happening to them in their lives. They recognized that what had occurred was beyond their explanation, and rather than getting caught up in being victims, they moved on in their lives.
Hardly a week goes by when somewhere in our world there are not natural disasters that cause great hardship to people. Many families might feel themselves victims and hold on to their grievances for the rest of their lives. How did the family above heal? They found that asking why didn’t help. The answer to that question might remain a mystery forever. To heal from such disasters, we have to ask what, not why. What can I learn from this situation? What can I do to move forward? What did I learn from this situation that will help me in the future?
When disasters of this kind occur in extremely poor countries, some people’s possessions may be limited to a bowl of rice and the meager clothes on their back. They truly know that at such times it is the preciousness of life itself and the love of family and friends that count the most.
Forgiving a Country
The biographies of Anwar Sadat, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela, as well as a host of others like them, tell us how they found their way to forgiveness while they were in jail. They acknowledged and honored their feelings of bitterness, anger, and vengeance. But forgiveness helped them transform these feelings into positive actions for change when they finally got out of jail.
As history shows, their forgiveness did not mean that they condoned or agreed with those who jailed them. They came to realize that the real jail is in our minds when we are full of fear, anger, and deep grievance. They moved beyond these feelings to begin bringing about the social changes they stood for.
We have a close and dear friend, Henri Landwirth, who was a prisoner at Auschwitz and other concentration camps during World War II. There was a time when he thought it would be impossible to ever forgive those who had been so cruel to him and to millions of others. Henri later changed his mind. He had seen life at its worst. He was almost killed and came close to dying from starvation many times.
When Henri came to the United States after the war, his heart was filled with hatred for the German government. He thought these feelings would never leave him. Both his parents had been murdered under Nazi rule.
He became very successful in business in this country and started a philanthropic organization called Give Kids the World. This organization makes it possible for children who have life-threatening illnesses to visit Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Over seven thousand children come to the village each year. For many children, Give Kids the World acts as a bridge to heaven.
Henri told me that holding on to his hatred of the German soldiers who had committed atrocities was killing him. But his heart was transformed by working so closely with children through Give Kids the World. It has been a gradual process, but he states that today he has forgiven Germany and those who committed heinous atrocities. He states that he no longer wants to continue recycling the anger.
Last year, Henri and seven other Holocaust survivors were invited to speak at a dinner honoring Holocaust victims. Most survivors talked about their continued anger and hatred of the past. Henri was the last to speak. He talked about all his blessings since coming to the United States. He spoke of how grateful he is for the love he continues to receive. He emphasized how important it is to live in the present, not to be stuck in the past.
Forgiving Institutions
Since the time that Yeltsin took over from Gorbachev in Russia, relations have become more harmonious between our two countries. At a cocktail party I was attending there, one of the Russian officials said to me, “Now that our two countries are at peace, I think the United States will have to go out and find a new enemy.” I thought his remark had a lot of merit.
When we follow the ego’s creed, we are always looking for a new enemy. We no sooner heal one relationship conflict than a new one pops up. It sometimes appears that we cannot live our lives without at least one enemy to fight.
In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service becomes an easy institution to hate and make into our enemy. There are horror stories of individuals and businesses who have been ruined by the agency’s heavy-handed tactics. While legislators promise us that new laws are being written to prevent IRS abuses, there continue to be people whose rage at the IRS is so high that they are considering moving to another country.
It is very easy for us to be angry at the IRS. We can point to things they have done that seem to justify our anger. Besides, there are always people around us who are equally angry and will support what we are feeling. It is human and understandable to be angry in situations like this. It is our attachment to the anger that gets us into trouble.
Some people I know have let go of their rage at institutions such as this. They have let go of their need to punish them, have forgiven, and have moved on in peace. Again, forgiving—whether forgiving a close friend or a whole society—does not take away the responsibility of the persons who have done things that inflicted hardship, death, or emotional pain. Forgiving does not mean condoning such behavior.
Above all, forgiveness is the process of letting go of your attachment to the negative thoughts in your mind. It is the process of healing your own mind and your own soul.
Is it possible to believe that we can live in this world without needing to believe we have enemies? Whenever I ask myself this question, I remember a Pogo comic strip in which one of the characters says, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”
Perhaps, as Pogo suggests, we will no longer have enemies the day we all choose to forgive the past and live wholly in the present. And on this day we will discover that it was only our lack of forgiveness which kept us chained to the painful past.
