Sunday, November 09, 2008

forgiveness, feeling safe and letting go


Forgiveness is a tolerance of mistakes, the ability to forgive each other for defections. Everyday acts of forgiveness among people who know each other in the real world are incredibly common.

1. Human beings forgive people who make them feel safe. To forgive we must know that the offender can't and won't harm us again. (Personally, I have found this to be painfully true. If I don't feel safe, I can't forgive.)

2. We are prone to forgive if the relationship has value to us. It is easier to forgive than to destroy the relationship and start over again. (As much as I value a relationship, if I don't feel safe, I can't trust. Since trust is the essential ingredient for forgiveness, safety is the key to everything.)

3. If we want to forgive, we need to have a conversation with the person who harmed us. The conversation should be about reassurance that safety can be restored in the relationship. It's important to talk about practicing behavior that will restore respect. This conversation can get messy and emotional, and the hard work starts after the conversation ends as people begin to re-establish trust once again. "Forgiveness is a brawny muscular exercise that someone with a passion for life should take on," according to Michael McCullough.

4. So much of forgiveness is about interacting with the person who hurt us and seeing him or her in a different light. Without this interaction and discussion, forgiveness is more difficult.

From NPR Speaking of Faith, November 9, 2008, "Getting Revenge and Forgiveness"

Synopsis of the program: Michael McCullough, Director of the Lab for Social and Clinical Psychology at the University of Miami, describes science that helps us comprehend how revenge came to have a purpose in human life. At the same time, he stresses, science is also revealing that human beings are more instinctively equipped for forgiveness than we've perhaps given ourselves credit for. Knowing this suggests ways to calm the revenge instinct in ourselves and others and embolden the forgiveness intuition.


AND NOW, SOME WORDS ABOUT BUDDHA:


Buddha is not a personal name and the concept is NOT a man.


"Buddha" is not a personal name; it is a title, meaning "awakened," "enlightened," and "evolved." A Buddha's enlightenment is a perfect omniscience. A Buddha's mind is what theists have thought the mind of God [or the human mind at its height of perfection] would have to be like, totally knowing of every single detail of everything in an infinite universe, totally aware of everything--hence by definition inconceivable, incomprehensible to finite, ignorant, egocentric consciousness.

- Robert A.F. Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism

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