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THE BENEFITS OF FORGIVENESS
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
If you truly practice forgiveness, forgive yourself and forgive other people, you would feel freed; you would feel as if a heavy weight has been lifted from your head and you walk effortlessly, like some one is pushing you along a park walkway on a cool summer evening. You would smile a lot more and would be happy and peaceful. Your body would be calm.
Since forgiveness means removing the veil over love, you would feel in love with your true self and with other people’s real selves. Other people would feel that you love them and love you in return.
NON JUDGMENT
If you do not judge people as either good or bad and simply accept them, as they are, they would feel their existence affirmed by you.
Judgment means that you want people to change and become as you want them to be before you accept them. To judge is to play God, for now it is up to you to decide what people ought to be before you accept them.
To not judge is to be humble and accept that you did not create you and other people and that it is not up to you to decide what you and other persons ought to be.
If you do not judge you and other people, which is the same thing as saying that you forgive what all people did to you, people would feel happy and peaceful around you. They sense your unconditional positive acceptance of them and relax and do not try to become what you want them to become before you accept them. They would feel united with you. Some of the people would go out of their way to help you. Thus, life becomes smooth for you.
OVERLOOKING ERRORS AND MISTAKES
Forgiveness means overlooking your own errors and overlooking other people’s errors. As it is, each of us is unforgiving towards himself. For example, I had not forgiven myself for been physically weak and not strong enough to participate in secondary school sports. I hated my weak body because it could not help me compete at sports. When I forgave my weakness, that is, when I accepted it, I felt more at peace with my body. Actually, my weak body serves a function for me; it enables me to not effectively adapt to the physical world, to fail and in failing redirect my mind to reading and thinking about what matters most in life, love.
LOVE IS NOT EARNED
Love is not earned for love is part of our heritage. Our true nature is love. God is love and his children are love. In our true essence we are one continuous love. That love is always there; we always live in love (love is the same as union, heaven and God), but we mask it with separation and hate (and see the empirical world). When we remove the veil (separation) over the presence of love/union we experience love/union and its attendant peace and happiness.
GRIEVANCES
Bearing grievances is a way to avoid love. If you truly understand what is going on you would know that every person you meet, both those who do good or bad to you are your friends and are quickening your journey to salvation. (Those doing it for you do not, at the conscious level, know that that is what they are doing, just as you do not know what they are doing, either.)
Both those who help you and those who hinder you are your friends for both are equal in enabling you to know that you are unified spirit.
If you forgive those who hinder you and feel one with them they have hastened your journey to union; similarly, if you love those who help you, you are unifying with them hence returning to the awareness of our eternal union.
Even the crazy persons (such as the Igbos) I met on the Internet were doing me a service; they offered me their crazy personalities to study and in studying them come to see how sick they are and from their sickness learned about may own masked sickness, for they are me projected out.
GRATITUDE
What this means is that one must have gratitude for every person, for those who help one and those who hinder one, for both are enabling one to reach salvation (union with all). Those who helped you, as the egos world understand help to be, and those who did not help you, as the egos world understand not helping you to be, are doing you the same service; they are giving you the opportunity to forgive them, to overlook their egos and bodies and in so doing experience union with them (and become enlightened to the light that you are).
I bear grievances against me (for been weak and a failure at sports), grievances against other people for not helping me and against God for not helping me. This bearing of grievances causes me a lot of pain and suffering.
Grievances separate the individual from those he bears grievances against; forgiveness unites the individual with those he forgives.
One must let go of grievances and be grateful to all people and to God.
ALL MENTAL AND PERSONALITY DISORDERS ARE HEALED BY FORGIVENESS
All mental illnesses are caused by separation from love (God, union, heaven, and other people). The mentally ill person and the personality disordered person feel separated from other people and from the rest of the universe hence feel alone. Whatever maintains separation keeps mental illness going. Feeling grievance keeps mental illnesses going.
All mentally ill people bear grievances against other people and seek revenge and vengeance against them; they want to punish those they feel caused them pain.
(The other day, I watch an A&E TV program, an interview of a prison inmate who had murdered over 200 people. He is called the ICEMAN. He talked about how his father abused him and how his mother was cold and not loving. In his view, he was hurt by his parents and that made him want to hurt other people. His antisocial personality, he believes, is rooted in his anger at those who hurt him and or those who did not help him. Clearly the man has a personality disorder, a mental disorder, and as in all such cases there is bearing of grievances against the world that hurt one and desire to get back at it. Such persons need to forgive other people the wrong done to them. When they forgive they feel at peace with the world and feel happy. Forgiveness is a gift one gives to ones self and to other people.)
