L'earning to Love. Forgiveness

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Lesson Forgiveness

To forgive is to love, anyway. Through forgiveness we love over and beyond the pain and damage others may have caused.
Before giving, we have to ‘fore-give’, let go, so as to open up again, to the flow of love. It comes from the humility of recognizing we are just as capable of wrong-doing as those who hurt us. Forgiving is taking in the pain, as described before, and making it sacred through ‘sacrifice’. It is not about vengeance, forgetting, or denying the damage done. Rather, forgiving requires reparation and rectification from the perpetrator, to enable him to re-establish his personal dignity and self-worth.

Before forgiving others, we have to forgive ourselves. It took me a long time to feel the pain of regret for my wrong-doing. I had effaced all restrictions that limited my rights and feelings from those that bound others. My compass had gone hay-wire unable to recognize love itself. I had mistaken love for sin, avoiding it at all cost. My ego-centric self-justification had wrapped me up in self-deluded self-worth. I became the lie I believed and hurt those around me, trying to love me. The first one I required forgiveness from was myself. I had wronged my Higher Self, by rejecting Love.

The aggrandizement of my pride had blown my sins up to the point of believing they were ‘un-forgivable’. My sins became greater that God’s mercy!!! I went around moping for being ‘un-lovable’, ‘un-worthy’, ‘miserere’- miserable. Such was my lamentation and self-commiseration that I closed down all possibility of loving; both giving and receiving love. My pride had elevated me to such subjective heights, that I my fall was devastating. Once fallen, I was stepped upon by those still running the ‘fast-track’ to reach the finish line. Face-down I knew humility (lat: ‘humus’ – soil)…and for the first time, I observed and admired a growing flower. I turned around and saw the sky. I had shifted my axis 180°, from linear cause-and–effect, to the depth and breadth of a new vertical perspective of life. It took my touching bottom, for me to crack my egocentric heart and let God´s loving in. Forgiveness engulfed me, healing my self-inflicted wounds with overflowing Love.

With such overwhelming Love how could I not forgive others?