Monday, December 30, 2013

Emotional Freedom Technique for Forgiveness

I use a number of different forgiveness processes for different situations and people.   The processes that I believe are the most effective can be found in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  I am also working to develop downloadable meditations of my favorite processes for this site to help people learn to forgive (hopefully, coming soon!)  

One process that I have worked with a little bit is EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique.  I find that it helps to lesson the pain that we experience regarding hot button issues.  I did some experimentation with this technique early on in my work with forgiveness.  I think it is a good process to start with and that it works well to help reduce fear and emotional pain caused by past events.  If you are suffering from hurt, guilt or fear and need to forgive, this is a place you can start.

Just a cautionary note, however, that some of our grievances run so deep in our subconscious and have so many aspects that they will require a lot of deep inquiry work (such as my "Feeling the Feelings" process which is included in "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness").  

In the meantime, this is an easy process to use and it will help resolve some issues entirely as well as be a good start on resolving others.  




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Sunday, December 29, 2013

Workbook Lesson 78 from A Course in Miracles

Today I am presenting Lesson 78 from A Course in Miracles.  If you are struggling with learning to forgive, this is an excellent exercise to help kick-start your forgiveness practice.

If you are not a Course in Miracles student it will help you to know that when the Course refers to the Holy Spirit, it is referring to the voice for God that we hear in our own heads.  Some people refer to this voice as our Higher Self.

Lesson 78

Let miracles replace all grievances.
Perhaps it is not yet quite clear to you that each decision that you make is one between a grievance and a miracle. Each grievance stands like a dark shield of hate before the miracle it would conceal. And as you raise it up before your eyes, you will not see the miracle beyond. Yet all the while it waits for you in light, but you behold your grievances instead.
Today we go beyond the grievances, to look upon the miracle instead. We will reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stop before it sees. We will not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in silence to behold the Son of God.
He waits for you behind your grievances, and as you lay them down he will appear in shining light where each one stood before. For every grievance is a block to sight, and as it lifts you see the Son of God where he has always been. He stands in light, but you were in the dark. Each grievance made the darkness deeper, and you could not see.
Today we will attempt to see God's Son. We will not let ourselves be blind to him; we will not look upon our grievances. So is the seeing of the world reversed, as we look out toward truth, away from fear. We will select one person you have used as target for your grievances, and lay the grievances aside and look at him. Someone, perhaps, you fear and even hate; someone you think you love who angered you; someone you call a friend, but whom you see as difficult at times or hard to please, demanding, irritating or untrue to the ideal he should accept as his, according to the role you set for him.
You know the one to choose; his name has crossed your mind already. He will be the one of whom we ask God's Son be shown to you. Through seeing him behind the grievances that you have held against him, you will learn that what lay hidden while you saw him not is there in everyone, and can be seen. He who was enemy is more than friend when he is freed to take the holy role the Holy Spirit has assigned to him. Let him be savior unto you today. Such is his role in God your Father's plan.
Our longer practice periods today will see him in this role. You will attempt to hold him in your mind, first as you now consider him. You will review his faults, the difficulties you have had with him, the pain he caused you, his neglect, and all the little and the larger hurts he gave. You will regard his body with its flaws and better points as well, and you will think of his mistakes and even of his "sins."
Then let us ask of Him Who knows this Son of God in his reality and truth, that we may look on him a different way, and see our savior shining in the light of true forgiveness, given unto us. We ask Him in the holy Name of God and of His Son, as holy as Himself:
Let me behold my savior in this one You have appointed as 

the one for me to ask to lead me to the holy light in which he 
stands, that I may join with him.

The body's eyes are closed, and as you think of him who grieved you, let your mind be shown the light in him beyond your grievances.
What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free, and make his freedom yours. The Holy Spirit leans from him to you, seeing no separation in God's Son. And what you see through Him will free you both. Be very quiet now, and look upon your shining savior. No dark grievances obscure the sight of him. You have allowed the Holy Spirit to express through him the role God gave Him that you might be saved.
God thanks you for these quiet times today in which you laid your images aside, and looked upon the miracle of love the Holy Spirit showed you in their place. The world and Heaven join in thanking you, for not one Thought of God but must rejoice as you are saved, and all the world with you.
We will remember this throughout the day, and take the role assigned to us as part of God's salvation plan, and not our own. Temptation falls away when we allow each one we meet to save us, and refuse to hide his light behind our grievances. To everyone you meet, and to the ones you think of or remember from the past, allow the role of savior to be given, that you may share it with him. For you both, and all the sightless ones as well, we pray:
Let miracles replace all grievances.





