Thoughts On Forgiving
Martin Luther King: Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can. Hatred cannot drive out hatred. Only Love can.
Rumi: The wound is the place in which the light enters.
Course In Miracles: the holiest place on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.'
J Myzkowski: My former enemy was a mirror who revealed
the dirt upon my face.
Jesus: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.
Alexander Pope: To err is human, to forgive divine.
Jan Freundschuh: When I have trouble forgiving someone
I mentally regress him or her to baby state.
Mark Twain: Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Sri Yukteswar: The vanished lives of all are filled with
many shames. Therefore do not judge. 9
Robert Frost: Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld: One forgives to the degree that one loves.
Bible: Judge not lest ye be judged.
Kabir: Forgiveness is a game only saints play.
April Baer: Forgiveness is a form of cleaning out closets.
Alan Paton: When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.
Nancy Taylor: Unforgiveness wastes energy as extra weight
is carried around. Unforgiveness requires the energy waste of repressing.
MSC: (re the Bible that God tosses our sins into
the deep sea) God has posted a no fishing sign in His deep waters.
Gopal: It helps in understanding why people do bad things to remember that only
a tiny pie slice of their divinity was brought into this incarnation with them. 18
L Bertsch: Resentment turns a face slap into an ulcer.
The Buddha: The more evil done to you the more good do in return. (Buddha's purity was so great that those who plotted to kill him had their plans recoil upon themselves, not by his actions, but by the law of spiritual physics.)
D Calleia: I went to sleep praying for an opponent, someone who
repeatedly harmed me. That night God came to me in her
form.. and gave me a creative new way to draw my graphs.
JBO: So are you saying that you are getting the senior citizen
discount on your sins and the reduced weekend excursion rate
on your transgressions?
Saint Of Shirdi: It is the fruitladen tree which attracts a shower of stones.
S. A. Grafio: To hold someone in past thoughts is to imprison him.
Amod Thakur: My uncle received the anger of a great saint. He
considered it a blessing.
Sai Baba: The actor who slapped you on the stage waits behind
the curtain to congratulate you on your performance.
Alanon: Others' opinions of me are not my business 27
Bible: Judge not lest ye be judged.
George Herbert: paraphrased: Forgiveness is the only bridge to peace.
Elizabeth Hoare: The woman was not miraculously healed until she forgave the horse who had thrown her. (*perhaps all horses need to forgive their human oppressors)
John C Lehman Jr: Sometimes it is not necessary the problem
to solve but change the angle of vision and the problem dissolves.
Harriet Beecher Stowe:
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Elizabeth Hoare: Part of her heart was tied off by God.. that the rest might grow larger.
Mahatma Gandhi: An eye for an eye makes everyone blind.
Unknown: To understand all is to forgive all.
Sai Baba: God looks on sin as on a baby's first halting attempts to walk 36
Kabir: The saint helped the scorpion over and over again and the scorpion each time returned a sting. Some said
"do you not know it is the nature of the scorpion to sting?"
and the saint replied "it is my nature to save."
S.A. Grafio: One never knows how another's soul is tied to the karmic
traintracks of his destiny.
Grace Hopper: It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
Joan Lunden: Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth.
Forgiveness gives one back the laughter and the lightness in life.
Lewis Smedes:
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
William Blake:
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
Corrie Ten Boom: At the end of Corrie's talk on forgiveness, a man came up to her and
said he was the guard in her sister's concentration camp. She mentally prayed "Lord I cannot forgive him but You can pass forgiveness to him through me.' The power
which surged through her arm to him made them both weep.
Robert Frost: God will forgive me. That's his job. 45
William Blake: When you forgive, you in no way change the past
- but you change the future
Jesus: Father forgive them for they know not what they do.
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Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking: Judge no one by the worst moment of his life.
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Francis Bacon: A man who studies revenge keeps his wounds green.
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"Say: O my Servants who have transgressed against their souls! Despair not of the Mercy of Allah: for Allah forgives all sins: for He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful." Sûrah al-Zumar:
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Jesus: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.
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Gopal: It helps to understand in why people do bad things
to remember that only a tiny slice of the pie of their
divinity was brought into this incarnation with them.
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Sai Baba: Not in the morning pond does the lion wash his blood.
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Wayne Dyer: If you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out.
Nothing can come out of you that is not in you. If when you
are pressured, anger comes out, it is not the fault of the person
who pressured.
