The Lord’s Prayer end’s with forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. This points to the great psycho-spiritual truth that hatred and resentment bind us to the object of our hatred with an invisible chain of mutual destruction.

In order for us to be free of the person who we perceive as having hurt us we must clear the resentment and hatred. When we forgive we clear the air and open new doors so we can move along to new places with new people.

Some people object and say, “Am I supposed to roll over and play dead in front of my persecutors?” That has nothing to do with forgiveness. When we forgive someone we need not have anything to do with that person. We don’t even need to like that person. We need not ever see nor contact that person again.

Having forgiven the person for past events and actions, we can take all necessary actions to stop us from being harmed in the future. Forgiveness clears the past which is unchangeable and in fact allows us better to take the optimal action in the future.

Forgiveness is an act of courage which allows us to move on out of harms way. It is a way of going from the past to the present and then moving on toward the future. The real point of any event is to learn whatever lesson exists in that event and then to move on. When we hold onto negative emotions and memories we end up harming ourselves much more than we could ever hurt or harm the other person. Thus we give the other person huge amount of power over us and we further victimize ourselves.

A Zen master once said that not forgiving a person who has harmed you is the equivalent of drinking a bottle of poison and imagining that will harm the other.