Forgiving the Military
Our egos have the capacity to put us in a vise of conflict and blame around any person, place, or institution. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is like a key unlocking us from the shackles of our egos.
Sometimes, as in the following story, we hide our grudges so deeply in the caverns of our minds that we have no awareness of the judgments and grievances we’ve left smoldering there.
In 1979, my friend Dr. Bill Thetford and I were invited to give a seminar on forgiveness at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California. As we were driving to the lecture, I started feeling increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, I told Bill that I was going to pull over to the side of the road. I had to talk.
“Bill,” I said, “how can I give a seminar on forgiveness when I am holding such a strong grievance against the military, where we are going to be talking?”
During the Korean conflict, I was pulled out of my child psychiatry residency to put in time at Travis. Every bone in my body had resisted. I was against killing or injuring people in any way, for any reason. Under no circumstances did I want to serve an organization that thought it was OK, under some circumstances, to kill people.
“I am still holding on to feelings of resentment and anger at the military for forcing me to serve them against my will.” I told Bill that I was still clinging to those judgmental feelings and was not at all peaceful. There was a war going on inside me.
I asked Bill to meditate with me as I attempted to let go of these feelings, forgive, and come back to the present without all that baggage from my past. It worked! Soon I was peaceful, and we gave a very successful workshop. I had none of the old, negative feelings I once held in my mind for the military.
Forgiveness allows us to experience our wholeness, our oneness with all of life. It opens our eyes to experience the light and the essence of love that we all are.
Forgiveness is like getting pregnant. Either you are pregnant or you’re not. Nor can you ever “sort of forgive.” Sort of forgiving just doesn’t work; it has to be total and complete.
It is always helpful to take a new look at the people and situations that we have not forgiven. Ask yourself if there is value or harm for you to persist to hold on to those old grievances.
The process of forgiving has no set structure or form. The person you are forgiving need not change at all. For that matter, they may never change! The only requirement is your willingness to change the thoughts in your own mind.
Forgiving Ourselves
The staff at the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Sausalito, California, had joined Diane and me at a workshop in Hawaii. During part of the workshop, the group divided up into pairs. Two partners would sit facing each other. Then one person would tell the other something they would like to forgive about themselves. The person listening would do their best to not make any judgments and to hold a space of unconditional love.
When it came my turn to talk about something I had not forgiven about myself, I could not think of anything. All of a sudden something popped into my head. I told the compassionate and understanding woman sitting opposite me that I had set a schedule for myself to do the final editing of a book I was writing. I wasn’t aware that I had been measuring myself and my progress, but at that moment I realized that I was giving myself a failing grade.
I finished telling my story, and by the end of it I had already forgiven myself for my negative judgments. It was like frosting on the cake to hear my partner say, “I forgive you.”
Curious, my partner then asked me, “What is the title of the book you are working on?”
I barely got the words out before we both burst out laughing. The book I was working on is the one you are holding in your hands—Forgiveness: The Greatest Healer of All.
So even though I have written this book on forgiveness, I still have my temptations and challenges. Perhaps as long as we remain in these bodies we will be tempted to judge and not forgive. We will forever need to remind ourselves that each new moment is an opportunity to choose once again. I am convinced that one of the greatest gifts of all is our power to choose the thoughts we want to put in our minds. The freedom to choose can release us from our self-imposed jail cells. It can release us from the enemy Pogo discovered—ourselves and our own attachment to the past.
Forgiveness puts us in the flow of love. The result of our forgiveness is a reminder that love is our only reality, that love is everything and everywhere. Love is all there is, and it is the answer to every problem or question that we may ever have to face.
Forgiving a Child and a School Principal
I am convinced that we will have a society which is focused more on cooperation than on competition when we begin expressing love and forgiveness in our homes and schools. When we believe that love and forgiveness can produce miracles, they begin to occur.
In 1998, Diane and I went to West Africa to consult with the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Accra. While we were there, the executive director of the center, Mary Clottey, told us this story:
Mary is a teacher at a school located about two hours from the capital. In her teaching she spent a great deal of time helping her young students find ways to communicate with each other without anger and fighting. She emphasized the process of forgiveness. In fact, her students knew her as “the forgiveness teacher.”
