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Rewrite your story to create a “healing” story that reflects an understanding of the perpetrator. Put yourself in his or her shoes and include a description of the perpetrator and what motivated the action. Where were the wounds? What was this person’s life like that possibly led to the action? If you found that a lot of anger or resistance came up and you could not put yourself in the perpetrator’s shoes, explore that. Did a shift in your thinking take place and, if so, how did it happen?

Finding Forgiveness – Eileen R. Borris-Dunchunstang

For me this step came into play with my father. He had just had his fourth serious heart operation over the past 25 years and there was a lot of concern he wouldn’t make it. When I walked into the room with my sister I was greeted by an angry man who showered me with an hour of abuse. Once my sister and I walked out of the room and met up with my mother and brother, my sister was a gasp wondering how I could sit there so peaceful and not respond in kind.

I could take his abuse, because I considered his point of view. He was scared, he had all these doctors hovering around him and I had just come all the way back from Indonesia, so in his mind the question was “Is this it?” And he reacted the only way he ever new when confronting stress. He attacked.

But that wasn’t the only growth I made from this visit. Following a week or so of my visits and remaining calm when facing his abuse, his anger (fear) began to subside and I was able to expand our conversation and pry out some information from him about his younger years. You see my father had never spoken to us about his past, so it was pretty obvious he had grown up in very hard times and under the watch of some very abusive parents so I guess it would only be natural not to want to rehash his past pain. Maybe in time he will come to understand that to open up and to release this pain will set him free from all the demons that lurk within.

In any case one afternoon my dad shared with me what his house was like? I knew he would shut down if I asked about his childhood so I just accepted whatever he offered. He told me about his house and the cracks in the walls that the cold wind blew through, what they repetitively ate each week, about his pet chickens and how he had to eat them and how he rode his bike to work at the age of 15 so he could support his elderly parents and twin sister. It was very emotional for me because it was the first time in my life I actually felt compassion for him.

Now when I speak to my Dad and he has moments of frustration that may escalate into anger, I see a person who suffered as a child and how these scars have influenced his actions and behaviors throughout his life. I am also aware of how easy it is for me to play God and judge the outcome based upon how it affects me, my perceptions and my desires. I don’t know why we in the west have such a need to judge, but I hope over time to find is the courage to give up my Godly throne and take on the responsibility to behave as our great spiritual leaders have- Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Mother Teresa and Gandhi and seek to walk a mile in the shoes of others before I force them to try on mine.

In the course of our lives we often make misguided decisions that harm ourselves or others. We do this out of ignorance. We think that a certain mode of behavior will bring us happiness when in fact it brings us suffering. Feelings of self-righteous anger and the urge for revenge may sometimes lead us to harm others in the mistaken conviction that it will benefit us and bring us some form of happiness. Actually, it creates suffering not only for the victims of our deeds but also for us. However justified we may feel, doing others harm, even in the name of revenge, severely disturbs our own peace of mind and creates conditions for our own suffering.

Dalai Lama – Forward from “Finding Forgiveness” by Eileen R. Borris-Dunchunstang

The other day I was having a discussion with a young lady and she was telling me about her childhood. She was telling me how when she was a little girl her father would mentally and physically abuse her mother. In fact there were times when her father was hitting her mother and her mother would cry out “Help me!” In my heart I could actually feel the pain and how hard it must have been for a little five year old little girl to watch helplessly. She went on to say how her father was always cheating on her mother and that her mother had even cheated on him to pay him back.

I then asked her a few questions about her personal relationships with men and she admitted that she had cheated on her boyfriends, lied to her boyfriends, stole from her boyfriends and basically had remained unwilling to give anything to the relationships. In fact she had become her dad so that she would never have to be her mom and go through the pain she had witnessed her mother go through.

I then asked her how she thought her mother felt when her father was behaving in these ways. I even asked her to take a moment and go back to those experiences so that she might actually relive the pain. After a few minutes she began to cry for her mother and she became very angry at her father.

I then asked her how she thought her boyfriend felt when she was treating him like her father treated her mother. There was a fair amount of silence and then she courageously stated that for the first time she understood that she was in fact hurting her boyfriends in the same way and that she was behaving no better than her father.

I then asked her to think about what life was like for her father when he was a child? What did he go through? I told her she didn’t need to accept her fathers’ behavior as OK, but she needed to understand how this pattern began and if she wanted this abuse to end she must be the one to find the courage to put a stop to it.

Time will tell

Her willingness to see life as it is is her willingness to follow Step #1 in the book Finding Forgiveness.

A little boy came running excitedly to his mother saying: “Mom, there is a boy out there in the woods who is mocking me. Everything I say he says after me. If I say: “Hello,” he says: “Hello.” When I say “Who are you?” he says: “Who are you?” “So I got mad and jumped over the fence and went into the woods to find him. But he wasn’t anywhere. So I yelled, “I’ll punch you in the nose.” And he said the very same thing, exactly as I had said it.”

The boy’s mother told him, “That is only an echo answering you Billy. If you had said: ‘I love you,’ it would have said the same to you.”

She went on to tell her son a a similar story about a dog who went into a room full of mirrors. He eventually died of exhaustion trying to fight his mirrored ‘enemies.’ If he had only wagged his tail once, he would have had all of them wagging their tails in friendship.

As a parent we have reflected many of our behaviors upon our children. Thus we must teach our children honesty from our deepest core and admit that as a parent we were flawed and made countless errors. Then we must ask our children for forgiveness – for it is when we ask our children for forgiveness – we allow them to understand that they are our equals and that everyone is flawed.

It is through this humility that we give our children the greatest gift we can give them – we give them the opportunity to forgive us and it is through that forgiveness that they learn to forgive themselves.

For the past few months I have been staying with my parents and I have to be honest – the experience has been wonderful. Seriously I can’t believe how much I’m learning about myself and why I do the things I do and the way I do them.

In addition I think for the first time in my life I have actually been listening to my parents and watching how they react to various situations. Yup they’re human and that’s pretty nice to see. We all have faults but when you observe someone’s faults without judgement those perceived faults actually become quite loveable little quirks.

Really this is simply amazing – but what’s even more amazing is how my parents are accepting constructive criticism on how to adjust the unproductive behaviours and patterns that they’ve been unconsciously following for years. Now I’m not going to get into all of these points individually but I will say this; for 83 and 86 years of age these two are pretty darn open minded, flexible and willing live life to its fullest even if it does require exercising their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions 2 or 3 times a day. And the change is really obvious to a lot of people.

Now of course it certainly is a lot easier to listen to someone when they aren’t attacking you, blaming you or negatively criticizing you and in the past I have to admit I could be pretty condemning and pretty harsh. However my new found approach (5 years in Buddhist countries) has taught me that I must lead by example, seeking to understand, acting with compassion and look to forgive. You see it’s the forgiving of others that allowed me to forgive myself and it’s that forgiveness of myself that has greatly reduced the condemning and harshness that I dispersed throughout my past.

So I guess what this really all comes down to is that given the right opportunity and a positive loving environment change is possible within all of us. We just need to understand that blame solves nothing, guilt is unproductive and if we want our life to improve it all comes down to our willingness to forgive our self, through the forgiveness of others.

So like my mom used to say – sweep your own door step first.

Last night I had an opportunity to speak to one of my sons about the reality of LOVE!

The Buddha stated that we can only really love one person in our life and that person is our self.

Now to many of us this may sound a bit strange and when I ask most people “Who is the one person you love in your life?” most reply “My mom or my Dad!”

But here is the catch – love is an act – the act of giving; giving kindness, giving patience, giving generosity, giving courtesy, giving humility, giving honesty and giving forgiveness. So how can we give away something unless we already have it? Well logically it’s impossible, because we can’t give away anything unless we already possess it. Therefore, the claim of the Buddha that we must first love our self makes complete sense. Well at least to me. So again, once we love of our self, then and only then can we give it away.

So how do we obtain self love – again we must give – for what we give we shall receive – if I give kindness – I feel kind, if I give patience – I feel patient and so on. Therefore “self love” is selfless and unconditional and without question possibly the most difficult pursuit we will ever personally undertake. Why, because self forgiveness is a condition of self love and as Scott Peck spoke of in his book ‘The Road Less Travelled’ we are all self destructive by nature. But we must remember that any improvement is better than no improvement.  