If you feel that people hurt you, you feel angry at them and want to hurt them back or avoid them.
Avoidance behavior (as in avoidant personality disorder) is based on a sense of been hurt by people, been rejected by them because one is not good enough for them to accept and like. The avoidant personality is angry at people otherwise he would not avoid them.
All personality disorders are caused by separation from people based on anger on people for hurting one.
What heals mental illness is what closes the gap between the individual and other people. Forgiveness overlooks what people did to hurt one and in doing so removes the veil of separation between one and other people and returns one to the awareness of love/union, love which is always there but masked by anger, hate and grievances (separation).
When you forgive people you have managed your anger and fear, and returned to union hence healed your personality disorder.
Schizophrenia, mania, paranoia, depression, anxiety and all mental disorders are caused by separation and bearing grievances against other people for what they did to hurt one. If one forgives other people one feels at one with them and is healed of ones separation and is healed of ones mental illness. (Clearly, Western psychotherapeutic approach to mental disorders does not work. It does not work because the West does not understand what causes mental illness. It is separation from union, aka God, which causes mental illness. It is return to union that heals all mental illness. See my book, Real Self Psychology.)
Forgiveness brings one to love, union, hence heals all mental illnesses (which are based on separation and grievances).
FORGIVENESS IS TRUE ANGER MANAGEMENT
If you have anger problem, forgiveness is what heals your anger. Your anger is predicated on your belief that other people did something wrong to you (did not love you, hurt you, ignored you, abandoned you etc).
Anger management courses may reduce your anger but will not heal it; what heals anger is forgiveness. This does not mean that you should not take anger management courses; by all means take them. It helps to learn when your body is feeling aroused/angry and to know what to do to reverse it, such as count to twenty, walk away, take a deep breathe, do not talk or do anything when angry, wait until you are calm before you talk to the person you believe made you angry, visualize beautiful sceneries when you are angry, go exercise when you are angry etc. In addition to these anger management techniques, forgiveness is what eliminates your tendency to temper tantrums.
Forgiveness is what heals anxiety aka fear. Fear is based on separation and belief that others are separated from you and can hurt one. Clearly, other people could hurt one physically. However, other people cannot destroy ones spirit because spirit is eternal. Knowledge of the immortality of spirit enables one to forgive those who can destroy ones body but cannot touch ones eternal spirit. This is what Jesus did: he knew that people could destroy his body but could not destroy his spirit so he forgave those who crucified his body (and liberated him from the egos prison and made him reborn in Christ, in our holy self, our unified self).
Forgiveness brings one to the awareness of eternity hence one cannot feel anger and or fear.
FORGIVENESS RELAXES THE BODY AND REDUCES HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
If you have ever been angry you know how you felt: your heart pounding furiously, your lungs beating fast, sugar released into your blood stream, blood flowing rapidly to your muscles, your nervous system working very fast and your feeling hot and feeling the urge to attack the person who made you angry.
Anger is rooted in your perception that somebody did something wrong to you, something that he should not have done to you. You felt hurt and want to get back, get even; you seek revenge. You nurse grievance and grudges. If you could you would beat up the person who wronged you, if not, you plan how to get even, how to kill the son of a bitch.
All these angry feelings make your body excited, aroused, stimulated and hot; that is, raises your blood pressure and also make you unhappy. Anger kills people through high blood pressure (and its contribution to cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attack, stroke etc).
Forgiveness calms down your body. Forgiveness reduces your blood pressure. Forgiveness prolongs your life. Forgiveness improves your physical as well as your psychological health. Forgiveness saves your life.
If you want to live a long and happy life, forgiveness contributes to those. Anger kills you; forgives saves you.
CONCLUSION
Forgiveness closes the space between the individual and other individuals and in doing so ends separation between them.
Separation is insanity. It is insane because it does not exist in reality but if believed to exist it seems to exist for one. That which is not real but seems real is delusional disorder, a psychosis.
When separation is given up via forgiveness, the gap closed, the individual is no longer insane.
Forgiveness heals all mental and personality disorders. Forgiveness removes the mask of separation and makes one feel joined, connected, associated and united with those one forgave.
In feeling unified with people one returns to the awareness of our natural unified state.
Forgiveness brings us to the gate of heaven (close to union/love/God) where we feel attenuated peace and happiness. When finally we give up all wish for separation, for having an ego and stop defending the ego self our egos disappear and we become aware of our always unified spirit self, aka the Christ, the self that is one with all selves and one with the God self.
*These points have been elaborated on in my more detailed writings, such as Real Self Psychology, and Living from the Real Self (LRS).
Cheers,
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
May 19, 2007
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Posted by Robot| 20.05.2007 09:03