Atonement And Forgiveness

I believe that forgiveness is absolutely essential to happiness and inner peace.Resentment and anger can eat away at us for years and cause us much damage which is why I am posting this article written by Derek Ayre.Please read it carefully,

Jane

Atonement, if split into syllables, becomes at-one-ment. Most people in the self-development movement today accept that in order to improve the quality of life, a person first of all needs to focus on his/her problems and/or conflicts to resolve them - in other words, to become at one with them - atonement. In fact, the more somebody can merge with their difficulty, the more successful they will become at dealing with it and can realise atonement. To look at it from a religious point of view, atonement I feel, is not a lot different to looking at it from a psychological point of view, and atonement would indeed, have the same beneficial result.

For example, say somebody was angry and feeling vindictive against somebody who had wronged him/her in some way, whom is that anger going to hurt?

Well, not the person to whom the anger is directed, that's for certain. The person creating the anger, the person creating the vengeful thoughts and other things is going to suffer the most. Yet forgiveness (that is really letting go) of thoughts of retribution and even judgment, will produce real feelings of well-being and freedom and allow the person to move on and realise atonement.

Forgiveness is not something that can be taught, but it's very easy to do. 

All that is required is a willingness to forgive others for what we believe they have done to us. In fact, I could go a step further than that and say that ALL that is needed, is a willingness to forgive others for what we thinkthey have done to us.

To qualify that last statement, whether or not somebody else has done something to us is really irrelevant. Whether they have or whether they haven't it's us thinking they have done something to us, that hurts us. By thinking in this way, we arecreating the scenario that we have been wronged and making ourselves into victims whom our "enemies" have power over us, whether or not they know it. See how complex this is getting?

There is another way we can play the victim too. That is we can blame ourselves for things that go wrong. In this scenario, we are attempting to split ourselves up into perpetrator and victim. We make a mistake and lose out on something. We blame ourselves for our stupidity. Just one question needed here... "Am I willing to forgive myself for what has gone wrong?" Just the willingness to forgive is enough. We need to be aware of our "mistake" and focus on it. By doing this, we are forgiving it, we are releasing it.

There's one problem that can arise here though and that is that many of us do not wish to focus on our shortcomings and there's a risk that they can be repressed into the subconscious mind to exert force on our subsequent thought processes.

And what about becoming a victim of what others are doing to others. How many of us get filled with rage and anger at man's inhumanity to man. That's a judgement that needs our forgiveness too.

I feel that what we need to realise here is that this form of behaviour is something that is as old as Man himself. Blaming and seeking retribution has only brought about more wanton destruction in the form of wars and conflicts.

Forgiveness.

What if men and women everywhere just merely contemplated the opportunity to forgive? What if they realised that by forgiving (self or others), that they would find the peace and liberation of atonement? What if they could read this message and put it into practice? What sort of world would we then live in? I will leave you to imagine the answers to these questions.

As mentioned earlier, my idea with this article is not intended to foster any particular religious belief in any way, but I think you will find that if you examine any religion, forgiveness is the fundamental idea the original teacher was putting across. And forgiveness was the road to stress-free life that atonement would bring.

Derek Ayre is a registered hypnotherapist established in the UK in 1976. After becoming a Zen practitioner in 1980, he uses its powerful influence to help his clients both on and off-line. For more articles on therapy and personal development visit http://ayrehypnotherapy.com