Sunday, December 4, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
9 Steps to Forgivness from the Stanford Forgiveness Project
Dr. Fred Luskin of the Standford Forgiveness Project has worked with thousands of people who have learned how to forgive. Here is the program of forgiveness as articulated through 9 steps. You can see the complete re-framing of your mindset that is asked of you. Please use this to your good health!
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.
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.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
"Pathways of Grace" A Retreat with Dr. David James
Pathways of Grace
From Addiction into Freedom through Forgiveness
Saturday November 12th
9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
The Spirituality Center at St. Placid's Priory
500 College St. NE
Lacey, WA 98516
360-438-2595
Studies have shown a link between trauma and addiction. What we are just learning about is a link between forgiveness and freedom from the addictive process.
In this daylong retreat we will examine our own life patterns of addiction, discover the wounded heart that lies behind them and learn experiential practices of forgiveness which can help us find freedom.
There will be times for quiet reflection and opportunities for group and individual sharing.
Register by prior Friday $20 Bring a sack lunch, a journal and a brave heart.
Dr. David James is an author, therapist, spiritual companion and animator of the Olympia Forgiveness Project. A former Episcopal priest, he served congregations in California and Washington. As a leader in the men's movement he has led retreats in the United States and Canada. He is the author two books and several articles in the field of spirituality and personal growth.
To register call 360-438-2595 or email "The Priory Spirituality Center" spiritualityctr@gmail.com
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The Victims of Terrorism Who Do Not Seek Revenge
How is it possible to feel the humanity of a person who has systematically and brutally maimed or murdered innocent people for the sake of an ideology?
In 2005 I met Andrew Rice, whose brother was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Andrew said something which has resonated with me ever since. His experience of losing someone he loved deeply had made him come to the conclusion that, "those people crying loudest for retribution so often seem to be the least affected".
Certainly to imagine that punishment or payback rehabilitates the victim is a delusion but I hadn't quite realized to what extent those who have suffered most can be healed by reaching out towards the very thing that has hurt them. This is the essence of Restorative Justice. In the past decade I've met many victims who have reacted in totally counter intuitive ways to trauma -- in other words rather than seeking revenge they have tried to build bridges of peace and reconciliation.
Of course sometimes those most affected by crime and violence stay locked in the trauma, where their justifiable rage towards the perpetrator may fester or freeze. But I believe a great many more have transformed trauma into a place of healing through reaching out to others and asking why?
Aqella Sherril’s 18-year-old son was murdered in 2004. No one was brought to justice and even though Aqeela knows the killer's identity, he has chosen not to seek revenge. He tells people that his son's killer is a victim too -- "a victim of a culture that lacks compassion." And he explains "you can only kill someone if you have a callous heart, so I want to know why this young man had such a callous heart. It's not enough simply to catch him and throw him away".
Aqeela's attitude, like that of so many other bereaved parents I have met, comes not just from compassion,
but is an act of self-healing. As someone said to me the other day: "the place where an old hatred becomes a new love is the holiest place on earth." Or as Aqeela would say, "where the wounds are, the gift lies."
Many of these survivors of violence and terrorism share their stories on The Forgiveness Project website, as a way of countering the more strident calls for payback and retribution. While some say they do not feel comfortable using the word forgiveness because it's open to so many messy interpretations, I believe all would embrace the concept, if they knew of Ginn Fourie’s favorite definition which states that - "Forgiveness is the principled decision to give up your justifiable right to revenge."
Ginn -- whose 23-year-old daughter, Lyndi, was killed in the 1993 Heidelberg Tavern Massacre in Cape Town -- has since worked closely for reconciliation Letlapa Mphahlele with , the former Director of Operations of APLA (Azanian Peoples Liberation Army) and the man who ordered the attack on the Heidelberg Tavern. It was on the day she first met Letlapa that forgiveness began to stir in her heart. "In that moment", she says, "I saw remorse in his eyes and body language. It would have been so much easier if he'd been a monster with horns and a tail -- if there was something to hate."
