Seeking Forgiveness

In one of my Strange Classrooms the other night a young lady, Dominique, brought up the subject of forgiveness. Not forgiving others, but asking someone to forgive you. She was devastated as her apology was rejected by the person that she asked for forgiveness from. Now I have not thought about that for a long time. Sixteen years ago in a different Strange Classroom I was shown, and advised to do what is called Step 9, that states, “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” I do not want to go into the whole process of how one gets to Step 9 right now, or even discuss the Step in detail itself, but by doing this Step I learned a lot about the difference between, an apology, an amend and very importantly, how to deal with rejection of my attempts to get forgiveness from certain people. As it was so long ago I had forgotten how hard and how much courage it takes to attempt to get forgiveness from a person. Then the devastating effect of the rejection! Thinking back on how long this process took me, and the lengths I took to do the Step to the very best of my ability, it was no easy task, I had a LOT of people on my list. Before I started I knew some of the people would reject my attempts, so I took this under discussion with my Teachers. This is what I learned, some from them and some from experience and much thinking on the topic. The most important step, for the want of a better word, is being honest. Honest with yourself. Look at why you came to this point of needing to ask for forgiveness, what part did the person that you want forgiveness from play in the whole scenario? Then see if you really want forgiveness or are just doing what society/religion/people expect of you. Most of the time the person you feel so bad about did things wrong and helped put you in the space where you reacted badly. Now here is the difficult part! You have to take their “sins” out of the deal and look just at your own. No doubt you had a few. Then do not rush out and say sorry for everything, first forgive YOURSELF for being human, make it right with the God of your understanding. By doing this you give yourself the courage to face any reaction you will get from the person you approach and most importantly you will only apologize for the things that you actually did wrong! Now the good part, whether that person forgives you or not, is irrelevant in the greater scheme of things! Sure it is nice to be forgiven, especially if the person genuinely forgives you. (Rare) but if they do not, the problem is theirs and not yours, they will have to deal with the resentment and the consequences of that. You on the other hand, can move on. That said and done, there are some people in this world that their forgiveness means nothing, absolutely NOTHING to me. Others that I need not make any attempt to gain forgiveness, as an honest appraisal shows I may have been bloody rude, but committed no sin as such. But in order to have this elusive serenity, I catch a glimpse of now and then, I have to make amends for my part of the conflict. This is vastly different than apologizing and also needs not involve the idiots I do not wish to ever see again, never mind speak to!


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Here is a story of developing and breaking an addiction, while dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome at the same time. THE CHRONICLES OF THE MEXICAN HORSE THIEF II