When I taught Political Science at a small liberal arts college, one of my friends was an Ethiopian economist who also taught there. When he has been a young man he had been imprisoned in a concentration camp by the communist Ethiopian government. Its leader, Mengistu, and other political thugs, brutally dominated that country from 1977 to 1991, being responsible for the deaths of thousands, before the regime was finally overthrown.
While in the prison my friend and other inmates were tortured regularly. After the regime fell the situation was reversed. The inmates were freed while many of their former guards were imprisoned.
My friend was close to a man who, if I remember correctly, had become the new Ethiopian Minister of Justice or of the Interior. The Minister asked him if there was anything he could do for him, now that they were both free.
He said he would like to return to the prison and meet his captors and torturers.
The Minister was surprised, but agreed to arrange it.
When my friend returned, and saw his former torturers and jailers behind bars, he spoke with them in a friendly way, and explicitly forgave them for their crimes. He meant it.
He also was able to get hold of police records that gave him the name of the man who had informed on him, leading to his years of imprisonment and torture. He called him up, and asked that they meet. When they did, he asked his former 'friend' why he had informed on him.
The man began to cry and said he believed he had little choice because the regime would have done terrible things to him and his family if he had not given them names. He said he felt he had no choice.
My friend, who describes himself as an atheist, also forgave him.
When he told me this amazing story I told him that despite his being an atheist, he had done one of the most spiritually wise things I had ever heard of anyone doing.
He laughed it off, saying he had done the forgiving for his own benefit. Not to have done so would have retained the poisons of anger, resentment at his betrayal, and worse, in his own heart. He could never have gotten past it. In forgiving his oppressors he had healed himself. And I can attest I have known fewer warmer, more easy-going and good-hearted people in my life.
I have not mentioned his name or given many identifying details because he has never to my knowledge made his story public. I wish he would. His story that would make a wonderful movie or book, and, more importantly, inspire others to learn from what he did.
I wonder whether one of the worst effects of those whose actions harm another is to tie their victims emotionally and energetically to the misdeeds. Hate, anger, and resentment are a kind of psychic virus. They are powerful thought forms, requiring a great deal of effort to hold under control and breeding still more hate, anger, and resentment in others when they are not held under control. Their presence also poisons and distorts our other perceptions and thoughts. Isuspect the only way their victims can free themselves from these powers and move forward with their lives is to forgive.
I suspect the lesson my friend taught me, and I have not fully perfected, we all could practice to our benefit.
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One of the definitions given in my dictionary for "forgive" is "to stop feeling anger or resentment against".
My Pagan tradition specifically teaches "instant forgiveness" as a core discipline, a go-to stance when we are faced with situations which arouse extreme hate, rage, or fear. This is not a fluffbunny sweetness-and-light thing, but a pragmatic way of surviving emotional and/or physical battle intact. It's about not letting others rule our emotions. It's about not being guided in our actions by hate, rage, or fear.
It''s a personal practice, and need not even be expressed to the person who has harmed us or is trying to harm us.
It does not involve allowing the person another chance to harm us, or shielding them from the consequences of causing harm.
It can be done while fighting fiercely against attack, and allows us to fight more effectively.
If someone were to cut me, I would seek medical attention to treat the wound so as to minimize scarring or disablement, to keep my physical identity. I would also use the spiritual disciplines of my tradition to treat the emotional wounds to minimize scarring or disablement, to keep my spiritual identity. To become ridden by hate, rage, or fear is scarring or disablement. In the short term, letting them guide us often leads to stupid, self-destructive actions. In the long run, they will suck the joy out of our lives.
The balance I personally keep between (hate, rage, and fear), and (love, compassion, and courage), is a major part of my name, my personal emotional and spiritual identity. I seek to find and keep a balance which allows me the best chances of creating and keeping celebration and joy in my life. Allowing others to set that balance, or change it, would be a surrender of one of my most basic freedoms.
In a fight, if we allow others to control our motions, they will probably win. If we allow them to control our emotions, we are giving them as great an advantage over us.
In this culture, where social/verbal/emotional struggle is far more common than physical combat, winning emotional struggle and healing from its effects are essential skills. The spiritual sociopaths, the verbal bullies, bad bosses, and other people who go about wounding others emotionally often get their feelings of empowerment by generating anger, fear, and resentment in others.