     

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Saturday, December 28, 2013

What's in Your Mind?

What have you filled your mind up with?  It's important to know, because whatever it is, it is going to show up in your life.

In fact, you'll know what is in your mind just by looking at what is manifesting in your life. 

If you obsess about how the world is wronging you and hold old grudges, you will see annoyances, irritations, hurts, injuries and emotional pain showing up in your life. 

If you judge others then you will be criticized, found lacking and rejected in your own life. 

In fact, the same sorts of damaging people and painful events will repeatedly show up in your life. For example, maybe rejection is one of your hot buttons.  Perhaps you experienced profound and painful rejection as a child.  Now you are judging and rejecting other people.   And they are judging and rejecting you.  This is a vicious cycle which you yourself are creating in your own life.  Of course, it seems like the rejection is coming from the world around.  But you are it's actual source.

That's actually good news, because as the source of your own experience in life, you have the opportunity to create something that is not causing yourself pain.  You can change your mind.  In essence, you get a chance to get it right. 

As it turns out, you get many chances.  Every time you participate in wrong thinking, you will get a painful lesson.  Over and over again.  The universe is offering you a chance to see the world differently.  You can create beauty and love in your world.  You are the one in charge of your own happiness.



Clean up your thoughts, offer the world love and forgiveness, stop the habit of judging others, and you will see your life change. It will become happy. 


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Friday, December 27, 2013

You Get What You Give

This is one of the Universal laws. What you give out, you get back.  When you give out love and forgiveness, that is what comes to you.  When you live in judgment and hold grudges, you will be judged and left un-forgiven. 

 


Which world do you want to live in? 

The one where you are gifting everyone around you with your love and forgiving every trespass?  In this world everyone around you loves and supports you and overlooks your shortcoming and mistakes.



Or, do you choose to judge others and hold your grievances?  In your world you will feel alone and afraid.  Everyone around you will judge your actions and find them lacking.  There will be no approval for you.  And there will be no forgiveness when you slip up.



Think about what it must be like to live in each of these two opposite worlds.  Imagine what a working life will be in each. In the first your work meets with approval and you are appreciated.  In the second you are attacked and scorned.

What about family relationships and friendships?  In the first you have friends and family that enjoy your company and have your back.  In the second world, you meet with constant criticism and nobody is there for you. 

How about romance in these two worlds?  In the first, you take your time getting to know your romantic partners.  You trust the world to bring you what's good for you so there's no rush.  Your love is mutual as you both love and respect each other. As time goes on your relationships develops into a deep caring and sharing partnership.

In the second world, early relationships might seem intense and exciting but after awhile, there is betrayal and rejection, no deep abiding love develops, there is no sense of strong partnership and ultimately there is no harmony, safety and peace in the relationship.



Forgive and accept the world around you and the people in your life.  Create a world that is safe, loving and supportive and where good things come to you.  A Course in Miracles calls this the "Happy Dream Life".   It doesn't happen overnight.  It takes a forgiveness lifestyle to create this world.  However, if you learn to practice forgiveness on every aspect of your life, it will come to pass that you will live a life in which you are surrounded by love and goodness. 

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Thursday, December 26, 2013

So....How Did it Go?

Okay.  Many of us have just made it through a major family holiday.  As we are getting our houses back to order, placing the good china back into the cupboard, and collecting all the shreds of wrapping paper, let's clean up our minds, too.


It's time to stop and review.  Quickly, mentally wind back the clock and review the time spent with your family members.  Were there any large blow-ups or small upsets?  Was there any moment at all when you felt that someone in your family was pushing your buttons?  Did you have any quick flashes of anger or annoyances?  Were you with anyone that just bugs you...period?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you have some forgiveness work to do.



