Do we ever Forgive and Forget?
We have been told so
many times in our life, in fact I remember since school days we were always
told to forgive and forget. Many times, people say things without any intention
to hurt anyone, people make fun of others, crack jokes at the expense of others
and forget about it. Everybody has a good laugh, even the victim of the joke
laughs along with the rest. But sometimes, the victim of the joke is hurt and
does not forget the joke, it plays on in his subconscious and he keeps on
digging up the perceived hurt. When he does this, he is actually opening up a
mental wound, this can never heal, a physical hurt heals with time but a mental
hurt is re-opened every time you think about it!
I remember my mother
remembered a hurt for more than 40 years and I could see the pain on her face
every time she thought about it. I would tell her to forget about it and she
would look at me crossly and say, “You have found a Guru, I am not you, I can
never forget this!” This would make me feel sad, and I would think how does one
ever forgive if one cannot forget?!?
This question would
continuously bother me, till I realised that one can only truly forgive only if
you totally forget that hurt and surrender it to the Guru-energies. Once you
surrender it, it does not belong to you. After doing this for several of the
hurts which I had undergone, I realised that even if I remembered those
incidents, I wasn’t feeling any remorse or anger or any negative emotion – it is
then that I realised that the only true way to forgive is to surrender all your
bad experiences, hurts, insults and what have you at the Lotus Feet of the
Guru. Once you have surrendered them, let go of them, they are no longer ‘yours’
and you can truly move on in your life without having the baggage of those bad
memories.
If you truly want to
forgive, it is not just giving lip service, you have to exorcise the hurt from
your subconscious, you can only do that by totally, completely, unconditionally
surrendering these bad memories to the Guru-Energies. Try it, I am sure you
will benefit and be happier and more peace with yourself after doing it.
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Shaila