title: Need to remove duplicate commits in repo; not able to undo erroneous merge commits
body: <p>I am starting to learn more about the more advanced aspects of git, and I got ahead of myself. </p>
  
  <p>I needed to remove a commit I erroneously pushed to my repo, and the ultimate result has been the duplication of most of the commits in my repo. </p>
  
  <p>I believe I messed up dealing with multiple conflicts with several different branches from the master as parent, and it looks like I've ended up merging the contents of my repo with the repo itself. In the snippet below are the last few entries in my git log. Even the "non-duplicated" repo has over 528 original commits, so I did not want to paste that huge volume on here and risk more downvotes than I'll probably get already from this embarrassing post. At least, perhaps, it could be a textbook case of why you really need to know what you're doing before attempting advanced git maneuvers ... on your own, anyway.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried undoing the erroneous merge commits with <code>rebase</code> and <code>revert</code>. Indeed, rebase-ing erroneously is what got me into this most recent predicament. I hate to admit it, but I also tried <code>reset</code>. However, using <code>git reset --hard HEAD~1</code> and <code>git reset --hard HEAD~3</code>, which refer to the erroneous merge commits, and then staging and attempting to set a commit, results in this message:</p>
  
  <pre><code>// ♥ git commit -m 'attempts to reset HEAD to master before erroneous merge'
  On branch master
  Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
  
  nothing to commit, working tree clean 
  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Thanks to anyone in advance for any help they can give.</p>
  
  <p>Aforementioned git log:</p>
  
  <pre><code>// ♥ git log --oneline --graph
  *   f2608af5 (HEAD -&gt; master, origin/master, origin/HEAD) Merge branch 'master' of github.com:stazman/sfsourcer
  |\  
  | *   5911dd07 Merge branch 'master' of github.com:stazman/sfsourcer
  | |\  
  | | * 7cb2f887 bundle updated
  | | * 40c8438c adds .env to gitignore file correctly
  | | * 5ae74993 more button disappears after clicked on funding_projects index view
  </code></pre>