What is forgiveness?

Forgiveness; that is dissolving resentment and embodying complete forgiveness; is one of the greatest gifts you will ever give to yourself. I first began to learn what forgiveness was and how to make use of this wonderful gift through readings of Louise. L. Hay, where she writes "When you blame another, you give away your own power, because you are placing the responsibility for your feelings on someone else." 

When you are finding it impossible to imagine forgiving another, it is important to remember that as human beings we are always operating out of one of two states, that is either from love or from fear. If you think of the hurtful action which another has caused you, remove your ego's need and desire to feel like the victim and instead step imaginatively into the shoes of that other person and their feelings. Remove the need to be separate and really feel what it must feel like to act in that way. What would cause someone to act in this way? Not only most often, but always you will find that someone acting with hurtful behavior is doing so from a place of fear. This understanding has helped me to heal and detach from situations which might otherwise have caused great distress and heart ache and I urge you to lovingly remind yourself of this the next time you feel hurt or frustrated.

The science of forgiveness :

Unforgiveness, by contrast, seems to be a negative emotional state where an offended person maintains feelings of resentment, hostility, anger, and hatred toward the person who offended him.

Emitting a negative charge shouldn’t need much more explanation than that.

People can deal with injustices in many ways. They don’t have to decide to forgive, and they don’t necessarily need to change their emotions. But if they don’t change their response in some way, unforgiveness can take its toll on physical, mental, relational, and even spiritual health. By contrast, new research suggests that forgiveness can benefit people’s health.

In one study, Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, a psychologist at Hope College, asked people to think about someone who had hurt, mistreated, or offended them. While they thought about this person and his or her past offence, she monitored their blood pressure, heart rate, facial muscle tension, and sweat gland activity. To ruminate on an old transgression is to practice un forgiveness. Sure enough, in Witvliet’s research, when people recalled a grudge, their physical arousal soared. Their blood pressure and heart rate increased, and they sweated more. Ruminating about their grudges was stressful, and subjects found the rumination unpleasant. It made them feel angry, sad, anxious, and less in control. Witvliet also asked her subjects to try to empathize with their offenders or imagine forgiving them. When they practiced forgiveness, their physical arousal coasted downward. They showed no more of a stress reaction than normal wakefulness produces.