Hi,
Yesterday evening I saw a video presentation, "Forgive for Good,"
featuring Dr. Fredric Luskin who is a project director at the Stanford
Center for Research in Disease Prevention. Evidently he also is a Senior
Fellow at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation.
Luskin outlines 9 steps to forgiveness:
1. Understand and be able to articulate what it was that happened that
was "not okay."
2. Make a commitment to health and happiness. Understand that the act of
forgiving is not for the other person(s), but for you.
3. Understand that forgiving is not necessarily about condoning,
reconciling, or accepting a behavior. It does not mean giving up on
issues that may be important to you. It even does not necessarily imply
future contact.
4. Understand that your primary distress comes from current emotions,
hurt feelings, thoughts, and associated physical reactions, not whatever
it was that happened in the past. Forgiveness ameliorates what is
happening to you in the moment. Forgiveness may be something you do over
and over again.
5. When your stress responses are triggered, practice a stress reduction
technique like deep breathing combined with visualization of something you
love deeply.
6. Recognize the absurdity of projecting your expectations on other
people.
7. Understand the insight in the aphorism that "Revenge is refusal to
accept that you can't change the past." It is a fact. You can't undo the
past, so instead of replaying your hurt over and over in your mind, seek
out ways to achieve your goals for things like friendship, love,
prosperity, and happiness.
8. Recognize that as long as you continue to dwell on your hurt, the
perpetrator continues to maintain a kind of power over you. Remember that
a life well lived is your best revenge. Be alert and responsive to love,
beauty, and kindness from others around you.
9. Change your story from that of being a victim, to one of becoming a
hero, through the heroic choice of forgiveness.
For those interested, I discovered that Luskin's work on forgiveness is
featured at a web site: http://www.learningtoforgive.com/index.html . Note
"learning" in the domain name. <G>
Luskin asserts that "forgiveness is a reasonable response to anger and
hurt." Forgiveness is a choice and an opportunity to focus more energy on
your hopes, desires and positive intentions and thereby create more
growth, joy, and peace in your life.
It's interesting to me that Luskin implicitly frames forgiveness in the
context of interests, particularly self-interest. Luskin observes numerous
personal physiological and spiritual health benefits associated with
forgiveness.
Do people on this list know how other peoples/cultures incorporate the
idea of forgiveness into their indigenous methods for dealing with
conflict? I have a vague understanding that the Hawaiians incorporate a
forgiveness ritual into their native conflict resolution process,
ho'o'ponopono.
Forgiveness also seems like an important forking opportunity in the
typical amplifying loops of conflict escalation. Part of what I assume
might happen in ho'o'ponopono is mutual forgiveness. As I understand in
ho'o'ponopono, forgiveness also is associated with the assumption that
once the conflict issue is resolved and closing rituals including
forgiveness have been done, the issue is not to be brought up again.
The standard mediation models that I am familiar with in the United States
tend not to incorporate much on forgiveness. An exception would be some
of the beautiful work done by Ken Cloke: "Mediation: Revenge and the Magic
of Forgiveness," and "Mediating Dangerously."
I notice, too, that forgiveness is not an entirely uncommon result of
victim/offender mediation, although it's never an expectation.
Are there any among you out there who would help me learn more about the
idea and process of forgiveness? History, literature, anecdotes? We will
be experimenting with ways to incorporate forgiveness ideas and
opportunities into our mediation practice.
Grins and best wishes,
Dan Chay
--"Heidi and Dan Chay" <chay@alaska.com>
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