I didn’t grasp what I was reaching for when I set out to inject spirituality into my life. I suspect no one ever really knows where they will land.

Initially,  I set out three issues that I believed would be the most difficult, for that was the point of a spiritual life. To learn how to be better. They were, in fact, and are still challenging.

Spirituality is not a magic wand but a process, like planting a beautiful garden. It needs a lot of care and much more courage.

The issues I pegged as the hardest for me were fear, anger, and forgiveness. I’ve made significant progress on anxiety, working hard on rage, and still seeing forgiveness as a tall, thin, and unyielding wall.

This week, I was ready to let go of my fear as an aging man’s fear of navigating icy roads in a winter storm.

I just decided it was time to let it go.

And I did. It’s not often that easy.

I’m leaving out many complex parts; there isn’t room. But  I am celebrating that today. Chalk up one more for the power of meditation to transform my life.

It’s tough for me to forgive the people who have hurt me or those I  have hurt.

I need to deal with this issue because I believe the inability to let go and forgive is a cancer of the soul, a burning pit in the heart, and a heavy wait on the spirit. I don’t mean to die with all this crap embedded in my soul. I want it to go.

I can’t get where I want to go without learning how to forgive.

Forgiveness is of seminal importance in the teaching of every great spiritual philosopher in Judaism, Christianity, or the Muslim world.  It is the very core of spirituality at the heart of every great prophet, from Christ to Maimonides.

There isn’t a book or education on spirituality that doesn’t elevate forgiveness as one of the spiritual life’s highest and most important goals.

I want to understand how to do it.

I’ve long considered forgiveness one of those soft and squishy woo-woo pursuits, like meditation.

Yet meditation has brought me closer to an understanding of myself and the importance of forgiveness than any other thing in my life, including decades of therapy.

I’m doing a lot of woo-woo things. Soon they’ll be after me for being woke.

Forgiveness is tough. We are taught from birth to hate the people who hate us – look at the pain in our country now.

We are taught to be proud and vengeful, an eye for an eye. I know of no middle school yard where forgiveness is practiced or taught.

A book by Bishop Despond Tutu called The Book Of Forgiving helped me understand the importance of forgiveness and the need to be able to do it.

Bishop Tutu was a pioneer in advocating a reconciliation movement that saved South Africa from much violence and death.

They called it reconciliation, each side forgiving the other. We call it forgiveness.

He makes the case that forgiveness is about healing us, not letting others off the hook or surrendering our dignity. I am learning nothing that requires more strength and grace than forgiveness. It is always the path of the better person.

It’s not about forgetting what happened to us. It’s about healing from what happened to us, closing it, moving on, letting it go, and giving all that space to something good. It’s about forgiving the pain, not the person.

Everyone reading this has been hurt or will be soon enough; that’s part of the human experience. Bishop Tutu’s book helped me. I read it when ready, and it helped me see how to forgive, even if I was not there.

It was the right time, I think. I wouldn’t have read that book even several years ago.

Forgiveness is simple. But that doesn’t make it easy.

Bishop Tutu writes about four steps. They worked for me.

The first is to tell my story, to put my hurt into words. This helps me to process the events and absorb them, to integrate them into my consciousness.

This took me a lot of time. But I kept at it, and it worked; I could feel it working.

The second he writes is to identify where the pain and hurt live inside me and shape my life.

Was I ashamed? Furious? Injured? Do I feel it in the heart, the soul, or the gut? Why did it hurt me so much?

I never had a chance to process my wounds or grief because I could never speak of them out loud.

Most people don’t want to hear our stories, and most people don’t want to tell them. We must find someone to talk to who will listen, not preach or try to heal us. We need to tell them our stories or, if we can, write them down.

This is where meditation was so helpful to me. I could do it all by myself.

I took my time and figured out where the pain and hurt inside me came from and where it lived.

That, I found, was the beginning of the healing process, the complex and grinding work of self-awareness.

What happened? What caused the hurt? How much damage did it do? How badly do I wish to heal? Do I want to forgive?

Healing is not a holy act or make me a saint. It is very much a selfish thing. But the rewards were great. Forgiveness promised to rid me of the poison and heart buried deep in my sense of self and affecting everything I say or do.

I often tell Maria that her curiosity is one of the most beautiful things about her. She always says, “that’s not what other people have said to me.”

I suggested that she should stop saying that every time I complimented her. It turned the compliment inwards and backward and gave the hurt fresh life.

My compliment just turned her into more suffering.

She has stopped doing it. It feels better, she says. She is beginning to accept my praise as the truth.

The third step is the most difficult. It is granting forgiveness to the people who are harmed. Without this decision, the others don’t matter much.

“The key to being able to forgive,” wrote Bishop Tutu, “lies in remembering your motivation, which is to free yourself from a lifetime of victimhood and grievance and anger…”  Good things to get rid of; they are poison, all that turns shreds our insides and keeps us from peace.

In forgiving, I saw I might give myself all the agency, power, and control of what hurt me. It could sweep a lot of junk out of my head and clarify how to tell and create a different story.

The inability to forgive hurt me much more than it hurt anyone else. If I wanted to be a whole human, let alone a spiritual one, I had to let go of all this darkness and rage and let it go. This isn’t an abolition of the.

It’s freedom and peace for me.

The last and fourth step came quickly for me. I had an s simple choice to make.

After real forgiveness comes to the freedom to think for myself and the essentiality of choice, I can either keep the people who hurt me or release them and me and just let them go.

None of this is about writing anyone a blank check or granting universal pardons.

This is God’s work, not mine.

Forgiveness says, “I no longer want to feel this pain, anger, and sorrow; I want to let it go.”

Most of the time, I let the people who harmed me go. I don’t need them in my life. Most often, they feel the same way.

Sometimes I contacted them and asked to talk and see if there was hope for friendship or a relationship.

That rarely worked out.

Those people are almost all completely gone from my life. I wish them well; I want them peace and light. I don’t miss them for a second.  I don’t want them in my life anymore.

My work on forgiveness is far from over. This isn’t a decision. It’s a practice.

I have to repeat this process every day, usually more than once. It feels like chipping away at a rock. But it feels better all of the time.

I feel more space opening up in my soul as the anger, resentment, and grief slowly fade.

Bishop Tutu is correct.

Forgiveness lies in digging deeply into myself and facing my true motives for hanging on to something so awful and pointless.

My goal is to free myself from victimhood and grievance, and anger. Fear leaves along with those things. When I am finally authentic, I will have nothing to fear and nothing to hide.

Anger and resentment do nothing for me but make me smaller and less peaceful. I want to be bigger, and I want to be better. That is what spirituality is all about.

Forgiveness is the way to that golden soul.