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Jan Freundschuh: (To a former foe) Now I see you as a pure rushing fountain ..adorned only by your own sweet splashes.* 54
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D Calleia: I went to sleep praying for an opponent, someone who
had repeatedly harmed me. That night God came to me in her
form.. and gave me a creative new way to do my charts, showing me that the cusp of any house should be made the ascendant to study questions about that house.
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Alanon (passed through SC) Others' opinions of me are not my business
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Jessamyn West: It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes. It takes more grit and
gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.
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JBO: Those unwilling to forgive exchange their chance in heaven in order to send another to hell.
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Ausonious: Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.
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Dorothee Deluzy: It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend.
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Starseed Transmissions: You do not have enough data to assign value to any action.
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Swami Premananda: True forgiveness lies in awakening the divinity of another by manifesting the divinity in oneself.
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S. B. Everett: paraphrased: When we recognize that we are all One, we send vibrations of love to all. (When one part of the body is in pain, cells elsewhere rush to heal.) 63
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Sai Baba: God stands outside all mathematical equations
no matter how long.. ready to render a plus or minus, multiplication or division
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Balaram fought the demon all night long and they were still tied..
Krishna disarmed the demon with one smile of unconditional love
-Sai Baba-
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No one but you can annoy you or make you angry
You are responsible for your response to the environment
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Jesus gave the prayer, the Our Father He asked His followers to recite: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
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"Don't be nervous, whatever happens. Don't sit near your TV sets and wait till
sickness finds you. Work, walk, meet people, do something but don't stop moving. -Unknown-
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"Love people and forgive people, whatever they do.
-Hanna Barysevich near Minsk.. 116 years of age-
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No arrow can return unless it was sent out by a person
in one life or another.
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JBO after watching a documentary on the Green River killer....Like many serial killers he was perhaps an abused child and more certainly abused animals.... the loved ones
of his many women victims were allowed to confront him at the trial.. he sat unmoved... as they all accused him... finally one man came forth and said "I forgive you." The prisoner broke into tears. Forgiveness can move mountains
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Thaddeus Golas, author of The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment: In response to pain, the natural thing is to contract
but one should expand (rather than shutting down) When
someone is cruel, Golas says to give more love) 72
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Yom Kippur is not the only day God calls on Jews to forgive.
Every day Jews are called on to forgive.
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R Avrutis: Each year on Yom Kippur at my temple we recite:
"May no one suffer on my account."
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We become what we focus upon.
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Unknown: Don't hate the haters
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L Hill: Sometimes negative memories can roll around the
head for many decades before they are finally released.
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SMC: Even if my part was only 5% of the argument,
I try to send a letter asking for forgiveness
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Don Young: judging implies the judge's belief in his or her
superiority
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Richard Nixon prosecuted an evil war, bombed and killed millions.
But he too had some wisdom. He said words to the effect 'Your enemies may hate you, but they don't win unless you hate them back.'
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Forgiveness flushes away escess weight, stress, and cancer cells 81
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Catherine Ponder: When one holds resentment toward another,
he is bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel.
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Nonforgiveness is a passive form of violence,
degrading into a sulkiness which repels others.
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Sai Baba: The sandalwood tree confers her fragrance upon the
ax which strikes her down.
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Those in line behind Czolgosz who had just shot President McKinley,
and guards in the room all jumped on Czolgosz and
started to punch him. Seeing that the mob on Czolgosz might easily and quickly
kill him, President McKinley whispered either, "Don't let them hurt him" or "Go
easy on him, boys." Edmund Morris reports in the book Theodore Rex that McKinley's last words before his death several days later were "Nearer my God to Thee. Thy will be done."
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Albert Einstein: Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
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Hatred can magnetize enemies to each other to the point that
they are fused together as Siamese twins.
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Lawrence Wilson: about the presence of adrenaline in the brains of those experiencing anger: Anger is a state of glandular arousal of the body in response to danger or perceived danger.
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S B Everett: We do not judge those we love. That unconditional love can be extended to all.
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Unforgiveness yokes one to his foe.
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The sour hard green fruit cannot help it that it is not ripe soft and sweet, nor are young souls unfolded.
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The Scorpio scorpion becomes the eagle when he soars high in detachment from the foibles of others.
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To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize the prisoner was you. (positivemotivation.net)
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Just as we do not punish our teeth for accidentally biting our tongue because we consider both the organs as parts of our body, so also, we have to bear in mind that the eternal and universal Atma resides in everyone and everywhere. The book Summer Showers 2nd year
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One needs to pray for those he is seeking to forgive, but need not have warm and fuzzy feelings about the person nor have contact. (paraphrased) Fr. John Lunness 96