meditation on forgiveness

[SaraTherase]

Hello

You could try Metta Bhavana aka Loving Kindness Meditation

1. You send love to yourself

You cannot do much without loving yourself. You can focus on your heart or just send love and light to yourself. The way in which you do it doesn't matter so much. Through sensations or a visual picture.

2. You send love to a friend

This is typically someone of the same gender so that there is no romantic love. You send out loving kindness to this friend. It is often easier to do this compared to loving yourself! You may start to feel warm and this is okay as you are sending warm, positive thoughts out.

3. You send love to a neutral person

This is an interesting exercise. By 'neutral' we mean someone you may know from the supermarket or post office, etc. Someone you may see but not actually know well. Metta bhavana (loving kindness) is unbounded compassion for all sentient beings. It is love that doesn't rely on personal views or passions. This stage of the meditation can really help break through everyday distinctions and polarising thoughts.

4. You send love to a person that you dislike

It doesn't have to be a person that you hate. It can just be a person who makes you uncomfortable. The barriers that separate us can be uncovered once we start to melt the ice and see the humanity within all of us..

5. You send out love to all sentient beings

Typically, you visualise all the above people together with you. You can be in a circle holding hands or whatever. You send out the love and then naturally, after a few minutes, you expand it out. Out of the house, out of your town, out of your country, and throughout the world, even into space..

I have found this to help me immensely and once you get into a nice rhythm you start to notice a shift within along side a very beautiful and fulfilling sense of warmth and wholeness.

[Gem]

I'm with Sara Therese, being schooled in that Buddhist tradition, and i'm not the right person to talk about spirit attachments, so I'm not going into that, but forgiveness relates to a grudge, and the issue isn't so much that of some other, but of the grudge one carries in themselves, which is not going to be resolved by a simple metta meditation alone, but through the process of first becoming aware of the grudge and how long one has held it, and the negative affect it has - because the grudge is not a 'happy place'; it's a burden of significant suffering.


The grudge will stem from being hurt, suffering a great injustice, and that hurt is perfectly valid and understandable and it need not be suppressed, hidden away, concealed in shame etc. but it can't be expressed outwardly in an uncontrolled flurry either, as revenge or some other urge which is potentially more harmful than good, so to be fully accepting that hurt feeling is really the experience, without suppression and without expression, but with full, truthful, conscious, willing allowance for the truth that it is - without judging or reacting - is coming to peace with that past.


After one of my meditation retreats I asked one the people I meditated with how his retreat went, and he told me that he realised that he was carrying a bitter grudge that he wasn't really aware of before, and it was difficult because now it was clear and he had to face it, which I imagine would take a lot of processing.

It's not like these sorts of things are easily resolved, and they really can't be taken glibly with some wise poetic words. It's more true to life than that, more entwined with life history, more ingrained, formative of the person, and also, it can actually be treasured because the hateful elements of grudges are strangely satisfying - the one who hurt you deserves it, and there are 1001 justifications for it being right.

However, the bottom line is, the grudge is an old reaction of hurt feelings to something long past, and the holder of the grudge has to carry it like an article of luggage that contains their pain, and forgiveness is not like just dumping the suitcase as something unwanted. It's like opening it up and taking out what's inside, and coming to terms with it so you can be at peace with the reality of your own life's past.

After one is able to accept the emotional contents peacefully, without being disturbed by it anymore, the feelings of malice which characterise the grudge will also subside. Metta will start to arise not so much as an intent at first, but with true acceptance of one's past and the consequential cessation of malice toward the transgressor, and when one notices that they have no 'hard feelings' anymore, then a metta meditation can be used purposefully with good-intent because it is actually true that you want the perp to be happy now.

[Taking a Break]

Whether we are seeking forgiveness for our own sins or asking God to help us forgive others, prayer is the first place to start when seeking restoration and healing.

[Taking a Break]

My favorite prayer/mantra:
God I repent and ask for forgiveness of all my sins and mistakes also I forgive all people who have done me wrong.

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by Taking a Break

My favorite prayer/mantra:
God I repent and ask for forgiveness of all my sins and mistakes also I forgive all people who have done me wrong.

And in the end we realise that no-one did anything and there is nothing to forgive.

Peace.

When walking in a dark room and get hurt because we are stumbling in darkness, should we not find the light either the switch or gather the fire making implements, however it must be done.

Surely we don't blame the dark but we see it was the absence of light for our pain.

[Taking a Break]

Originally Posted by iamthat

And in the end we realise that no-one did anything and there is nothing to forgive.

Peace.

better safe then sorry?

[Unseeking Seeker]

Originally Posted by iamthat

And in the end we realise that no-one did anything and there is nothing to forgive.

Peace.

***

That’s it. No sense of injury felt so no need to forgive. We accept that each acts as of his consciousness as at this time and can do no better since he knows no better.

***

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

***

That’s it. No sense of injury felt so no need to forgive. We accept that each acts as of his consciousness as at this time and can do no better since he knows no better.

***

Exactly

Peace

[Taking a Break]

I agree, ignorance is bliss, not knowing something is often more comfortable than knowing it or “What you don't know cannot hurt you.”