Written by Melanie Tonia Evans
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A lovely friend of mine Sylvia inspired me, in her reply on one of my Facebook posts, to write this article.
“Forgiveness” is such a hot topic … and within the self-help, psychological and healing industries it is a widely acknowledged term.
It’s also a very confusing and misunderstood topic.
The deeper implications of forgiveness and the personal freedom it achieves and why it achieves it, are not necessarily examined, talked about or accepted.
And there are many people who may have believed they have “forgiven” – who have done it conceptually, yet have not experienced a true shift in their heart and being.
I know what this was like – before my profound personal journey of narcissistic abuse recovery, where I had to actualise True Forgiveness to save my life …
As Nelson Mandela famously said,
“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”
In regard to conceptual forgiveness, rather than true forgiveness, it can go like this: “I’ve moved on, I’ve let that go … I don’t want to talk about it.”
Yet … if we have done the work within our Inner Being, we know that we can easily go back to something and discuss it with no charges or pain. Because we have liberated ourselves internally from the trauma of it – which included reaching True Forgiveness.
If we have not fully integrated and accepted and evolved beyond what happened to us (including the experience of real forgiveness) then the trauma in our being persists.
Throughout this article, I want to dissect the topic of Forgiveness deeply …and I want to bring Quantum understandings of it to the table.
There are many different theories and classifications of forgiveness, and by exploring this I want this article to be a progression all the way leading to – what I believe is the highest levels of forgiveness – which now can be coined (thanks to Sylvia) “Organic Forgiveness.”
Resistance to Forgiveness
There are many concepts about forgiveness, that take away the benefits of doing it.
Which is sad, as it has been proven through extensive research and studies that people who are prepared to forgive experience happier lives, have better mental health and live longer than people who don’t wish to forgive.
This famous meme comes to mind, “Holding onto anger is like taking poison every day and expecting the other person to die.”
This quote has been coined in slight variations by Buddha, Pema Chodron, and Nelson Mandela.
Yet, despite the ongoing emotional agony experienced by anyone who holds onto anger and blame and refuses to let it go … and also how apparent this awful result is when we observe someone else doing this … there are many misconceptions within our society, and especially amongst abuse communities, regarding forgiveness.
The evidence is everywhere … that where demonization, resentment and victimhood prevails it derails people’s inspiration to forgive.
Such as these common victimised beliefs:
Perpetrators do not “deserve” our forgiveness.
Forgiving someone condones their behaviour.
Forgiving someone means that you let this person off the hook, and they will never be held accountable for their behaviour.
Forgiving someone means you will stay connected to them and will be subject to more bad behaviour.
Forgiving someone means that you are inviting similar bad behaviour to happen to you in the future.
Forgiving someone means you are a victim and not standing up for your rights …. and …
Forgiving someone means you are weak.
All of these are false premises, drastically … and they create the very opposite of what the victim model believes they create.
And, truly the best gauge of that is our emotional state as a result of hanging onto the judgement, hurt and resentment.
How do our emotions respond to that?
This is what we experience … the trauma of these toxic emotions eating us alive. They hurt us every day – over and over again.
Our emotions are our connection to Infinite Wisdom that supersedes any “theory” we may come up with mentally – to let us know we are horribly in “wrong town” – when our emotions scream “yuk that HURTS!” at us.
Because of these reasons … which debunk the previous “non-forgiveness” beliefs.
Whilst stubbornly deciding other people don’t deserve our forgiveness, we deny ourselves our own deservedness of freedom from the pain.
We don’t get free as a result of holding people eternally responsible for what they did to us.
When we hate them because of what they did to us, rather than being free and protected from suffering future abuse from them, we are in fact much more likely to stay connected to them and their abuse (even if only the mental obsession of it every day) whilst never getting them to be held accountable as a condition to set us free (which honestly wouldn’t work anyway).
Because we are living within the emotional container of being “wronged”, rather than be safe from future abuse, we simply become a target for more of it, because ….
We are already feeling it and we fear it. We try to defend from it, we show up unconsciously in ways that re-generate more if it again … and our entire life becomes one of “people wronging us” and not being able to trust people.
