Unforgiveness or Forgiveness

What do you have the tendency to hold inside, a state of unforgiveness or forgiveness?

What if someone assaulted you either physically, verbally or emotionally? What if someone you trusted betrayed you? What if someone stole something that belonged to you or otherwise wronged you in some way? What do you do?

Unforgiveness or forgiveness? Which side of the bars are you on?

Forgive them

The idea of forgiving someone for doing something to hurt us, our feelings, or otherwise negatively impact our lives sounds ludicrous. We have been programmed to do anything but forgive. When we have been wronged, we want revenge or justice, and we want it now. Not dissimilar to Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen asserting, “Off with is head!”

We get all righteous and indignant insisting that our basic moral code reads, “An eye for an eye,” indicating that retaliation is warranted and honorable.

When you have suffered an injustice you have one of two things you can do, either harbor unforgiveness, or to embrace the idea of forgiveness and let it go.

The idea of forgiveness is crazy-making for most of us, because retribution seems much more satisfying. If someone does something to harm someone else, they must be severely punished. It is this positioning that has our prisons filled to maximum capacity.

As we pass more and more laws to penalize more and more Americans the rate of incarceration increases exponentially. In fact, is we keep creating new laws and arresting more and more wrongdoers, in the next three decades you will either be imprisoned or work for the judicial system.

And where does all this incarceration get us? It fills us with negative emotions, keeps us in a virtual state of fear and causes us to harbor hatred. Think about how much you hold onto negative emotions about being victimized by someone else. You can hold a grudge for a lifetime, and feel as though it’s warranted and justified.

What does holding fast to these negative emotions do to you? It causes you to spin a whirlpool of negative emotions, causing premature aging and deterioration of all of you; your mind, body and soul.

What good is it to seek revenge, when you could just let it go and live a better, happier life? You could let someone’s negative words of deeds overpower you and cause you to wither away and ultimately put you in an early grave, or live a better life, you best life and make the world a better place. How? By

Forgiving

Many people would state, “I cannot forgive,” him or her because what he or she, “did was unforgiveable.”

What you fail to understand is every moment you hold tight to your lack of forgiveness, you bolster the very thing that hurt you or caused you harm, and you allow someone else (the person who committed the action against you) to have power over you. Every minute you ruminate about this person or what they did to disrespect or otherwise harm you, you reward them with control over you. How much more power does this individual need to have over you?

We take it personal because we feel someone has done something to us, when in fact the thing that happened to you to hurt you or your feelings actually had little or nothing to do with you. You were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time because if it didn’t happen to you, it would have happened to someone else.

If you think about it, God selected you to be the recipient of the wrongdoing because you could handle it (‘ere the phrase, “God will not give you anything you can’t handle). Which implies, Yes. God thinks you are a superhero because no one else was uniquely qualified to deal with this injustice.

Unforgiveness is your own prison. Your only hope for escape is to enact your prison break with forgiveness.

Remember, forgiveness is not for the wrongdoer. Forgiveness is for you. Forgiveness does not condone any sin against you, it simply releases you from your prison, allowing karma, God, the local jurisdictions, state or federal agencies to deal with the offender in any what they choose.

If you’ve forgiven, you walk away, retaining the education you received from this incident or circumstance as you keep moving forward. You needn’t forget the incident, but you must find a way to forgive in such a manner as to be able to think or talk about the event without experiencing any emotional distress.

After all, the best revenge is to live a successful life filled with happiness and abundance in spite of any transgression that has visited you.

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