How to Forgive: The Freedom of Letting Go

 

How to forgive someone who has hurt you is not always easy, particularly when the hurt is deep, the injustice feels unresolved, or the person who caused it has never acknowledged what they did. Yet forgiveness is not necessarily about excusing another person’s actions or restoring a broken relationship. At its deepest level, forgiveness is about deciding how much space we are willing to allow that experience to occupy within us.

 

“Compassion means to Forgive. There is both Inner Forgiveness and Outer Forgiveness. Inner Forgiveness is for all people, but Outer Forgiveness should be done on a case-to-case basis.”

— Grand Master Choa Kok Sui, The Golden Lotus Sutras on Experiencing Being

 

This distinction between inner forgiveness and outer forgiveness is the starting point for a three-part exploration of compassion and forgiveness.

 

In this first article, we look at inner forgiveness—why it matters, why it is for everyone, and how letting go of resentment can become an important part of our spiritual growth. The second article will explore outer forgiveness: when forgiveness should lead to reconciliation, when it should lead to boundaries, and why the decision has to be made on a case-to-case basis. The third will take this further into the realm of dharma and responsibility—what happens when we are in a position where compassion for one person must be balanced with our responsibility toward others.

 

Together, the three articles explore a simple but profound question: How can we forgive without confusing forgiveness with approval, weakness or inaction?

 

The Sack of Rotten Potatoes

 

Imagine a man walking around with a heavy sack of rotten potatoes. The potatoes are decaying and giving off a terrible odour, yet he continues to carry them everywhere he goes. When someone asks him why, he explains that another person gave him those potatoes and wronged him badly. He believes that carrying the sack is justified because what happened to him was unfair.

 

The irony is that the person who gave him the potatoes may have walked away long ago. The one still carrying the weight, enduring the smell and suffering the discomfort is the man himself.

 

Resentment can work in much the same way.

 

Someone hurts us, betrays us, insults us or treats us unfairly. The incident may be over in minutes, but we can continue to replay it for years. We revisit the conversation, remember the injustice and imagine what we should have said or done differently. The other person may have moved on, but we continue carrying the experience.

This is where inner forgiveness becomes important.

 

Inner Forgiveness Is About Freedom

 

Forgiveness is often understood as something we do for the person who has wronged us. But inner forgiveness is primarily about freeing ourselves from resentment.

 

It does not mean that what happened was acceptable, nor does it require us to forget the experience or pretend that we were not hurt. We can recognise that someone’s actions were wrong and still decide that we no longer want anger, hatred or the desire for revenge to occupy our inner world.

 

We can learn from what happened without continuing to relive it.

 

This is why Master Choa Kok Sui says that “Inner Forgiveness is for all people.” It does not depend upon whether the other person apologises, changes or even understands the hurt they caused. Inner forgiveness is a choice we make for ourselves.

 

And importantly, forgiving someone internally does not mean that we have decided what should happen to the relationship. That is a separate question.

 

Forgiveness and Spiritual Development

 

Master Choa Kok Sui takes forgiveness beyond emotional well-being and connects it directly with spiritual growth:

“Your Spiritual Development depends on your ability to Forgive others.”

— Grand Master Choa Kok Sui, The Golden Lotus Sutras on Experiencing Being.

 

Why should forgiveness matter to spiritual development? Perhaps because it changes the way we see the person who has hurt us.

 

In the spiritual perspective, every soul is on its own journey of evolution. The age of the physical body tells us very little about the maturity of the soul inhabiting it. A person may be eighty years old and yet, in the larger journey of the soul, may still be learning lessons that another soul has already learned.

 

When we see another person as an evolving soul rather than simply as someone who has wronged us, compassion becomes easier. We do not expect a baby to know what an adult knows, nor do we become angry when a baby behaves in a way that an adult would know is inappropriate. We understand that the child is still learning.

 

Perhaps we can develop the same compassion toward a soul that is still learning.

 

This does not mean that we ignore harmful behaviour or allow ourselves to be repeatedly hurt. It means that we begin to separate the soul from the behaviour. We can recognise that the action was wrong while holding compassion for the being who is still evolving.

 

There is another, deeper dimension to this. When we see another person as completely separate from ourselves, it becomes easier to divide the world into me and the other. The other person hurt me; therefore, I must protect myself from the other.

 

But when we recognise the deeper spiritual truth of oneness, the distinction begins to soften. The person who has hurt us is not fundamentally separate from us. We are both souls moving through different stages of the same larger journey.

 

From that perspective, forgiveness becomes more than an act of emotional release. It becomes an act of recognising our shared divine nature.

 

We forgive not because the behaviour was right, but because we recognise that behind the behaviour is a soul that, like us, is learning, evolving and making mistakes along the way.

 

Perhaps this is one of the deepest expressions of compassion: to see the soul, even when the behaviour is difficult to accept.

 

Putting Down the Sack

 

The man carrying the rotten potatoes eventually has a choice. He can continue carrying them because he believes the other person deserves his anger, or he can recognise that the burden is now hurting him far more than it is affecting the person who caused it.

 

When he puts the sack down, he does not change the past. The potatoes were still rotten, and the injustice still happened. What changes is that he is no longer carrying their weight.

 

That is the essence of inner forgiveness.

 

To forgive is not to say that the past was acceptable. It is to decide that the past will no longer dictate the emotional quality of your present.

 

This is why compassion begins with forgiveness. We forgive within because we do not want to carry resentment indefinitely. What we choose to do outwardly—with the relationship, with trust and with boundaries—is a different matter.

 

As Master Choa Kok Sui teaches, outer forgiveness is case-to-case.

 

That is where the next question begins: Can we forgive someone and still decide that they should not have the same place in our lives? (to be continued in the next blog)

 

Meanwhile, you can continue exploring our other blogs on www.soul-literally.com