Learn the 7 Pillars of True Forgiveness: Free Yourself Through Forgiveness

Among the most valuable skills a person can develop on the path toward better health, quality of life, and meaning is the ability to forgive completely, both yourself and others. Because it is forgiveness that sets us free. Here you will gain a deeper understanding of what forgiveness really is, and you will learn why and how you can forgive both yourself and others from the depths of your heart.

The inability to forgive is probably the single most important cause of conflict, enmity, acts of war, breakups, and the loss of the joy of life. Had we been taught this skill as early as elementary school, both our own lives and the world around us could have looked considerably different.

Here you will discover why and how absolutely everything can be forgiven, and the crucial difference between forgiving and accepting what has happened. Forgiveness is solely for your own sake, and it has the power to set you free. My advice, therefore, is to become a master of the art of forgiveness.

The inability to forgive is probably the single most important cause of conflict, enmity, acts of war, breakups, and the loss of the joy of life.

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When we cannot forgive, we use up large amounts of energy every single day. We walk around carrying irritation, bitterness, frustration, and hatred toward people who have caused us pain. But is it really worth letting other people have that kind of control over our thoughts, our emotions, our health, and our quality of life?

Does this mean I have to condone and accept everything others have done to me? Absolutely not. This article gives you fundamental insight, practical tools, and motivation, so that you can learn to forgive both yourself and others from the depths of your heart.

Free yourself through forgiveness

Forgiveness is a skill we all have to learn. Very few people are born with the ability to forgive, and most of us did not get it from home or from school either. What is more, there is only one way to know for certain whether forgiveness has actually taken place: how you relate to the person in practice, in everyday life. I will come back to this.

Trying to forgive through sheer willpower or self-discipline usually fails, because forgiveness touches strong emotions. “Pulling yourself together” or “swallowing it” rarely solves anything. More often than not, it leads to more stress, inner tension, and suffering.

Since there are many misunderstandings about what forgiveness really is, we first need to understand what forgiveness involves, what it is not, why it is necessary to forgive everything, and which methods actually work in practice.

Experience shows that many people throw themselves into various techniques without a clear understanding of what they are doing, or why. They also lack insight into what needs to be in place before you are even able to forgive fully and completely. Without this insight, they also have no good criteria for judging whether a forgiveness process has actually succeeded. That is why we will first go through the basic principles, and then look at concrete methods that give lasting results.

A classic case

I am myself a good example of what happens when you have neither the insight nor the tools to forgive. Before my burnout in 2003, which nearly killed me and led me onto the shamanic path, I held grudges against quite a few people who had done things to me that I did not like: bosses, colleagues, live-in partners, neighbors, friends, and family members.

When someone had hurt me, I spent a lot of energy dealing with the negative thoughts that kept coming up. I have no idea how many months or years of my life I have wasted letting other people have partial power over how I think and feel. Because that is exactly what we do when we cannot forgive.

I especially remember the trauma from my first serious live-in relationship. We had been together for almost three years, had gotten engaged, and had moved into an apartment we renovated together. One day she came home from a trip to Paris and told me she had found another man and wanted to leave me. It came like a bolt from the blue, and it traumatized me deeply.

Things went no better with my next partner. About three months after she had moved out, two letters from a law firm arrived in the mail. She had sued me for everything I owned, both personally and in my company. I nearly had a heart attack when I read the letters. How could she? The legal fees alone would have broken me.

The hatred and resentment toward both of them marked my life until I was introduced to the subject of forgiveness in 2004. My teacher at the time explained that I was unlikely to be happy with a new partner unless I learned to forgive my former partners for the ways they had hurt me.

“How can you give your heart to another person when you have built a steel wall around it?” he asked me. That was where my introduction to the art of setting myself free through forgiveness began. It was difficult at first. But it was worth it. Without it, I could not have lived as happy a life as I do today, together with my wife Maria.

Why is forgiveness so important?

Most people carry more or less heavy burdens that use up a lot of energy, because they cannot forgive themselves, other people, or situations they have experienced. In reality, we are the only ones who suffer when we cannot forgive. You can hate another person for what they have done, and the only one the hatred hurts is you.

If you cannot forgive yourself, it creates inner sabotage programs against your health and your happiness in life. If you will not forgive others, you build walls around yourself and your heart, and the walls make you lonely and stressed.

