Aug 12, 2006
Every faith teaches something about forgivness. The problem is, it can be hard to do. Face it, some people and groups of people make anyone feel like there's an absolute right to get mad.
There is a lot written on forgivness that sounds like it must have been written by someone who hasn't had to forgive very much. Either that or the person is being used for a doormat. How many times do you "turn the other cheek" until you've run out of cheeks?
Of all of the obstructors that can get in the way of spirituality, there is none harder to deal with than "anger-based baggage." This is especially true since you might be carrying this "baggage" around long after the people who caused it have become irrelevant to your current life. Some of those people might not even still be alive!
And how can you forgive if the hurt won't go away?
So often, some of the standard advice you get sounds ridiculous. It's easy to tell someone to ignore the hurt if the person giving the advice isn't hurting, right?
So, here's another way that works for some, when nothing else would work. But it must be done carefully, and with wisdom. Anger, hurt, and their remedies have one thing in common: they should be taken seriously.
And we are talking about the kind of "baggage" which does need to be put behind you so that you can move forward to where you need to go.