Rawan Abd El-Azeez’s Reviews > The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace > Status Update

Peace requires us to surrender
our illusions of control.
We can love and care for others
but we cannot possess
our children, lovers, family, or friends.
We can assist them, pray for them, and wish
them well,
yet in the end
their happiness and suffering
depend on their thoughts and actions,
not on our wishes.
Even trying too hard to be good, we can lose our center.

We can direct our actions
but not their fruits.

The secret of human freedom is to act well, without attachment to the results.

~ No seed ever sees the flower.

There is an innocence in love, a wholehearted pleasure and delight.

*This part about attachment vs love

When attachment arises in the place of love, it sees the other as separate; it grasps and needs. Attachment is conditional; it seeks control and it fears loss. Ask your heart if attachment has replaced love. If we speak to our heart, it will always tell us the truth.

The many blessings that come from cultivating the power of a loving heart:
Your dreams become sweet.
You fall asleep easily.
You waken contented.
Your thoughts are pleasant.
Your health improves.
Animals will sense your love and not harm you
People will welcome you everywhere.

True love is unconquerable and irresistible, and it will go on gathering power and spreading itself until it transforms everyone it touches.

Releasing the grief we carry is a long, tear-filled process. Yet it follows the natural intelligence of the body and heart. Trust it, trust the unfolding. Along with meditation, some of your grief will want to be written, to be cried out, to be sung. Let the timeless wisdom within you carry you through grief to an open heart.

FORGIVENESS DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE HAVE TO CONTINUE TO RELATE TO THOSE WHO HAVE DONE US HARM.

In some cases the best practice may be to end our connection, to never speak to or be with a harmful person again. Sometimes in the process of forgiveness a person who hurt or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm.

FORGIVENESS DOES NOT FORGET, NOR DOES IT CONDONE THE PAST.

Forgiveness sees wisely. It willingly acknowledges what is unjust, harmful, and wrong. It bravely recognizes the sufferings of the past, and understands the conditions that brought them about. There is a strength to forgiveness. When we forgive we can also say, “Never again will I allow these things to happen.” We may resolve to never again permit such harm.

FORGIVENESS DOES NOT HAPPEN QUICKLY.

For great injustice, coming to forgiveness may include a long process of grief, outrage, sadness, loss, and pain.

It cannot be hurried. It is a deep process repeated over and over in our heart which honors the grief and betrayal, and in its own time ripens into the freedom to truly forgive.

Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.