By forgiveness, I do not mean accepting what another person has done. You forgive in order to let go and become free yourself. The more resentment and hatred you carry, the more resources are lost for nothing.

Forgiving by sheer will is very difficult, because strong emotions are involved. Full forgiveness from the depths of the heart is almost impossible with the will and the conscious mind alone, since they have limited access to the subconscious part of us, where most of these experiences are stored.

Forgiveness is only for your own sake

Forgiveness is basically only for your own sake, not for others. It is the only way you can create peace within yourself. When you allow yourself to remain hurt by what others have done to you, you give them part of the power over your life.

The negative thoughts and feelings you have toward those you resent govern how you think and feel in life in general, and indirectly your health as well. The people you cannot forgive are then helping to rule over your life in a destructive way.

When you allow yourself to remain hurt by what others have done to you, you give them part of the power over your life.

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The only one this hurts is you. By learning to forgive, we take back the power over our own lives. We no longer let those who have hurt us decide how we think, feel, react, and act toward ourselves and other people.

The foundation for true spiritual development

Forgiveness heals our own heart and sets us free from the past, so that we can live here and now. It is also a foundation for true spiritual development. Such development is not possible until we have learned the art of forgiveness, because the heart is the key to our soul and our essence.

Forgiveness means that love, not anxiety, is at the forefront of our decisions and actions.

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For every person we manage to forgive from the depths of our heart, we let go of a great burden that has held us back on the path toward good health, meaning, and joy of life. You have probably felt for yourself how such a weight lifts from your heart after you have forgiven your partner or a friend for something they said or did.

Forgiveness means that love, not anxiety, is at the forefront of our decisions and actions. Through forgiveness, human beings restore the oneness between themselves and the creative force, and that oneness is a prerequisite for spiritual enlightenment and self-realization.

The proof of forgiveness

There is no objective yardstick for whether forgiveness has succeeded, because our heart, our subconscious, and our soul are very complex.

But there is one measuring instrument that is 100 percent reliable: your everyday life. When you meet a person you have tried to forgive, you quickly notice whether you have truly forgiven, or whether the forgiveness was cosmetic.

If you feel uneasy, attacked, stressed, or “small,” you still have work to do. Another sign of incomplete forgiveness is that you often think about the person or the situation, and that negative feelings and thoughts come up every time. Inner dialogues often arise in which you imagine what you will say and how the other person will react. In these scenes, you are often the “winner” who walks away from the situation with your head held high, or else justice has finally been done.

When you have forgiven, you can meet the person and exchange a few words without becoming stressed or feeling uneasy. You may of course have decided not to have close contact with that person anymore, but then it is a decision you have made freely, without coercion and without feeling pressured.

Should I forgive everything?

Many people ask me whether we should forgive everything and everyone who has hurt us or done us wrong. The answer is yes. But that is not the same as accepting and condoning everything others have done to us. We have to distinguish between two different ways of being hurt or harmed: objectively and subjectively.

Objective wounds: You have been hurt in an objectively verifiable way, for example through physical violence, bullying, robbery, abuse, torture, or deception. A simple way to find out whether you have been objectively hurt is to check reality: describe exactly what happened, as your five senses registered it. That way, you use clear language that defines what actually happened, not what you feel or believe happened.

If you have been hurt or harmed in an objective way, you should of course not accept the act. Then you need to find out what measures are needed so that it does not happen again. In such cases, it is wise to get help from a professional, for example a psychologist, therapist, or coach.

But if you stop there, you are still left with the often enormous burden of resentment and hatred toward those who hurt you. The only one who suffers under that burden is you. Forgiveness in such cases means setting yourself free. It does not mean accepting the act.

So on the one hand, it is about taking action so that this cannot happen again. On the other hand, it is about forgiveness, to free yourself from the burden you carry.

Extreme torture

I like to read biographies. They help me see my own life and my own problems in perspective. A documentary shown on German television was about Eva Mozes Kor, who as a child was subjected to the most inhuman experiments of Josef Mengele, Nazi Germany’s most notorious camp doctor at Auschwitz.

