If You Can’t Forgive, You Can’t Dance

posted by Ed and Deb Shapiro Aug 16, 2010
We were teaching a forgiveness workshop when John, one of the participants, told us that his brother
had continually abused and even molested him as a child. He said quite
emphatically that he would never forgive him. After John had spoken,
there were a few minutes of shocked silence, another participant gently
said, “If you can’t forgive, then you can’t dance, you can’t sing, and
you can’t smile.”  Those few words exactly describe the emotional blocking that takes
place when there is no forgiveness. Our ability to dance—to move
emotionally, to give, to love, to feel alive and free—gets stuck.
All the pain, grief, and hurt get held in this immovable place. We
cannot move forward when a part of us is locked in the past.  All around us is the evidence of a lack of forgiveness: broken
families, self-hate, guilt and shame leading to depression, huge amounts
of anger, bitterness, and closed-heartedness. We learn to live by
ignoring this dark place without realizing how deeply limiting it is,
how it holds back our joy and laughter. We point the finger and see the
other person as the cause of the suffering but we do not see how, by holding onto hurt feelings, we are simply creating more grief for ourselves.  Deb used to work with the elderly. As she recalls: “I worked in a
nursing home where I saw numerous residents clinging to incidents from
the past: words said in anger, distorted memories of how they had been
wronged by children who had disagreed with them and left in anger. So
much bitterness. They could not let go,
even now, so near to dying. Over the years the hurt and anger had
become solid, fixed, and immovable, as if they were surrounded by prison
bars.”
How many times have you rerun the tape, gone over the details of who
said what to whom, of how it all happened, of the injustice and blame or
the guilt and shame? How many times have you done this, and did it ever
help you feel healed, more joyful, or happier? How often do you have to
repeat this before you see that all of it is going nowhere other than
prolonging your unhappiness?  We are not trying to be simplistic. From a rational point of view, it
can seem impossible to forgive: You are hurt and want revenge, it is
the other person’s fault, so why should you forgive? But if we want to
reach closure then we have to confront this desire to hold on to the
story, for this simply causes further suffering. We are the ones feeling
the pain, and the longer we hold on, the more suffering we cause
ourselves.  To forgive includes fully acknowledging our feelings:
how angry, upset, betrayed, bitter, or indignant we are; how unfair
life is; how let down and sad we feel, and that it is absolutely okay to
be this way. We know and feel the pain, but the desire to no longer
continue the suffering is stronger; we care enough about ourselves to
not want to carry the anger or sadness any longer.
Next: Forgiveness meditation
If we do not forgive it is like carrying heavy baggage that weighs us
down so we cannot go forward, but we cannot go without it as it
contains our history, our identity. Or it is like holding on to hot
coals but we are the ones getting burned. Letting go of the past, of the
story and the details, enables us to open to the present,
to who we are now. We do not need to live in the drama, to keep the
story alive, to maintain suffering. We can come back to sanity and
goodness and bring that sanity into our lives.  As spiritual teacher Gangaji says in our book, Be The Change:
“We have all experienced being hurt by someone, such as our parents,
lover, or friend. But it is not about denying the hurt; it’s actually
about opening and meeting the hurt, and then the hurt itself becomes a
deepening of our heart. In that moment, it is natural for forgiveness to
occur.”  Sitting in meditation,
we can come to forgiveness and bring compassion to ourselves, making
friends with who we are, knowing we cannot change the past but we can
change our attitude toward it. As we do this a remarkable thing begins
to happen. The boundaries that normally keep us isolated from intimacy,
boundaries that have been maintained over the years to protect us from
being hurt, begin to come down, like old walls crumbling and falling.
In this way, forgiveness is truly revolutionary. It releases the pain
of the past so we are free to live in the present. It changes fear and
hate into love and acceptance, just as an oyster uses the irritation
from a grain of sand to produce the beauty of a pearl. It enables us to
live with kindness and caring.
Forgiveness Meditation
You can develop forgiveness for yourself for another. You may
want to meditate on just one of these areas when you do this practice.
Find a comfortable place to sit, and settle your attention on your
breathing.
1. Focus on memories, feelings or issues that you have not
forgiven yourself for. Simply observe, without attachment. Hold yourself
with care and tenderness, inviting forgiveness. Silently keep
repeating: “I forgive myself, for my words and actions, intentional or
unintentional, I forgive myself. May I be peaceful and filled with
loving kindness.” Keep breathing, letting the breath open and soften
your heart.

2. Now focus on one person you wish to forgive. Breathe out any
resistance or anger, and breathe in forgiveness and gentleness. Silently
keep repeating: “I forgive you, for your words and actions, intentional
or unintentional, I forgive you. May you be peaceful and filled with loving kindness.”
Be gentle with yourself. Do not get sidetracked by the details of what
happened. Let go of the story and breathe in forgiveness.

Feel the joy of forgiveness throughout your whole being. When you are ready, take a deep breath and slowly let it go.