In the end, forgiveness simply means never putting another person out of our heart.

To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring them to the transformative power of our heart.

An honorable spiritual practice recognizes the losses we have suffered, tells our story, and sheds our tears to free us from the past.

As we follow a genuine path of practice, our sufferings may seem to increase because we no longer hide from them or from ourselves. When we do not follow the old habits of fantasy and escape, we are left facing the actual problems and contradictions of our life.

When we feel anger toward someone, we can consider that they are a being just like us, who has faced much suffering in life.

Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.

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 hurts or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm.