I certainly do think that while utilizing forgiveness in
therapy could cause brilliant break-throughs for client healing, this inclusion
of the concept of forgiveness would necessitate a paradigm shift. This
shift of conception would have to take place on both the individual and
societal levels. Until people can have high levels of wisdom, empathy,
compassion, deeper understandings of the meaning of life and a holistic picture
of their existence, then forgiveness is not going to be an easy method to teach
or to utilize in therapy.
In previous weeks we have debated the utility of
spirituality being applied in the counseling realm. When working with
forgiveness, it seems imperative and most effective to apply it in a spiritual
framework. The reason for this is not initially clear, however it is
paramount. Having a spiritual foundation allows for people to understand
something more than their ego existence. So the guilt, resentment, and
all other transitory negative feelings which are ego produced can be released.
Then one can re-attain the peaceful state of the soul which includes
forgiveness. To ask people to forgive from a lesser mindset, one which is
still bound up in ego dramas, materiality, greed, selfishness, etc. is like
asking a baby to give up its favorite toy. It’s not really a reasonable
or even fair request. Of course your ego self wants to fight someone who
appears to have wronged you. What benefit does it see in forgiving?
It just wants to win, come out on top, to outshine all others, etc. And
as long as a client is based in the realm of ego mental space and functioning,
then the client will also be highly resistant to cohesive, unifying,
compassionate approaches.
But your spiritual self inherently wants peace, harmony, kindness, compassion,
forgiveness of self and others, tolerance, understanding and all of these other
grounding psychological feelings. Regardless of the religion, there are
universal truths that can be utilized to reach these feelings, as mentioned in
the article (McDowell, 2007). One can approach forgiveness from any
soulful route. But for an individual to feel the benefits fully, I do
believe that forgiveness cannot just be a mental exercise, but has to be an
experienced that is embraced with the body, mind and spirit.
The holistic view of life which incorporates the soul, or a higher perspective,
can be taught in a way that it becomes ingrained in people. Then
forgiveness becomes a natural response as opposed to an effortful, or even
sometimes seemingly impossible task. To ask an ego mind to forgive an
affront is setting oneself up for a battle. To ask an enlightened mind,
that recognizes the oneness of everyone, or the eternality of the existence of
the human soul, to ask such a soul to forgive is to ask the sun to shine.
It is a natural and beautiful process that does not need much coaxing.
When the ego clouds move away, those radiant inherent qualities of love expose
themselves. Meanwhile the human who is having this experience becomes
more psychologically sound than could be hoped for in an average therapy
session. That is because this is not about mind, but rather it is about
soul which trumps the mind.
So ultimately yes, forgiveness is a great therapeutic tool. But a tool is
used to fix a system. The spiritual system must be put into place for a
client to apply the tool of forgiveness easily and successfully. So the
therapist must build the proper system with the client, and then they should
apply the tool of forgiveness and other positive qualities as needed. In
this way therapy can reach levels of healing which were unprecedented in former
intellectual models.
Resources:
McDowell, C. (2007) “Peace: the Virtue of Forgiveness,” Retrieved on August 14th, 2015 from http://www.onesanctuary.com/peace/peacevirtues/virtueofforgiveness.pdf
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