The Power of Choice .. along the Path of Freedom and Inner Peace
- Mind Catalyst
- Apr 20
- 9 min read
I was just today going through my menagerie collection of material of life's wisdom, when in one of the videos I heard the statement "The gift of choice is a gift that's given to you that nobody can take away from you."
Indeed! Nobody can make us feel hurt, wounded, down, inferior or unworthy without our consent. We are confronted with the ostensible and perceived paradox of whether or not we have the choice to forgive somebody. Particularly all the more so if we've been severely emotionally injured, or psychologically harmed.
It has been advised that we let go of our clingings and attachments. We seek to manipulate and mould the world in our image. When somebody behaves in a way that we perceive to be incompatible or incongruous with how we would've behaved had we been in their place, we get angry and frustrated. But the roots of the jungle of disappointment is cultivated primely through the torrential downpours of expectations.
A friend of mine once told me, "Know yourself, and you'll understand any reflection.". That quote both struck me, and stuck with me. Because it was so profound. I'd humbly invite you to ponder on its meaning. What I learned from the school of hard knocks, is that people’s thoughts on us are merely a reflection of their own reality; their own state of being; their own mindset; and their own soul. It’s never about us, never was.
So, people's responses to us is often rooted in somethings that had nothing to do with us; perhaps it was their childhood, perhaps it was a relative who made them very angry and they just didn't know where to vent those negative emotions of anger, so we happened to be a victim of it.
Perhaps there were just coming back from the hospital after a long day staying to console and provide support to a family member. Perhaps they were feeling down. Perhaps they had a tough day, or a heated argument with their boss over a matter of high significance about their career .. There are endless possibilities for reasons and factors that might influence people's responses to us.
What helps us limit our suffering in such cases is to recognise that hurtful or insensitive responses from people are merely reflections of their emotional state, and that we, thus, shouldn't take it personally. If we take everything too personally, then we suffer more than necessary.
I invite us to firstly heal ourselves. Healing oneself can be sometimes daunting, and we may not know where to start. I myself wasn't sure how or where to start healing myself. It was only when I dared to befriend the ghost of my 12-year-old self; when I decided to forgive my younger self for his inaction on the call of duty that he had; when I learned to forgive myself for being human, for not realizing the power I had been endowed and blessed with at that age.
I could've been a social justice superstar activist, and I knew it back then, but I still didn't act
or execute on my higher calling. And it haunted me for years and years and years, until recently when I decided to finally let go of my attachment and my clinging to my past.
That was the moment I chose to free myself from the manacles, the shackles, of a past that cannot be altered. That is when I got empowered to let go of that which no longer served me, to let go of what has already gone by. That is when I learned how to accept that which cannot be changed.
Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know before you learned it.
Oprah Winfrey once wisely said “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different.”
Here is the video whence I got those timely and profoundly blissful words:
Thich Nhat Hanh once said "Every single person contains the seeds of goodness, kindness, and enlightenment. We all have the seed of buddhanature. To give the buddha in you a chance to manifest both in yourself and your loved ones, you have to water those seeds. When we act as if people have these seeds inside them, it gives us and them the strength and energy to help these seeds grow and flower. If we act as if we don't believe in our inherent goodness, we blame others for our suffering and we lose our happiness."
This is important here. Even when their bad side is manifesting itself, and we nonetheless choose to see the good in them, we attract that immanent goodness in them.
Because a beautiful soul chooses to see the beauty in others.
"Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it"
Abraham Lincoln noted.
Wisdom prods us to pause and think about why others showed up in the way that they did. Forgive others, for they know not what they're doing. Expecting wise actions and behaviors from foolish, ignorant people is the surest path to bona-fide, agonizing disappointment.
I highly recommend checking this post out, it features a short animated and very cute video accompanied by a concise comment above it. I am hopeful it will make everything much clearer:
So, let's keep up the positive energy, so that we attract energy of similar vibrational frequencies. What we see depends on the lens we look through. And since what we see is what we believe, seeing is believing. But, so is feeling. Feeling is believing, too! And we attract what we feel!
If we feel positive, we'll attract positivity.
If we focus on the goodness in people, then that's what we're gonna see.
If we focus on the bad and evil in people, then that's what we're gonna see.
If we focus on the pain, we'll continue to suffer; but if we focus on the lesson, we'll continue to grow.
If we focus on the problems, we'll have more problems, if we focus on the solutions, we'll have more opportunities.
Forgiveness is one of the trickier moments we get to face as humans. However, when we choose to recognise that other people's behavior towards us is nothing more than a reflection of their past trauma, -and therefore has nothing to do with us- we anchor ourselves in the enlightening state of letting go. When we decide to let go of that which no longer serve us, we liberate ourselves from unnecessary suffering. We need not get trapped or decoyed by the temptation of resisting to forgive.
Again, "Know thyself and you'll understand any reflection". When I read it first time, it was a moment of facing reality, a moment of coming to terms with the truth. Indeed, what we judge in others, is merely a projection of our own inner, unresolved trauma. What we envy or suspect in someone else, can lead us to the darkness we have within ourselves. It is indeed as J. Mike Fields put it, "The desire to fix another is but an active avoidance of the neglected self."
