Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. When we think about forgiveness, we automatically think about something that someone has done TO us. And I think right there is one of the first problems: is that we victimize ourselves; we give somebody else the power to do something to us,
to change our internal peace. And when we look at the situations in our lives, in our past, as things that have happened FOR us, not TO us, but FOR us, for us to learn from, grow from, and move on from, perhaps most importantly, then we're no longer victims. Then we look at what's happened and go, even the situation, as terrible as it might be, we can look at it as an opportunity for us to grow, and we can be grateful for what that person did FOR us, not TO us.
And if there are instances where we need to forgive, where we need to let go, then it's really imperative to just realize that we don't need to wait for the other person to apologize to us in order for us to forgive them. In fact, they don't even have to be sorry. Forgiveness is a gift that you give yourself. And so by
deciding to let that go, you're liberating yourself. There's an old, Buddhist saying about staying angry with someone is like holding a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone else, but you're the one who ends up getting burned. And the beauty of forgiveness is you are no longer caught up in that story that they deserve any kind of animosity from you. That's why people
tell me they hang onto anger. They are like, "They deserve it!" But you're not harming THEM, you're harming yourself when you're angry. That is toxic energy within you, and the most incredible feeling in the world is to let that go. I can only feel like comparing it to paying off debt: it's just so liberating to write that last check and be debt-free and think, "I don't have to carry this around anymore."
And so, I talk a lot in the book about everything that's happened in my childhood and the relationship with my mother, and someone asked me, "When did "you forgive her? How long did it take you?" And in all honesty, the moment that I decided to let it go is the moment that the forgiveness just came and it just no longer mattered. I'm actually grateful for all the experiences in my life because they brought me to where I am today, and I couldn't be happier.
Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp. For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list. We hope you have enjoyed this episode and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