In turn people don’t warm to us or trust us. They feel our “funk”– fear us and defend themselves or position themselves against us.
What is True About Forgiveness
When we reach a level of forgiveness that is real and embodied (not just a mental construct), we experience an Inner Being Shift, and then we are emotionally freed.
And able to:
Let go and move on, realising that someone is not healthy for you – without regret, anguish and pain.
Take action in your power, without being emotionally derailed in a way that states healthy boundaries and is capable of bringing someone to justice (if applicable), yet in no way is getting a certain result a need or a condition in order for you to be “whole”.
Recognise what it was that you needed to heal in order for your own growth, so that you will no longer hand power over to people who can hurt you. Meaning you have evolved beyond abuse as a result of “taking the gift” and therefore will no longer be susceptible to being abused in the future.
We can love and forgive people from a distance, and recognise that hurt people hurt people and that their behaviour is not personal, and given their amount of trauma and wounding that they suffered in their childhoods and / or took on from their ancestor’s unconscious, wounds and traumas, that it is no wonder they behaved the way they did.
(And … how on earth could they have behaved any differently without the healing of their traumas?)
Forgiving someone does not mean you are a victim and not standing up for your rights. We don’t need to be traumatised to know something is not right for us, and assert our rights.
In fact, we can have a deep knowing of what does and doesn’t serve us without feeling incensed and totally we can take assertive, healthy action for ourselves when we are NOT operating as a victim.
We can also deeply understand; it is a blatant untruth that forgiving is “weak” … the absolute truth is stronger people forgive.
When we take our own development and emotional freedom to Quantum Levels, we accept that as children we were totally powerless and dependent on our caregivers to grant us ourselves, yet as adults we are not.
And this is where we can grow up and make it our greatest mission to free ourselves, knowing that holding other people responsible for our own levels of love, approval, survival and security is fruitless, self-defeating, the path of the victim and renders us powerless.
And the only times, at the deepest levels of our emotional being, that we do this – is when we have not as yet actualised ourselves beyond our own wounds, dependencies and neediness … in order to become the essential source of these self-commodities to ourselves.
Victims hold other people responsible for their own levels of love, approval, survival and security. They are acting out their childhood dependencies that they have not healed and reached their own power with as adults yet.
There are different level of forgiveness.
Let’s explore them …
Logical Forgiveness – The Attempt to Move On
This can come about as an understanding that forgiveness is necessary to be free of the toxic emotions and move on … and this is where people will say “I’ve dealt with that.”
And generally … you now they haven’t.
That is an attempt to bury what happened to them – state they have forgiven the person and moved on – yet the trauma in their body has never been dealt with.
Trauma is very real – and trauma comes under the deeply damaging categories of things such as betrayal, injustice, disbelief in the levels of cruelty inflicted, being treated like a dispensable object rather than a flesh and blood human who matters, and being treated with such disregard and maliciousness that may have threated your soul and being at multiple levels.
Narcissistic abuse is full of such high levels of trauma – inflicted by narcissists (deeply wounded unconscious people) inflicted with the identical traumas and terrors they dispense.
Because unconscious trauma is a psychic virus which spreads epidemically.
True Forgiveness does not bypass the validity and seriousness of the traumas that have infiltrated our Inner Being – yet logical forgiveness does.
True Forgiveness recognises, holds, heals and up-levels (frees the Inner Being) from these traumas.
Logical forgiveness doesn’t – it’s a spiritual bypass that doesn’t work. Because the gift (graduation) of personal development and evolution beyond abuse (psychic human unconsciousness) hasn’t happened.
Logical forgiveness doesn’t midwife the breakdown into a true breakthrough – it simply buries the trauma inside and hopes to move on from it.
The results are this:
Ongoing pain and obsession.
High probability for “more abuse” (because the evolution was missed).
Recoiling and hiding out from Life and people because the “fear” is not healed.
Distrust and defences sabotaging connection with people and Life.
Ongoing emotional, mental and physical dis-ease that may require medication and ongoing management.
Addictions, as an attempt to self-medicate the inner pain that has not been healed.
