Morel Guy said:

Seriously, they seem very unforgiving yet obsessed with the purity of blood to be forgiving.  Is it a suicide pact? 

Like some 90% of elected officials in the good 'ole USA claim to be Christ worshippers.  Whats up with the obsession of forgivness without forgivness?

Animals don't forget and humans pretend to forget.  Is it really smart to forget and forgive?  Or do we know the same shit could happen again?

Is it all a scam?  To get us the authority that another will decide our fate?

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Morel Guy said:

Why are Christians obsessed with receiving forgiveness?

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mt cleverest said:

Forgiveness is the greatest spiritual practice. Forgiveness is acceptance is love (is enlightenment?).
Christianity has got a pretty sweet handle on forgiveness. Most people get that the world and man have an evil side, but christians also believe that God redeemed all that when christ became sin. so now everything is forgiven, you just have to come into alignment with that.  to the pure, all things are pure.

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I agree with your words, and would add that in the 5-Path® method of Hypnotherapy that I use, forgiveness of self and of those who hurt us is absolutely necessary for the remission of symptoms due to traumatic events. Often clients will have difficulty forgiving self or other, but it must be done by them for a resolution of the injury. I sometimes have to explain that one does not forgive because the offender deserves it, but that one forgives in order to disengage or detach from the effects that individual has caused. Then the therapy can proceed in the session to the annihilation of negative feelings that are 'stuck' to the client like "barnacles on the hull of a boat," "emotional parasites," that need to be plucked off (or out), and incinerated in a potent visualization exercise (Gray Room technique).

But the point is, one must first sever the emotional attachment to the offender by forgiveness and then they must forgive themselves for any self-loathing they have had, or for the times they beat themselves up emotionally or physically with self-destructive behaviors for their weakness or failures to act. They were not ready, it must be explained, but they are NOW, by virtue of the very fact that they have finally arrived in a therapy chair. Paraphrasing BE HERE NOW, you cannot rip the skin off the snake, the snake must shed its skin when the time is right to do so. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness (something a lot of people request - amnesia for an event), but another snake simile is that while the image of the event will remain, the 'guts' of it will be gone. The memory will be like the hollow shed skin of a snake, having a semblance of the snake, but minus its danger.

I think forgiveness serves the same purpose in the teachings of Jesus in the gospels. Forgiveness requires detachment inasmuch as compassion (or agapé) requires detachment from any thought of reward. This is how compassion and wisdom (or emptiness) are united in Buddhism as well. Empty and meaningless in itself, a cruelty perpetrated on a child (for example) was preceded by a chain of sick events in the life of the offender. It was not deserved by the client, so the client can disown the pain visited upon him/her by a sick individual. By forgiving, they cease to process the pain as personal, like ceasing to rant at a driverless car which has rolled into your own car by gravity, not by a driver's intention. This is how I would describe the 'mechanics' behind the logical and emotional ability to forgive.

Morel Guy said:

So it's an act?  An act of forgivness?

Is that what jesus meant by saying everyone is a hypocrate which means actor?

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Duncan Rowhl said:

Perhaps he simply meant that people complain about things, that they themselves perpetuate.

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