Forgiveness vs. Resentments
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya
Q: Sometimes when I think I have forgiven someone, a year or two later something happens and I still feel anger or resentment. Did I do something wrong? How can I completely forgive someone so I am free?
A: There are a few facets to this complex issue. We experience the world 3 ways, physically, psychologically and spiritually.
The Visceral (Physical) Experience
Physically, neurons create a memory and record it in our brain. Whenever a significantly painful memory is recalled there is a “trigger” that releases a particular cocktail of chemicals into our system. Some of these cocktails can be like rocket fuel, adrenaline, enabling us to escape a hostile situation. Other chemical cocktails can be like turning off a switch to hope or joy, leaving us in depression. The effects can quickly change our blood pressure and heart rate. Trauma creates chaos and blitzes the brain. The frontal lobes become unable to process or access the scary stuff and the amygdala (emotional center) takes over.
Ego’s Filing System (Psychological)
The psyche (ego) seems to behave as a simple-minded clerk that instantly “judges” all information in a fraction of a second, not always accurately either. It classifies information into a very simple filing system like: good, bad, safe, not safe, ok, etc. The psyche/ego is fear-based because its function is survival. Therefore, it is wired to be on the lookout for anything that appears threatening. It sometimes overreacts and wrongly judges that its survival is being threatened. It strives to keep us safely in the middle of the herd and in its good graces.
Finding Healing and Freedom (Spiritual)
Perhaps it is naïve to think that we can simply forget about a painful event from our past when we forgive someone associated with it, especially if it was traumatic. For example, the thought of a person we forgave years ago, can become the trigger that launches the same chemical cocktail we experienced at the time of the event. We forgave them with our frontal lobes, our cognitive reason, which has nothing to do with where the painful memories are stored. Those memories will always have a powerful chemical charge to them unless we go right into the memory and sit with it. “If you want to disappear something, be with it.” That’s the advice of David Hawkins MD, PhD who ran the largest psychiatric practice in the US. If we can go into that experience and allow it to trigger all the chemicals associated with it until we discharge all of the old neuronal energy tied to that memory, then we may be free of being triggered. Remember, this is just an old thought by now. The actual event could be a month, or even 60 years ago! Either way, it is ancient history. (However, if you are currently living in a dangerous situation, seek help.)
If we identify ourselves as the experiencer, we are more vulnerable to these chemical-induced emotions. If however, we identify ourselves as spirit then we are less likely to get stuck as the actor on the stage. We can then witness or observe the play from the balcony, no longer susceptible to amygdala hijack from the event.
The spiritual journey is the “dis-identification” with the animal, ego “self” and the shifting to identifying ourselves as “Self” or Spirit. We cannot identify as Spirit by avoiding the trauma. That is called spiritual bypassing. Folks that do this tend to come across as holier than thou. Their junk has not been dealt with and there it remains as their shadow blames folks all around them.
Be courageous, dive into the junk. Sit with it until the sting (and the stink) is gone. When it’s gone, forgiveness can be euphoric, experienced as a tremendous letting go of a heavy burden.
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