We have been told so many times in our life, in fact I remember since school days we were always told to forgive and forget. Many times, people say things without any intention to hurt anyone, people make fun of others, crack jokes at the expense of others and forget about it. Everybody has a good laugh, even the victim of the joke laughs along with the rest. But sometimes, the victim of the joke is hurt and does not forget the joke, it plays on in his subconscious and he keeps on digging up the perceived hurt. When he does this, he is actually opening up a mental wound, this can never heal, a physical hurt heals with time but a mental hurt is re-opened every time you think about it!
I remember my mother remembered a hurt for more than 40 years and I could see the pain on her face every time she thought about it. I would tell her to forget about it and she would look at me crossly and say, “You have found a Guru, I am not you, I can never forget this!” This would make me feel sad, and I would think how does one ever forgive if one cannot forget?!?
This question would continuously bother me, till I realised that one can only truly forgive only if you totally forget that hurt and surrender it to the Guru-energies. Once you surrender it, it does not belong to you. After doing this for several of the hurts which I had undergone, I realised that even if I remembered those incidents, I wasn’t feeling any remorse or anger or any negative emotion – it is then that I realised that the only true way to forgive is to surrender all your bad experiences, hurts, insults and what have you at the Lotus Feet of the Guru. Once you have surrendered them, let go of them, they are no longer ‘yours’ and you can truly move on in your life without having the baggage of those bad memories.
If you truly want to forgive, it is not just giving lip service, you have to exorcise the hurt from your subconscious, you can only do that by totally, completely, unconditionally surrendering these bad memories to the Guru-Energies. Try it, I am sure you will benefit and be happier and more peace with yourself after doing it.
Posted by GIRISH BORKAR at 5:02:00 AM
