Forgiveness as Freedom
In Arabic, ʿAfw carries the essence of both forgiveness and freedom, the act of releasing and returning to spaciousness. To forgive is not to condone or forget, but to unbind the heart from that which keeps it restricted or hardened. In this way, forgiveness is not a gesture toward another, but actually an offering to our own spirit, a loosening of the grip of the threads that tether us to pain.
Every authentic spiritual path carries some teaching on forgiveness. From the yogic lens, forgiveness weaves through the five Yamas, though it is not explicitly listed among the five: Ahimsa, Satya, Asteya, Brahmacharya, and Aparigraha. Yet it arises as a refinement of them all, a subtle fruit that ripens when we truly live their essence. It is the natural flowering of a heart that has remembered its own vastness.
invitations to practice
Write freely for 5–10 minutes on the question: “What am I still holding to?” Let words arise without judgment. When you finish, fold the page and burn it, imagining the end of one chapter as it burns down and a sense that a new one waiting in the wings.
Rituals hold space for the heart to return to itself. In my experience, offering silently peace and forgiveness to yourself and others through Meditation, honours the heart’s naturalness to be free and vast.
Use a dry brush to very gently stroke your body from your feet and hands moving towards the heart. As you do this, hold the intention in your heart to move what maybe stuck of stagnant and to fill where you may be empty.
Explore a breathing practice that focuses on long, slow exhalations. Beginning with a few rounds of equal breathing moving slowly. Inhaling for a count of 4 and exhaling for a count of 8 is not a goal, only a direction.
When we hold tightly to hurt, wrongdoing or judgment, we are caught in the same net as the one who caused the pain. All the thoughts and emotions that arise from that experience linger in our body, shaping our breath, our blood, energy, our entire chemistry. We remain entangled in what hurt us because we continue to feel it within. When we soften the hand of the heart, the energy can begin to move in new ways. In that softening, forgiveness arises naturally, not as an act of will and effort, but as an effortless return of love to its natural rhythm.
Forgiveness as a rhythm, is the ongoing exhale of a spirit learning to trust its own tenderness. To forgive is to return to our natural state of freedom, to align ourselves with life’s current rather than pushing against the tide of what has been. To let love move without obstruction is to remember that peace is not something we find, but that which remains when we stop holding on. To forgive is to remember that our natural state is freedom and that love, when it is not held tightly, always finds its way back to flow. In that release, forgiveness blooms not as a moral act, but as a spiritual one, where true forgiveness becomes the cessation of subtle violence within ourselves. When we forgive, we stop wounding the same place again and again, and the heart can finally rest.