She survived the grotesque human experiments and was freed when the camp was liberated in January 1945. But life afterward became a nightmare. It was impossible to live a normal life, because she could not let go of what had happened. It marked all her thoughts, feelings, and actions, both toward herself and toward others. Only in 1995, fifty years after the liberation, did she forgive. In the interview, she was an elderly woman with gray hair and a gentle but firm voice:

“My life changed when I understood that the people who had hurt me still had power over my life. They were the main reason my existence was still unbearable, even after decades of freedom. The turning point came when I realized that the one thing they had no power over was my forgiveness of them. Forgiveness truly set me free. I could once again feel and think normally, live happily with my partner, and enjoy the smiles and laughter of my grandchildren.”

Eva Mozes Kor

A similar story is that of the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who in his book Man’s Search for Meaning describes how he survived the Holocaust by saying yes to life even under inhuman conditions.

The only one who suffers from refusing to forgive is the one who has been hurt. When people in situations like these manage to forgive, it gives hope to all of us. But no forgiveness is possible unless we first use our free will to choose to forgive. Then we have taken the first step toward setting ourselves free.

I recommend watching the full interview with Eva Mozes Kor, in which she tells her own story (15 minutes).

Subjective wounds

Being hurt subjectively means that the ego’s values have been wounded: our ego structures, our negative self-image, and our worldview have been called into question. We naturally try to hide our poor self-image from the world around us, and when it is in danger of being exposed, it feels like being hurt.

Examples are accusations of stupidity, ugliness, laziness, or incompetence. Since the ego is built on fear, it perceives attacks on its value system as an existential threat. Irritation, anxiety, hatred, resentment, and envy can arise on this basis.

The biggest challenge when starting a forgiveness process after a subjective wound is the ego’s intense defense program and fear of change. That is why the process can take time if you are not used to forgiveness work, or lack help along the way.

Misunderstandings about forgiveness

“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Matthew 5:39) is one of the religious tenets our society is steeped in, and one of the reasons so many people suffer in the role of victim. In practice, the Bible verse means that we should stoically tolerate having our dignity and integrity abused, and hope that the perpetrator understands the quiet, pacifist message and learns from it.

Forgiveness does not mean turning the other cheek. That would be consenting to other people doing whatever they want with you.

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If not, I have unintentionally given him a different message: Feel free to repeat the act without fear of consequences. And next time it may well be worse, because “this is something you can do to me.”

Forgiveness does not mean turning the other cheek. That would be consenting to other people doing whatever they want with you.

Forgiveness does not mean

• acting as if nothing has happened
• accepting violations of your boundaries
• remaining in the role of victim
• forcing yourself to believe that the person who hurt you is a good person who surely had good reasons for it
• gritting your teeth and keeping quiet about what you have experienced
• taking the blame for what has happened
• assuming that “it just had to be that way”
• thinking that the responsibility lies equally with both of us
• believing that “you just have to learn to deal with it”
• forgetting the incident and ignoring your own feelings

Many people I meet do not want to forgive others because they believe forgiveness means giving their consent to what has happened. That is a big misunderstanding, and it blocks the process that sets both you and your heart free.

What about revenge?

When someone has wronged us, the temptation to long for revenge is often great. The Old Testament principle “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21:24, quoted in Matthew 5:38) has given revenge religious legitimacy in our culture. But revenge has never brought anything good with it. It can give brief satisfaction, but in the long run it always ends in suffering.

My wife Maria worked for several years as a social worker with hardened criminals, including murderers. One of her clients had killed the man who had abused his daughter, and had served 20 years in prison for it. She asked him whether it had been worth it. “I lost the best years of my life. I only got to see my daughter on a few visits, and my marriage was destroyed. I lost everything that was dear to me, because of my thirst for revenge.”

None of her clients had ever become happy through revenge. Nor have I ever met anyone who became happy after taking revenge. It always creates a heavy emotional and karmic burden.

Forgiving yourself

Being able to forgive yourself is an absolute prerequisite for being able to fully forgive others. Qualities and behavior I reject in myself, I will also have problems with in other people.

Sometimes it is hard to understand what you should forgive yourself for. Then it can be a good idea to forgive yourself for having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you forgive yourself, your heart (the heart chakra) opens in a deep way, and all kinds of forgiveness processes become easier.

Forgiving yourself without looking more closely at feelings of guilt and shame, anxiety, and moral and religious belief patterns is often difficult.

The consequences of forgiving

You do not forgive for the sake of the person who hurt you. You forgive for your own sake, for your well-being, which the hatred has damaged. In this way, every completed forgiveness process is an act of love you show yourself. Only when you forgive do you show that you intend to be kind toward yourself and others.