"Forgiveness isn't forgetting, it's remembering without anger."
"Keep in mind that forgiving is not for others. It is for you. Forgiving is not forgetting, It is remembering without anger. It frees up your power, heals your body, mind and spirit. Forgiveness opens up a pathway to a new place of peace;" said Les brown.
@Vishen had talked about the personal heath benefits of forgiveness before, and studies show that forgiveness can allow us to access the monk-like, deep states of mind, improve vertical jump and overall mental health.
Author of Breakthrough, Dr. Ahmed Hankir advised that “If we realised that many people are wounded children trapped in adult bodies, it would help us not to take things personally.”
We need not be held hostage by the actions of others, nor by our own. The power to forgive and move on is indeed an underestimated superpower. Maya Angelou's wise words resonate with this, "Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know before you learned it". We need not be prisoners of our own past, nor the past of somebody else. Forgiveness is to the soul, what meditation is to the mind: it heals our wounds, alleviates our pain, and most crucially, allows us to be free.
We have been conditioned to believe that it is a sign of strength to hold grudges, or hold every little thing that gets done to us against those who did it. As if that was our power; A way to prove that we are 'tough' and we didn't forget what has been done to us. But I learned that it takes a whole lot more strength to forgive, than it does to bear a grudge, or be vindictive or angry.
A fellow philosopher of mine, Mr. Mitch Davidowitz once wrote “We are collectors of hurt, placing them in scrapbooks of resentment.” Indeed, we are masters at creating our own suffering. When we refuse to forgive another soul, we perpetuate our own suffering, and theirs.
Everyone makes mistakes in life, but that doesn't mean they have to pay for them the rest of their life. Sometimes good people make bad choices. It doesn't mean they're bad... it just means they're human. And we are not defined by our mistakes, but how we deal with them.
Mr. Davidowitz, had written the following insightful essay on this matter:
"One of the ways we architect suffering is allowing our minds to transport us to places that either no longer exist or have yet to occur. When we ground in the now, we collect ourselves and return to wholeness. It is here that we are only empowered to address what matters in our life. We are challenged to release the countless stories we drag with us from days gone by."
I had once stumbled upon a saying that read ‘The first to apologise is the bravest, the first to forgive is the strongest, and the first to forget is the happiest’.
And so, what do you need to release at this moment to allow yourself to be freer?
All forgiveness is, we will say, is simply a releasing of fear. When you release the fear of another, they may be in forgiveness as well, and you may move to a new vibration in the light of love. When we release the fear of another, we free ourselves from being a prisoner of someone else's actions. We need not burden our tender hearts with the pain or anguish of someone else's behaviour. Again, when we fail to forgive another, we perpetuate their suffering, and ours.
Morgan R. Olivier’s wise words are resonant here:
“Letting people be wrong about you or a situation while keeping your peace and focus is the most misunderstood power move you will ever make.”
So the question becomes:
When do you simply need to allow somebody to be wrong about you?
The legendary Kathy Buckley had the following to add on forgiveness and letting go, "If you have to forgive somebody, what's the first thing that's presented to you in your life? Anger, resentment, pain, not trusting, feeling ugly, all the negative words will come upon and they become your life. That's just other people's shit you're carrying. It's not yours. That's how you love yourself. You take all the negative things that are in your life, you give it back to somebody. There's only one power no one can ever take from you. One. And that is the power to forgive. And you use that power to love, respect and honour yourself. You are the gift that has been put on this universe."
It is important to remember that forgiveness does not acquit the perpetrator. It does not vindicate or excuse their behaviour. Forgiveness is simply a gift you grant to yourself. I always say to my friends, don’t forgive others because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve to live in peace.
After all, when it comes down to the truth of it, why would you ever let anyone walk in your mind with their dirty feet; steal your peace-of-mind, or rob you of your inner peace, and be granted control over your quality of life?
Why would you ever do that?
Holocaust survivor, Eva Mozes Kor, who was one of the Mengele Twins, ended up ultimately, after decades of rightful resentment, anger and indignation, coming to realize this superpower of hers.
She remarked: "What I discovered for myself was life-changing. I discovered that I had the power to forgive. That I, the little guinea pig of 50 years, even had the power over the angel of death of Auschwitz. As a victim of almost 50 years, I never thought that I had any power over my life. I felt free. Free from Auschwitz, free from Mengele."
She continued
"Forgiveness is nothing more, and nothing less, but an act of self-healing, an act of self empowerment. Pain was lifted from my shoulder, that I was no longer a victim of Auschwitz; that I was no longer a prisoner of my tragic past; that I was finally free."
She finished by giving this helpful advice:
"I want everybody to remember, that we cannot change what happened. That is the tragic part. But we can change how we relate to it."
Let us also remember the wise and pertinently timely words of Oprah Winfrey,
"Forgiveness isn't accepting what has happened to you, but rather it is accepting that it has happened to you. Not accepting that it was ok for it to happen, it is simply accepting that it has happened. Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different."
This has been Yusuf Kemal, and I invite you, to re-consider.
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