Alexander TKACHENKO
It's easy to offend people. To comprehend this bitter truth, it is not at all necessary to be a psychologist or philosopher. All people, without exception, have the sad experience of experiencing an insult, and everyone knows how much a single unkind word can hurt the soul. Resentment haunts a person from early childhood. In the sandbox, a very small toddler brings another child to tears, taking away his toy or breaking the sand house he built. The next generation of schoolchildren with joyful laughter torments their classmates who are overweight, have poor eyesight or other physical defects with offensive nicknames. Well, I don’t want to talk about how scary, sophisticated and mercilessly adults can offend each other. And if a finely organized, vulnerable person cannot fight back against insult, betrayal or meanness, then the last argument in favor of his own rightness becomes a feeling of resentment.
So why does Christianity encroach on this last stronghold of human dignity, why does it call for voluntarily giving up your inalienable right - not to forgive the pain and tears of the one who mercilessly burst into your life and scorched your heart? What kind of paradoxical call is heard in the Gospel: ... love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you (Luke 6:27-28)? This is probably the most incomprehensible commandment of Christ. In fact: why love those who hate, offend and persecute you? They probably need our love and forgiveness least of all in the world. So why then force yourself to such a difficult and thankless task?
Why you can’t take revenge on your offenders is even more or less clear: after all, if you respond with evil to evil, then it’s unlikely that there will be less evil in the world. With well-deserved grievances, everything is also clear, since a simple and understandable principle applies here: if you earn it, get it and don’t complain. But what to do when you were offended for no reason, if you were spat on, trampled and humiliated simply because the offenders wanted it that way? Is it really possible to forgive too?
What is resentment?
Resentment is a feeling when we begin to make claims against ourselves, another person, and the whole world in general. This is a huge disappointment that some of our expectations could not be met.
Someone reacted to events not the way we wanted, but in a completely different way, and the world around us dared not fulfill our desires and did not adapt to us.
And sometimes, against our will
, you have to let go of something very dear and so necessary. And we begin to do things for which we then reproach ourselves for a very long time.
We don’t even notice what the lion’s share of time and energy we spend so that circumstances bend under us, under all our expectations, and when we receive another rebuff, we are left for a long time with a huge sense of resentment, a feeling of strong injustice and complete disappointment.
How can this benefit us?
We mentally replay our grievances in our heads over and over again, immersing ourselves in those events that have long passed, thereby poisoning our present, what is happening now. How can you let go of such pain? What does it mean to be able to forgive?
If you are asking yourself this question now, it means that you are already on the path to true forgiveness. And this is very good.
How to remove the burden from your soul
Forgiveness is not mercy to someone, not your weakness, but liberation from a burden that you absolutely do not need. An unforgiven evil is the chains with which you have bound yourself. Of course, it’s easier to accept advice, but how to forgive? It is especially difficult not to complain about fate when everything does not work out the way we would like.
Resentment against fate is a powerful force that completely absorbs human consciousness. It is often difficult for a person to cope with bitterness and hatred of the world around him. In this case, a good psychologist can help.
A psychologist’s opinion on this matter: self-flagellation, reproaches to yourself that you can’t do anything, but for people everything goes smoothly, will not bring you good luck. Complaining about fate leads to alcoholism, often to suicide.
No less terrible is hatred of a loved one who betrayed or acted wrongly. These feelings must be fought.
Advice from psychologists on how to forget unpleasant life situations will help you overcome this feeling.
- A very effective way is to throw out all the bitterness in an imitation of a conversation with the offender, writing letters and then burning them.
- When emotions overwhelm you, you need to switch to any little thing, for example, talk to the person standing next to you or start carefully studying the text on some stand. The method is strange, but it works.
- To avoid beating yourself up, look at the unpleasant event from the other side. Now you can see that nothing terrible happened. Now restructure your consciousness to achieve the goal, and not to despondency, then you will see that your consciousness has cleared up, and life is not so bad.