Blow Ups   Let's start with the large blow-up.  If something like this happened in your family then set aside a little time in the next few days to do some deep soul searching around this.  A big blow-up is usually triggered by memories and behaviors from the past.  Take a look at whatever triggered the blow-up and see if you can relate it to events or feelings in your past, or the group's past.  Spend some time with this and keep asking your higher self questions until you get the answers you need.  Dig deep and really do some serious contemplative thought.  If you really want to know the answers, they will come.  Maybe not immediately, but eventually, you'll have them.

Once you can pin-point the issues involved, you can do the forgiveness work.  Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms are great for something like this.  You can get them for free at www.colintipping.com under free stuff. 

Fill out as many forms for as many people, memories or emotions that come to mind.  It's important to forgive as many aspects of a complicated group issue as you are able to.  Be sure to forgive each individual involved separately.

Small Upsets, Annoyances, Flashes of Anger   If these situations happened more than once, be sure to forgive each episode individually as well as any person involved individually.  Even if logic tells you that it wasn't someone else's fault, if they were at all involved, just go through the motions of forgiving them.  If you're not sure how to forgive, there are many processes outlined in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  Try them all and settle in on what works best for you. 

If you see any larger issues coming to the surface in your mind as you do this forgiveness work, then either get one of the Colin Tipping Radical Forgiveness forms, or use any of the other deep forgiveness processes from my book. 

Finally, be thankful for your family and their/your issues.  With each act of forgiveness we grow immensely.  Your family members have given you a beautiful gift of this opportunity to release old hurts and wounds.  Forgiveness unblocks sub-conscious barriers our minds create that keep us separated from God.  Forgiveness is the way home.

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Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Did Santa Bring You What You Want?

Let's broaden this question a little bit.  What do you want?  What do you really want? 



Are you wishing for a beautiful new pair of boots.  Or are you hoping for new Bose speakers?  Perhaps you covet an island vacation trip.  You may think that what you really want is a new car or a flat stomach or for someone to truly cherish and appreciate you. 

However, all these things are only representational of what you really truly want...you want real love.  You want the real love of God that calls to you from your ancient memories.

Every one of us knows down deep what this love feels like, but we've forgotten it.  Our egos have blocked out the memory.   Our egos have created football and presents and pancakes and twinkly lights.  Christmas music and airports and eggnog are all distractions the ego has created to keep us from our true knowing of God's love. The ego wants to keep us away from real love.  That's why his distractions can be so attractive and alluring.  Of course we want eggnog and a roaring fire.   The ego knows these things will keep our minds on the busy-ness of our days and away from real love. 

We've all seen that the ego has other tricks to play.  He has disease, disappointment, hardship and death.  These keep us distracted, too.  The ego plays dirty and he'll do whatever it takes to keep our minds from truth.

Today he plays his happy tricks.  That's fine.  Enjoy the Christmas pleasures.  Have a beautiful day.  I fully intend to enjoy my Christmas dinner.  Just keep in mind, along with me, that truth is not all about a fine Christmas ham.



It's about the love of God, the love that enfolds you in peace, perfection, safety and happiness.  A love that is infinite and never ends.  It's always there for us.  In order to have it, all we need to do is to see the false world the ego has set up around us.  When we do that, we can forgive this false world. 

The act of forgiveness brings us closer to thinking like God and when we do that we are entitled to accepts his gifts of love. 

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Forgiveness is a Lifestyle

Most people, if they bother at all with forgiveness, use it only on occasion.  They save it for those times when something comes up in life that smacks them in the face.  In those kinds of moments, there is just no peace without forgiving a particular person or situation...and so they forgive.

There's no doubt that this kind of forgiveness is helpful.  Anytime we forgive, we feel happier about our lives. 

However, if we want to be truly happy, we need to live a forgiveness lifestyle.  We need to develop daily forgiveness habits and we need to do the deep introspective work that allows us to delve into our pasts and root out all the hurt, anger and guilt that lurks deep in our sub-conscious.

