Probably you have not noticed (else you would have loved) that “the person that you can’t forgive” is in your mind? Not really “your” mind since it does not belong to you, but the mind is simply “an arising” for experience to be experienced. You see, the mind is simply “happening” to mean, it is just an arising of different experiences occurring moment to moment, albeit seamless and endless. The mind is not “something”, “somewhere”, nor is it “somebody”. It is simply a kind of nature that has the ability of experience to be experienced.
Have you not noticed that each moment of your so-called life is made out of experience; and that “experience” is the mind? That experience, whether it comes from any of your senses, is constantly accompanied with the meaning of “I” – “I am experiencing this or that”. The “I” cannot be removed, nor can it be annihilated as that is impossible since the “I” is merely a projection of the function of “knowing” – so long as “you” exist, then “you are knowing”. “You” and “knowing” is inseparable, indispensable, for existence to exist.
So when it comes to unforgiving, what occurs within the mind of the beholder is the idea that “it should not have happened” – this meaning is conjured within the mind and has never left the mind, so to speak. Somehow, when one does not notice that this thought is simply within the mind and has never “came out of the mind” this obvious experience becomes an imagination of sort that there is “someone” out there that one cannot forgive. The truth is that you can neither forgive or not to forgive another since it is impossible to do so as all the “talking of forgiveness” has never left the mind of the beholder. It is a game one continuously play with himself or herself.
In fact, what one seemingly can’t forgive outside – is not the person, or the body, or something, but a certain character traits that is inherent in that specific event that triggers the irritation. That trigger is clearly an indication of what has been an ancient idea, lodged latent in the mind that has pain meaning in it that has yet to be released or undone. In other words, the mind has been carrying this pain for a long time and each event that brings up that pain is actually a call for inner forgiveness to be initiated so that “where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you.” (A Course in Miracles).
So, forgiveness, in all its due, is not to let go of anybody from your wrath of resentment, but to free the mind’s illusion that is within your experience of a once misperceived idea that has not been undone. Forgiveness has always been for you – fortunately! To forgive another is missing the mark. When perception is not directed correctly, its result will be a misperception of event, thus arising the “I am holier than thou” attitude, which is not just meaningless, but non-existential. This perpetuates further the already ignorant state.