This is not true healing.
Evolving Forgiveness – The Giving Up of Judgement and Righteousness
Judgement is synonymous with fear and pain.
We can separate from someone without judging them.
We can know someone is not healthy for us without judging them.
When we give up judgment we stop standing in our lofty position of righteousness.
When we give up judgement and righteousness, it is much easier to give up our resistance to forgiving.
When we give up judgement, the space appears for much healthier emotions – which are ones of our organic True Self.
And we know they are, because when we make the space, they start flowing through us as understanding and even compassion.
And at a deeper level we also have humility, we realise that we too have been capable of dispensing hurt (and to a huge extent to ourselves) as result of operating out of our unhealed traumas that were causing negative emotions which manifested as “less than” behaviours.
Then we progress into an even deeper awareness – where we realise that the ways we have spoken to, treated, demonised and tried to curse, bully and shame ourselves into “a better version” (the conditional, critical love we were taught as children) on a consistent and cumulative basis, has probably been more damaging for us than the way anyone else treated us.
Now we are moving from the level of a powerless victim into taking personal responsibility – where our true power lies.
We start to awaken out of the trance of “people have done this to me” into the Quantum Truth of “of course I accepted and stayed with people who treated me in the ways I was unconsciously treating myself” … because I promise you that when you awaken, you deeply understand that you do not accept or stay with ANY level of love which is less than the level of love you grant yourself.
The Shifting Out of Trauma
Now … here is the clincher.
You can’t just decide to “wake up” and drop judgement and righteousness in order to forgive.
Not when you have a ton of trauma stuck in your body.
Why?
Because your range of consciousness (ability to think in evolved ways) is always limited to the level of your trauma (or otherwise).
The range of our brain capacity matches 100% the range that our Inner Being is in on that topic.
So, even if conceptually you may agree with what I am writing, if you don’t have the space to embody it for real, you will try to “take it in” by reading and re-reading this over and over to try to make it real for yourself.
You are trying to “learn it” rather than “being it”.
Emotional evolution is not like golf lessons – you can’t “learn it”, you have to actualise it.
Until you shift the trauma out to make space (and even more than that receive an instant corresponding mind shift … which is what the “space” really is), all this can be to you is an “unreachable concept.”
Because what IS taking up space within you is the young, unhealed parts of you that were unconsciously holding this person responsible for your levels of love, approval, survival and security … and incensed when this person damaged you instead of granting you these commodities.
The truth is people who are already a whole source to themselves of these commodities, let go of abusers once the mask falls.
Why would you try to turn crumbs into delicious cookies, when you are already a delicious cookie to yourself?
Why would you choose a warfield in Beirut when you already have stakes and property in Vanuatu?
That wasn’t me back then – I was nowhere near whole.
I was empty, needy and not a source to myself … hence why I was at war in Beirut fighting over limited resources for my “survival” on multiple levels, that I as yet had no idea how to provide emotionally for myself.
So when we are in “wrong town” trying to force a person who doesn’t have the consciousness and resources to grant us these commodities that we aren’t generating for ourselves, we don’t get healing from them … we only get more evidence of our traumas that have now surfaced.
As well as more accumulated damage to them.
It’s EXACTLY those traumas that require healing – and lots of it.
And the incredible soul gift is – by healing these traumas we FINALLY become the Source of love, approval, survival and security to ourselves.
It’s the way home.
And we realise the grand design plan that was taking place all along – all paths no matter what they looked like were leading home.
People who are living in the false illusion (human constructed delusion) of “non-forgiveness” may even believe that going to their traumas regrading what someone did to them – grants that person power – it validates their behaviour.
Such as “I would never give that person the satisfaction of acknowledging what they did to me. I’m stronger than that”.
Again – this creates the exact opposite. It DOES validate the person, because the trauma trapped inside your Inner Being causes you to be wounded indefinitely.
Ignoring trauma does not heal it.
It lives on.
It’s only our insecure, immature, victimised ego who puts the importance of “what others think” in front of our own self-love.
Our True Self knows this is not even about the other person … this is entirely about the evolution opportunity for self.
