I have a question and I want to hear folks' answers:
Has forgiveness been a part of your successfully overcoming your pain and symptoms.
Are you still struggling with pain and symptoms, despite doing all of Sarno's work, and are totally unwilling to forgive?
I want to clarify about forgiveness. Even if you haven't actually forgiven people who have done you wrong, do you deep down feel like you ought to forgive those people? Is forgiveness something that you think that someday you will do.
As for unforgiveness, are you the sort of person who says 'over my dead body would I ever forgive'?
Please let me know.
Also, clarify if you successfully have overcome your symptoms, and are a forgiver or unforgiver. And likewise, clarify if you are still struggling with your symptoms, and are a forgiver or unforgiver.
Here's what my experience is:
I have for 6 years successfully overcome a whole array of symptoms (migraines, digestive problems, food intolerances, chronic pain throughout my body) with using Sarno's methods.
Forgiveness was not a conscious part of my healing- that is for sure.
Many years ago I did consciously forgive somebody who had caused all sorts of abuse throughout my childhood.
Life was good for a number of years with this person. Then they flipped the whole thing on its head and denied and lied about all of the abuse that they had inflicted.
This moment was, I believe, the catalyst for a heap of symptoms, especially migraines.
Now although I did not practice any conscious forgiving while doing the mindbody work, I have always felt that I would someday forgive people, or that it would be the right thing to do.
I have come a long way since, and forgiveness certainly comes very easy for me- this despite the fact that I even held a grudge towards somebody for a long time for eating my turkey sausage out of the fridge! So petty!
I read a powerful book a couple of years ago by Sokkreaksa S. Himm 'After The Heavy Rain'.
This man was a victim of the Killing Fields in Cambodia. At the age of 12 his entire family was murdered. He was clubbed over the head, believed dead, and was tossed into the pit with his family.
He survived, crawled out of the hole, and grew up to enlist in the police force.
He became a chief of police, with the sole reason being that he could hunt down his family's murderers and kill them, under the guise of something crime related.
Although he had many opportunities, he never killed his family's murderers.
He eventually became a Christian, and believed that, through the teachings of Jesus Christ, that he needed to forgive his family's killers.
He actually did this- he literally found the people who murdered his family, hugged them, presented them with a gift, and told them he forgave them.
As he says in his book, he actually did this for himself. He had been plagued with all sorts of symptoms, including migraines and such.
After forgiving them, and ridding himself of rage and bitterness, his symptoms went away.
This book had me thinking strongly about the other paths towards healing.
So now as I think back on my own healing journey I realize that, although I was not consciously forgiving anybody as part of my mindbody work, I hadn't hardened my heart towards eventual forgiveness.
And of course, the subconscious certainly isn't forgiving- as that is where the reservoir of rage exists.
So I wonder, if I had been somebody who would no way in hell ever forgive those who had done me wrong, would I still have had so much success in overcoming my pain and symptoms?
