— So you say you forgave him?
— Yes, I forgave him. Why would I carry the weight of heavy grudges.
— And even that he…
— I forgave him!! Let him be happy. No grudges.
— You know, he broke up with her recently,
He’s suffering, even drinking a lot…
— Ah! There is justice in the world!
Let him find out what it’s like for me to be alone!
— But you said you forgave him…
— I did?
(Marina Alexandrova)
So, did you recognize yourself? Admit it to yourself. You know you need to forgive, that you shouldn’t carry grudges with you, but…
There’s this huge BUT… It doesn’t work!!
Sometimes you’re sure you’ve forgiven, let go of the past, you’re already on the thirty-third stage of your life after that grudge, and it seems like that’s it.
But someone tells you how amazingly well everything is going for the person who wronged you, and a little voice quietly squeaks inside: “well yeah.. let them, but it’s not fair somehow… or they outdid me here too, what kind of a fool am I”…
Why it’s so hard to let go of a grudge
If it’s so hard for us to let go of a grudge, then we must need it for some reason.
Why?
It’s beneficial to be offended
You can use it to explain your current situation: especially if “they hurt me when I was so defenseless as a child.”
Now I can’t cope with my beliefs and attitudes, or maybe traumas.
You can use it to explain why you don’t do certain things – “well, I got burned, you try it yourself.”
See also: 5 reasons why you have lost your wholeness
You crave justice
Justice implies that something is deserved or undeserved, something is good, and something is bad. In other words, there is a judgment.
Judgment is always comparison. Even the highest grade “excellent” implies, at its very root, a distinction from someone or something.
Justice is a powerful thing because it is instilled in childhood.
There’s a big mess in our heads about this because words and actions regarding justice often don’t align, starting from our parents all the way up to our bosses.
But it is precisely the concept of justice that allows us to be offended and even justify our not-so-best behavior. We allow ourselves to do the very thing we were offended about.
For example, an offended person calmly discusses “that jerk who dared to throw all that dirt on me,” behaving little differently from that same “jerk” in that moment.
But we allow ourselves this because it’s directed at the offender.
See also: Betrayal Trauma. How to restore emotional balance if you feel you have been betrayed
Every grudge is unique
The uniqueness of a grudge is the biggest pitfall.
Even very spiritual people constantly claim uniqueness. But not the uniqueness that would finally teach you NOT TO COMPARE, that I AM THIS WAY and a priori cannot be like others!
But the uniqueness of the experience. So many recipes and methods for forgiveness have been written here, and there are always those who write about their SPECIAL pain and grudge.
“Easy for you to say, you haven’t been through that.”
And it often happens just like in the parable about choosing “Your Own Cross,” where a man begged that his cross was too heavy and he was invited to heaven to pick any other one.
He chose the smallest one and walked off, hearing the angels laughing behind him: “you picked your own.”
See also: How resentment and anger are dangerous from the perspective of the universe’s laws
The forgiveness algorithm for resentment
1. Acknowledge the resentment
Realizing that the resentment is there: sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes old stuff suddenly surfaces.
It’s tracked by your personal reaction to information about old offenders (see the epigraph).
2. Release the anger
Anger, the desire for justice — this needs to be released.
Acknowledge and allow yourself to be a jerk too for a moment, wishing all the worst on the offender.
The “little stone” technique helps a lot here. Find a stone (the image of the offender), go far away from people, say or even shout everything-everything to this stone, and throw it far away, preferably into a body of water.
3. Understand that everything passes
Understand that everything passes… well, absolutely everything passes!
Go to a cemetery and see for yourself that everything passes. This reduces the significance of any problem, calms emotions, and increases awareness.
The resentment is no longer something that eats you up from the inside and sometimes even freezes your brain, but simply a task that needs to be solved… preferably before the cemetery.
4. Look for the treasure
Understand that in any painful situation, there is a Pearl of wisdom.
And YOU, specifically you, needed this. It wasn’t that jerk who ruined your life, but you, for some reason, “asked” them to teach you something.
What helps me is writing what I call an I-statement flip: Write down all your grievances without restraint or choosing words.
“He doesn’t love me. He’s tormenting me! How could he say such a thing!” and immediately rewrite it, replacing “He” with “I.”
“I don’t love myself, I torment myself…”. This way you can see what the lesson is.
5. Acknowledge but release the resentment toward yourself
Here comes the most unpleasant thing – blaming yourself for allowing SUCH a thing into your life, for attracting the situation…
That is, resentment toward your dear self, which means a lack of self-love, which is already sad. Forgiving yourself is the hardest thing because there’s no one else to shift the responsibility onto.
Right here, remember your uniqueness (not the uniqueness of the situation), your irreplaceable experience and path on this planet, and by any means, bring back love for yourself.
Accept yourself, everything you’ve done. No self-flagellation. So you messed up, let it all burn with a blue flame – maybe it’ll get warmer.
6. Write a forgiveness letter
This works well when a memory suddenly floods in. Grab a sheet and pen and write:
- I am very sorry that …
- forgive me for …
- I thank you …
- I love you.
- I forgive myself!
- I accept myself!
- I approve of myself!
- I release myself!
- I love myself!
If needed, we shout out what’s written with all the overwhelming emotions. Even 50 times!
7. Let go of the concept of fairness on ANY level
We avoid the mistake of expecting fairness.
Even if we understand everything and honestly try to forgive the offender, deep down we still hope for fairness — not just on the level of the simple 3D world, but on a spiritual one.
Like, I’m already on a higher level, a mage and a wizard, while they’re still floundering in the 3D world, and even if everything on the surface is fine for them, I know that it will all come back to them energetically…
Funny?.. but it’s true. Admit it.
Better yet, thank the one who offended you — their soul had to show itself in a less-than-flattering light in order to teach you.
8. Forgiving an offense as a vital necessity, even without intellectual understanding
Try to imagine that an offense is a knife wound… not in the heart, maybe, but in the palm of your hand.
The wound bleeds and hurts. The knife inflicted it.
And instead of taking action to stop the bleeding and treat the wound, you turn your anger on the knife. Even after throwing it in the trash, you keep remembering and regretting that you didn’t toss it into a smelting furnace.
With every memory, the wound bleeds again.
So, what now? Are we going to bleed out and keep convincing ourselves that we have the right to do so and go on about fairness?
You have a blockage in your energy flow — it needs to be fixed and restored, while the knife never understood why it got so much blame — it was just doing its job, after all.
By the way, it’s not a bad idea to actually designate some knife (or pin, etc.) as the image of your offense and throw it away.
So to speak, “say goodbye and farewell.” Forgiveness has taken place.
P.S. Forgiveness..
I forgive you, him, someone. But on what basis?
Is this person worse than you, and you are more “divine” than them, that you get to forgive?..
If you forgive someone a monetary debt, you release them from their obligations to you.
That seems clear. So by forgiving, we release from obligations.
WHAT obligations? Who has obligations? The Universe, which was “unfair”? The person who was obligated?
Obligated by whom, who decided they were obligated? … If you look at it from this angle, we don’t even have the right to be offended and to forgive.