Letting Grudges Go

Like most people I hold grudges. Sometimes for slight injustices and inequities, sometimes for much more personal attacks. As someone who is Christian, has practiced affirmations and meditated daily for almost twelve years, I find it somewhat incompatible and think about this often in my quite times.

I held two grudges for over a decade. The longer one was against a former best friend, someone I grew up with down the street, went to school and vacations with, partied and hunted together. He had a gravity that pulled people towards him but it was evil. In the end, I finally saw him for the narcissistic, egomanic man he was, someone that had known me daily for fifteen years and yet didn't give a shit about anyone or anything, not even his own family. The more traumatic of the two was an OSC (Officer Candidate School) instructor that made it his personal mission to destroy my life. It is the closest to physical torture I have ever come and it scarred me physically and emotionally for a long time. A sincere apology towards the end of school from his Commanding Officer for the abuse heaped upon me did nothing to temper the hatred I had for the man.

I gave these grudges almost a daily audience in my mind. As I studied more and more about how to reprogram my mind and let go of the past, I realized I could give away so much except for these two. What used to be a flowing river of held frustration and anger in mind slowly trickled down to a dry river bed with two gigantic boulders in middle. I had forgiven everyone but them. Even the woman who took my memory and changed my life forever.

I spent years meditating, praying and affirming, two or three times a day, to release the grudges against the two people I hated more than life and yet had not seen in many, many years. I knew that when I took away their power over me, I would be free. And I was free for sometimes moments and occasionally days before something would jar my mind back to the same intensity I held for them.

Finally one day it clicked. Call it divine intervention, call it giving it up to the cosmos. Wrap it up in some psyhco-babble, I don't care. I know I finally just got frustrated with these two grudges after a decade and I prayed my heart out for my God to take this pain out of me. I talked for hours. And it happened. Unlike before, I felt something snap in me. Like the last piece of a puzzle. Like I was whole again. I knew that I was free.

That was four years ago. I still think of those two people but in a much more dispassionate way, they hold nothing more over me. Much like Charlie Sheens character, "Chris" in the movie Platoon was shaped by Elias and Barnes, my life was formed by these two people and I am in part who I am today because of it.

People who meet my son are pulled to him with a gravity that is unmistakable. People come to him in resturants and stores, they walk up to him in parks and on the street, to be near him and touch him as if he has a palbable charisma they can take with them. It has amazed us since the day he was born. But I saw that once before, the exact same gravity my son has I saw in the person I thought would be my best friend forever. But the power of attraction my son has is pure and full of love. I know that my mission is to teach him how to not use that power for selfish gain lest it corrupt his soul the same way I saw before. Forgiving the friend gave me the discernment to nurture the power of attraction in a positive way instead of trying to eliminate it from his personality.

The other man, the instructor, I think about when I face fear. There are still some aspects of his punishments that I can not face, nor think I ever will, but I forgive him. His might have been my greatest accomplishment in letting go of a grudge. His scars I could not control. I was his prisoner and he held my military life in his hands. Surviving that course, which graduated only12% of the starting class, still rates as one of my greatest accomplishments of sheer willpower over pain and suffering. The iron will I developed to overcome tremendous physical and mental injuries from a car accident, were forged into a sharpened blade at that school.

My life is so much better since I forgave those people and finally broke down the two remaining boulders in my psyche. I let their power linger over me for over a decade, many of those years I fought just to get them out of my head. I wasted so much vital energy and time rehashing and opening wounds that should have healed long ago. I held on to them, when surely they had long stopped thinking of me. I think of all the anger that flooded into me at a moments notice and how that affected my relationships with people that only wanted the best for me. I let people from my past affect people I loved in my present and who loved me in return.

All of us hold grudges, against friends, family, co-workers, past relationships. Make an effort to clean these people and their transgression from your mind. I am not a professional and know that only some issues can be solved with counseling. Its not easy. It took me years of daily processing to finally remove the largest of my grudges. I talked to business mentors and spiritual mentors. I talked to myself. I can only say that my life is so much better since. Yours will be too. Trust me.