When we start to come home to ourselves with true love, approval and self-devotion we stop ignoring our unhealed, under-developed traumas and we go to them with dedication, purpose and fierce devotion to free our Inner Being from them …. as if our VERY Life depends on it.
Because it does.
And we make this our foremost mission– regardless of who put our traumas in there.
When we start doing that work of freeing ourselves from our internal trauma … we realise ALL our traumas came from someone else – they are NOT our True Self.
They were no-one’s True Self.
Every traumatised person traumatising someone else had their original traumas inflicted by another traumatised person and so on and so forth – back through the entire human condition.
And we want OFF that unconscious, insane treadmill.
Then we deeply want to be a force that helps everyone within the human condition to awaken, free themselves from their own trauma and get off it – perpetrator and victim alike.
By being the example of doing that ourselves.
Non-forgiveness will never lead the way.
Forgiveness does.
Radical Forgiveness – The Healing of Existing Trauma
When we start releasing our traumas, deep Infinite Wisdom starts to arise within us, that brings peace and True Understanding.
Radical forgiveness is about taking radical personal responsibility.
It is about a concept that Neale Donald Walsh writes about in Conversations With God – “True forgiveness is the recognition that there was nothing to forgive.”
Radical personal responsibility is foundational within this Community of Thriving. It is the understanding of the absolute Quantum Law – so within, so without.
Meaning that no-one could inflict any level of abuse to us unless we already had the corresponding wounds inside us as a match for them.
This can be a hard pill to swallow for people who refuse to forgive and want to hold onto the victim label. They can be incensed with this theory – thinking it puts the blame on victims.
Yet it doesn’t – none of us consciously chose our traumas or our emotional belief systems programming. We had NO logical say in what we took on from our ancestors.
People have jumped up and down, and I totally understand why – in response to the radical forgiveness theory (and the perceived connotation of “victim blaming”) and have asked questions like this … “How can a child ask for being sexually abused?”
The answer is this … she did NOT ask for it – yet the trauma of abuse was already in her being.
I know of so many people (myself included) who suffered sexual abuse – whose mothers had also and so on and so forth.
In fact, this pattern is frighteningly common with people who have been narcissistically abused (and I know many of you reading this will relate).
This is what the bible speaks of with this profound truth: “the sins (wounds) of the father passed on for seven generations.”
Epigenetics is now proving irrevocably that the offspring of trauma victims are born with trauma brains at birth, regardless of whether or not they have experienced a trauma environment.
Trauma lives on and is passed on.
Until someone takes radical personal responsibility and heals it within their OWN being.
Then the cycle is broken.
Radical forgiveness is this –
“There is nothing to forgive, because YOU showing up in my life was for an evolutionary purpose. It brought to my attention the already existing trauma energy inside me so that FINALLY I could go to it and heal it.
Thank you! Without you showing up and making my unconscious conscious I couldn’t.
And … if you didn’t show up then someone else would have had to fill your shoes. In fact, many people like you had – they didn’t get my attention before – but you were so impactful that you did.
And … this painful trauma I had been carrying had been limiting me in so many areas of my Life. I thought this was all about me getting free from you, but that was only the beginning!
Now I realise this is really about me being freed from these parts of me that weren’t serving me, so that I could become the next Highest and Truest aspect of myself.”
Compassionate Forgiveness – We Are All In This Together
For myself “compassionate forgiveness” came after “radical forgiveness”.
This is when we move out of wanting the narcissist to be held accountable and suffer for what they did, and we get to the stage where we absolutely wish with all our heart that everyone, including narcissists – could awaken to heal from their trauma and be set free.
Generally, this stage comes after the incredible gratitude we feel that the narcissist showed up in our life, revealed for us our disowned wounds that had never fully got our attention before, and forced us to our knees (because life could no longer go on as normal) to finally, finally do the inner work to release our wounds, bring in our True Self replacement – and we are now loving how this granted us the most healed, expanded, happy life we could imagine possible.
Yes, the process is huge and it is the most incredibly demanding mission we will ever take on in our entire life, and it may take time – but it is totally doable – and it is the gateway that provides us the freedom to step into the ONLY life that was ever going to fulfil us.