Daily Affronts   Let's start with the daily forgiveness habit.  Each day many things transpire that push our buttons.  Create a habit of reviewing your day each night before you go to bed.  Gather together all the memories from your day of hurts, upsets and annoyances and methodically forgive and release each one.  This only takes a few minutes to do and it will make a big difference in your life. 

Forgive Your Past  It's also important to forgive people and events from your past that hurt or angered you.  At the beginning of this process it helps to keep an ongoing list.  Every time you remember somebody or something that damaged you in your past, add it to your list.  Then each morning when you take your daily time to pray and meditate, try to tackle an item on your list.  (I recommend using Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms for this.  You can get them on his website, www.colintipping.com under free stuff.)  If you devote ten or twenty minutes to this process  each day you'll find that in six months or a year, you'll have released a big chunk of the surface pain in your subconscious mind. 

Go Deep   Once you forgive and release much of the obvious stuff from your past, it's time to start the really deep work.  So many of our responses to and perspectives on the world around us have roots in painful moments in our past.  Many of these moments have been forgotten, cloaked or suppressed  by us.  Even if we do remember them, we may have forgotten the depth of the hurt they created. This hurt is often the key to much of the crazy, irrational behavior we exhibit in our lives today.  It is also the source of much of our unconscious guilt.  Forgiving this guilt and pain  requires some deep introspection and releasing techniques.  There are several processes outlined in my book which will help to root out memories and forgive and release them. 

This may seem like a lot of work, but it is actually fascinating to do (of course, what's more fascinating than our favorite subjects; ourselves!)  More importantly, this work leads to inner peace. Each act of forgiveness releases fear.  Over time, the forgiveness you do begins to accumulate into something magnificent.

Not only that, but in time the actual forgiveness work becomes pleasurable to do and searching our pasts for little scraps of intel that shed light on the pain that runs our lives today becomes like a treasure hunt.  Each scrap is cause for celebration, because releasing it leads to greater awareness and greater peace. 

Create a forgiveness lifestyle and live a life of peace and happiness.  It all starts with baby steps and you can begin right now by simply scanning your day and forgiving what bugs you.  What have you got to lose...except your pain?  Just get started.  Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

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Sunday, December 22, 2013

Fragments

We are so much larger than what we are here on earth.  This is only a fragment of our whole self.  In reality, we are made by God, exactly in his image.

We are endless and everywhere.  We are timeless and always.  We are everything and all that is.

We are in God.  We are of God.  We are part of God.  We are one with God.


However you look at this bigger picture, we are so much more than the mere fragments of ourselves that we project into this illusory dream that is our life on earth. 

When we see a brother behaving badly.  We must learn to take a leap in our minds to that place where we know his real truth.  He is not the fragment we are seeing here.  He is a Son of God and his real truth is only love. 

Knowing this for him is your true act of forgiveness.


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Tuesday, December 17, 2013

You Can Learn to Forgive

Yes, learning to forgive seems difficult, but learning anything new can take perseverance and courage. We all have those characteristics, however, and we’ve demonstrated them repeatedly. We used them to learn to walk, to read, to find jobs. In fact, we use them every day!

 Forgiveness is not any harder than most of the challenges we face in life. And it is the one with the biggest payoff...peace.
 
Mandela is a great inspiration, because he moved past his resistance and fear, accomplishing complete forgiveness and acceptance. Perhaps his single greatest legacy is that he has shown us the way. We can all do it, too.

 
 
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Monday, December 16, 2013

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

One trick I use to help me forgive people who are behaving badly is to put myself in their shoes.  I try to see the world from their perspective.  Why are they doing what they're doing?  What rejections, abuses, hurts and scars from their past are motivating their actions today?  Might I behave just as badly under similar circumstances?



Also, is it possible that I might be pushing their buttons, just as much as they are pushing mine?  Why? 

I try to imagine what they were feeling and thinking when the upset occurred. I let my imagination go and create a story in my mind about what they may have been faced with.  It doesn't matter whether I come up with the actual truth of what was going through their minds.  My willingness to swap places with them for a moment is the act of forgiveness.  In that moment, we become brothers as I drop my judgment and release my hurt and anger. 

