1. That of someone who did have malice at one time and
2. Forgiveness for myself.

The first is not in ‘offering’ or ‘delivering’ forgiveness, they will never know about it. Forgiving is a step in realizing that by not forgiving it was chewing me up and taking over.
The second was about realizing when I had been judging and how I was not fully aware in some cases. Forgiveness for me is a very personal thing, it is based on my reactions and subsequent actions and thoughts attached.

Your point is taken, and certainly gives me something to think about regarding forgiveness overall, thank you for the input.

This is an excellent post.

There is another element of forgiveness that you didn’t cover here. I have been forgiven by people who in fact, did not have the right to forgive me because I hadn’t done anything wrong (but by forgiving me, they were making the statement that I had done something wrong but they were releasing me from it through some magnanimous act on their part).

By doing so, their act of forgiveness was in fact an unfortunate, selfish attempt to assert power over someone else (me) since to forgive in their mind was to be the bigger person and to release some power back to the person being forgiven. This, in their mind, helped them subconsciously establish that they were the “superior” person in the relationship and that the act of forgiveness in itself was not an authentic act but an act of asserting this superiority.

Such types of forgiveness are an insidious, back-handed, passive-aggressive means of attempting to create more control (or play the victim even more strongly) instead of trying to find true forgiveness in a relationship.

This is why I don’t believe in forgiveness in most cases. Good people who do great things but make small errors in judgement don’t deserve my forgiveness. They were doing the best that they could with what they had available to them and so I don’t need to forgive them – they were doing the best they could and made a mistake as I could easily have done also. In such cases, me as the imperfect person, in saying “I forgive you” am implying that I wouldn’t have made such an error. What an untruth that would be.

For those who made a faux pas with intention (especially a malicious one) couldn’t care less about forgiveness and probably won’t change their actions even if one were delivered … and in those situations, forgiveness falls on deaf ears and doesn’t move the ball forward in the relationship. A “feel good” action on the part of the person offering it doesn’t really heal anything.

Now … a person who acts with malice who LATER discovers the error of their ways will find forgiveness to be healing. But this type of person is the rarity.

A Course in Miracles has a lot of great insight in this area.

Create a great day.

Harry