The hardest thing of all, forgiveness

I am thinking this morning of how to approach forgiveness - not for the victims - they don't need this, though they need a lot of other forms of loving.  But for the abusers - bullies, those who seem callous, those who seem to have pleasure out of hurting others.  Not to understand them, (abusers) but to find a place to at least begin to look for their humanity under the evil that we see.

Many of us lead some kind of spiritual life.  We usually include love as an outgrowth of our connection to the greatest to the least of our blessings.  But when it comes to considering the most evil of the human creation, we usually prefer to either a) forget them or b) (and most usually this is the outlook that is prevalent) just consider that these are people in league with the devil and therefore hate them.  Punish them for the crime, but mainly hate them.

In my practice, I try to consider that there is good in everything, and everyone.  So how do I find a way to love those who commit crimes?  I start by saying, I'll just consider that maybe it's possible to forgive them.  Not today.  Today I'll just consider a possibility.  And maybe in many years (centuries?) to come, there will be a way of finding forgiveness.

What will that look like? My own path gave me several abusive people around me.  The child abuse was the most difficult to consider forgiveness.  I really hoped he'd die before I had to actually forgive him.  Well, it's not that I'd ever go up to him and say "You are forgiven." So what was the purpose of this aim?

It's to let go of a clinching, a roped off part, of my own heart.

It looks like a loosening of those ropes on my own heart...it looks like seeing his eyes and that that person's idea of love was wrong, but it was still a form of love.  Ouch.  There is the limit of where I am today.  But in over 3 decades, I've finally arrived here.

And here's a writing (perhaps a poem) that speaks of forgiving the abusers.  Today I'm using it in considering some people who have been brainwashed by those who abuse, and these followers are perpetuating the lies today, which is certainly difficult for me to understand.  I can't forgive them. I do hold them responsible for their actions (including their words.) I can only hope to remember the good, which might still be somewhere in their beings.  I have long ago learned to set my own psychic shields to protect myself from abusers.  Working on my own healing has let me move away from being vulnerable as part of interactions with abusive people.

Kuan Yin’s Prayer for the Abuser

To those who withhold refuge,
I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being.
To those that cause a child to cry out,
I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony.
To those that inflict terror,
I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns.
To those who would confine, suppress, or deny,
I offer the limitless expanse of the sky.
To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,
I remind you of the invincibility of Spring.
To those who cling and grasp,
I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto.
To those who vent their rage on small children,
I return to you your deepest innocence.
To those who must frighten into submission,
I hold you in the bosom of your original mother.
To those who cause agony to others,
I give the gift of free flowing tears.
To those that deny another’s right to be,
I remind you that the angels sang
in celebration of you on the day of your birth.
To those who see only division and separateness,
I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole.
For those who have forgotten
the tender mercy of a mother’s embrace,
I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow.
To those who still feel somehow incomplete,
I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.

copied from Facebook posting