Sometimes the thought of feeling any sympathy whatsoever for someone who is behaving badly is very distasteful at first.  I have a strong resistance against seeing things from their side.  I know from experience, however, that I will feel so much better if I just turn it around.  It takes courage to face it, but if I do it, I will heal myself and this healing leads to happiness.  



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Sunday, December 15, 2013

Forgiving our Food

So many of us have food allergies, diabetes, gluten sensitivity, cholesterol issues, weight problems or other food-related issues.   It's easy to fall into the trap of taking this all too seriously and allowing food to become a controlling issue in our lives, and to believe that our food actually has the power to harm us. 


Rather, when we find ourselves thinking thoughts like; "I need to eat lots of vegetables to be healthy", or "I can't have fats or I'll weigh too much", or "If I eat grains or dairy (or whatever), I won't feel well", we need to examine the fact that we are allowing the ego to create fear in our minds around our food.  
 
 
I acknowledge that I am perfectly whole and healed.  I have created the belief that I need certain foods to heal myself as a way to join with the ego and separate myself from God. 
 

The ego's goal is to distract us from our truth.  It wants us to become engrossed in worries and fears.  It wants us to create judgments that certain things are bad and other things are good.  When we are in a state of fear, we are separate from God.  The ego wins. 

The ego wants us believing that bodies are real.  It wants to keep us away from the truth that We Are MIND.  Nothing physical can harm, hurt or heal us.


I release my attachment to believing that the food I eat can either harm or heal me and I acknowledge that my well-being is created in my Mind.  I ask the Holy spirit to be with me whenever I eat and to bless my food

 
So where does all this metaphysical thinking leave those of us who get hives all over our bodies when we eat certain foods, or are overweight or have dangerously high cholesterol?  Of course, it is perfectly fine to follow a sensible diet for now, if we feel led to do so. We must meet our world where we are right now.  Until we can absolutely and deeply know that we are only Mind, complete and perfect, it is prudent to do what our body "seems" to tell us it needs.  However, when we eat our food, we should do so with Spirit, turning it over to Spirit, acknowledging that we have faulty beliefs that our food can harm us and asking Spirit to help us know that we are actually healed and whole.


Here is a wonderful affirmation on food by Ernest Holmes in "The Science of Mind": 

My food agrees with me and I agree with it.  There is no condemnation in me or working through me.  I understand that food is a spiritual idea of substance and I am now in complete agreement with this idea.  Everything that I eat is perfectly assimilated and perfectly eliminated.  I have no trouble digesting my food for digestion is also a spiritual idea and works in perfect harmony with all that I take into my system.  My system is spiritual and harmonious with every idea that passes through it.  My food is spiritual and harmonious with my system.  Substance and supply for the physical body are both spiritual and cannot create any inner disturbance whatsoever. 
And another beautiful quote from "The Way of Mastery":

Those that know that only Love is real are not concerned with what they eat and what they drink.  For these things come into the body and leave through the body  They are concerned only with whether or not that which they consume for the sake of the body was consumed in Love.
For love is what allows the transmutation of anything that comes into the physical system and allows it to be turned to that which supports the energetic wholeness of the physical system itself.  It is far greater to have a bottle of Scotch for breakfast in a state of total Christed Love, than it is to have nine thousand vitamins with one tiny little fearful thought.
For you see, it is fear that causes you to be unable to digest what you place in the body.

 

I have been greatly inspired this week by some thoughts on food by Corrine Zupko on "From Anxiety to Love" who was asked the question: "What's the point of eating healthy or taking vitamins if the world is an illusion?"
 
 
 
Zupko says; "It all boils down to this.  "I exercise/juice/take medicine/take vitamins because I still haven't accepted that I am already healed.  I still haven't accepted that EVERYTHING is coming from my sleeping split mind and that all healing comes from within.  I still believe the cause of healing is outside of myself, and something that will be achieved "later".

Her whole article is terrific and very thought provoking.  I have read it over every day this week.  You can find it here.

 
 
The holidays are a time of food and togetherness.  Let's be mindful this year to turn our thoughts on food away from guilt and toward loving acceptance of the food we eat, the people in our lives and the world around us. 