Refusing to allow others to generate these emotions, or grounding them if they get generated, are learnable practices. They are a good defense , and a way of healing from the wounds such attacks generate. This is not nicey-nice b.s., it is simple tools and techniques for emotional and spiritual survival, so we can be who we want to be rather than who or what others decide to make us be.
In the end, it comes down to whether I define and practice my own form of sanity, or allow myself to become infected or affllicted with the psychoses of others.
Besides, in a world in which terrorists do imponderable acts of psychotic cruelty and billions are spent by media propaganda engines for the purpose of controlling my emotions, it's fun to flip them all off and set my own emotional and spiritual agenda.
Thermal
It's been amazing reading everyone's thoughts on this. I can relate most with Cassaundra and LadyHawke and the way they view the issue.
To me, forgiving someone means *completely* forgiving them - like the incident never even occurred.
I've considered what some people have mentioned that to forgive someone is to "free yourself", but I can't get my head around that. We weren't born to be anyone's doormat, and I don't feel constrained by recognizing that someone inflicted an intentional wrong that I won't pardon. It may not be all New Age-y but as a friend once pointed out, "Not all Witches crap rainbows". I suppose I'm one of those.
But I appreciate everyone's input.
And then there is the effect of forgiveness on the Forgiver.
Some of us have it programmed in from childhood that "forgiveness" is a transaction between the Victim and the Aggressor. The Aggressor says "sorry" (whether true or not), and the Victim says "forgiven" (whether true or not), and now, forms satisfied, we go on.
But for many of us, the Aggressor is no longer in the picture. The person I was most likely to "never forgive" lived far away from me for more than 30 years. We had very few "former friends" in common, and no current ones.
What effect does my Unforgiving have on this Aggressor? Does the Aggressor even know?
But what effect does my Unforgiving have on Me? I know. I hold onto my anger, my self-righteous insistence that the Aggressor "shouldn't" have done that. My anger binds me to my stance as the Victim in the situation. Every time I think of the person or the situation I am Victimized in my mind once again.
So, from my perspective, the Aggressor doesn't need (or even receive) my forgiveness -- it's not about the Other, it's about Me.
So: I forgive myself for judging myself as bad and wrong, stupid and vulnerable, too trusting, too needy ... when the truth is that at 17 I'd never met anyone like that and didn't know how to set good boundaries.
And this simple statement, made with feeling (and sometimes at length), frees Me. It probably would do nothing for the Aggressor even if the Aggressor ever knew about it. But it liberates Me from the crushing load of my continuing self-judgment about being stupid, needy, trusting ...
A daily practice of reviewing the day and forgiving whatever I've done or thought against myself in this way has deeply reduced my level of anxiety and brought me considerable peace. I heartily recommend it.
And now I think I'll do today's, so far:
I forgive myself for judging myself as lazy because I went back to sleep.
I forgive myself for judging myself as insensitive because I wanted to finish reading my e-mail before engaging in my mate's political conversation.
I forgive myself for judging myself as lazy and incompetent because my do-list, after four days away, looks longer than this week ... when the truth is that as I focus my attention and attend to the next steps of each item, real progress will occur.
I forgive myself for judging my fellow bloggers, too, as having too much to say for me to read it all.
Love and light and lots of laughter
--Maggie
Here's an issue I'm curious if other Pagan parents share: a lack of support from the Pagan community for people with families. I just get the sense from my own experienced from the Pagan community that people don't have anything hostile to say about families, but I get a sense amongst many that there's very little support for families to attend festivals with childcare options, workshops for children, and general support for Pagan families.
Where I live, once we became parents, it pretty much eliminated our ability to go to Pagan festivals. Perhaps this is only a problem with my area and my family, but I wonder if anyone shares these problems or if not, why not. Mainly, I wonder if there are Pagan communities that do offer more support than mine in Central Ohio.
I'm not sure what your family situation is Gus, but would appreciate your perspective. If my experience is common, I think this is a failing of the Pagan community, where other traditions often do provide such help.
Gus, can you delete my last post, it should have gone to the Open Thread. My apologies.
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