Forgiveness and boundaries can exist together. Sometimes, we forgive someone we once loved and trusted, yet know in our heart that the relationship cannot return to what it was. This can feel contradictory. If I have forgiven you, why can I not simply go back to being your friend? Because forgiveness changes how we hold the past; it does not necessarily determine what the relationship should look like in the present.
“I Have Already Forgiven You”
Two friends share a close relationship. They trust each other and speak openly about their lives. One day, one of them shares something deeply personal. The other, in a moment of poor judgment, reveals the secret to someone else.
The betrayal hurts. The friend who trusted him feels exposed, disappointed and dejected. With time, however, he decides to forgive. He understands that people make mistakes, sometimes out of weakness, carelessness or poor judgment. He does not want to carry anger towards his friend. But he also chooses to step back from the relationship.
Some time later, the friend who betrayed the confidence apologises and asks to be forgiven.
“I have already forgiven you,” comes the reply.
The friend is relieved. “Then let us be friends again.”
The answer is gentle but clear: “I have forgiven you. But that does not mean we will remain the same as before.”
There is no anger in the statement. There is no desire for revenge. There is simply an acceptance that something has changed.
This is the distinction between inner forgiveness and outer forgiveness.
Forgiveness Does Not Automatically Restore Trust
In the previous article “How to Forgive“, we explored inner forgiveness—the process of releasing resentment and freeing ourselves from the emotional burden of what happened.
Outer forgiveness asks a different question: What do I do with the relationship now?
Forgiving someone does not require us to immediately trust them again. Trust is rebuilt through behaviour, consistency and time. Nor does forgiveness require reconciliation or the restoration of the relationship to its earlier form.
Sometimes we can forgive someone and remain close. Sometimes we need a little distance. And sometimes, particularly when a pattern of hurt continues, we may decide that the relationship needs to end.
Master Choa Kok Sui puts this distinction very simply in Golden Lotus Sutras on ‘Experiencing Being’: “Inner Forgiveness is for all people, but Outer Forgiveness should be done on a case-to-case basis.”
That is an invitation to use both compassion and discernment.
Forgiveness and Boundaries
A boundary does not have to come from anger. It can come from self-respect.
If someone has repeatedly lied to us, betrayed our confidence or treated us without consideration, we do not have to keep putting ourselves in the same situation simply to prove that we have forgiven them.
We can understand their humanity and still protect our own.
Perhaps the other person was acting from their own hurt, immaturity or weakness. Perhaps they genuinely regret what they did. We can have compassion for that without pretending that the consequences of their actions did not exist.
And we can extend the same compassion to ourselves. We do not have to feel guilty for needing distance. We do not have to keep a relationship unchanged simply because we have forgiven someone.
Forgiveness says, “I no longer hold this against you.” A boundary says, “I have also learned to take care of myself.”
These two can coexist beautifully.
Compassion Does Not Mean Treating Every Situation the Same
Every relationship is different, and every person is at a different point in their journey. A genuine mistake may call for patience and another opportunity. Repeated betrayal may call for greater distance.
Compassion does not require us to remove every consequence of another person’s actions. It asks us to respond without hatred or revenge, while remaining honest about what the relationship has become. We may forgive the person and still accept that closeness is no longer appropriate; we may release the resentment while retaining the lesson; and we may wish them well without restoring the trust that once existed.
Perhaps that is the deeper wisdom in outer forgiveness: we do not have to choose between compassion for another person and compassion for ourselves.
We can hold both.
And when we do, forgiveness stops being about simply letting someone “off the hook”. It becomes a conscious choice to release the hurt, retain the wisdom and allow each person to continue their journey with dignity.
In the next article, we take forgiveness beyond our personal relationships and ask a more difficult question: what happens when we have a responsibility to protect others and uphold order?
Visit the previous article “How to Forgive“, to explore the process of inner forgiveness.
You can also explore our other blogs on esoteric learning on on www.soul-literally.com/.
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? (continued in the next blog ‘Forgiveness and Boundaries’)
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