Meditation remains the bedrock practice for finding peace and resilience is this extraordinary time of uncertainty and rapidly changing events. Forgiveness is a spiritual practice that really targets our emotional nature and the judgmental aspect of our thinking colored by feeling states. As such it complements meditation. In the long term process of meditation, we become more aware of the range of emotions we are capable of as we become aware of our subjective points of view. Along with the background of the mind's processing of daily events, memories (sometimes forgotten, sometimes repressed) challenge our spiritual focus and disrupt our peace. If you meditate daily, there are times when it is difficult to reconcile a new found peace and freedom with our shifting emotional states, surfacing memories, and our judgmental mind. Meditation can stimulate inner conflict and we may struggle to maintain focus. There are different schools of thought and techniques for navigating this; forgiveness is one of them. So in a sense, meditation reveals conflict and forgiveness reconciles.
A meditation practice in a relatively stable situation, where it becomes a part of your daily life
is one thing, but with forgiveness--just to keep things in perspective--requires a stretch, we are now dealing with a global epidemic that hasn't happened in over 100 years. Along with everything else affected by this particular pandemic, we will have to find our way of forgiveness.
I also brought up forgiveness because if you are on lockdown and spending time in reflection and meditation, it is likely old injuries and emotion wounds may resurface. Times of crisis tend to stir up memories and emotional reactions of past emergencies and trauma. Sometimes that is actually useful, because we realize how resilient and adaptive we are. Sometimes, it is an inner call to the power of forgiveness. (Susan Nettleton)