This again was about reaching out and hearing the story from the other side, which did not take the pain away but gave meaning to it. As Ginn says about Letlapa, "I know his comrades' bullets killed my daughter and that terrible pain will always be with me. But I have forgiven this man who gave the command. I feel his humanity."
These victims of violence and terrorism recognize that the more you slam down something, the more people re-group and emerge in a stronger, more resilient way. There is an understanding that bombing civilians only grows resentment. And there is a real desire to break the cycle of violence.
It is often assumed that to explain is to excuse and to understand is to forgive. Certainly explanation should be used to put something in context, and never for justification or consolation, but why should understanding that a young man has grown angry through shame and poverty, or through insidious indoctrination, explain away or excuse an act of terrorism?
Usama Hasan, a former Islamist working as Senior Lecturer in business information systems at Middlesex University in London who now speaks out against Islamaic extremism, said at the Google Summit Against Violent Extremism in June this year: "I would ask you to understand one thing, try to understand why people are driven to certain measures. In the case of Islamic terrorism, or Muslim Jihadists, most of them I know are not ill intentioned -- but become corrupted along the line. They are trying to answer real problems about what they perceive to be the suffering of their nation."
As Fyodor Dostoevsky so appropriately said: "Nothing is easier than to condemn the evil doer, nothing is harder than to understand him."
Marina Cantacuzino’s background is journalism and in 2003 –- in the lead up to the Iraq War -- she started collecting personal stories of atrocity and terrorism which drew a line under the dogma of vengeance. The stories formed a body of work in the celebrated F Word exhibition and led to Marina founding The Forgiveness Project, a UK based not-for-profit unaffiliated to any religious and political group. The Forgiveness Project explores forgiveness and reconciliation through individual real-life stories, and promotes alternatives to violence and revenge. Her website is: http://www.theforgivenessproject.com/
In 2005 I met Andrew Rice, whose brother was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Andrew said something which has resonated with me ever since. His experience of losing someone he loved deeply had made him come to the conclusion that, "those people crying loudest for retribution so often seem to be the least affected".
Certainly to imagine that punishment or payback rehabilitates the victim is a delusion but I hadn't quite realized to what extent those who have suffered most can be healed by reaching out towards the very thing that has hurt them. This is the essence of Restorative Justice. In the past decade I've met many victims who have reacted in totally counter intuitive ways to trauma -- in other words rather than seeking revenge they have tried to build bridges of peace and reconciliation.
Of course sometimes those most affected by crime and violence stay locked in the trauma, where their justifiable rage towards the perpetrator may fester or freeze. But I believe a great many more have transformed trauma into a place of healing through reaching out to others and asking why?
Aqella Sherril’s 18-year-old son was murdered in 2004. No one was brought to justice and even though Aqeela knows the killer's identity, he has chosen not to seek revenge. He tells people that his son's killer is a victim too -- "a victim of a culture that lacks compassion." And he explains "you can only kill someone if you have a callous heart, so I want to know why this young man had such a callous heart. It's not enough simply to catch him and throw him away".
Aqeela's attitude, like that of so many other bereaved parents I have met, comes not just from compassion,
but is an act of self-healing. As someone said to me the other day: "the place where an old hatred becomes a new love is the holiest place on earth." Or as Aqeela would say, "where the wounds are, the gift lies."
Many of these survivors of violence and terrorism share their stories on The Forgiveness Project website, as a way of countering the more strident calls for payback and retribution. While some say they do not feel comfortable using the word forgiveness because it's open to so many messy interpretations, I believe all would embrace the concept, if they knew of Ginn Fourie’s favorite definition which states that - "Forgiveness is the principled decision to give up your justifiable right to revenge."
