Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
Forgive, as a word, and as an ideal, is very misunderstood in our world. Not only is the idea misunderstood, but the word itself is often intensely disliked.
The act of Forgiveness does not release the perpetrator from responsibility for their crimes, nor condone the behavior. Forgiveness is about letting go, a process that releases us from another’s destructive hold over our lives. It is not about accepting, trusting, or increasing future suffering. To the contrary, Forgiveness is simply releasing pain from the past in order to end future suffering.
Ultimately, forgiveness is not about someone, or something else. The idea that we must forgive someone else is only a step in learning the real Truth about letting go. This step helps to teach us where the real suffering of unforgiveness is experienced”¦in us. It is ourselves that is released through forgiveness, and until we forgive, we are likely to repeat the past.
Forgiveness is how we let go of the resentment that is harming us, and I speak from experience. In fact, the only way to I know how to help others is by sharing my understanding through my experience. Personally, I receive very little benefit from people that offer advice and opinions from a perspective that does not include actual personal experience. All of the healing that I have experienced in my life has come from God, and those that have personal experience with overcoming difficulties through faith and forgiveness.
Most people have their own understanding of forgiveness based on where they are in life and this article is in no way meant to criticize another’s perspective. I do not ask others to do, or believe what I write. That is up to the reader.
I am not sure how to say what I need to say without sounding like I am taking credit for something that I had very little to with, but feel the need to use my own personal experience to show an example of what Forgiveness in action looks like.
It is God’s Grace, faith, and forgiveness that changed my perspective, and with it, my life from hell, to heaven.
My dad is a serial killer. He abused my mom, used me to help him destroy evidence so I would not go to police and has threatened to kill me. I know what evil looks like. I’ve been to hell.
I also know what unforgiveness looks like because I have experienced that as well. Unforgiveness looks a lot like hell to me. It causes physical and emotional illnesses, including migraine headaches, chronic back pain, nightmares, sleep apnea, drug addiction and many others”¦all of which I have personally experienced.
Holding on to resentment is like drinking poison, and hoping the other person dies. It is toxic both physically and mentally. This is a medical fact as well. Many studies have been done on what resentment (or unforgiveness) does to our bodies, including raising one’s blood pressure when simply discussing someone they have not forgiven.
Forgiveness is not a lack of responsibility or action. It does not mean that we are to be passive and perpetual victims. To the contrary. Forgiveness requires great courage, faith, and action.
Yes, forgiveness does require action and the results may surprise you”¦it did me. I thought forgiveness was for sissys, but I was wrong!
Next week, in part II, I will write about how forgiveness gave me the courage to face my fears, my father, break the cycle of abuse, right the wrongs of the past, and what it looks like in action.
“It SEEMS like at times if only justice would be served, if only the offending person would just listen, accept responsibility, apologize——we could move on with our lives”
indeed it does seem so. i do believe that, even though i know there was nothing genuine about it, hearing my spath apologize, and repeat back to me the things he did wrong, it helped me in some way. at least he knew the words to say even if he didn’t understand what they meant, at least he knew what to feign guilt about. there was a tieeeeeeeny tiny comfort in that.
but my friend plays dumb. i get a sheepish apology, but i see no guilt ever, no change in behavior which is just further disrespect to me and others. (and themselves, of course) i always feel if i could only make them see this time, everything would be ok, there’d be a happy ending, i wouldn’t carry the guilt for 2 anymore. but i can’t make that happening without being a meddlesome person, and for all the pain they have caused me, i still do not want to intentionally hurt them even if earned.
i can’t reconcile these sets of feelings, i feel in complete upheavel.
Greenbean,
So, what if you’ve pursued every avenue you know to get an apology or justice out of your spath, and you just can’t? What do you do to get some peace for yourself?
Personally, I think when we try to figure this out with our minds, we cannot solve the problem because our minds want justice. It’s really the time to turn to some sort of higher power for help letting go of it. I do believe that on the spiritual level, justice is served, due to the simple laws of cause and effect. And so we don’t have to try to and right the wrongs ourselves. In my belief system, you cannot always see karma working because it sometimes takes more than one lifetime. I believe whatever higher spiritual powers there are in the universe, they have the whole justice thing covered.
In the case of a spath, if you look objectively, they do cause their own suffering in this lifetime alone. Imagine what kind of inner peace a person can have who lies and cons people? Mine couldn’t sleep at night. Literally. And if you keep that person and their wrongdoings in your mind, it may give you some sort of security that you are doing the “right thing” by never forgiving. But really you are keeping the suffering and chaos in your own life, too. Is he really worth that?