 
 
 
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Saturday, December 14, 2013

Forgive Your Family for Christmas

What could be a more beautiful gift than to free our families from old angers and hurts?  This is something we can do quietly on our own.  We don't need to have any "deep" one-on-one conversations or unpleasant family dramas to do this.  We can simply go inside, into our own mind where all the "real" stuff happens. 

Our own individual act of forgiveness will begin to change our personal relationships with each of our family members, and it might even change the overall family dynamics, too.  More importantly, whether or not our family changes dramatically, we will have a new perspective, one that is more loving and accepting.  We will be more peaceful and happier than before.

Because we have spent so many years with our families, feeling irritated, annoyed, hurt and even possibly abused by them, the wounds relating to our families run deep.  Even people who have relatively easy family relationships will have much to forgive when they really start to dig honestly into their pasts. 

Let's start by looking at our own beliefs.  If we experience feelings like these below (and everybody does), we can be almost certain that we will find their roots in our early childhood years with our family:

  • I'm not worthy
  • I always get abandoned
  • Nobody likes me
  • I always get what's leftover
  • Everybody ignores me
  • I'm not good enough
  • I get rejected
  • I'm not loveable
  • What I feel does not matter
  • Nobody listens to me
  • They only like me when I'm good (or smart, or funny, or pretty, or whatever)


Go ahead and look at this list and decide which beliefs apply to your life.  Now set aside a little quiet time to spend with each of these thoughts.   Think back to your childhood and try to remember times when you felt these beliefs intensely.  What was happening?  Who was involved?  Now try to remember the very first time you experienced any of these beliefs.  Remembering the very first incident is a wonderful thing because it gives you a specific moment in time and specific people to forgive. 



Now its time for a little forgiveness work.  In "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", I recommend lots of different forgiveness processes.  I find that each processes works best for different types of forgiveness issues.  For deep family stuff, one process I like to use involves Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms.  You can get these at www.colintipping.com under "Free Stuff".  You have to register for the site, but it is well worth it.

The old pain and hurt we associate with our family took years to build up and develop, so don't expect to be able to root it all out over-night.  This is a process and it will take time.  However, you can accomplish miracles if you just get started on it.  Whatever you do before Christmas, even if it is only a small dent, will help you make it through the holidays with more peace in your mind and love in your heart. 



Forgiveness is really a lifestyle and it is something that happens over months and years of looking deep within to find acceptance for all the people and everything that occurred in our past.  A lifestyle of forgiveness creates a happy life.  Don't waste time living without peace.  Give yourself the best Christmas gift ever and get started on forgiveness now!

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

What do you Choose?


"Nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace or upset you in any way."  --A Course in Miracles Lesson 70, Workbook

It's all a matter of choice.  How do we choose to see the world?  If we choose to see it through the eyes of forgiveness, the world will treat us gently.  If we choose to hold grievances, the world will continue to seem to be a fearful place. 



When we forgive, we are trusting God and knowing that everything we experience is for our greater good.  Sometimes it can be hard to understand this, especially when we are in the midst of  what seems nightmarish.  However, almost always, a purpose behind the pain comes clear at a later time.

In the meantime, we can look at the painful situations we have drawn to us and meditate on what we can learn from then.  What can we accept and forgive here?  How is this situation helping us to grow and purify and come to know more of love?

 
 
 
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Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Who is Irritating You Today?

Make it a practice to search your mind each day to discover all the people you feel annoyed or upset with.  Don't miss anyone.  This is important. 

Maybe a stranger cut you off in traffic on your way to work this morning.  Perhaps you stopped in for coffee and some pushy lady gave you a good jostle without saying sorry.  Was your spouse in a grouchy mood?  Did your children leave a mess in their rooms?  Do you have a client who is not returning phone calls?  Is a co-worker talking too much and wasting your time?  Maybe a friend is calling on the phone to whine about her relationship with her boyfriend, once again.

   

Gather all these people up in your mind and, one by one, forgive them all.  It only takes a minute or so for each person.  Just get it done!  If you can't do it right now, be sure you do it before the day is over.  In fact, the best time might just be as you crawl in bed tonight.  Forgive every one of the day's offenders and sleep peacefully.

If you create a habit of forgiving everyone, everyday, your life will change. 



