What follows are exercises for cultivating self-forgiveness.
Self- forgiveness is necessary for us to be able to truly and fully love ourselves and others.
To cultivate self-forgiveness,
Start by understanding the forces impacting upon you that caused you to harm.
To begin,
Write a list of the people you have harmed and the ways that you have harmed them.
One by one,
Go through your list and write down the various causes and conditions that led you to this action or inaction.
Look deeply.
Inquire carefully with kind,
Non-judgmental curiosity.
See if there are any connections between your harmful actions and the fact that perhaps you were harmed,
Perhaps through abuse or neglect,
When you were younger.
Now think of other precipitating factors such as a family history of violence or a family history of addiction,
As well as more subtle factors such as stress due to financial problems or marital problems.
Look closely to see if and how you may have been suffering,
In pain,
Or somehow unaware at the time that you caused harm.
Now ask yourself to consider why you didn't stop yourself from harming this person.
For example,
Were you so full of rage that you couldn't control yourself?
Did you hate yourself so much that you didn't care how much you hurt somebody else?
Had you built up such a defensive wall that you couldn't have empathy or compassion for the person you harmed?
After you have some clarity on this,
You can then move forward to perhaps making apologies.
Spend some time thinking seriously about how your actions or inactions have harmed another person.
And then complete the following sentence that may help in this process.
I harmed so-and-so by doing such-and-such.
Write down all the ways your action or inaction harmed this person.
You might write down,
I caused such-and-such to suffer or this person to suffer in the following ways.
A meaningful apology is one that communicates what some have called the three R's.
Regret,
Responsibility,
And Remedy.
To begin,
A statement of regret for having caused the inconvenience,
The hurt,
Or the damage.
This includes an expression of empathy toward the other person showing that you understand how your action or inaction harmed him or her.
Second,
Offer an acceptance of responsibility for your actions.
For an apology to be effective,
It must be clear that you are accepting total responsibility for your actions or inaction.
This means not blaming anyone else or for what you did or making any excuses for your actions.
You wouldn't want to say,
For example,
I didn't mean to or I wasn't aware.
You really want to take total responsibility for your actions.
Third,
You might include a statement of your willingness to take some action to remedy the situation.
While you can't go back and undo or redo the past,
You can do everything within your power to repair the harm you caused.
Therefore,
A meaningful apology needs to include a statement in which you offer restitution in some way and offer to help the other person or a promise to take action so that you will not repeat the behavior.
In the case of emotional or physical abuse,
You can enter therapy or a support group,
For example,
To make sure that you don't abuse anyone again.
You can offer to pay for your victims therapy or you can donate your time or money to organizations that work to help victims of abuse.
You'll see that this exercise is really a combination of developing clarity,
Compassionate clarity,
On what you did in a non-judgmental,
Understanding and compassionate way toward yourself and understanding deeply the pain and ignorance and lack of skill that you might have had that led to your harming other people.
But see that also embedded in this practice of self-forgiveness is this process of making repairs to those you have harmed.
It is amazing how helpful this process is of an apology or amends or repair is for helping us to get to a place of feeling that we've done what we can to correct for the harm and helps ease our own self-contamination and promotes our own self-forgiveness.
