Much has been written about forgiving others, less about forgiving oneself. What strikes me is that everyone agrees that to forgive is indeed a good thing to do but why it is a good thing to do is usually not clearly explained.

We think it is good to forgive because we will be rewarded for it in heaven. A good person is a forgiving one, and we want to be good. Self-forgiveness is altogether a different and more difficult story. Is it even possible to forgive oneself? We may find ourselves asking if it is even right that a criminal forgives himself? If anyone can forgive them, isn’t it the victim’s doing? Isn’t that act reserved for them?

There are a lot of questions that come up around the subject of forgiveness and in this article, I hope to shed some light on them by looking at forgiveness from the perspective of inner growth.

Why is it good to forgive?

Why forgiving is hard to do.

We have all seen movies that revolve around revenge. These movies are fun for us to watch; we enjoy it when in the end, the victim takes revenge and gives the perpetrator a good beating. How liberating it feels to see it, the opposite of forgiving, but for some people extremely satisfying. Why is that so? Is it because revenge is morally legitimized violence and we feel entitled to experience it? It may be true that we watch a movie about violence and revenge, so we don’t have to feel guilty as long as it’s the villain that gets killed, beaten up or something horrible happens to them. It makes us feel good, and after all, aren’t we allowed to feel good about that?

In other words, one reason forgiveness is difficult is because we believe villains are one-dimensional figures with no back story, bad through and through. Thus, forgiving them makes no sense; but taking revenge does. Films in which the victim forgives the perpetrator are less exciting and spectacular than those in which the victim takes revenge. The belief in an eternal hell where villains are punished forever is widespread because we believe in the existence of villains who are incorrigible.

In the Middle Ages, people thought one of the greatest pleasures of going to heaven would be to watch all the people in hell below them. Revenge at last. Is it primitive? Are we that much different than those who lived then when we enjoy watching the villain get punished? At least that is the case when we are outsiders, because desire for revenge lives mostly in the mind of observers who don’t really know what it’s like to be a victim.

If you talk to victims, you discover that they usually don’t want revenge at all. They want to be seen and heard, they want their suffering to be recognized. They want the perpetrator to realize what he/she has done to them. They don’t want revenge as much as they want justice, and at the deepest level, they want the perpetrator to grow in consciousness. That is something completely different. The victim seldom gets their wish, because this rarely happens. As a rule, perpetrators deny or downplay their crimes. Consider, for example, the discovery of pervasive child abuse within the Catholic Church. How many priests have expressed regret to their victims? I can’t recall ever seeing a single report in the news of that happening. On the contrary, they deny their guilt and cover up their offences. If a victim waits for the offender to show repentance and remorse, they will unfortunately wait for a long time.

So to sum it up, we find forgiveness difficult because deep down we hold a dualistic worldview where evil is evil and good is good. In order to forgive, we must learn to accept that there is good in every person and be willing to see that good. It is that good that binds us together and makes humanity one.

Why forgive?

We forgive each other so we can let go. If the victim does not forgive, they remain under the perpetrator’s influence, and their life is determined by that energy. As long as a victim doesn’t forgive, they remain a victim. Forgiveness is not for the offender; it is for you. It is an act of strength, an act of I-saying. It is how you move on with your life, follow your path, and free yourself from the offender’s energy. To forgive is to stand up for yourself. To forgive is to take your sword and use it to sever the bond with the offender. It is a masculine act. To forgive is to choose to no longer be a victim.

How do you let the perpetrator go and banish them from your mind? Realize what the offender has actually done to himself. The universe is one and that oneness is within us. A person who hurts another breaks their connection with it. When a man abuses a woman he damages his own inner woman. He damages something within himself.

When you look into the perpetrator’s eyes you do not see happiness; you see emptiness. Every time a person commits a crime, they break a bond with themselves, with their child within. The bond with the universe is severed too, as is the bond with their fellow human beings, with nature, the past and the future. Every broken bond inevitably leads to a loss of happiness. Maybe the perpetrator is rich, and lives in a beautiful environment, but you will not find happiness in their eyes.

The victim longs for the offender to become aware, but in the end, the universe will take care of that. It will do everything it can to restore wholeness to the person who did harm. Again and again, the offender will be given opportunities to become more aware and have more insight into himself. However, it can take several lifetimes to arrive at this. Reality encourages awareness. As the victim, you do not have to do anything. “Living well is the best revenge” is a well-known English expression, and a profound truth. Live your life to the fullest and let the universe do its job.

