“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them” ~ Albert Einstein
Those who embrace the path of forgiveness are not "better" or somehow more special than others, they're not even smarter. Intelligence has nothing to do with enlightenment. Freeing the self from suffering is dependent only upon the willingness to learn how not to suffer. Those who are on the path of unconditional forgiveness perhaps only differ in that they have reached the limits of their tolerance for their own suffering and have decided there must be another way to be in this world. Even if they're not clear on what that way is, they're open to it because they've realized that their way of being up until this point has not brought them the peace or happiness they desire. Their belief in the value of their past learning about life has diminished enough for them to be open to an alternative although they are still unsure what that alternative could be. But while the tolerance for pain is high it is not endless and the true seeker of peace will eventually reach the point where they are willing to exchange all of their past learning, their cherished and fiercely protected hurts and grievances against the world, their long held conflicted and conflicting ideas about who and what they are, for a fundamental peace of mind and lasting freedom from pain. They are willing to be shown. They eventually ask themselves the question "Would I rather be right or be happy?" and finally answer "I choose to be happy".
Even if others have appeared to wrong you it is not their actions that are causing your pain. Your internal response to the external world is the ONLY thing that dictates and defines your experience of yourself and others and is the ONLY thing you truly have control over. What happens is not the same thing as what we experience. What happens we cannot control. What we experience is always our decision and is always a direct consequence of how we have already decided we want to experience ourselves, of how we want to SEE ourselves. We selectively perceive and interpret events so that people will always play the role in our minds that we have assigned to them that justifies upholding the story we want to tell ourselves about ourselves. But we always have a choice in the purpose we give to the people and events of our lives and in the script we choose to experience. We can use them to teach us how to suffer and thereby reinforce our own existing pain or we can use them to learn how to love, to forgive and thus free and heal ourselves. It is our stubborn insistence that we cannot be free of anger, conflict and pain in the present until the world gives us the compensation for the wrongs of the past and acknowledgement of our "rightness" that we believe is so dearly owed to us that keeps us stuck in the need to suffer. If you are not at peace in any way this is the choice you have made, are still making. It's how we say "You have done this to me and so it is your fault that I suffer", "YOU must change in order for me to be at peace", "It's not my fault I'm like this", "My pain is your fault and not my responsibility."
But it IS your responsibility, it is a choice you are making, every day. No-one else can make you hold onto pain, stop you learning to be at peace if peace is what you truly want. What happened in the past may be have been painful but it's not happening now and yet you still hurt. Why are you still holding onto it? It's over and gone. You are keeping it here and now because as long as you need someone else to be wrong and guilty, to remain unforgiven, then you need pain, you must continue to suffer, to make the present an ongoing testament to your past pain because that pain is the proof that upholds the validity of your case against them. If you were to forgive and no longer be in pain then there would be no blame to be assigned, no guilt to be projected, no "wrong" to be righted because the decision to forgive fundamentally says my experience of you has not robbed me of the peace, love and joy that I deserve and so you owe me nothing. If you forgave you couldn't play out the script that you fundamentally believes makes you YOU. This is the cause of our basic resistance to simple forgiveness. It's the root of our unconscious and powerful investment in suffering. This self is the only self you know, for who would you be without your pain, without your stories of long gone but not forgotten injustices and unfairness? We are fundamentally afraid of letting go of this painful idea of what and who we are because even though it doesn't make us happy, it's all we know and so we hold onto it stubbornly. But the blame for the pain it causes has to go somewhere and so we project the responsibility for this inner conflict onto the world around us. We look for the cause anywhere but within the self. Not looking at it directly is how we protect it, keep it.
We replay our past hurts and the injustices of the world in our minds, turning them over and over like coveted gems that must constantly be buffed to reveal our pain and misery and the faces of those we accuse reflected and made real in every facet. The secret thought they represent is "you may have robbed me, abused me, neglected me, wronged me, but at least I have my rightness. I am not the guilty one". This is why we are so invested in being right and in others being wrong. This thought is a treasure that we fiercely guard and yet it is a poor substitute for the riches that we truly deserve, that our soul truly yearns for. To hold onto these dim stones leaves no space within the self for the shining richness of joy, peace and a mind that is truly free.
And so the choice for forgiveness is, above all, a fundamentally practical decision. Through a willingness to look honestly at their own investment in holding onto pain as a means to punish or hold others accountable and a genuine desire to learn how to escape from suffering, those learning to forgive have begun to understand that while forgiveness may not satisfy the ego and its need to be right, it is the only thing that will truly liberate and heal the self. And so they are learning that they are not their painful ego self but that it is simply a painful thought about themselves that they mistakenly identified with as being themselves. They are learning that forgiveness is the only way to permanently release the ego blocks of anger, judgment and condemnation which obscure and dim the experience of love, joy and peace within the mind, that cause us to feel separate and unloved by others. Their practice and the experiences it creates are teaching them that to forgive and to love just feels better than to judge and to hold grievances. They are happily learning that only when identified with the ego does the world seem painful, upsetting and separate from us and that forgiveness is the choice to see that when we look beyond our ego selves there is no difference between our own needs and the needs of others, there is no need for one to suffer for another to be guilty. We ALL need release from suffering. This is why to forgive is essentially a self serving activity. The beauty of it is that is serves EVERY self. To forgive frees everyone in your mind, including you.
