I like what Oprah said about forgiveness on the Oprah Winfrey show today. She said, "Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different."
I liked that statement, too. I didn't have time to write it down. I'm glad you put it here--
Thank God (or whoever) I didn't have to suffer what those girls suffered, but I have had to get to that point in my own life and with what happened to it to be able to heal.
I like how Rudolf Steiner once defined faith as "the belief that the future can be different than the past."
This means 'different from the projections of the past' as well, and that important point distinguishes it from people's usual wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is an egoic operation where the future is imagined in the confining terms of the past--righting wrongs, fulfilling desires, improving present conditions...it doesn't matter: this is baggage from the past. Faith is the intuition that "we" are in fact essentially unconditional beings, and so are not bound to repeat our patterns.
I believe it takes an open mind to have faith, in addition to logic and reason. TSCC stifles that and wants us to stay within their delusional, closed minded parameters that they define, thus repeating our patterns over and over again. Maybe this is why it takes a while to recover. I like that quote Richard...thanks for sharing.
I forgave someone once who had deeply hurt me, over a period of many years. It was the best thing I ever did. My feeling is that forgiveness is the gift that you give to yourself. You let go of hurt, sadness, anger, etc. that is merely weighing you down. I agree with what Oprah said, that you have to let go of your happy vision of a perfect life. Forgiveness is acknowledging that whomever offended you did the best they could with what they had at the time. Forgiveness helps the other person as well, which is an added gift. The forgiven person gets to let go as well (and move on.) I will never, ever forget the look of relief in that person's eyes when he/she knew I no longer held a grudge, that indeed, I understood. Very powerful.
I don't think people can truly forgive if they really believe they've been injured. Pardon, yes--but forgive, no. Sounds like an impossibility then, since in conventional terms some injury may have occurred (i.e., it's not just our interpretation of events). This is where forgiveness really relates to transcending.
I must stop letting my "self" be defined by outside events, positive or negative. In fact, "I" do use outside circumstances to define "me"; it often looks like my self-image is a reaction to them. But I suspect it's really the reverse--my self-image USES outside circumstances to confirm itself. Forgiveness, then, is giving up the ongoing self-image that is apparently supported by/tied to the things that happen to me. I am NOT that image (and the people who "hurt" me are not their images either...not their own self-images nor the images I hold of them).
Forgiveness in this sense, then, is seeing through all the phenomenal crap that's happening and realizing that the hurter and the hurt one are only self-images, not Self, and those images are past-conditioned roles acted out by people who are for all practical purposes asleep to their true selves. I remember Christ's dying words, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Well, at the existential level NOBODY knows what they're doing...so forgiveness in this sense is also unconditional.
In the Mormon church forgiveness means staying married to a spouse who continually cheats on you.
And speaking of forgiveness, the church doesn't really believe in it anyway. My older brother was disfellowshipped about 15 years ago for a single sexual act. He was re-instated one year later. His wife forgave him, and they are still married. Before this happened, he had been on the high council. Since then, the only callings he has had are in scouts and sunday school - not that there's anything wrong with that. He's 50 yrs old, and people ask him all the time why he hasn't been a bishop. I think we know why - it's on his record and will never be erased.
The Lord forgives and forgets. The church does not.
Actually, this question is answered differently on a continuum of God-concepts:
1) God never forgives--the narrow judgmental eye-for-an-eye concept of a punishing parental God (even punishing people 'for their own good').
2) God sometimes forgives--the conditional-loving God who forgives if people are remorseful and do the penance.
3) God always forgives--the unconditional-loving God who understands all our sins and dismisses them.
4) GOD NEVER FORGIVES--God the Absolute is Only Love and doesn't judge in the first place: no judgment = no sins = no guilt = no need for forgiveness. In this view, God is 'not of this (fallen) world.' This world of errors and mistakes is a creation of human thinking, and the judges, punishers, and executioners are our own condemning superegos.
#1 & #4 sound the same, but their meanings are totally different!
My mom, a Holocaust survivor, was often invited to speakat schools, churches, the media etc. about her experiences and was often asked about this subject. She answered that she had forgiven those who incarcerated and torture her.
She was a woman of faith, so that of course, had a great impact on that descision, but it wasn't only that, but psychological sound as it freed her of these people, so 'let go and let God' wasn't just a cliche to her.
Unforgiveness makes people lierally ill. While in so much pain or what happens to us, it's us. They aren't in pain for what they've done, so why do them the favor to continue to do you harm.
I have to admit that I wasn't that nice about all that and when we visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and entered the hall of the children, where each name of a murdered child is read loud, she wept so hard and instead of comforting her, I chastized her about her 'forgiveness' and ask her 'what about those children?"
She answered "THE Nazis have to ask them for forgiveness and say are dead." I felt very bad for my behaviour and apologized. I thought 'what goes around, comes around sooner or later. It's the 'law of the universe' as far as I'm concerned and I see it all the time. Mom had a twinkle in her eyes until the day she died. What a remarkable woman. I sure miss her!!