 In addition there other obstacles we must overcome if we are to ever fully understand love. One of the toughest challenges is to accept that love is ‘NOT’ a feeling! How can that be you ask? We watch movies and read books and all the time people are being swept off their feet in the throes of love – but it’s simply not true. Lust, desire, cravings, infatuation, wants, needs, and so forth are the feelings that compel us to seek out the opposite sex, but I assure you these feelings are not love, but rather a genetic desire to procreate. Truth be told these feelings begin to fade after a year or two, leading many people to believe that they are actually falling out of love.

You see love is relatively passive in most relationships (offering to help with dinner, waiting patiently for the toilet) and is not often tested until our ego is shattered because of some perceived wrong that our significant other has inflicted upon us. It is at that moment that we either apply the humility of love or succumb to the taunting of our ego and lash out and proclaiming injustice.

Love teaches us to care, understand and to humble ourselves in these times of difficulty. The true test of love is to overcome our egos desires and needs to protect against pain and hurt and to act positively, supporting others when their actions are damaging to themselves and to the lives of those around them.

For example; today’s’ hot topic – Tiger Woods – Now I don’t condone the actions of Tiger, but as a past member of the fraternity of unfaithful males – I cannot cast the first stone, however I do know why we as human beings succumb to these errors in judgement. Why – to paraphrase an old Waylon Jennings song – we are “Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places”.

Tiger is no different than any other human, he exercised poor judgment as we all have in various ways and at various times in our lives, but he doesn’t need to be ground into the dirt either. He needs to be given love and to be guided to the self love he was in search of.

We can have everything materialistic in life, but without self love we have nothing. The quick fix never works – instantaneous gratification is short lived but slick marketers know our weakness and target it through sex, alcohol, food, clothing, fast cars and multiple other items creating the illusion that there is an external cure for this internal void.

But external gratification is not and never will be the answer. For Tiger and his wife they have their work cut out, but the answer is not for her to leave or for him to run – it’s now time for both of them to roll up their sleeves and get down to the business of LOVE and overcome the immediate demands and pressures of their egos.

At one of Stephen Covey’s seminar’s a man came up to Stephen and said,

“Stephen, I like what you are saying. But every situation is so different. Look at my marriage. I’m really worried. My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just dont love her anymore and she doesn’t love me. What can I do?”

“The feeling isn’t there anymore?” Stephen asked.

“Thats right.” he reaffirmed. “And we have three children we’re really concerned about. What do you suggest?”

“Love her,” Stephen replied.

“I told you, the feeling just isn’t there anymore.”

“Love her.” Stephen again replied.

“You don’t understand. The feeling of love just isn’t there.”

“Then love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.”

“But how do you love when you don’t love?”

Stephen replied, “My friend, love is a verb. Love — the feeling — is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?”

Any way you slice it, it takes two to tango – so if we want love – we give love.

Today is December 18th and we are now officially one week away from Christmas. Stores are hopping, cashier lines are long, mall parking lots are near impossible to find a place to park and excitement is building in the minds of most children.

Now don’t get me wrong, the positive impact that Christmas can have on a child is very powerful and may very well be one of the reasons why western culture has such a solid foundation in “Hopes and Dreams.”

But was it really the act of the three wise men that we were to emulate most on this the birth of Christianity’s greatest prophet. Well let’s look at it. The act of the wise men was a sign of respect and goodwill; in fact back in those days’ it was expected to offer gifts to people of power. Therefore if we break it down, when we exchange gifts with our family and friends we too are emulating in our own small symbolic way an act of respect and goodwill towards our family and friends.

So that’s pretty good, but is there more? Well certainly there are additional positive spin-offs associated with the season of goodwill, such as gifts to charitable foundations, to the poor and to the homeless. But I still don’t think that was the primary intent of this day, even if all of the aforementioned are pretty darn good secondary objectives.

For me Christmas is a time to reflect back upon the acts of Christianity’s greatest prophet, what he practiced and what he preached. Whether a person is Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or whatever the teachings of Jesus have a great deal to offer to all mankind. For me the following stands out at this time of year:

Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

Jesus

There is no better time than today to realize that it is our judgment of others that creates our greatest pain and downfalls. It is our egos that cause us our greatest harm and separate us from others, filling our minds with false illusions of grandeur, supremacy and the need to be right at all costs.

We all have someone we have judged and through that judgment created harm and possibly separated a relationship. So set your ego aside, reach out and make amends without needing anything in return. If we do this unconditionally from the core of our hearts this holiday season will certainly be filled with the true magic of Christmas.