Stargazer,
Your above post shows that you are RECOGNIZING what is making you miserable…and that is your attitude toward what happened in the past.
We cannot change that past. It is what it is.
What we CAN change is our attitude toward it.
It is DIFFICULT to do, but we CAN do it. We MUST DO IT in order to heal.
If we allow what has happened in the past to CONTAMINATE our today we lose today, the bright wonderful today we COULD have had if we had but changed our attitude toward the past.
Yep, your N-mother and my egg donor did not nurture us, in fact, they emotionally at the very least abused us. That is a pity. For both us and them. What COULD have been a loving relationship was LOST. We can’t get that back and they are NOT going to see the hurt that they did to us, or to accept responsibility for it. They can’t see it and they can’t know it.
As Jesus said “they have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not.” And I will add they have a brain but understand not.
To me getting that bitterness out of my heart toward what they are and what they did is the KEYSTONE of making today better. Call it indifference, forgiveness, or whatever word you want to assign to it, it means that I do not let that past contaminate today.
Sometimes I lose sight of that and will “revert” but when I do, I gather up my resolve and get that bitterness out AGAIN. It is a CONTINUING PROCESS, not a “ONE AND DONE” deal. Because if I let it, if I ruminate over it and throw a pity party for myself, I will again start to feel the past as my today.
A normal period of grieving is NORMAL. Like losing your beloved cat. But you will come to the ACCEPTANCE level with that, where you can think about her with happiness, and not feel the pain of the loss. It takes time to process all that, but you will do so. Sometimes there will stll be sentimental tears but they will not be the great wracking sobs of the initial loss.
I think it is work to heal, and it is a continual process as we live life. Can’t remember who said the “unexamined life isn’t worth living” but it is true. We examine ourselves and work on improving ourselves, and it makes life worth living as we become better, stronger, more compassionate, and wiser. That’s what living is all about, actually.
Oxy et al, it is not possible to understand another person’s pain unless we really get to the bottom of our own. This is a lot of work, and it is a proactive process. At any time, we can choose to go unconscious and just stop looking. Sometimes you have to just be unconscious when you’re overwhelmed. A few weekends ago when my cat died and I got triggered into abandonment and self-esteem issues by my neighbor, it was all I could do to hang on to eat Pepperidge Farm cookies and not kill myself. But once you start on a spiritual path, there is really no turning back, and when you go unconscious, you know it and you can’t stay there for long. So for me, there is really no choice but to confront the demons one at a time when I’m ready to face them.
One of the challenges for me – and I am sharing this in case it can benefit anyone else – is thinking that it’s impossible to fix my problems because the roots are so deep. Or it will take many years and a lot of money to fix. These are just thoughts. The reality is that all I need to do is have a dialog with the part of myself that is repressed and hurting and let that side speak. Like I said it is a proactive process. But in our culture, we are encouraged to always be doing. So it’s “easier” to go to the gym, to talk on an internet forum, to clean the house, etc. How often do we really sit down and DO this kind of inner work? It takes effort and it takes focus and concentration. It’s like a meditation. But it really doesn’t have to be so impossible or hard. That’s just the mind judging – it’s not the reality.
The attitude shift is good. But also, we have to be willing to feel the pain we have inside. It is human nature to do anything to avoid it.
i dont see this person suffering. i see them moving about happily, falling in love while being disloyal, being successful, generally enjoying life, and getting everything that they want while i bear the burden of their mistakes and wrong doings. i dont know how to stop doing that. i believe he CAN they happy, i don’t believe they are a true spath, more so an addict who learned to manipulate and bottle away their feelings about what their means to an end. i see no guilt from this person, no sadness, no anger, no fear.
my spath, well him i truly do pity in a way because he DOES suffer, and i’ve seen it once, in its purest form that he couldn’t hide, i saw the emptiness. Even if a lot of it is an act, he is at least smart enough to know which emotions you are supposed to show in order to fake guilt or remorse, he knows the right script, he knows how to cry on command when a normal person would cry uncontrollably.
the addict, they show no remorse. they are the happiest clam i’ve ever met, and always know without being told when i need to be cheered up and know just how to do it. they smile, laugh and joke, surrounded by friends and family, so well liked and always perceived as so kind that they are able to get away with murder. i am one of very few people who have seen the dark side, and i did not waiver in my friendship or love of them. but i have not seen remorse for their actions, ever. i have only seen him cry over deaths. i feel privileged to know them so deeply. but because i do, i am cast off, i am hidden away. it is devastating and a crushing blow because though they are certainly not perfect, they are my main support system, my main cheerleader, the main believer in me. i do believe in some ways, that they love me so much they do not want to burden me by being with me. but by having them in my life, i have always felt everything will be “ok”. now i am losing that.
and i’m left wondering, was i wrong all along about who is the spath and who is just troubled??
