The first step to practicing forgiveness is admitting that we are attached to vengeance. This means owning our feelings of anger and resentment, which often have their origins in the distant past. We must admit that we feel angry and then find out what it is that we are angry about before we can work on our attachment to revenge.

The second step is exploring the complex emotions that prevent us letting go of blame and anger and keep us feeling vengeful. Denying or concealing our deeper feelings binds us to the acts and the people we are unwilling to forgive. Our sense of offense, indignation and outrage may be so powerful that we are unwilling to let them go, even when they cause us great suffering. Our sense of self and our self-importance conceal our victim stance and hopelessness and self-pity are the adverse byproducts.

The third step is becoming aware of our reaction: how we dealt with what happened to us and working with our desire for vengeance. We may fantasize about a series of acts which those who have hurt us would have to perform or ordeals they would have to endure to deserve our forgiveness, of course, we do not really intend to forgive them, whatever attempts they might take to make amends.

The fourth step is discovering our investment in blaming and letting go of it. We may feel self-importance and be unable to see our part or take responsibility for what we did to the other. Or we may feel justified in our vengeance. Or we may not want to take responsibility for our life and seek justification for revenge in our suffering. Or we may feel grief, anguish and it is easier than joy and the challenges of living happily and fully. The question at the fourth stage is, 'What is my investment in blaming the other?' and it is a hard question to answer honestly unless we take deep responsibility for our negativity.

The fifth step is finding out who is suffering most from our not forgiving and the answer, of course, is ourselves. We see that we have become our own worst oppressor. The voice inside us, modeled on our mother, father, grandmother, teacher or whoever it is that rakes over the events of the past, is our own. It is only we who prolong and feed it, so it is within our power to stop it. If we reach this stage of forgiveness we begin to be empowered to truly forgive.

The final step is the 'juggling stage'. We must hold all these levels of enquiry together simultaneously - knowing more, feeling more, revealing more, letting go of more, seeing more. Then we see that our sense of ourselves, our feelings of presence, exist only in the present and that this is the one thing that is constant in our lives. One fact becomes startlingly clear: we cannot let go of the past unless we learn how to forgive. So we cannot be who we truly are. The insight dawns in us that we have traded our self, the present moment and our life for the dubious comforts of anger and revenge.

As we deepen in the 'juggling stage', the past gradually peels away and separates from the present. We have been living as if the wrongs that were inflicted on us in the past were happening now. This sense of distance has not previously been there because we have replayed the tape of our past oppression, kept the memories alive and superimposed the past on the present. Now we know that was then and this is now - and distance grows between us and what is unforgiven.

This gives us one of the most crucial insights of inner work: No one but ourselves causes our distress or is responsible for our problems. The present issue is always within our power to do something about. This insight empowers us to change.

BLOG entry #86

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Six Steps to Freeing Yourself from Anger and Blame’ was first published in 2011.