Forgiveness: A Spiritual Practice for Your Repertoire
The Spiritual Practice of Forgiveness Try this quick experiential activity to try out forgiveness for yourself: 1. Think of a situation from your life where someone treated you poorly, maybe said something unkind to you, took something that was yours, or was unfair to you. 2. How did you feel? Were you hurt, sad, angry, upset? 3. How did you behave or react? Did you yell, shout back, want revenge, or treat them as poorly as they treated you? 4. How did your response make you feel? Did you continue to feel justified in your response, or did you have any remorse or regret about your response? Did your response help to reduce your suffering/ pain, or did it exacerbate, or prolong the pain? 5. What did your response depend on? Did you want the other person to suffer, or to acknowledge their wrong? Was your forgiveness dependent on the adequacy of the other person’s suffering, punishment, acceptance of wrongdoing, or apology? 6. In which of the steps above did you experience suffering?