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delving into my next video project…..

How To Forgive
a meditation by Hugh Prather

“I once heard someone ask Bill Thetford, “How do you forgive?” He answered with his usual wry humor, “You just call the S.O.B. out and forgive him.”

It took several years before I realized forgiveness actually is this simple. Anyone we want to forgive, we forgive instantly. Anyone we are conflicted about forgiving, we never quite forgive.

The root meaning of forgive is “To let go. To give back. To cease to harbor.” Thus forgiveness is as easy as opening our hand and dropping what we are clutching. In fact, it’s so easy that little children do it instinctively. “You’re not going to invite Joie to your birthday party, are you?” asks the parent of a four-year-old. “Don’t you remember what Joie did to you?” But the child answers, “Joie is fun to play with.”

Unlike adults, children value the present more than the past. They would rather be happy than right. They instinctively understand that it’s more fun to decide from now than from then. It’s more fun to let go of a grievance than to hold on to it. Little children get it: Judgment is a very unpleasant state of mind that hurts us more than the other person.

But so often we adults don’t get it. We have forgotten that forgiveness is not being nice to someone else; it’s being nice to our own mind. We no longer recognize that in order to prove that other people are wrong, we must remain living proof of their guilt. We must remain damaged. Yet the person we judge is often unaware of our thoughts, which poison our relationships, weaken our health and, if not eliminated, can embitter our entire life.

The reason we have so much trouble forgiving is that we are not honest with ourselves. We haven’t yet confronted our mind with the question, “What is so desirable about judging this person?” Because if we did, we would have to take responsibility for how we choose to use our mind. In short, we would have to stop being a victim. Instead, we wring our hands and say, “I’ve tried so hard to forgive but I just can’t do it.” Or we ask God to forgive for us. Or perhaps the worst, we tell ourselves that we have forgiven, when, actually, everyone around us can see clearly that we haven’t.