Here's a quick and easy forgiveness practice you can use.  Picture each person you want to forgive individually and say: 

You are Spirit
Whole and Innocent
I Forgive You, I Release You
I Bless You With Love
 
You may have to repeat this a few times, but stay very sincere.  Really think about what these words mean.  When you say "You are spirit", know that each person is a beloved Son of God, made exactly in his own image.  And when you say the words "I bless you with love", visualize yourself gifting this person with as much love as you can. 
 
If you find that you are simply too deeply angry to forgive one or more of these people, you may need some hard-core forgiveness practices.  No worries, tools for handling the people and situations that really, really press our buttons can be found in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".
 
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Monday, December 9, 2013

Why We Sometimes Feel Hatred for the People We Love the Most

The people we love most are in our lives for an important reason.  They are our biggest forgiveness lessons.

Colin Tipping, author of Radical Forgiveness, theorizes that before we incarnated,we made agreements with certain souls to come here together with the explicit intention to help each other learn our life lessons.  I don't know whether this is true or not, but I do find that there are a handful of  people that repeatedly give me my daily forgiveness lessons.

Although some of life's lessons happen with people we only know for a short period of time, most of our biggest lessons come as we learn to accept and forgive the people we deal with on a daily basis. Our families, our co-workers, our friends...we love 'em...and sometimes we hate 'em!  After all, whose flaws do we experience the most, red and raw and right in our faces?



As I work to forgive the same small handful of people again and again, I begin to feel a great gratitude for each one of them.  It is their presence in my life that is helping me to know myself and to release and forgive what needs to go from my own mind.  

When we feel annoyed with others, we are actually annoyed with a certain aspect of ourselves.  I had great resistance for this concept at first, but as I have worked with it over time, coming eventually to accept it, I now know that it is truth.  More importantly, I repeatedly see the evidence of it in my own life.



At first it seemed impossible that I was actually seeing my own negative traits in others and reacting to them. It was so much easier to project the things that were wrong with my life outward, to blame them on others. "They" were the wrong ones.  "They" were bad.  "They" were faulty, imperfect and flawed.  "They" were the ones requiring forgiveness.

For example, it used to upset me to be around people who expressed anger and short tempered-ness.  What was wrong with them?  Why couldn't they just get on with life without tantruming about everything?  It was all so hugely unpleasant.



However, when I finally worked up the courage to look deeply into my own psyche around this issue, I saw that there was suppressed anger lurking in the depths.  I grew up in a family where it was not okay to express anger.  We were always "nice" people.  However, I see now that I actually have a great deal of anger that I have been suppressing, hiding it from the world, and in the process, hiding it from myself, too. Now that I know it's there, I can work to forgive and release it.

Since we are here to learn love and acceptance, it stands to reason that we will draw into our lives people who will help us do this.  We will attract people that will sometimes annoy and even hurt us because they are here to show us what we need to accept and forgive, both within ourselves and in others.

The irony of all this is that when we finally deeply forgive and completely accept the people we love (and "hate") in our daily lives, we are not going to need these particular lessons anymore.  When this happens, the people we love will become more lovable to us.  We will feel less annoyed with them, or they will simply cease to be annoying.  Sometimes we mutually release each other and someone will move on.  Most people will stay, but under happier circumstances.  Whatever happens, with forgiveness, we can know that it will all be for the betterment of everyone involved.  That's because forgiveness leads to happiness.

 
 
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Sunday, December 8, 2013

Get on the Forgiveness Gravy Train

Forgiveness changes your life.  If you want to stop living a nightmare and move your life into the "happy dream" life the Course of Miracles promises, only forgiveness can get you there. 

Some ways a steady habit of forgiveness will change your life:

Your life begins to feel lighter, easier, more pleasurable.  This brings you happiness.

The people you've forgiven change and actually become less annoying.  The more you forgive them, the more they change.  This brings you peace.

Life eases up.  Nightmarish things occur less often or not at all.  This brings you security. 

You begin to feel powerful in the role you play in healing the world around you. This brings you joy.

