Forgiveness is a practice to mastery skill.
If interested, read on.
I had a powerful experience many years ago. My wife had died after an extended struggle with cancer. In the year preceding her death, as her cancer worsened, my wife and I went away together - for the last time - to a conference in Boston. We had a wonderful time.
On our way home, we received a call from my sister-in-law reporting that our oldest son had a near drowning experience while swimming at the health club pool. He was 5. My mother-in-law had not been supervising him as my wife had instructed her to. She had disregarded the instructions.
To keep it short, my wife spoke with the ER doc, who reported that everything was fine. Our son was alert, sitting up, and playing with toys.
My wife hung up, called one of her partners (she was a pediatrician), and asked him to have out son airlifted to the PICU at the major hospital.
We arrived at the PICU before our son, watched at the wheeled his intubated, induced coma little boys into the PICU. We waited there to see if he were going to live or die. I held my dying wife’s hand while we waited.
There were additional isolations by my mother-in-law as my wife neared death and after she had died. I was filled with trauma-rage for years after.
One day, ironically while I was driving to therapy, I heard a story on NPR about a man who had forgiven the man that had murdered his father.
My first knee jerk thought was “that’s bullshit”, but then I thought “how do I know what he did or didn’t do?” I decided that I would just take his word for it.
In that instant, I had a “SEEing” experience. The whole concept of forgiveness opened up in my heart.
I saw that I could forgive my mother-in-law first. Clearly her transgressions had been less severe. Then I saw that I could forgive everyone throughout my entire life who had harmed me.
Then the biggest epiphany of all opened in my heart. I saw that I could forgive myself for all of the transgression I had committed throughout my life.
Forgiveness is a practice-to-mastery skill. It’s not a natural predisposition. I started practicing. I practiced forgiving my mother-in-law a little bit at a time. I meditated, imagined exhaling her transgressions and my rage as little specks of fine dark powder. I imagined them leaving my body, get caught in the breeze, moving across my yard, through the forest, up into the sky, then being dispersed into the atmosphere. I imagines some of them leaving the atmosphere and going off into the solar system.
I did this every day. As my heart healed with my mother-in-law, I moved to the next person, then the next, then the next … slowly practicing forgiveness of their transgressions going all the way back into my earliest memories of childhood.
Then I started the same process of forgiving myself.
I’ve gotten better at forgiveness. I now forgive transgressions on the go, as they occur.
Fortunately / unfortunately social media provides ample opportunities to practice.
K. H. Little Consulting Services
Kenneth H. Little, MA
KHLittle603@gmail.com
