Life brings us many disappointments and challenges. It is easy to fall victim not only to others who may hurt or mistreat us but also to our own anger. When someone hurts us and we grow angry, we suffer twofold. First, we have to bear the pain that others may cause us. Second, we have to bear the pain and suffering that comes with feeling angry. Anger not only upsets us emotionally, but it has a deleterious effect on our physical body. It causes stress, which in turn contributes to stress-related ailments. This can affect us by increasing our risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, high blood cancer, and other diseases. It takes a great amount of strength to withstand the temptations to overcome anger. We may think the angry person is strong, but actually they are succumbing out of weakness to this trick of the mind. It takes one who is brave of heart to say no to anger.
Let’s trace what happens to us when we do not forgive. Each of our personal stories generally begins with something that happens to us that we do not like. Some person has wronged us in some way. Maybe someone has said something to hurt our feelings or has hurt us physically. Maybe someone we love has stopped loving us and caring for us or has cheated on us. Maybe someone has taken our power, position, or wealth or has been dishonest with us. We can safely assume that all of us go through life with some incident happening that we do not like or that hurts us. So, what happens next? We are upset, hurt, annoyed or angry. We think about what had happened. We do not like it and we cannot seem to forget it. We think about it again and again. We may speak about it repeatedly either to the person who hurt us or to others. Some person who has less control over themselves may lash out physically to the person or take out their anger physically on someone else. As the incident escalates, we find our thoughts and words occupied with how to rectify the situation. Some people will try to solve the problem peacefully by talking it over with the person who they felt has done them wrong. Sometimes they try that but the other person is not willing to listen or change. Then, we feel we have to do something drastic. This may lead to retaliation or revenge. We begin to think about ways to get back to the person who hurt us or we think about ways to get even with them. We want to see justice done. Our mind refuses to forget what had happened until we retaliate or see justice done. Thus, in response to one incident, we end up creating more scenarios and situations. The other person then may get back at us for retaliating. A cycle of action and reaction may go on and on escalating a small situation into a major problem.
What has happened in the process? We have lost our peace of mind. The initial incident may have lasted a few moments or a few hours, or a day, but we have now spent hundreds of hours and countless days replaying what happened and thinking about how to get even. In this process, the precious moments of our life have been wasted. Instead of keeping our attention on what can help us become better, happier in life, we have wasted the time replaying a bad movie. Thus, we lose more than the person to whom we are directing our anger. A Chinese proverb says that when we seek revenge, we dig two graves, one for the other person on whom we seek revenge and the other one for ourselves.
We become nothing more than a tape recording or video recording that plays the same bad scene over and over. How many of us want to see a bad movie twice, or hear a song we don’t like played again and again? How many of us want to eat the same food we don’t like again? We usually say, “This is yuck”. That is what happens when we repeat in our minds all the wrongs done to us.
The solution for protecting the body against the hormones released by hatred, anger and vengeance is simple: forgiveness. It is only through forgiveness that we can calm ourselves down and avoid the reactions of hatred and violence. What are the keys to developing the power of forgiveness? One of the keys is to let go. When we forgive and forget we are letting go of the past and what has happened. We are saying, “I forgive the person for what has happened. Then I am going to forget about it.” In this way, we are letting it go. When we let go of the past and the wrongs done by others, the gain is that we achieve peace in our life. If we want to succeed on the spiritual path we need to have a pure and clean heart and mind. The way to do this is through forgiving and forgetting, letting go, and getting God.
Let’s learn to forgive and forget. It is time to wipe the slate clean and begin anew. Let’s let go of all anger. Let’s let go of all hatred. Let’s let go of all feelings of vengefulness. Let’s let go of all animosity. Let’s devote ourselves to forgiving and forgetting, letting go and getting God. We can tell our mind that we need to forgive everyone and everything from the past and make a conscious decision to forget all the previous hurts. By sitting in meditation, free from all worldly desires and attachments, we can let go and find ourselves free to soar back to God. In this way, we can spend all our time in enjoyment, bliss, laughter, happiness, and love.
The author is the head of the Sawan Kirpal Ruhani Mission.
