Dave, a Sahaja Yoga practitioner shares views on forgiveness and its aspects in this beautiful message:
In my experience, there is always a good reason why people do (bad) things. If someone hurts you deliberately, try looking for why they did it. If you dig deep enough, you'll find there is always a good reason. It is the necessary action for them. If you were in their exact place (including their spiritual development), you would do the same thing.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't protect yourself. Or that it is OK for them to hurt you. They will incur their own Karma, which they will have to work off in full. You can feel free to prosecute them legally, or other naturally occurring consequences for their actions. But this must be done, not at all out of revenge, but because this is a nature consequence.
Occasionally, someone wronged me strongly. I took my best judgement of appropiate action. But I recognized that the anger I felt inside was MY problem. It took time for me to let go of this anger (in one case, two years -- now I have a better method with bandhans), but I did not put the anger on them. Actually, I felt sorry for them, that they did such a foolish action.
Finally, it may be that what seems hurtful to you may end up being for your benifit (if only learning to let go of the anger). I believe we are not qualified to judge others, or ourself. "Let he who is without sin...". But also, we are just not in a position to determine what is bad, simply because we don't like it.
It just doesn't matter.
Dave
