Forgiving

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.
He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love."

Martin Luther King, Jr.


Yes I have heard of this many a time. But it is easy to hear someone say it or read it somewhere but it becomes difficult to put this into practice in our own lives. It was some years back. I had watched the Oprah Show and some of the guests were speaking about forgiving.

I always thought that I could never forgive the 2 people in my live who had betrayed me. One of them was someone I had loved and trusted. They had brought a blow to my heart and I have been carrying this feeling with me for many years. Every time I remembered the hurt, the feeling was like having a knife being put through me and having it turned repeatedly within.

It was late at night around 11 pm. I was discussing this issue with my son and all of a sudden he looked at me and said, "Amma - You need to let go. You need to forgive and move on !".

It was like a slap on my face and I could literally feel the burning sensation. I told him to leave me alone and felt that I wanted to weep my heart out all alone. The pain was unbearable and the time had come for me to stop running away and face the truth. I had to forgive. Period. The pain was becoming torturous .

Abandoning all my pride, in the silence of the night, all alone, I cried out loudly to myself - "At this moment today , I forgive the 2 people who have hurt me deeply. I hold no more grudges and carry no more pain. From the deepest part of my heart I have forgiven them. I want to be free of the burden of carrying the pain. I hurt the most when I do not forgive". I needed to stop hurting. It was no more a want but a fundamental need. A need that if I had not fulfilled, would have become an everlasting pain in my life.

Amazingly and slowly since then I started to feel lighter and as time passed by I began to feel the joy and freedom forgiving brings. A heaviness had been lifted from my heart. I had put down the baggage I had been carrying all these years. Many years have passed by but the memory is still fresh in my mind. Today it is no more someone else's words but my own experience which has taught me, that to become free I have to forgive. I had to let go and move on with my life. I needed to forget the past and live in the present. Only then was I able to take the flight of my heart in the wings of freedom.