- Write down an action plan on the way to achieve your goal, gradually implement it. Just don’t set yourself sky-high, unattainable goals.
What offenses are most difficult to forgive?
- The strongest grievances
, as a rule, are always more difficult to forgive against your family and friends, this mainly concerns husbands or wives.
- But it all always starts with our parents.
They are usually presented with complaints that they were little loved, poorly cared for, criticized, poorly supported, not loved, did not believe in our strengths, and so on. - The child places so many expectations
on the shoulders of his parents that they, as a rule, are not able to cope with this large burden. - It is only later, already growing up, that we begin to understand
that our parents loved us as best they could and knew how, but for some reason the grievances continue to remain in our hearts one way or another. And gradually they begin to take root firmly in us. - After this, we begin to project
this onto our partners. - Usually, we begin to expect everything that we so wanted and could not get from our parents from our
partners, and therefore we experience strong resentment and dissatisfaction towards them. - But we should not forget that we ourselves choose our parents
long before we are born, and they fully comply with all our requirements, which were once concluded on subtle planes. - And it is parents who are the catalyst for the changes
that occur in us. And in the most powerful grievances in life, hidden, in fact, are very important realizations and our very main tasks. - If we failed to learn this with our parents
, then we, accordingly, transfer this to our husbands and wives. - You should take a closer look at the series of life actions
and, starting from a very early age, you can find the very reason for which you, in fact, had to come here to this earth.
What does it mean when we forgive?
Most people naively believe that to forgive and give in means showing some kind of weakness and complete lack of will. But, in essence, this is a manifestation of great power.
You may be becoming somewhat vulnerable.
When you forgive, you gain enormous strength and completely cease to be dependent on various strong feelings that destroy you from within.
If a person continues to be angry with another for a long time, no matter how much pain he causes, then he continues to be no more and no less - in a state of victim.
When a person sincerely forgives another, he is completely freed
. And by letting go of his past for good, he can completely destroy the dam built from various claims, reproaches, anger, irritation and various grievances.
Washing away all my painful feelings
, energy will begin to pour out of your heart and it is at this time that transformation will occur to you, you will begin to embark on the right, completely new path of spiritual progress for you.
Positive motivation
In friendship, the ability to forgive is very important. The arguments in favor of this statement are as follows:
Practices for cleansing and letting go
We forgive in letters
- This action must be carried out in stages.
On the first day, you should write on a piece of paper all your feelings that captivate you, as well as negative experiences and also what you have always kept deep inside yourself for quite a long time. There is no need to try to restrain yourself in any way at this time, because special feelings will wash over you.
- On the second day, write down again all your negative feelings, those that still continue to remain with you. Just try to throw them all out onto paper without leaving a trace.
- On the third day, try to find some improvement in your life and write down the changes you find on paper.
- When finished, you should burn all three pieces of paper you wrote. This is what will become your excellent ritual of complete cleansing. After all, the human subconscious always accepts and loves such symbolic actions.
We give flowers to the offender
Want to break your habitual thinking pattern?
Then give your offender a bouquet of flowers and try to change your memories. This will be perhaps the most original and most effective practice.
You can close your eyes and remember the situation
, which occurred when you experienced a very strong offense. You must present it in great detail. Continue to remember all the details at the moment when resentment begins to rise from the depths of your nature.
Now mentally take out a bouquet of flowers
and present it to the one who offended you. Just imagine the bewilderment and surprise that will appear on his face at this moment. This is how the patterns of all kinds of memories are broken. You can try to talk to your offender and ask him for forgiveness, and also completely forgive him and let him go.
Be sure to try to role-play this situation in your thoughts.
and be sure to communicate with the offender. Most likely, you will certainly feel how such unusual behavior of yours will completely discourage the offender and then you will calmly lead the dialogue in the direction you need.
Practice letting out emotions
Place an ordinary chair in the middle of the room and mentally place in it the one who once offended you so much. Express in his direction all your reproaches and sorrows, everything that has accumulated in you a long time ago.