Some of the consequences of forgiving

• Through forgiveness, a greater zest for life and a greater ability to enjoy life arise.
• Forgiveness heals emotional pain.
• Forgiveness heals anger.
• Forgiveness heals the desire for revenge.
• Forgiveness is the most important tool for stopping and preventing conflict and war.
• Through the heart chakra and its ability to love, we can open our heart to living in this world, and that is a prerequisite for pleasure, passion, and joyfulness.
• Forgiveness counteracts the ego’s power over us, and its idea that the only things that make us happy are status, money, and power.
• Forgiveness can be an important prerequisite for the physical heart staying healthy, or becoming healthy again if it falls ill.
• The circulatory system, the kidneys, the lungs, and the large intestine can benefit from forgiveness (in traditional Chinese medicine: the elements fire, water, and metal).
• Forgiveness is a prerequisite for a happy and lasting relationship, since there will always be situations in which one partner hurts the other. When forgiveness is not a habit, an insurmountable mountain builds up that can end in divorce.
• Those who forgive themselves become better able to take care of their own well-being, their success, and their health. Those who do not forgive themselves are constantly asking their subconscious to attract problems.
• Forgiveness is a prerequisite for working well together in a team.
• A well-functioning family can only be held together over time with the help of forgiveness.

What happens when I don’t forgive?

The consequences of not forgiving are far-reaching:

• You suffer.
• The people around you suffer.
• Your mental and physical health suffers.
• Your joy of life and zest for life are constantly held back.
• Your stress level stays high, which can suppress your immune system and lead to various health problems.
• All personal and spiritual development is blocked.

There are absolutely no reasons not to forgive, apart from the ego’s wish to keep things as they are. And the only one stopping you is you.

Forgiveness in practice

A few years ago, Stephanie went through one of the most traumatic moments a person can imagine: she watched her own husband die before her eyes, just after they had reached the summit together on a mountain hike. The experience completely floored her. For four years afterward, she lived in emotional paralysis, without joy, without drive, and without the ability to move on in life.

In an interview, Stephanie talks openly about how she was stuck in grief, shock, and trauma, and how she gradually found her way back to life. A crucial part of that path was about letting go, not of the memories, but of the pain. Through the work we did together, she learned to free herself through forgiveness.

What had held her captive for years began to loosen its grip. After just a few months, the spark of life came back. Her mood, her energy, her motivation: everything began to come alive again.

Stephanie’s story shows in a personal and genuine way how forgiveness can open the door to healing, inner peace, and a new chapter in life.

Is there a shortcut?

For a long time, I tried to forgive my former partners, among others, through sheer willpower and mental control. The result was minimal. With tests from applied kinesiology, you can actually reveal whether you have really forgiven another person, and in my case it quickly turned out that I had not gotten very far.

The challenge is simple: forgiveness can almost never be achieved through willpower alone. Pain, betrayal, grief, and fear, the feelings stored like a wall around the heart, cannot be disciplined away. You cannot force an open heart with a closed mind.

What would change my life was a deep shamanic method of forgiveness from the heart, a method anyone can learn. It is not a mental technique but a tool that dissolves the causes of the emotional knots that hold us captive.

You cannot force an open heart with a closed mind.

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As a civil engineer, I was naturally skeptical when I was first introduced to this. A “shamanic method” for deep forgiveness sounded foreign to someone trained to think logically and in measurable terms.

But to my great surprise, it took only three to four weeks, with 10 minutes a day, before the burden I had carried for years began to lift. Completely.

I remember the overwhelming feeling: it was as if dozens of kilos simply vanished from my chest. When I think of these people and situations today, I feel no pain, bitterness, or resentment, only gratitude for the lessons they unknowingly gave me. Among other things, I learned to distinguish between the person and the act, and to feel the value of true forgiveness.

The experience kindled a strong motivation in me. I decided to go through a systematic forgiveness process for everyone who had hurt me throughout my life, including my parents.

In phase 1, “Free yourself with the 7 Pillars of True Forgiveness” (see below), I received guidance through talk therapy. I carried out phase 2 on my own with the shamanic forgiveness method (see below): 10 minutes a day, week after week.

