My understanding of karma through LOO

[Diana]

How do we know we've forgiven ourselves and others from everything?

When there is no emotional charge. When the encountering of, or thought of, "it," has no meaning beyond an unconditional, objective, not-personal positive attitude toward "it."

Will one little nonforgiveness that is unconscious keep us on the cycle of Karma, doomed to repeat another cycle of incarnation?

I have found that the word "forgiveness" has a lot of connotation that makes it seem unreachable or impossible or even unknowable. I like to focus on removing the emotional charge, which tells me I am invested in some way, rather than "forgiving." Forgiving has the same feeling as the word believing; how does one make one's self believe--it's a paradox.

So, focusing on addressing the emotional charge is more solution oriented, for instance, hypothetically: Someone did something to hurt my feelings. To try and forgive for the sake of forgiveness is like trying to believe something I don't understand. Analyzing "why" so I can figure out how to forgive doesn't seem to work very well. How can I know why someone does something when they are themselves full of distortion as everyone is; you will never get to a starting point of where the why came from.

But if I look to myself, and where my emotional charge may have sprung from, which will likely have nothing to do with the actual act that hurt my feelings--that being only a trigger--then I have a better chance of forgiving because I am getting to the source of my own issue. (Because it removes the source of hurt from the other, and places in my own self.) I can then have a reasonable expectation of forgiving the other person.

The hard part comes in of then forgiving myself. I find this to be an ongoing evolving process with levels of progress dependent upon awareness. Whether this would prevent getting off the karmic wheel may depend on how the individual judges themselves--which is not the same as forgiveness.