Let go of the perpetrator, forgive, live your life. Don’t waste your life’s energy on the perpetrator, give that energy to your loved ones. Forgive and free yourself so you are there for those who deserve you. Forgiveness is an act of strength; it is choosing for yourself. Someone who can truly forgive continues with their life and doesn’t let it be determined by what was done to them. To say, “I forgive you” is to say, I am no longer a victim, I am free from victimhood. You no longer give the perpetrator access to your inner life.
It is becoming whole again, becoming one again; letting go of duality.

Perpetrators and their long road to self-forgiveness

Perpetrators need to forgive themselves because without self-forgiveness consciousness will be blocked and growth is not possible, only stagnation. Self-forgiveness sounds simple. I do something wrong and think, “I’ll forgive myself and get on with my life.” But that’s not how it works. Self-forgiveness is possible only when you know what you have done to the victim, and understand how much sorrow, pain, and suffering you have caused. Until you do, you don’t know what to forgive yourself for, and if you don’t know that, self-forgiveness is impossible.

Time passes, we say, and for the perpetrator the memory of the crime fades into the past, and eventually he will try to forget about it, and be less bothered by it. We say time heals everything. Psychologically, it does not work that way, it works exactly the other way around. A human being’s consciousness wants to continue to grow, become lighter, enrich itself, evolve, go with the flow of life and the universe, but when someone commits a crime, growth ceases. The hurt the perpetrator has caused a victim, the suffering he has caused is like a river that flows in front of him and blocks the path. To heal, he has to swim through it, experience it from within and understand what he has done to the other person, only then is self-forgiveness possible. Immediately after they commit the crime, it is not yet a terrible problem, their life goes on. But if the culprit never lets himself feel his victim’s feelings and remains unmoved, the longer it goes on, the darker his life becomes.

We all have an inner sun, and the light of the soul will follow its path. But the inner sun of the offender will slowly disappear, replaced by an inner emptiness, and the darkness will deepen and deepen. If there are no external stimuli that encourages self-reflection, for example, loss, or illness, the darkness continues to grow. When someone commits a crime, the dark cloud within them grows larger and larger and will eventually totally obscure their inner sun. By the end of the perpetrator’s life, his eyes are empty, and his facial expression is bitter.

When this person dies and enters the astral sphere that reflects their inner state, it is a dark sphere of desolation and lifelessness. When they lose contact with their inner light, they lose their ability to create light and beauty. However, sooner or later, they will want to free themselves from the darkness and will be open to receiving advice from their guides.

Perpetrators do not view their victims as human, they view them as inferior based on racist ideology, for one example. And that is not easy to let go of. Slaveholders were totally convinced that because Black people had darker skin than whites, they were more animal than human. Thus, slaveholders felt they had a perfect right to own them, rule them, and treat them cruelly.

For centuries, men have believed they are superior to women and even do so to this day. They refer to themselves as so-called “masters of creation” giving them the right to subjugate women, forcing them to be obedient, and turning them into sex slaves. The Nazis regarded people who did not look like them, who were of a certain faith and culture to be “Untermenschen” (translates to "subhumans" or "inferior humans") and therefore believed it was acceptable to mass murder them. Virtually every ideology assumes that one class of people is better than others, thus, “the good guys” have the right to hurt “the bad” guys.

Ideological beliefs are often so deep that they cannot be released while in the astral sphere. Reincarnating as a victim is the only way out because when they experience life from that perspective, the suffering and pain they caused is experienced and internalized from within. This is not a punishment, rather, it provides liberation from the stifling worldview of the perpetrator, and it is only with experiencing and feeling what the victim went through that there is the possibility of self-forgiveness.

A perpetrator’s worldview is a prison for their consciousness. Any worldview that provides a justification for mistreating another denies the inner oneness of life. When you treat someone violently, you suppress that oneness within yourself and diminish your consciousness. It is the inner unity of life that enables the growth of consciousness. Inner oneness allows consciousness to continually seek new forms and new experiences.

Three roads

When the perpetrator realizes what he/she has done to the victim, there are three options.

1. The offender forgives himself
   The universe will always give someone who forgives himself the chance to make things right. Self-forgiveness leads to the blossoming of something beautiful. The inner light of self-forgiveness is creative. Some offenders go on to create social and societal change, and fight for equal rights, social justice, and cooperation.
2. The perpetrator does not forgive himself
   Overwhelmed by the pain he caused his victim, the perpetrator remains stuck in his guilt, continues to punish himself and does not come to believe in anything positive. This is a very unpleasant situation. What helps the perpetrator the most is to receive forgiveness from the victim. When the perpetrator truly feels that his victim forgives him and sees that they have continued on their path and encourages him to continue as well, there is usually movement towards self-forgiveness.
3. The perpetrator distances himself from himself.
   This is an undesirable situation that is unfortunately common. An offender chooses to experience the life of a victim, but his consciousness remains stuck. He does not recognize the perpetrator within, so he projects it onto the outside world, people, and situations, thus, no integration takes place. A healing inner wholeness does not happen. He slips, as it were, from one dualistic worldview to another. First there is a belief in the inferiority of victims, then in evil forces outside himself. This creates a holy belief that there are evil forces in the outside world that must be fought.

