佚名/Anonymous
Human growth is a process of experimentation, trial, and error, ultimately leading to wisdom. Each time you choose to trust yourself and take action, you can never quite be certain how the situation will turn out. Sometimes you are victorious, and some-times you become disillusioned. The failed experiments, however, are no less valuable than the experiments that ultimately prove successful；in fact, you usually learn more from your perceived“failures”than you do from your perceived“successes”.
If you have made what you perceive to be a mistake, or failed to live up to your own expectations, you will most likely put up a barrier between your essence and the part of you that is the alleged wrong-doer. However, perceiving past actions as mistakes implies guilt and blame, and it is not possible to learn anything meaningful while you are engaged in blaming. Therefore, forgiveness is required when youare harshly judging yourself.
Forgiveness is the act of erasing an emotional debt. There are four kinds of forgiveness：
The frst is beginner forgiveness for yourself.
The second kind of forgiveness is beginner forgiveness for another.
The third kind of forgiveness is advanced forgiveness of yourself. This is for serious transgressions, the ones you carry with deep shame. When you do something that violates your own values and ethics, you create a chasm between your standards and your actual behavior. In such a case, you need to work very hard at forgiving yourself for these deeds so that you call close this chasm and realign with the best part of yourself. This does not mean that you should rush to forgive yourself or not feel regret or remorse；but wallowing in these feelings for a protracted period of time is not healthy, and punishing yourself excessively will only creates a bigger gap between you and your ethics.
The last and perhaps most difficult one is the advanced forgiveness of another. At some time of our life, you may have been severely wronged or hurt by another person to such a degree that forgiveness seems impossible. However, harboring resentment and revenge fantasies only keeps you trapped in victimhood. Under such a circumstance, you should force yourself to see the bigger picture, by so doing, you will be able to shift the focus away from the anger and resentment. It is only through forgiveness that you can erase wrongdoing and clean the memory. When you can fnally release the situation, you may come to see it as a necessary part of your growth.