Forgiveness

Mark Twain once said, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”  Forgiveness is an essential to part of life, it maintains the integrity of relationships and allows us to move forward in life without trailing behind us a dark shadow of negative past experience.  I think of Eryka Badhu in her song ‘Bag Lady’ where she cleverly rhymes, “you gone’ break your back, draggin’ all them bags like that.”  Anyone who has been seriously offended in life, and that’s most of us, knows the burden of weight bereavement can yield.  Memories tickle our dreams and cast a heavy weight in our heart.  The question is who suffers?  The answer: we do.  Our relationship to past events has a direct impact on our psychological and spiritual wellness.  Perhaps the offender is someone else, or maybe it’s ourselves. Either way, our capacity to hold on to negative memories impacts our wellbeing.   So, what to do?  There is powerful insight carried in the teachings of the Buddha and mindfulness meditation, which garners us the power to re-perceive our memories with attitudes of kindness and acceptance.  While we may not be able to forget, we can drastically alter the way in which we remember, therefore rendering a gentler effect on our mind and body.

Forgiveness is an important component to our relationship with self and with others.  Could you imagine what life would be like if you held on to every bit of angst you ever felt towards yourself or others?  Meditation offers us the tools to discern our experiences in a new light and change the wiring of our nervous system which is linked to memory. Shapiro (2009) defines mindfulness as the awareness that arises out of intentionally attending in an open and discerning way to whatever is arising in the present moment.  Meditation provides an avenue in which to change the way one perceives autobiographical memories and the emotions connected to those memories. As a clinical trial published in Journal of American College Health showed, meditation lowered stress and supported attitudes of forgiveness among college students who participated in several week long meditation practices (Oman, Shapiro, Thoresen, Plante, Flanders, 2008). 

Mindfulness exercises are often guided meditations in which one attends to thoughts, memories and cognitions in open, kind and discerning regards (Shapiro, 2009). Often times subjects are able to come to greater understanding and realize different perspectives for causation of events.  When working with forgiveness we can begin by sending kindness to ourselves and others, and setting an intention of loosening our grip on harmful memories. Mindfulness training has been proven to reduce over general memories and increase autobiographical memory specificity (Heeren, Van Broeck, Philippot, 2009).  This helps to loosen the strings of emotional reactivity and cultivate a new relationship to experience.  Mindfulness allows us to change the emotional charge associated with painful memories.

When one is able to make precise discernments about the facts of an event and become consciously aware of their reactivity, it provides the opportunity to change the emotional relationship to memories, or as Ms. Badhu might say, put down the “Bags lady…let it go, let it go, let it go..”.    When we come from a place of truth and kindness for ourselves and others e are able to remember the life inside of ourselves and let go of our tight grip of the past.  This promotes our wellness and allows for better relationships with others.  What a gift!

References

Alexandre, H., Van Broeck, N., Philippot, P. (2009). The effects of mindfulness on executive       processes and autobiographical memory specificity. Behavior Research and Therapy.        47(5). P.403-409. Doi: 101016

Luskin, F.  (2009).  The Stanford forgiveness project. [Podcast] Available at:             http://www.fetzer.org/resources/resource-detail/?resource_id=1000114

LaVeist, T. (2005).Minority populations and health. (223-241). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Plante, T.Flinders, T., Oman, D.,Shapiro, S., Thoresen,  C.(2008). Meditation lowers stress and     supports forgiveness among college students: A randomized controlled trial. 

            Journal of American college health. 56(5)p. 569. Doi: 1464309731

Shapiro, S. (2009). The integration of mindfulness and psychology.

Siegel, D.  (2010). Complexity Choir; The eight domains of self integration.  Psychotherapy          networker. 34(1). Doi: 1935243211

            Journal of Clinical Psychology. 65(6) doi: 10100220602