There was a ten-year-old boy in the school who was a real terror. He fought with everyone and disrupted everything around him. Wherever he went, he seemed to break things, though he never accepted any responsibility for what he did.
One day he was caught red-handed stealing money from his teacher’s purse. The school principal jumped in and called for an assembly. According to the tradition of the school, the boy would be whipped with a cane up on the stage where everyone in the school could watch. They would make an example of him in this way, and then he would be expelled.
The entire school assembled in the auditorium where the caning was to take place. But as the boy was led out to be caned, Mary stood up. Just as she was about to say, “Forgive him,” all the children around her leapt to their feet.
“Forgive him! Forgive him! Forgive him!” the children chanted, until the whole assembly hall was ringing with the message.
The boy stared out into the audience and then broke down and began to sob. Suddenly the whole climate of the assembly hall changed.
In the end, the boy was never caned. Nor was he expelled. Instead, he was forgiven and loved. From that day forward, he has not gotten into a single fight, broken anything, stolen, or been disruptive in any way.
At first, many people in the school believed that the principal’s action of calling the assembly to punish the boy was harsh and unfair. But he was forgiven, too, and in the process the seeds were planted for a new, more loving environment in the school.
Forgiveness in the Community
Here is another story about forgiveness that comes from Africa. When a person acts unjustly or irresponsibly in the Babemba tribe of South Africa, he is placed alone in the center of the village but is in no way prevented from running off.
Everyone in the village stops working and gathers in a circle around the person who has been accused. Then each person, regardless of age, begins to tell the person in the center about all the good things he or she has done during his or her life.
Everything that can be remembered about this person is described in great detail. All the accused’s positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are verbalized for their benefit. Each person in the circle does this in great detail.
All the stories about this person are told with the utmost sincerity and love. No one is allowed to exaggerate events that happened, and everyone knows that they cannot make stories up. Nobody is insincere or sarcastic as they speak.
This ceremony continues until everyone in the village has had his or her say about how they value this person as a respected member of their community. This process can go on for several days. In the end, the tribe breaks the circle, and a joyous celebration occurs as the person is welcomed back into the tribe.
Through the eyes of love, which this ceremony so beautifully describes, we find only reunion and forgiveness. Each person in the circle, as well as the person who is standing in the center, is reminded that forgiveness gives us the opportunity to let go of the past and the fearful future. The person in the center is no longer labeled as a bad person or excluded from the community. Instead, they are reminded of the love that is within them and are joined with those around them.
Forgiveness between Brothers
Often our most difficult conflicts and grievances are with family members who we feel have done something unforgivable. Several years ago, while I was giving a lecture in Honolulu, a middle-aged man wearing a business suit came up to me and asked if we could talk.
Everyone else in the room was wearing Hawaiian shirts and casual clothes, so I suspected he might be a physician—which he was. He told me that he and his brother had not spoken for six years. Their relationship had ended with an argument. He explained that he had read my book Love Is Letting Go of Fear, and because he had begun seeing the value of forgiveness, he had decided to give his brother a call.
The physician told me that he had called his brother and told him he would like to let go of the past, to let bygones be bygones. The two men agreed to get together the following week. At lunch that day, everything was peaceful, and there was no reference made to their past argument. Instead, their love for each other radiated from their table.
The physician thanked me because he felt that if he hadn’t read my book, he never would have had the lunch meeting that day. It was doubly important to him, because a week later his brother was killed in an auto accident. What a wonderful reminder this story is that it is never too early or to late to forgive!
About ten years after this story was told to me, I was referred to a physician for a consultation about a health issue I was having. When I entered his office, the physician introduced himself and asked if I remembered him. I had to confess that I didn’t. He then said, “I am the man who told you about the experience I had with forgiving my brother.” I was thrilled to be able to thank him once again for his story, which I had shared with thousands of people over the years.
It is my hope and belief that you might use the stories in this chapter as examples and guidelines for how forgiveness can work in our lives. In the following chapter, I outline preparatory as well as action steps for the forgiveness process.
Forgiveness is the shortest route to God.
Forgiveness is the eraser that makes the hurtful past disappear.
Forgiving can be a most important process not only for a person who is dying but for the people who are left behind.*