In the practice of I AM Yoga®, I say: when someone offends you and you are able to forgive them, it means you have come to a place of inner purity. You are no longer participating in the conflict or disturbance that appeared to come from the other. In truth, the one who felt offended was not reacting to the person as they are now, but to a lookalike memory event from the past that was triggered in your nervous system.
When you perceive someone as having hurt or wronged you, your stored memory-based energy blocks are activated. You are no longer perceiving what is present; you are reacting to a karmic imprint from the past. This reaction reveals that the conflict was not only with the other, but within yourself. You, as a subjective perceiver, brought a past event into the present moment and misinterpreted what occurred.
When this truth becomes clear, you no longer need to ask forgiveness from the one who triggered the event—because they did not cause it. Nor do you need to hold yourself in blame. You realize that your own perception, judgment, and interpretation were colored by unresolved impressions.
As long as you identify with your perception of the other through the lens of the past, you are seeing through a filter. You are not seeing the reality of the person or situation now. You are experiencing through the time-bound, separated ego mind—the reactive self that is not who you truly are.
We are born into separation from our true Self. The time-bound ego mind perceives through the polarity of fear and desire, craving pleasurable memory and avoiding painful ones. It functions in time, while your true nature lives in the timeless dimension of now.
When you awaken to this truth—I am not the time-bound ego mind; I am not the memory-based reaction stored in the body as energy blocks—you no longer need to forgive others or even yourself. You are no longer operating within the loop of blame, shame, and justification.
This is the deeper meaning of Christ’s words: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” He did not say, “Forgive yourself and others to set yourself free.” He pointed to a direct realization: truth itself is freedom.
Even if someone asks for your forgiveness, it does not dissolve the pain unless the inner memory has been met and seen. This does not mean there are no harmful actions in the world. It means that the pain lives on in your nervous system as a filtered perception until it is seen through.
This is why the meditative approach of I AM Yoga is not about the ego mind trying to fix, fight, or eliminate the past. That effort only reinforces the stress. As the ancient yogis said, and as Patanjali taught: Yoga is the cessation of the modifications of the mind.
Yoga begins when you witness and withdraw from the ego mind that is shaped by unresolved karmic memory. When you are no longer identified with it, your true nature is revealed: timeless, maskless Presence.
In that moment of witnessing, you become free. You are the Seer—not the sufferer. You experience yourself as pure awareness. You can finally see the person or situation as it is now, beyond the illusion of wrongdoer and wounded, beyond the memory-based perception shaped by time.
