The Journey of Forgiveness: Fulfilling the Healing Process

By Carolyn Baker PH.D

THE JOURNEY OF FORGIVENESS: Fulfilling The Healing Process, first and foremost, emphasizes the process nature of forgiveness. The author, a former psychotherapist, has come to believe that forgiveness is not an event willed by an ego which desires to be free of guilt, which may long for connection with those who have harmed oneself, or which hopes to comply with the admonitions modern awareness gurus. Rather, forgiveness, the author insists, is a conscious journey requiring a thorough knowledge of the offense(s) and its effects, as well as the most essential pre-requisite, self-forgiveness. The book offers a compassionate yet courageous challenge to look deeply into the wounds inflicted, the emotional and spiritual effects of the wounds, and the psyche of the offender(s) in order to enter and complete what is nothing less than a daunting rite of passage. The author's style, poignant, poetic, and frequently disturbing, relentlessly dispels all illusions of quick-fix forgiveness but offers supportive, no-nonsense exercises for embarking on a life-changing, transformative journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 19, 2000
• ISBN: 9781469767291

Carolyn Baker PH.D

Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., is a storyteller, drummer, and educator living on the Mexican border of the Southwestern United States. She leads workshops and retreats on ritual and mythology of which she has been a lifelong student. She is author of RECLAIMING THE DARK FEMININE: The Price of Desire.

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All Rights Reserved © 2000 by Carolyn Baker, Ph.D.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

IT IS I WHO MUST BEGIN

DO I WANT TO FORGIVE?

THE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE

INITIATORY VISION

BEING CARRIED

TO FORGIVE OR NOT TO FORGIVE?

FORGIVING ONESELF

ON THE WAY TO MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL

LAYERS OF FORGIVENESS

HOW DOI KNOWIF I HAVE FORGIVEN

FORGIVING THE UNFORGIVABLE

THE COST OF FORGIVENESS

THE SOUL OF FORGIVENESS

CULTIVATING ACCOUNTABILITY: FORGIVENESS IN THE WORLD

WHEN THE OFFENDER IS ME

OUTCOME UNKNOWN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For Delfina whose love makes forgiveness possible

INTRODUCTION

For the past thirty years of the so-called New Age Movement, individuals from every culture and tradition have imparted volumes of information and inspiration regarding the origin and alteration of human suffering. Those of us born into the World War Two generation entered a world reeling from the Nazi holocaust and at the same time hurling headlong into nuclear annihilation. During the sixties we revisited the transgressions of our ancestors against Africans kidnapped from their homeland and mercilessly transported to our shores to be sold like sub-human chattel in order to plant our crops, raise our children, and perform menial and abhorrent tasks too demeaning for such as we thought we were. Predicatably, the same generations which bought, sold, raped, and brutalized its slaves simultaneously genocided millions of Native Americans in the name of Christianization and Manifest Destiny. And then the Vietnam War forced us to confront our hypocrisy once more as we officially lost, for the first time, yet another attempt to subdue an indigenous population.

In the eighties, with the demise of Communism and an external enemy, we awoke to the disturbing reality that two hot wars and a cold war had kept us sufficiently preoccupied so that we had not had to acknowledge the prevalence and severity of all manner of abuse rampant in our homes, schools, workplaces, and churches. Thus was born a new American institution, the talk show, in which we aired our dirty laundry, without inhibition, in all of its bizarre repugnance. Naively, we were surprised when, after a decade of well-meaning survivors of horrendous abuse telling their stories on network television, emphasizing that they had been and may continue to remain in therapy for decades, our health insurance companies pulled the plug and instituted a massive policy of managed care, also known as managed scare, to discourage, among other things, chronic mental health treatment. Suddenly, with great chagrin, we realized that perhaps we had shot ourselves in the foot with our unabashed, tell all approach to which some people attribute the current twelve-to-twenty-session limit for psychotherapy in most health insurance programs.