As your forgiveness work accumulates, you find that you are actually forgiving yourself on a deep subconscious level.  You allow yourself to accept God's gifts because you actually believe you deserve them now.  This brings you abundance.

The more you forgive yourself, the more you see the false self and the false world you've created.  This brings you truth. 

As you  begin to see your false self you begin to really see the insane lies you've been telling yourself and the insane things you've been doing, and you develop humility.  This brings you dignity.

Life slows down.  You take more time with what's important.  You know the difference between crazy ego schemes and the simple truth of God's love. You see the "real world" all around you.  This brings you beauty. 

You see your brother in every person you encounter.  This brings you love. 


Forgiveness will bring you everything you truly want!



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Saturday, December 7, 2013

Forgiveness is Easier Than You Think

Yes, it actually is easy, once you get the hang of it.  In fact, it's not only easy, it's pleasurable!



However, easy forgiveness requires a shift in the way we view the world.  We have to stop thinking about the world from the same perspective we've seen it from all of our lives.  We have to let go of a world where "me" and "them" are two different things. 

In order to forgive easily, we need to see the world as a place where we are split off from our normal home in the Oneness of God.  We are here to learn some lessons and purify, but our real home is with God.  In our real home, we all live in perfect bliss, forever. 

When we come here to earth, it's set up so that we forget everything about our true reality.  Then we start to get all caught up in the illusions that make up our lives on earth.  We start to want things.  First we want toys and playmates, but later we want houses and cars and relationships.  We might want success, fame, power or glory.  Wanting these things can set us at odds with other people.  Often, one person wrestles these things away from someone else.  One of us wins, and one of us loses. 

When we lose, we can feel hurt, angry or fearful.  When we win, we feel guilty, although some of us are not aware of this in our every day consciousness.  Rest assured, however, that whenever we win at the expense of someone else, we create guilt deep in our sub-consciousness. We all have mountains of this guilt hidden deep in our minds and it is the source of our real anxiety, worry and fear.

In reality, we're all the same, each of us created exactly in God's image and loved infinitely by him.  God wants us to know this about each other.  The way we do this is through our forgiveness.

When we forgive, we drop our earthly view of the person we are forgiving and we see their higher truth.  We know them as God's beloved son.  We recognize that if God loves them unconditionally, then they are truly worthy of our love, too.

Of course, in the beginning, this is not always easy.  It takes practice to get good at this.  What happens, however, as we start to forgive others, is that we find that we feel so much better afterward.  Over time, we realize that we can feel better NOW, if we will only let it go, shift our perspective and see the higher truth of our trespasser.

Another benefit of forgiveness is that as we begin to forgive the people and the world around us, that horrible guilt that has been building up in our sub-consciousness is dissipated.  Over time, through our weeks, months and years of forgiveness, a significant release of this guilt occurs and we find our lives become peaceful and happy, even blissful. 

If you are just starting out with forgiveness, try this beautiful forgiveness process from Lesson 68 in the Workbook from A Course of Miracles.



As a beginner, I would recommend that you not start out with the most difficult forgiveness task in your life.  Rather, select the people who are only mildly annoying you, people who are not wreaking major damage to your life. Let's go for success and ease this first time out of the box!

"Think of the minor grievances you hold against those you like and even those you love.  It will quickly become apparent that there is no one against whom you do not cherish grievances of some sort.  This has left you alone in all the universe in your perception of yourself. 
 
Determine now to see all these people as friends.  Say to them all, thinking of each one in turn as you do so:
 
I would see you as my friend, that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself. 
 
Think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world that protects you and loves you, and that you love in return.  Try to feel safety surrounding you, hovering over you and holding you up.  Try to believe, that nothing can harm you in any way.  Tell yourself: 
 
Love holds no grievances.  When I let all my grievances go I will know I am perfectly safe." 


What about the people who do real damage to our lives...how do we forgive them? Obviously, serious injuries require serious forgiveness work. In my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", there are many forgiveness processes explained. There is a process that works on any problem in your life. Rest assured, however, that even serious forgiveness work can become easy and pleasurable. And the rewards of living a steady forgiveness habit are simply too fabulous to pass up!

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Available at:
 
barnesandnoble.com
amazon.com
balboapress.com