Forgiveness.

Burning the ashes that connects you to the past.

“‘I can forgive, but I cannot forget,’ is only another way of saying ‘I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note—torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.”

Forgiveness that is partial, or halfhearted, works no better than a partially completed surgical operation on the face. Pretended forgiveness, which is entered into as a duty, is no more effective than a simulated facial surgery.

Your forgiveness should be forgotten, as well as the wrong which was forgiven. Forgiveness that is remembered, and dwelt upon, reinfects the wound you are attempting to cauterize.

If you are too proud of your forgiveness, or remember it too much, you are very apt to feel that the other person owes you something for forgiving him.

Forgiveness Is Not a Weapon.

Real forgiveness has been so seldom tried. Another fallacy is that forgiveness places us in a superior position, or is a method of winning out over our enemy.

This is just another way of saying that forgiveness itself can be used as an effective weapon of revenge—which it can. Revengeful forgiveness, however, is not Therapeutic forgiveness.

Therapeutic forgiveness cuts out, eradicates, cancels, makes the wrong as if it had never been. Therapeutic forgiveness is like surgery. First, the “wrong”—and particularly our own feeling of condemnation of it—must be seen as an undesirable thing rather than a desirable thing.

Therapeutic forgiveness is not difficult. The only difficulty is to secure your own willingness to give up and do without your sense of condemnation—your willingness to cancel out the debt, with no mental reservations.

We find it difficult to forgive only because we like our sense of condemnation. We get a perverse and morbid enjoyment out of nursing our wounds. As long as we can condemn another, we can feel superior to him. No one can deny that there is also a perverse sense of satisfaction in feeling sorry for yourself.

We cancel the debt, mark it “null and void,” not because we have made the other person “pay” sufficiently for his wrong—but because we have come to recognize that the debt itself is not valid.

True forgiveness comes only when we are able to see, and emotionally accept. You cannot forgive a person unless you have first condemned him. what you and I must see after the fact in practicing therapeutic forgiveness: that we ourselves err when we hate a person because of his mistakes, or when we condemn him.

Not only do we incur emotional wounds from others, most of us inflict them on ourselves. Remorse and regret are attempts to emotionally live in the past.

Excessive guilt is an attempt to make right in the past something we did wrong or thought of as wrong in the past. Emotions are used correctly and appropriately when they help us to respond or react appropriately to some reality in the present environment. Since we cannot live in the past, we cannot appropriately react emotionally to the past.

The past can be simply written off, closed, forgotten, insofar as our emotional reactions are concerned. We do not need to take an “emotional position” one way or the other regarding detours that might have taken us off course in the past. The important thing is our present direction and our present goal.

You Make Mistakes. Mistakes Do Not Make “You”.

Also, in thinking of our own mistakes (or those of others) it is helpful, and realistic, to think of them in terms of what we did or did not do, rather than in terms of what the mistakes made us. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to confuse our behavior with our “self”.

A lot of people need a thicker and tougher emotional skin than they have. But they need only a tough emotional hide or epidermis—not a shell. To trust, to love, to open ourselves to emotional communication with other people is to run the risk of being hurt.

If we are hurt once, we can do one of two things. We can build a thick protective shell, or scar tissue, to prevent being hurt again, live like an oyster, and not be hurt.

An oyster is secure, but not creative. He cannot “go after” what he wants—he must wait for it to come to him. An oyster knows none of the “hurts” of emotional communication with his environment—but neither can an oyster know the joys.

Carrying a grudge against someone or against life can bring on the old age stoop, just as much as carrying a heavy weight around on your shoulders would. People with emotional scars, grudges, and the like are living in the past, which is characteristic of old people. The youthful attitude and youthful spirit that erases wrinkles from the soul and the face, and puts a sparkle in the eye, looks to the future and has a great expectation to look forward to.

We all have things we would like to forget, but we also have the awareness that our memories—even the bad ones—are what make us who we are. Our happiness depends not only on what we can remember but also on what we are able to forget.

Too much of the past can be paralyzing. We want to hold on to our happy memories, but we also want to be able to let go of the past, to live in the present and plan for the future.

Please don't forget that forgiving others is like carrying a burning flame in your hands. You think while holding onto the flame, you are hurting the one who hurt you without knowing that you are the one who feels the hurt even the most.

Therefore know this and know peace; the person you forgive loses nothing but you are the one who carries accumulated burden from the past, which prevents your mind and life from getting to certain points even without you realizing it. A person who chooses to forgive no matter the level of the hurt is actually stronger than the offender. The art of forgiveness only heaps invincible coals on the head of your enemies and makes them very uncomfortable. Choosing to hold onto hurts and festering wounds of the past hurts you even more than you will ever envisage.

I know your boyfriend hurted you so badly while you were dating by cheating on you with another girl; even to the point of impregnating her, but don't worry, cause that's definitely not the end of the road, don't lament and say, oh no, “I will never meet a guy who will ever love me like he did.” “O shut up”, cause there are over a thousand guys out there that will bow at your feet as their Queen. So you honestly don't have an excuse, kindly dust from your body the ashes of penury and regret; cause there is a whole life of fulfilment waiting ahead of you with all its indescribable potentials.” Don't throw away your bright tomorrow because of one guy/babe that refused to see as you could be.

Say to yourself today that, “I choose to forgive all my friends and enemies, frienemies, family members who have hurt me in the past and I free myself completely from the past with its pain that pins me perpetually back to it. I choose not to be stuck in the past. I am rather moving to my next level with purity of heart and intentions.” Kindly do this today and find peace, thereby freeing you from the clutches and manipulations of others in and outside your circle.

Thanks alot for your time and have a nice day.