Reliance on Twelve Step programs, self-help books, and workshops, which had facilitated the uncovering of abuse, became more essential as the cost of therapy increased and insurance coverage subsided. As we honed our awareness, cultivated our self-esteem, and began experiencing healing and recovery, we also began turning our attention to the subject of forgiveness—a prospect particularly appealing to the war-weary veterans of years and decades of processing their abuse issues, and a perspective vigorously reinforced by a culture sorely deficient in its comprehension of the healing process and obsessed with the heroic attitude of putting it behind you.

I genuinely believe that after some three decades of deepening our consciousness and attending to our self-improvement, we are now more prepared to address the issue of forgiveness than we have been at any time in modern history. Yet our efforts in this arena, as with all other issues of becoming whole persons, requires clarification and refinement. Forgiveness, like our recovery, is not an event but rather one of many journeys, leading to still other journeys, in the precious epic saga of each individual life. My intention in writing this book, therefore, is to underscore the necessity of approaching forgiveness as a process that is extensive, often demanding, and never easy. Too many simplistic quick fixes for forgiveness, in my opinion, permeate self-help books and tapes and the workshop circuits of some of our most esteemed self-awareness gurus.

One reason that forgiveness has not been clearly comprehended in our culture, in my opinion, is our fascination, perhaps even addiction, to what is white, bright, and light. We have come to believe that becoming conscious is similar to logging on to the Internet. With a click of a mouse and a sufficiently rapid modem, one should be able to go anywhere. It is as if we have incorporated into our spiritual development the entitlement inherent in affluent and technologically sophisticated cultures.

The journey of consciousness (and of forgiveness), on the other hand, is more like a tree which can grow tall, strong, and beautiful only because it has depth by virtue of roots reaching sometimes hundreds of feet into the dark earth. Much of our twenty-first century spirituality is superficial because it lacks rootage and naively fails to notice that a tree can reach toward the light, withstand pounding rains, scorching heat, and numbing ice only because it is grounded to the earth. Therefore, a spirituality which does not include the body, humankind’s connection with nature, and an exploration of the inherent darkness that dwells alongside the divine in the human psyche, cannot guide us to deeply-rooted, substantial, life-altering forgiveness. In the chapter on The Soul Of Forgiveness, we will examine more extensively the need to befriend the darkness of that which we desire to forgive in order to permit a more thorough, organic, profound forgiveness to unfold.

I wish to convey here, the arduousness of the task called forgiveness, as well as offer permission not to commit to the task if one is not up to it. Too often, people decide to forgive as a result of external pressure from a self-help author or workshop facilitator or member of the clergy. While I emphasize in the book that forgiveness is a worthwhile option with unimaginable rewards, I am equally aware that no one has ever forgiven anyone authentically as a result of moral duress or inducements of eternal peace of mind. In other words, the journey of forgiveness is not for the fainthearted. It is yet another step in a protracted, tedious, taxing process of healing and transformation.

I come from a long line of individuals who committed grievous atrocities against their own children and against minorities. My ancestors, treacherous pioneers who immigrated from Germany, left behind them a legacy of brutality and racism, many of them having participated in the massacre of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, and in the Ku Klux Klan during the twentieth century. As I have pondered the grotesque behavior of some of my elders, I have prayed for their forgiveness, all the while knowing that some transgressions are so heinous as to be humanly unforgivable. Far more disturbing for me personally is their influence in my life through my parents and grandparents in the form of atrocities committed against me and other family members of my generation. My healing work with the wounds and scars sustained in childhood from this ruthless heritage ultimately led me to the dilemma of forgiveness and questions like: Can I forgive them? Should I forgive them? What does forgiveness really mean? Is it even possible?

While I have focused on forgiveness primarily in relation to childhood wounding, my hope is that the reader will apply the book’s message, anecdotes, and exercises for healing and awareness to a variety of contexts that may invite forgiveness. Thus, one’s work in forgiving a parent might also be translated into the process of forgiving an ex-lover or ex-spouse, an ex-friend, or an offspring. In addition, I am aware that forgiveness applies not only to past injuries and to offenders who may no longer be present in one’s life. Many individuals are struggling, as I was when I began writing this book, with people and situations in current time that may feel hopelessly unforgivable. Because I feel a special kinship with this dilemma, I hope what is offered here will enhance not only hope, but healing.