Ginn -- whose 23-year-old daughter, Lyndi, was killed in the 1993 Heidelberg Tavern Massacre in Cape Town -- has since worked closely for reconciliation Letlapa Mphahlele with , the former Director of Operations of APLA (Azanian Peoples Liberation Army) and the man who ordered the attack on the Heidelberg Tavern. It was on the day she first met Letlapa that forgiveness began to stir in her heart. "In that moment", she says, "I saw remorse in his eyes and body language. It would have been so much easier if he'd been a monster with horns and a tail -- if there was something to hate."
This again was about reaching out and hearing the story from the other side, which did not take the pain away but gave meaning to it. As Ginn says about Letlapa, "I know his comrades' bullets killed my daughter and that terrible pain will always be with me. But I have forgiven this man who gave the command. I feel his humanity."
These victims of violence and terrorism recognize that the more you slam down something, the more people re-group and emerge in a stronger, more resilient way. There is an understanding that bombing civilians only grows resentment. And there is a real desire to break the cycle of violence.
It is often assumed that to explain is to excuse and to understand is to forgive. Certainly explanation should be used to put something in context, and never for justification or consolation, but why should understanding that a young man has grown angry through shame and poverty, or through insidious indoctrination, explain away or excuse an act of terrorism?
Usama Hasan, a former Islamist working as Senior Lecturer in business information systems at Middlesex University in London who now speaks out against Islamaic extremism, said at the Google Summit Against Violent Extremism in June this year: "I would ask you to understand one thing, try to understand why people are driven to certain measures. In the case of Islamic terrorism, or Muslim Jihadists, most of them I know are not ill intentioned -- but become corrupted along the line. They are trying to answer real problems about what they perceive to be the suffering of their nation."
As Fyodor Dostoevsky so appropriately said: "Nothing is easier than to condemn the evil doer, nothing is harder than to understand him."
Marina Cantacuzino’s background is journalism and in 2003 –- in the lead up to the Iraq War -- she started collecting personal stories of atrocity and terrorism which drew a line under the dogma of vengeance. The stories formed a body of work in the celebrated F Word exhibition and led to Marina founding The Forgiveness Project, a UK based not-for-profit unaffiliated to any religious and political group. The Forgiveness Project explores forgiveness and reconciliation through individual real-life stories, and promotes alternatives to violence and revenge. Her website is: http://www.theforgivenessproject.com/
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
The Gift of Poison: A Story from Traditional Sources
The Gift of Poison
A man and a woman in a small out-of-the way village marry and as was the custom of their people, they moved into his parents home. From the start the young bride and her mother-in-law clashed regularly...about everything. The mother-in-law thought the bride an disrespectful know-it-all who disdained the traditions of their elders, and the bride thought the mother-in-law was a cantankerous old hag who was trying to turn her son against her.
Finally fed up with the conflict in their home the bride approached the village doctor and told him that she hated her mother-in-law and wanted poison to kill her. The doctor listened to the story and finally agreed to the bride's request. He reached into his medicine bag and gave the young woman a handful of herbs guaranteed to cause the death of her mother-in-law. “There are two conditions, however, that you must observe in doing this,” he told her. “Anything” the young woman agreed.
“First,” the doctor said, “This is a very slow acting poison that you must put into your mother-in-law's food over a long period of time.” “A poison that work's quickly would cause both of us to fall under the suspicion of the authorities, so slowly administer this in a way that no one will ever know.” “And second?” the bride asked. “Secondly, from this moment forward you must treat your mother-in-law very respectfully, agreeing to her every wish, so that when the poison begins to work, no one will suspect you.”
Agreeing to both conditions, the bride rushed home and when preparing the next meal so sprinkled a little of the poison into the food, and then she took the meal to her waiting mother-in-law and served it in a friendly and respectful manner.
After a few days of such solicitous service, the mother-in-law began to think that her new daughter was actually a fine young woman and began to treat her with kindness. The young bride, now the recipient of a mother's care began to love the woman she'd once hated. After a few short months the two were fast friends and enjoyed each others company.
