I’m terrified to forgive.
Never good enough. It had to be said earlier or do it otherwise. Something better or better or more creatively or better or more useful, etc.
Alan Watts has very clear this: no.
Alan Watts for forgiveness
We all make mistakes
We have all said things we wish we were not, we did things we would like to cancel. Still, if you look honestly, you will see that at this time, with the understanding and the mind you had, you do everything you can.
“To condemn the past is like quarreling a child that you don’t know the calculus.”
You moved through life with the tools available at this point, with clarity – or lack of clarity – at that time you had. Every mistake was part of the path you brought you here.
The first step: self -esteem
Forgiveness starts not with big gestures, but with a simple recognition: you have always done everything you can, even when it seemed cumbersome or confused. To see that means to soften. To soften means starting to forgive.
Forgiving yourself does not erase the past or pretend that it has not happened. He sees the past for what it really was – an experiment in being alive. Every choice, every mistake, every raw word was not a crime against existence, but a step in learning how to walk.
Stones
Most of us carry mistakes like stones in a sack, dragging them year after year. We replay scenes in our heads, wanting to edit the script. But the past is complete. Learning opens the way forward; Self -realization is a dead weight.
The compassion for yourself leaves the stones to fall and see that you are no longer the one who stumbled – you are the one who learned.
This is the first step to freedom.
Seeing others through the same lens
What is true of yourself is true of others. People do not act with perfect clarity. They act from the limits of their awareness and the conditions that shape them. When one acts in bitterness, it is because bitterness is rooted in their heart – often from wounds you may never see.
“To condemn them directly means to forget that they are already living in their own punishment.”
Seeing this, it allows you to forgive without apologizing. You can still move away – without wearing hatred in your heart.
Understanding
The solution is quick and easy. Understanding takes effort – it asks us to pause, to imagine the inner world of another. This is the intelligence of empathy: seeing yourself in another and another in yourself. Their anger, confusion and blindness are reflections of what you carried at other moments of your life.
“Forgiveness ceases to be a moral obligation. It becomes a natural answer.”
Breakdown
The pain is reproduced as a contagion. Without awareness, we pass by what we have been given. Forgiveness refuses to play this game.
Forgiveness says, “It stops here.”
This is how you restore freedom from the endless repetition of the injury. You become a break in the chain – the point where the pain is no longer multiplied.
Forgiveness as a release
Forgiveness does not always mean reconciliation. It often happens silently, in the privacy of your own heart. You can forgive someone and still choose not to go to them again.
“Outrage only burns the one who holds it.”
Putting on the release not only the other person, but also yourself. You are no longer tied to their history.
Empathy as the highest intelligence
Cleverness wins arguments. Empathy transforms hearts. Asks, What pain causes this action? No one wakes up and chooses to be cruel; They arrive there through a network of reasons extending back, even they can even track. Seeing this dissolves a judgment and replaces it with understanding.
Unity and integrity
At the deepest level, forgiveness is not even a moral act. This is a recognition of unity – that the one who harms you is not really separate from you.
“To hate them means hating a part of yourself.”
In this vision, compassion runs as natural as breathing. Forgiveness happens on its own because you see that there has never been nothing separate to forgive.
Leaving life to be
When you stop demanding perfection from yourself or others, you begin to see the beauty of the cumbersome dance of life. Forgiveness does not delete the past; He releases his grip.
Forgive you. Forgive the world. Not because it is noble, but because it is the only way life can continue to flow.