Since my own forgiveness journey has proven how crucial self-forgiveness is as an essential component of the total process, I have accentuated it, even at the risk of sounding redundant. If one comes away from the book experiencing even a shred of self-forgiveness, then regardless of one’s achievements in forgiving another individual, the book will have, in my opinion, accomplished its task.

Forgiveness occurs, not at the beginning, but in the later stages of personal and collective healing. This book emphasizes that sufficient emotional and spiritual preparation are necessary for the forgiveness journey, and that it cannot begin before the appropriate time. Nevertheless, the journey must begin somewhere, somehow. May these words inspire and empower you to take the first steps.

If you have already begun, I salute you and pray that what you read here further enhances your journey.

IT IS I WHO MUST BEGIN

It is I who must begin…

Once I begin, once I try—

here and now,

right where I am,

not excusing myself

by saying things

would be easier elsewhere,

without grand speeches and

ostentatious gestures,

but all the more persistently

—to live in harmony

with the voice of Being, as I

understand it within myself

—as soon as I begin that,

I suddenly discover,

to my surprise, that

I am neither the only one,

nor the first,

nor the most important one

to have set out

upon that road… Whether all is really lost or

not depends entirely on

whether or not I am lost.

Vaclav Havel

Chapter 1

DO I WANT TO FORGIVE?

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves…

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

Forgiveness is defined in a variety of ways. According to some dictionaries, it means absolution from payment, the pardoning of an excuse or an offense, releasing from punishment, exonerating, acquitting, vindicating. All of these synonymous words sound extremely legalistic and evoke images of Court TV, famous trials, and their equally famous attorneys, in what has become perhaps the most litigious era in the history of the human race. In the legal profession, however, the term forgiveness is rarely used, and if it is, it is applied only to a situation where the accused is found to be innocent. Thus, forgiveness of a suspect who has not offended or has offended far less severely than was believed, is not a difficult task. Forgiveness in this context obviously cannot be compared with the quality of forgiveness elucidated by the world’s great spiritual teachers, especially Jesus, who insisted that forgiveness is not something to be extended to the innocent, but only to those guilty of all manner of offenses, from the most frivolous to the most heinous.

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT FORGIVENESS

This book is not about forgiving trivial offenses committed by well-meaning people. I am speaking to the subject of forgiveness as a survivor of physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse. Furthermore, I speak as a former psychotherapist who sat for seventeen years in the presence of clients with murdered souls and often maimed bodies as a result of violent acts committed against them when they were children. I have known individuals who were victimized by and forced to participate in rituals of Satanic cults. What is to be the attitude of these survivors toward the perpetrators of such atrocities? And on a larger scale, what should be the attitude of survivors of the seemingly endless horrific holocausts of human history—the extermination of entire civilizations and ethnic groups, whether on the frontier of the United States or in Nazi Germany or in Bosnia? Does the word forgiveness have any relevance in these ghastly events, and if it does, how do groups and individuals even attempt to begin the process of forgiveness.

The word process is perhaps the most important word in this book, and I will be returning to it repeatedly because the forgiveness of violations of body and soul, no matter how grave or grotesque, and even those violations which we would not necessarily consider severe, is too vast, too formidable, and too momentous an issue to imagine that it could be accomplished in one fell swoop. Thus, I wish to offer some perspective regarding forgiveness—another way of seeing it, which realistically addresses the herculean task that forgiveness is—a perspective that permits forgiveness to become a possible, workable, and even desirable option for those individuals who are struggling with the issue of forgiveness or may have virtually given up on forgiveness as conceivable or achievable.

In addition, I will not subject the reader to what I consider something approaching scare tactics used by some authors, spiritual teachers, and workshop facilitators expounding on the consequences of not forgiving.