The result was remarkable. I became freer. More balanced. Happier. More alive. As each weight lifted from my heart, my inner reserves grew. In the end, I saw the great breakthrough: forgiveness was never about the others. It was about my own freedom.

In my work as a spiritual teacher and mentor, forgiveness has become one of the most central subjects I teach. All my clients and students get the opportunity to learn this method, a practice that can be mastered in a couple of hours through an online course, because I see again and again how deep and life-changing the results can be.

Time and again, students and clients tell stories that touch the heart: of love that finds its way home again, wounds that heal in silence, anxiety that dissolves, a deeper inner peace, and a new, clearer light over life.

The value of true forgiveness is enormous. It is one of the most important keys to a happy life.

Free yourself with the 7 Pillars of True Forgiveness

My advice is to become an expert at freeing yourself through forgiveness. As a rule, it is a little slow going at first. Since you are learning something new, it can be wise to have help from an experienced mentor at the start, for example a therapist, psychologist, or coach.

The forgiveness process is divided into two parts: phase 1, awareness and learning, which is completed before phase 2, forgiveness.

Phase 1: Awareness and learning

The first phase is about clearly defining what has happened, taking action so that it does not happen again, and gathering the lessons from what you have experienced.

1) Decide to forgive. Everything starts with you making a decision, with your free will, to forgive. Once you have understood what forgiveness is, and why it is so important to forgive, this becomes much easier. Once you have done it a few times, it becomes a habit.

2) Describe objectively. Find out whether it is about objective or subjective wounds by describing what has happened clearly and plainly. Use your five senses. Avoid dreamy language and words like “I feel,” “I believe,” and “I wish.”

3) Trivial or serious? Find out whether it is about trivial, surface matters or a serious, deep event. Trivial matters and minor everyday incidents you can handle yourself, while for serious events you should get help from a professional.

4) Objective or subjective wound?

Objective wounds: Can the situation or event be resolved? If not: What measures need to be taken to protect you?

Subjective wounds: Was the intention to hurt you deliberately? Is the other person willing to relate to you in a harmonious way in the future? Which negative ideas about your own self-image were activated? How can they be healed?

5) Give yourself space. When you are hurt, you need to take care of yourself as a hurt person. Give the pain space, and feel what has happened. Accept that you are hurt, because only then are you able to start the forgiveness process. By ignoring what has happened, we deprive ourselves of this opportunity.

6) Gather the lessons. Use what has happened to move forward in life. The experience and knowledge from many negative events can be used for something positive, just as the burnout that nearly killed me in 2003 gave me entirely new opportunities. It is a good idea to read biographies of people who have used even the greatest traumas of their lives for something positive, such as Eva Mozes Kor and Viktor Frankl.

Phase 2: Forgiveness

7) Choose a forgiveness method that actually reaches the depths of what you carry. There are many approaches on the market, such as NLP, systemic constellations, and shamanic methods for deep forgiveness. Whichever method you choose, it is crucial that it reaches the deepest layers of your heart and your karma. The bigger the wound, the more important it is that the method can transform it at a deep level.

Work that takes place only in the conscious mind or in the subconscious has its limitations. Experience shows that a combination of talk therapy and targeted shamanic energy work often gives the most thorough and lasting results.

Remember this too: the only real proof that forgiveness has succeeded is how you relate in practice to the person you have forgiven, in everyday life.

When you can meet that person, physically or in your thoughts, without negative feelings, without bitterness, and without inner resistance, then you have truly forgiven.

Online course: Forgiveness from the Depths of Your Heart with the 4 Shamanic Heart Guides

In this online course, you learn an unusually powerful method of forgiveness, based on the 4 Shamanic Heart Guides. The method is activated through an energetic initiation ritual with the teacher, and it gives deep, measurable results from the very first day.

The course gives you a clear understanding of what true forgiveness involves, why everything can be forgiven, and how you can free yourself from emotional baggage that has long held you back. You learn how the heart functions as our “third brain,” how trauma can be transformed, and how the 4 Heart Guides help you heal both yourself and your relationships with others.

The course is for you if you want to open the treasure chamber of the heart and discover the inner freedom that lies in forgiveness from the depths of the heart.

Forgiveness from the Depths of Your Heart with the 4 Shamanic Heart Guides is part of the online course Awaken Your Inner Primordial Shaman: An Introduction to Deep Primordial Shamanic Healing and Nature’s Healing Rhythms.