Ever Heard “Forgive But Don’t Forget”? Me Too.
When I hear people talk about forgiveness, the idea of “forgive but don’t forget” comes up a lot. I think people intend to say that they’re not going to have hard feelings against this person who has hurt them, but they’re going to store this incident away in their minds, in order to learn the lesson. As they store it they’re keeping a bit of the pain in tact, as a way to drive home the lesson. From the perspective of the mental energy field this makes a lot of sense. The mental energy field, and the mind which functions in the mental energy field, is always about collecting data, analyzing data, and then coming up with strategies that will change our behavior so that we don’t get hurt again. It’s a worthy intention. It’s just that it doesn’t really work.
That is because true wisdom and integration comes from the spiritual energy field, the much larger field that surrounds us and offers healing, expansion, miracles and abundance. From the spiritual energy field there is no reason to hold onto pain. Pain has no benefit after you’ve integrated the lesson. If you have something happen which causes you pain, then pain is like your “NO!” You can follow the “NO” to the lesson. Your soul integrates the lesson and you no longer need the pain.
Two Ways of Learning: Riding a Bike
Let’s look at how we learn lessons from the different perspectives of the spiritual and mental energy field, and use riding a bike as an example. When you learn to ride a bike, you fall off the bike, you skin your knee, you get bruises, you get angry and frustrated. But, from the perspective of the spiritual energy field, once you know how to ride the bike, you don’t remember those lessons anymore. Now your body knows how to ride a bike. You have the skill. There’s no benefit to holding onto the mistakes you made beforehand. That creates an experience of freedom.
But learning how to ride a bike from the perspective of the mental energy field is quite different. It reminds me of a TV show I saw once. It was about an adult learning to ride a bike. He was learning in the park, and he kept focusing on a tree that he was trying not to run into. But because he was focusing on it, he kept steering toward the tree. Of course it was a comedy and it was very funny to watch.
But that actually is how the mental energy field functions. It focuses on all these lessons to try to avoid the thing happening, but because the pain it carries keeps anchoring it into the same behaviors. It means well but the mental energy field simply doesn’t have the capacity for wisdom to actually make our lives different and freer. That’s why it doesn’t really serve us to “remember” that someone hurt us. It makes sense to experience the thing you don’t want, to say “NO” to it, to release the pain, and to trust your soul to make the necessary adjustments.
Trusting Your Soul’s Learning
You can probably see how this has already happened in your past. As you mature emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally, you can observe that your soul naturally guides your life in different directions. Maybe you have certain people who fall out of your life, and you don’t really attract people like them anymore. New people and new opportunities are showing up. That’s your soul molding your life organically, bringing into your life the people and things who match you.
When you are not burdened by these lessons and the attached pain, you are free to just naturally move in abundance and healing, and experience these relationships in a way that feels much closer to what you actually want. If we want to live the lives we are designed to live from the perspective of our soul, it makes sense for us to release every bit of pain we can. That way we are free every day to come to the world with innocent eyes. Not naïve eyes, because the soul is always learning. But innocent eyes, eyes that see anything is possible for me today. We are willing to encounter something completely new, be someone who is optimistic and looking for miracles. You can only really do that when you’re pain-free.
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