Mindful Forgiveness: Experiencing the Love Factor

Lori A. Dunn is an ESL teacher, instructional designer, and freelance
writer in New Westminster.

In Mindful Forgiveness, Doug Geiger outlines his ideas for a healing
spirituality that begins with accepting responsibility for one’s own
emotions and thought patterns. Part 1 develops the concept of mindful
forgiveness, a mixture of logical, common-sense ideas that he encourages
in the reader. We are to begin with the choice between accepting
responsibility for our own mindset or else continuing to see the
external world as having power over us. This is followed by a discussion
of the meaning of responsibility and an explanation of how our false
thought patterns make us assume unnecessary guilt that is “based on
false beliefs of who we think we are.” The articles that make up Part
2 demonstrate mindful forgiveness in practice.

The author’s theory of mindful forgiveness combines ancient Buddhist
ideas with a dose of 12-step AA theory (“I realize that I am not at
peace,” “I accept that my thoughts are the cause of my
experience,” etc.) and a vision of a force outside oneself to draw
strength from. (Geiger’s concept of God—a system “based on Love,
Truth, and Knowledge” whose “Source is a power greater than
ours”—is singularly vague and, as such, likely to appeal to many
denominations.) This thought-provoking, non-denominational book has the
potential to truly help people.