When We Can't Forgive Someone and Ourselves

This is another of those points that we need to look at. First, we need to distinguish between can't when it means I am unable and can't when it means won't. Parents know when their child means won't rather than can't - such as when they can't sleep because they want to stay up.

If they are honest with ourselves and if we have come to truly understand that the hurt inside us is created by us, then it is never a case of can't but always a case of won't forgive.

We then need to change the internal dialogue and open up a chink of possibility: "Maybe I can forgive......"

What is happening when we can't forgive ourselves? For most of us, this is the hardest thing to do. On a television programme about the "bag people", a late middle aged woman was interviewed. She had taken to the streets and began compulsive collection of rubbish, mainly papers.

When asked why, she replied wistfully that she had been involved in the death of a child. First, we must distinguish conscience from the "judge". Conscience is that simple ability to know what is right from wrong. It is a wisdom based on the knowledge of what causes harm.

The judge within us is that part of the self that hates and condemns the self, that wishes to punish it. So, it is with the self as judge that we must deal.

This is where the understanding of Dependent Origination can be so helpful. The aversion that arises towards ourselves because we do harm is concretized into a voice that condemns us. It is being able to listen to the voice and not to believe it that undermines its power over us.

Once we can distance ourselves from the voice, we can feel the underlying aversion towards ourselves the better. Then we need to remind ourselves that this also is just another mental state, arising and passing away which "I" don't have to own.

In this way, we stop indulging self-hatred and in time it will to die away.