My above post about not being able to turn away for long from my spiritual path made me think about something a meditation teacher said to us 26 years ago when I was on one of my early retreats. He said that doing mindfulness meditation is like putting money in the bank. It’s always there if you need it – it never goes away, even if you don’t do anything with it for years (which was the case with me). This is kind of how I feel. Since I’ve had my first spiritual awakening at 23, it’s been a rough, rocky road, and I’ve gone unconscious for months and maybe even years at a time. But it seems to always be there in the background as an alternative to living in craziness and chaos, a constant influence in my life pulling me to a different level. Without this perspective, I’m sure I would be dead by now.
Greenbean, I have a man like the one you described in my past, too. He was very selfish, but I wouldn’t say he was a spath. And he seems to get everything he wants out of life. Similarly, my rockstar neighbor who just chases after every new thing (woman) like high school is the happiest person. I do believe that they all have their suffering though you can’t see it. There are other kinds of suffering besides emotional suffering. There is a type of spiritual suffering of people who just chase after people/things without the pause for reflection of what they are doing. This is the type of suffering that I believe often takes more than one lifetime to fix.
For you, all you can do is really feel the pain they caused you and look at how it is that you were drawn to someone like that. I believe that when you get to the bottom of it and can pull back your energy and thoughts from them, you will be innoculated from their influence and from the influence of others like them. In other words, they are in your life to teach you something. And the biggest lessons seem to always be the most painful. Ugh.
yes, definitely selfish, very selfish. similar to a spath in the sense that everything they do is for themselves. but not a spath, not entirely uncapable of love or emotions. like a spath though also, his main emotion is anger. and he doesn’t believe he needs help even though he knows he’s not handling things well. i have always been a tool for him, be it financially, emotionally, physically, and so on and so on. i am kept for that, to get him a step closer to whatever he wants. after 5 yrs on and off together, and 10 yrs as inseprable friends, i guess i thought, as did everyone else, that we had a very special relationship. i thought we toughed it out and stuck through the bad times and i thought that meant something. but when i am not good enough, when something is more exciting, i am kept background, holding the secrets the new person would most likely not be willing to accept.
but, i still don’t believe he is a true spath. is certainly sounds very close though.
agreenbean,
I would never, ever have thought my spath was a spath because his mask was so good. Yes, he was selfish and didn’t care about my spiritual needs, but he professed love and devotion. He also was very protective – I didn’t realize that he was causing the “problems” that he had to “rescue” me from.
He had an ego problem, that became clear in the end, but for most of the 25 years, he was VERY careful to show how humble he was. Dressed modestly, drove a geo metro – made me feel bad for being materialistic! The frame control was impressive. And yet, I found out that it was just for me. He didn’t use particular manipulation on his other friends. They were allowed to see MUCH more of his sleazy side. All I got was the saint.
My mother is also good with her mask. I thought she was a saint, but then everybody thinks that. She keeps the same mask on all the time for everyone. Only a few times has it slipped.
In the end, it’s very difficult to know what another person’s motivation is. Is the behavior part of a mask? or is it true? I think the only way to find out is to observe the person when he doesn’t know he is being observed by you. Just the fact that he keeps you compartmentalized tells me that you would be shocked at what you would see.
Greenbean, why have you allowed him to use you as a tool for so many years? Did he suddenly change after 10 years, or was he always selfish like this? If he’s always been like this, then it would be so beneficial for you to look at why/how you let him treat you badly. Maybe you had a hidden agenda that if you loved him so much, he must love you back.
The man I spoke of started behaving selfishly right away. I just accepted him the way he was because I loved him, or so I thought. And though his behaviors got more and more disrespectful, I stayed with him becuase deep down I thought he really loved me. Turned out to be not so.
So I had to look at why I stayed and allowed him to disrespect me. This is MY issue and not his.