A Life where we are start living as our True Self – our natural organic state without the normal yet horrifically “unnatural” state of human accumulated wounds.
Narcissists hand us that evolutionary opportunity on a platter MORE than any other force on this planet – because it is through the dire necessity to free ourselves from profound darkness that we can finally harness our greatest and most powerful light.
When we have undergone that transformation – we wish it for everyone.
We understand that the bringing of our entire species and our planet out of darkness into light is NOT a righteous issue of punishment, pain and control … rather it is a shift in consciousness that is required as the ONLY remedy.
If one by one we were to all awaken and release ourselves from own wounds, everyone and everything would heal.
This understanding allows us to have deep compassion for the people who are so far gone that they are incapable of doing this. We know there is no escaping their personal hell.
We also stop believing that people who are living the bottomless pit of having to constantly feed their ego, to feel okay, are having a good time of it.
We ourselves, to heal for real, had to drop placing our value on image, success, stuff, or other people’s approval in order to become an authentic source or self-love and approval.
Becoming authentic means no longer being emotionally reliant on false props.
And we know the pain people suffer who are still reliant on them.
We stop thinking that narcissists with money, sex, property and whatever else they have, are at peace, whole or happy.
We know such a manic striving is for one reason only – to try to escape the ever present wounds threatening to eat the narcissist alive – and that the only way to ever get rid of that for real would be to face the inner traumas and heal them.
Which the narcissist doesn’t do.
People think narcissists never “pay” for who they are. The truth is they never escape the bowels of hell and we can.
Compassionate forgiveness, like evolutionary forgiveness and radical forgiveness, is not just something you can conceptually do.
You may want to bypass your internal de-tox of trauma … but forgiveness at True Levels can’t be embodied until the trauma you have inside you is released to make space for it.
These are all stages that come as True Self recognition when you are ready for them – when you have personally ascended to levels that match these higher versions of wisdom.
Some people are organically more aligned with these stages than others.
People like myself, who came in with high levels of trauma and then accumulated / generated / contributed to much more of it, and who had very energised egos and attachments to false structures, need to do a LOT of internal work to get there for real.
Personally I had to work my BUTT off to get here – but I am so grateful I did.
Organic Forgiveness – No Need to “Forgive”
This section is my conclusion – and this entire article has been leading to this.
There is a massive truth in the Thriver Way of healing from narcissistic abuse, and it is this:
Forgiveness becomes organic.
It happens on its own accord.
As a result of making this journey all about focusing on healing ourselves, and as trauma leaves our being and wisdom, peace and Life-force enters … and …
We just become what we seek.
Wholeness.
In this state we no longer hold others responsible for our own love, approval, security and survival.
All loses we suffered pale into insignificance in the face of finally becoming self-partnered and coming home to our own emotional peace and wholeness.
No longer are we hiding or presenting masks, because all of our false constructs have fallen.
Finally, we are free to be authentic and love and approve of ourselves and be that to others.
We understand the deep Quantum connectedness of our Life, and we understand how our Higher Power adores us and that Life is always happening for us and not to us.
We have broken through to a great acceptance for our Life, including our past – accepting our gift of evolution and forever evolving ourselves beyond who we were previously being to more and more of Who We Really Are.
Within that, there is no regret or resentment.
Rather, we have a profound gratitude.
The concept of needing to “forgive” is over. We know at soul level that we planned all of this perfectly and adore that we woke up to the bigger picture.
This is what Sylvia wrote which inspired this article from me –
“I used to struggle with forgiveness……I used to feel angry with people who told me I SHOULD forgive those who had never apologised for their mistreatment of me, or asked me to forgive them.
But when I started healing myself, it kind of happened organically. At no time did I make a conscious decision to forgive anyone, but when I started to see the bigger picture, and realised that my abusers were messengers – I found that I had totally let go of all resentment and anger toward them.
I won’t be inviting any of them round for cocktails and canapes any time soon, but I can thank them at a distance, for co-creating the experiences that led to my healing.
Much love xxx”
I hope this article has helped you connect to what “forgiveness” can mean to you.
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