You can also use absolutely any expressions and words for this. You can even scream if you want. Moreover, this is even welcome. Stomp your feet loudly, yell, squeal, most importantly, express everything that you cannot agree with, as well as what does not suit you at all.
You can even throw some objects at this person, just to drive away absolutely all the anger and aggression that has accumulated in you.
When you can sense fatigue and great emptiness, it means that you have worked hard and freed yourself from a large share of negativity.
You can try again and continue to do so until you realize that it is time to stop and you begin to experience relief.
Letter to an offended person
There is another technique in which you should write a letter to your abuser. For most people, this method of forgiveness and healing from negative emotions is the most acceptable.
You can start a letter like this: I want to tell you something that I have never told you in my life.
And then we write it in approximately this order:
- This is what you did to me
- The emotions that I experienced because of you
- It had an impact on my life in this way
- This is what I would like from you now
And the last, fourth point will help us fully understand our essence, ourselves, what we most need now and try to accept it in some other place.
Technique using meditation
This action is suitable mainly for those people who have already been able to survive a strong attack of their resentment and are now ready to say goodbye to all negative beliefs in a planned manner.
This practice resembles a kind of affirmation. For it you need to be in a state of meditation.
Approximate text:
“Now I completely forgive (the name of the person who offended you). I forgive him just like that, unconditionally and without any restrictions, and also in any case, regardless of how he feels about it. It doesn’t matter to me whether he wants me to forgive him or not, I’ll just do it.
I completely forgive him because that’s what I decided, because I am an independent person and I no longer want to carry a large burden of some grievances within myself, because he puts a lot of pressure on me.
At the same time, as I completely free myself from negative manifestations, I feel how grievances leave me forever, and at the same time it becomes very easy, comfortable and joyful for me. I have completely freed myself from bitterness and wish my offender good health, both spiritual and physical.”
When repeating this text, try to be in a meditative state, when your consciousness is somewhat weakened, and you have a wonderful opportunity to dive deeper into it and try to completely clear it.
Louise Hay technique
You should close your eyes and remain in this state for several minutes. Then imagine that you are watching a movie in a cinema hall. And you see how the main screen shows the person towards whom you feel unpleasant feelings.
This can be either a living person or a person who has long left this world. Take a good look at his appearance and picture in your mind that something too positive and kind arises with him, something that is of great importance to him.
Now imagine him happy and smiling and hold this portrait for several minutes.
After the image of your offender disappears, try to imagine yourself in the same film. And in the same way, incredibly pleasant and wonderful things begin to happen to you. You are very satisfied and truly happy.
This kind of practice will require repetition from you.
Letting a person go forever
In order to be able to forgive and let go of a person forever, you have to understand that nothing happens in the Universe just like that, among other things, the actions of some other people that cause in us a strong feeling of resentment, some kind of injustice, as well as other difficult emotions.
We get all this as a result of our past actions.
and now these are only certain fruits of karma, so to speak, the return of our own actions to us, that is, what a person emits is what he, accordingly, receives.
It becomes very easy for us to forgive
then, if we see that our offender, who did something bad towards us, in fact only returned a debt to us, namely, what we ourselves once did in relation to someone, to some other people .
And by understanding this relationship, we can forgive people easily
, without even applying any specific practices, since the problem will simply disappear completely on its own.
When we try to forgive a person who has somehow let us down, perhaps committed treason, deceived or betrayed us, we completely free ourselves from negative connections.
with his personality.
Letting go of a person does not at all mean letting him go; it rather means that it is letting go of the grievances within ourselves, as well as all the negative things that have accumulated in us.
Negative motivation
The ability to understand and forgive is not inherent in everyone. Even understanding all the positive results of such an act, people cannot let go of their grievances. Then negative motivation comes to the rescue. So, if you continue to accumulate grievances, the following will happen:
