Nine Steps to Forgiveness by Frederic Luskin, Ph.D.

		1. Know exactly how you feel about what happened and be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK.  Then, tell a trusted couple of people about your experience. 2. Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better.  Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else. 3. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation with the person that hurt you, or condoning of their action.  What you are after is to find peace.  Forgiveness can be defined as the "peace and understanding that come from blaming that which has hurt you less, taking the life experience less personally, and changing your grievance story."  4. Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes - or ten years -ago.  Forgiveness helps to heal those hurt feelings. 5. At the moment you feel upset practice a simple stress management technique to soothe your body's flight or fight response. 6. Give up expecting things from other people, or your life , that they do not choose to give you.  Recognize the "unenforceable rules" you have for your health or how you or other people must behave.  Remind yourself that you can hope for health, love, peace and prosperity and work hard to get them.  7. Put your energy into looking for another way to get your positive goals met than through the experience that has hurt you.  Instead of mentally replaying your hurt seek out new ways to get what you want. 8.  Remember that a life well lived is your best revenge.  Instead of focusing on your wounded feelings, and thereby giving the person who caused you pain power over you, learn to look for the love, beauty and kindness around you.  Forgiveness is about personal power. 9. Amend your grievance story to remind you of the heroic choice to forgive. The practice of forgiveness has been shown to reduce anger, hurt depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of hope, peace, compassion and self confidence. Practicing forgiveness leads to healthy relationships as well as physical health. It also influences our attitude which opens the heart to kindness, beauty, and love.

The Importance of Forgiveness

Forgiveness releases the condemnation that guilt has imposed and opens our mind to a way of thinking and seeing that is not dedicated to finding fault.  In the most direct way possible it denies that the ego’s unworthy perception is true and offers the peace of acceptance in its place.  Since it refuses to condemn, our natural union with one another can be remembered.  Because of this, forgiveness is the fundamentally most important thing for us to practice.   

Forgiveness is what accomplishes the whole complex business we call awakening.  It is the practice of undoing our story that there is something wrong with us.  It does take a lot of learning to understand why we think and behave the way we do, but once we have understood this, the way we actually change our beliefs is to make different choices and feel the different emotional feed-back we get from them.  It is discovering and appreciating how good we feel when we respond to a loving impulse rather than one motivated by fear and guilt.   That is the purpose of forgiveness; responding to someone or to our world in a loving way with an intention of joining with them.  Creating a new experience entirely the opposite of our “normal” need to make someone wrong because we didn’t like ourselves very much.

Forgiveness is an attitude that dissolves all our thoughts of something being wrong in the desire just to love.  It is the practice of making loving choices to find the freedom and happiness they bring.  We have spent lifetimes developing the habit of condemning what is wrong—us—then making up stories that hide the truth about everyone.  Practicing forgiveness now takes back our judgment and lets us experience what we had missed before.