On the subject of forgiveness from author Jeff Brown.....
Forgiveness is not a concept. It’s a process. And, if you choose not to forgive at the end of that process, it doesn’t mean that you are unhealed. It doesn’t mean that you are a lesser human. It doesn’t mean you are not spiritual or evolved. It doesn’t mean you will come back in the next lifetime to live it out again. It may just mean that forgiveness is not actually in your integrity. The assumption that forgiving the abuser is the benchmark of a completed emotional and karmic process is the mistake. The real benchmark of resolution is whether you have gone through your emotional process authentically and have arrived at a place where the negative charge around the experience has dissipated. Perhaps you will learn some lessons, or perhaps you will eventually be legitimately liberated from the memories. Perhaps you will work it through so completely that you have very little energetic charge around the events. Or perhaps you will actually realize that forgiveness is not essential to your healing, and not your responsibility. The point is that focusing on our responsibility to forgive a wrongdoer, sidetracks the whole process. Your sole responsibility is to arrive at whatever destination is true to you.
I call the tendency to arrive at forgiveness before going all the way through an authentic healing journey: “The Forgiveness Bypass.” That is, the attempt to rise above unresolved emotions by feigning forgiveness. This is not only an ungrounded tendency—because you cannot actually will yourself into a feeling of forgiveness—it’s also a dangerous one. The unhealed emotional material will come back to assert itself and haunt us in various forms: internal splitting and confusion, passive aggressive behavior, and the toxic impact of held emotions. In the process, we become another step removed from an authentic presence. Because at some level—we are not living our truth.
True forgiveness can only arise organically, after a genuine healing process. Only then is it authentic. Forgiveness is one of the primary mantras preached by the New Cage and “Positive Psychology” movements. They often encourage people to forgive independent of extensive emotional processes, as though forgiveness is merely a thought, or a concept, or something that can be willed. Some even go so far as to suggest that you must always heal your wounds directly with the wrongdoers, and remain connected to them. Putting our focus on forgiving a wrongdoer before we have actually prioritized working through our anger and our pain, is another way we imprison consciousness and overturn reasonable principles of accountability. Yes, forgiveness can be a beautiful thing… but it is essential that it arises authentically. Forgiveness is not the first place to go after an abusive relationship or a traumatic experience. Healing is.