Forgiveness: The Key to Inner Freedom

Who hasn’t had painful interactions which leave us wounded and in pain? I’m sure that at some point or another, everyone has gone through some sort of transgression that had them feeling hurt. Such wounding can often envelop us like a cage we can’t escape. Yet there is a key to Freedom, and that is Forgiveness.

Transgressions Bruise Our Psyche

When a transgression occurs, our mental and emotional body (and sometimes physical body too) are bruised. While such injury is visible if it occurs on the physical body, it is obviously hidden to the naked eye when it comes to psychological or emotional hurt.

Rejection, humiliation, abandonment, injustice, betrayal, even harsh criticism and cruel words and interactions can be causes of mental and emotional distress that demands our attention and healing.

From Distress to Forgiveness

A bruise doesn’t instantly go away after it appeared on the body. It has to go through different phases of healing—this is visible to us by the changing of colors on the skin. In the same way, so does our bruised psyche.

Often times, healing from a transgression requires us to go through the entire spectrum of emotions that need expression. Sadness, anger and resentment might be natural in the first phases of healing. We need to find healthy outlets to let that emotional energy out of our organism. For if we ignore, deny and suppress it, it will only wreak havoc on our bodies and life.

However, this doesn’t mean that we should stay in that state of mind for a long time. Would that serve anyone? On the contrary, healing requires our willingness to move past the transgression and reach a state of forgiveness. This may not be easy when we’re in the midst of the stormy seas of hurt. Yet the willingness to forgive will eventually take us to complete forgiveness.

Forgiveness Sets Us Free

Forgiveness frees us from the chains of suffering that keep us imprisoned in the past once a hurtful occurring has happened. It releases us from the pain of guilt and blame, and restores us to our peace of mind and happiness:

What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace?

Forgiveness offers it.

Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you, and more.

It sparkles in your eyes as you awake and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice, and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace.

All this forgiveness offers you, and more. — A Course in Miracles

Forgiveness is the Key to Inner Freedom

As an ending to this article, I’d like to share with you The Key To Your Release, a poem about Forgiveness, included in Part I. Matters of Trauma and Justice of my poetry book Embraced by Love.

Check out this spoken word performance which was part of the Poetry On The Grass festival in 2020, inside the ruins of a Romanian church from the 1600s:

May We Forgive and Be Forgiven so that We May Be Set Free!