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Let’s
talk about the process of forgiveness and you know what’s beautiful
about this? It’s actually quite elegant, this process. You have
to go through it, but if you go through this process – you will have
the genuine experience of forgiveness whether you are asking for
forgiveness or whether you’re granting forgiveness.
It’s very easy to remember – it’s four r’s.
First I’m going to review the four r’s and then we’ll talk
about the process. The first r is you have to recognize
what it is you did. The second r is you have to regret
what you did. The third r is you have to resolve not
to do it again, and the fourth r is you have to try to
reconcile. Now if you use all four r’s, you are
guaranteed to have an experience of genuine forgiveness.
Practice #1:
"Grudge Inventory"
For the first practice, I want you to go home and do
a grudge inventory. Take five or six people with whom you have a
real grudge and go through what happened. What really happened
there? Who hurt whom? Who is standing on ceremony? Who has been
diminished? Who needs to get down? And try to understand that. Do
that especially with the five or six people for whom you would love
to have a forgiveness experience, but it’s just not happening. Use
the process a little bit. (By the way, if you have 10 or 20 people,
it is going to take you a very long time to do this practice.)
Practice #2:
"The Forgiveness
Experience"
Now it’s time for the second practice. After you
have looked at all five or six [or ten or twenty] people in your
grudge inventory, pick one person and pick the easiest person to
create a forgiveness experience with – the easiest one. And with
that person go through this four r process: recognize,
regret (I’m sorry), resolve and reconcile or
engage the critique if it’s about granting forgiveness. Here’s the
story. If you do this, if you actually do this, then you’ll learn
it’s not true that to err is human and to forgive is divine. What’s
true is to err is human and to forgive is human. Because each one
of us is created in the image of the Divine and that’s “Simple
Wisdom.”
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