Replying to LO29087 --
Hello Dan and Heidi,
You started your message:
>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:
Not too many years ago the idea of forgiveness was as alien to me as a
Martian to an earthling. My long departed Mum in response to my
embittered ravings of revenge upon someone who had "dented my ego" would
be to sincerely say "turn the other cheek". At that time of my life and
when I was wounding someone else's ego, were they to turn the other cheek
I would have gleefully slapped that one as well.
You go on to say
>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.
The Hawaiians are Polynesians like us (Maori). Without too much
difficulty we would be able to decipher what each, speaking in their own
language, was saying, and many of our customs and legends are similar, yet
I know nothing in our Maori history of forgiveness. I know marriages were
arranged between our tribes to lessen the impact of conflict but in
general we "lived to fight another day". Very much like the peoples of
Europe;-)
Nevertheless Dan and Heidi, the concept of forgiveness is not foreign to
me any longer, however I have not long turned 54 and I have been watching
the people like Nelson Mandela and (in my knowing) his opposite Robert
Mugabe. I have read Viktor Frankl and Daniel Goleman, Covey, Waitley,
Hubbard and more. One story that had a particularly inspiring effect on
me was the "Prologue" in the book "Executive EQ" by Robert Cooper and
Ayman Sawaf - awesome.
And so to Eckart Tolle's "The Power of Now" and as tacit becomes explicit
so enveloping becomes the peace I "more frequently" feel within, perhaps
one day I will even understand the 7 essentialities. (and I try hard to
take my family and my organisation(s) with me)
Forgiveness is so very difficult in an ego driven world it is up to you,
and you, and you............and me....despite our different cultures, we
are all of the species ....human.
Dennis
--"Dennis Rolleston" <dennisr@ps.gen.nz>
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