So let this holiday season be the one where your gifts are not purely materialistic, but also from the willingness to humble yourself as you seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted, to understand, than to be understood, to love, than to be loved and where by your act of forgiveness returns to you the grace that you have been forgiven.

In Calgary, Alberta a 26-year-old mother stared down at her 6 year old son, who was dying of terminal leukemia. Although her heart was filled with sadness, she also had a strong feeling of determination. Like any parent, she wanted her son to grow up & fulfill all his dreams. That was no longer possible. The leukemia would see to that. But she still wanted her son’s dream to come true.

She took her son’s hand and asked, ‘Billy, did you ever think about what you wanted to be once you grew up? Did you ever dream and wish what you would do with your life?’

Mommy, ‘I always wanted to be a fireman when I grew up.’

Mom smiled back and said, ‘Let’s see if we can make your wish come true.’ Later that day she went to her local fire department in Calgary, where she met Fireman Bob, who had a heart as big as Alberta. She explained her son’s final wish and asked if it might be possible to give her 6 year-old son a ride around the block on a fire engine.

Fireman Bob said, ‘Look, we can do better than that. If you’ll have your son ready at seven o’clock Wednesday morning, we’ll make him an honorary Fireman for the whole day. He can come down to the fire station, eat with us, go out on all the fire calls, the whole nine yards! And if you’ll give us his sizes, we’ll get a real fire uniform for him, with a real fire hat – not a toy – one-with the emblem of the Calgary Fire Department on it, and a yellow slicker like we wear and rubber boots.’ ‘They’re all manufactured right here in Calgary, so we can get them fast.’

Three days later Fireman Bob picked up Billy, dressed him in his uniform and escorted him from his hospital bed to the waiting hook and ladder truck. Billy got to sit on the back of the truck and help steer it back to the fire station. He was in heaven.

There were three fire calls in Calgary that day and Billy got to go out on all three calls. He rode in the different fire engines, the Paramedic’s’ van, and even the fire chief’s car. He was also videotaped for the local news program. Having his dream come true, with all the love and attention that was lavished upon him, Billy lived three months longer than any doctor thought possible.

One night all of his vital signs began to drop dramatically and the head nurse, who believed in the hospice concept – that no one should die alone, began to call the family members to the hospital. Then she remembered the day Billy had spent as a Fireman, so she called the Fire Chief and asked if it would be possible to send a fireman in uniform to the hospital to be with Billy as he made his transition.

The chief replied, ‘We can do better than that.  We’ll be there in five minutes. Will you please do me a favor? When you hear the sirens screaming and see the lights flashing, will you announce over the PA system that there is not a fire?’ ‘It’s the department coming to see one of its finest members one more time. And will you open the window to his room?’ About five minutes later a hook and ladder truck arrived at the hospital and extended its ladder up to Billy’s third floor open window——– 16 fire-fighters climbed up the ladder into Billy’s room. With his mother’s permission, they hugged him and held him and told him how much they LOVED him.

With His dying breath, Billy looked up at the fire chief and said, ‘Chief, am I really a fireman now?’

‘Billy, you are, and The Head Chief, Jesus, is holding your hand,’ the chief said.

With those words, Billy smiled and said, ‘I know, He’s been holding my hand all day, and the angels have been singing.’

He closed his eyes one last time.

In our day-to-day life we have many opportunities to give little gifts to others that will enhance their day and make their life a little bit better. These little gifts are the gift of love. Love is kindness, patience, generosity, courtesy, humility, forgiveness and honesty. Fireman Bob took the time to be kind (to openly and willingly receive Billy’s moms wish and act upon it), he took the time to be patient (to take the time to really listen to Billy’s mom’s need and act upon it), he took the time to be generous (to act and give of his time to have Billy’s uniform made), he took the time to be courteous (he acted in a respectful manor to the pain Billy and his mother were going through), he took the time to be humble (he set his own intentions and needs aside and acted to fulfill the needs of Billy and his mother), he took the time to forgive (he forgave life for taking this young boy at such an early age and acted without resentment or anger) and he took the time to be honest (he took action and fulfilled his commitments to Billy, his mother and to himself) – and it was Fireman Bob’s willingness to act that emotionally pulled at our hearts as we read this story because we all know it is within us too – to be channels of love – all we have to do is find the time and the willingness to give it away.