Forgiving

Another aspect in relation to loving-kindness is learning to heal our psychological wounds by forgiving ourselves and forgiving others. These wounds may have been created in childhood or in subsequent relationships. If we do not really heal our wounds, one thing that might happen is that this may create problems in our relationships which cause suffering for ourselves and for others. They can create certain destructive patterns in our relationships. They can also affect our bodies. They may create tensions in our bodies that are related to these repressed emotions or wounds. They can also create illnesses in us. They can also affect our sleep and dreams, so that we might get angry in our sleep, or we might cry in our sleep, or have frightful dreams. These things can be related to the unhealed wounds that we carry. Or we can have sudden emotions, and we can’t find a reason for them. Suddenly we feel like crying, suddenly we experience fear or we feel panic.

Another way that these wounds can affect us is when we are dying. A big problem when a person is dying can be the wounds which they have not healed. They may surface in a very strong way. While we are living we can suppress them, we can push them away and not look at them, but when we are dying our mind and body become weak, then these wounds can surface. Unless we heal these wounds we cannot live peacefully and we cannot die peacefully. The meditation on loving-kindness can help us to heal these wounds by forgiving ourselves and by forgiving others, although both may be difficult.