Dismayed, the bride returned to the village doctor and tearfully confessed to him that she'd come to love her mother-in-law and begged him for an antidote to the poison because she couldn't think of life without the kind old woman.
“I'm sorry,” the doctor shook his head sadly, “there is no antidote to what I've given you.” Now beside herself with sorrow and rage she began striking the doctor, accusing him of killing her beloved mother-in-law and that she was going to report them both the authorities and throw herself on their mercy.
With this the doctor began to laugh and when his laughter subsided, he wiped the tears away from his eyes and said, “Silly girl, I never gave you poison, only harmless herbs to mix in her food.” “But by following my instruction your prejudice and anger melted away and you and your mother-in-law are now fast friends and companions for life.”
So this is how the angry young bride came to be grateful for the gift of poison given her that day.
Thank you Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche for this story. May your three year retreat it the Himalayas be a blessing for you.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Forgiveness in Domestic Violence: A Muslim Perspective
Healing from Domestic Violence
People can heal and escape this vicious cycle of violence Forgiveness can play a significant role in the healing process.
Toward Forgiveness: For the Offender Seeking Forgiveness
In Hebrew the word salah means God's removing sin from the people. In Greek, the word aphiemi means "to leave off, release" (to release what blocks a relationship with God). In the Quran, the word "forgive" (a'fo) means God's pardon of one's wrongdoing, which requires recognition of one's mistake, repentance, and asking for forgiveness.Becoming able to experience forgiveness, a healed conscience, and restored self-esteem are not the responsibility of the offended person, but the offender.
To experience forgiveness, one must:
Acknowledge
Acknowledge responsibility for doing wrong. Acknowledge wrongdoing to oneself, to others, and to God. Apologize with sincere remorse to the person(s) hurt.
Grieve
Show understanding and empathy for the pain caused.
Change
Change the behavior. Work to heal the emotional basis for the behavior.
Practice
Practice appropriate use of power. Make amends; provide restitution directly to the offended party, or symbolically to a related cause or group.
To be granted forgiveness before doing the hard work described above constitutes "cheap grace," and sabotages the healing process for the person who abuses. Only after completing the process will reconciliation with the offended be possible - if and when the offended indicates that he or she is ready.
Toward Forgiveness: For the Offended Letting Go
In the ancient language of major religions, the word "forgiveness" carried the connotation of releasing or letting go (of a debt, of bitterness, etc.). To prepare for forgiving (releasing the hold abuse has had on a person), one must:Acknowledge
Acknowledge the situation as an unchangeable piece of the past. Remember. "Forgive and forget" is the formula for denial, which makes painful events more likely to happen again. Tell the story many times in many ways.
Grieve
Grieve, to discover and honor what was lost.
Change
Change, by giving oneself permission to:
- Feel, especially the anger and passion, respecting that anger can be useful on the path to justice
- Take one's time to heal
- Get support to explore the hurt and move on towards wholeness
- Honestly reflect on one's strengths, limitations, and needs
Practice
Practice appropriate use of power. Go beyond thinking/feeling and express oneself in action, even if symbolic. Provide restitution. If appropriate, confront the behavior and/or report it to authorities.
After this preparation, one may experience release from the fear and damage of the abusive relationship and be free to live life fully. Forgiveness is not exoneration; the offender must still be held accountable for his or her actions. Forgiveness does not require trusting the offender, whose behavior may not have changed.
"Reconcile" means "to settle, to make content." If the offender has completed his or her process toward receiving forgiveness, it may now be possible to reconcile with him or her. To rush reconciliation before both the offended and the offender have completed their inner work is cheap grace and dangerous! Reconciliation with God is the reconciliation necessary for healing.
SEMAH’s mission is the promotion of healthier relationships and prevention of domestic violence through education and awareness of options. We are a conduit for resources to help build bridges to safer communities especially those that are not well served. We have a special focus on the Muslim and inter-faith communities. http://www.semah.org/fivff/healing.html
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