People who believe in conspiracy theories do not recognize their inner culprit that projects everything onto something or someone outside of themselves. Psychologically, this explains the reasoning behind these conspiracy theories. Many people are caught in this blind alley and cause misery in the world. Their belief in duality reinforces existing duality. Belief in powerful perpetrators creates an energetic space in which such perpetrators can manifest. The outer world energetically follows the inner world. A self-perpetuating dualistic worldview is thus created that is almost impossible to put into perspective. A lack of inner integration, for example, between the masculine and feminine or between perpetrator and victim, always results in a dualistic worldview.

Fortunately, there is a solution, which is to love yourself.

Loving yourself

Self-forgiveness is ultimately choosing to love yourself because if you can love yourself, you can forgive yourself. To love yourself is to look at everything in you with love and bring it into the light, both the perpetrator and the victim. You have been a perpetrator, you have been a victim, and perhaps both at the same time. You have been powerful, and you have been powerless. You have been everything; thus, everything is within you. Loving yourself means loving yourself as an offender and as a victim.

As long as you believe in perpetrators that exist outside of you, you deny the inner oneness of the universe and as long as you do, you deny your own inner oneness. That is a sign you lack self-love, and it is connected to why you reject the offender within. It can also manifest as contempt for the victim within, resulting in feelings of inferiority.

People may despise themselves for letting others walk all over them, take advantage of them, and ultimately, they blame themselves. We live in a world where weakness is scorned, where people who are vulnerable and sensitive despise themselves. Think of the victim in you, think of all the times you have let others walk all over you or worse. Maybe you were beaten, abused, or robbed and in past lives, I am sure worse things have happened.

Go to that frightened part of you now, the one who is hiding out feeling inferior. Love it, comfort it, and let love flow into it. It is a part of you, an extremely sensitive and vulnerable part, and therefore, oh, so precious. It provides you with a deep understanding and insight into others. It is the source of your ability to feel empathy and love. Accept it, love it, and realize that at a very deep level you have chosen to experience it. It is part of being human. It completes you.

There are exercises you have surely heard about where you look in the mirror and say positive affirmations to yourself. That’s fine! But I suggest you do something different. Look in the mirror and say, “You’re a sucker! You’ve let people walk all over you, but I still love you very much.” Learning to say “no” to victim feelings and stand up for yourself begins with feeling love for the part of you that is weak, vulnerable, and sensitive. The part that is considered weak by this world in truth is full of beauty. Love it and it will blossom. Do not despise that part of you, love it. There is a huge shortage of gentle, weak, and sensitive people in this world, and when you are vulnerable remember it is a sign of your inner beauty. Just look at the world around you, everything beautiful is vulnerable.

Then think of the offender in you. How many times have you unintentionally hurt others? How often have you hurt another in your fantasies or been violent to someone in your dreams? What you fantasize or dream about often has to do with past lives. Accept this. Go for a walk in the forest by yourself and imagine you are a tree. Each root of the tree is a past life, and all of them are connected to the earth. Connect with the roots that are connected to a lifetime when you were the offender. Those roots feed you, too. They give you energy and strength and they too need your attention and love. Let your love flow to those roots, and to all the offenders within you.

In conclusion: wholeness

When you accept that you have been both perpetrator and victim, and love both of them, it creates an energetic space within where perpetrator and victim can meet each other and forgive. This is self-forgiveness. This is wholeness. This is being human. When you accept your humanity, you accept that you are both perpetrator and victim. The power and energy of the perpetrator can now cooperate with the empathy on the victim’s side. The result is a loving creative person; one who enlightens others with understanding and compassion. One who loves and forgives himself will approach his fellow human beings in this way, ensuring that the artificial duality of this world is no longer empowered. Instead, a new energy is empowered; one that restores harmony and unity to the world and spreads the belief in the power of love.

Love the offender, love the victim. When you do, they both feel supported by your love, they can look each other in the eye, which makes self-forgiveness possible. An inner flow is created, and you begin to live from your soul. The soul can flow through the personality only when there is inner harmony. The manifestation of that inner harmony creates a new world, a new earth—a world in which humans live in harmony with each other, with plants, animals, and the earth itself. And then, the era where humans have been separated from nature for so long, finally ends.

Man made whole is a creative man, a healing man.

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