Friday, February 28, 2014

Jennifer Hadley's Words on Non-Judgement

I get Jennifer Hadley's daily emails and prayers in my inbox every morning.  She is so clear-headed about seeing the world only from love and I really admire that about her.  This morning she had this to say:

"One of my favorite lessons in A Course in Miracles is #68,  Love Holds No Grievances. I honestly think if you work this lesson for a whole year you’ll be totally transformed.This lesson tells us “It is as sure that those who hold grievances will forget who they are, as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.” 
Forgiveness can seem so difficult, but the key is to realize that forgiveness is non-judgment. If we stay in a dedication to practicing non-judgment then we actually will never have anything to forgive. Forgiveness is releasing attachment to the negative meaning we’ve made of things. It’s releasing the opinion. It’s mind opening and mind-liberating."

Non-judgement.  Can we stay in a place of non-judgement today?   Can we release our opinions and just accept whatever comes up in our lives?  When we do this we are at peace. When we learn to live like this, then forgiveness truly becomes our lifestyle and we become happy.


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Thursday, February 27, 2014

Are you an eternal victim?

A friend sent an email this morning saying she had found this statement thought-provoking: 


"When you forgive someone, you make a promise to not hold the unchangeable past against your present self

Free yourself of the burden of being an eternal victim."

These are quoted from an article called, "10 Painfully Obvious Truths Everyone Forgets Too Soon." http://livelearnevolve.com/10-painfully-obvious-truths-everyone-forgets-too-soon/

When we are wrapped up in thoughts of victim-hood, reviewing over and over in our minds how we have been wronged and put upon, we are stuck.  We are stuck in fear, negative emotion, anger and hurt.  We are contracting.  There is just no way to go truly, happily and creatively forward when victim-hood is the pattern of our reality. 



As the quote above says, the past is unchangeable.  Why are we allowing it to rule our lives today?  What insanity possesses us to allow events that happened twenty years ago to create our worlds today?  

Forgive and release the past.  Let it go.  Flip the switch from fear to love and watch your life change.  All things are possible but only when we are expanding.  In contraction we cannot create anything of true value.  But, when we are in a state of love and acceptance,  we create happiness and inner peace in our world.  It's just that simple!


If you want to start forgiving your past but are not quite sure how to start, there are many easy forgiveness processes outlined in "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  


Available at:

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Get started right now!  If you want to to try a simple 20 minute forgiveness process today, download "Forgive Your Past Now".  It's a guided audio that will allow you to forgive and release a painful memory from your past today.  It's easy and it works.  Why not start creating happiness in your life today?






Monday, February 24, 2014

Forgiveness Life Lessons

Each of us is working on certain assignments in this lifetime. You will probably find that your most painful past memories will be oriented toward certain themes.

As an example of how this works, let’s suppose you father died in a car crash during your childhood. If something like this has happened to you, then abandonment could be one of your big issues. Look at your lifetime and see how many times abandonment has been a major theme. 

If you believe that your father abandoned you, then your first wife may also abandon you. Later, your best friend may abandon you in some way. This theme could be repeating itself over and over throughout your life. 

The only way to end it is to deal with it for once and for all. Go deep and strike it out at the root with your forgiveness. Once you do that, you probably won’t have to deal with it again. If you find that you do, it means that your forgiveness hasn’t really gone deep enough. Keep probing to find what is buried down there that needs to see the light of your forgiveness.

Forgiving and clearing through big life themes like this is the way to take large strides toward creating inner peace. Of course every day forgiveness of daily events is important, too.  Forgiveness IS a lifestyle.  But probing deep into your past to discover the important life lessons that have become themes in your mind is essential work.  As you uncover and release these, you will begin to discover true happiness. 




Forgiveness is a lot easier than you may think. If you're not sure how to forgive, there are many easy processes explained in depth in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness":  


Available at:

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Thursday, February 20, 2014

Burn and Release

I stumbled across this video from The Daily Connoisseur.  She outlines a great little forgiveness process she calls Burn and Release which she learned about in "The Untethered Soul".  


I use a similar process to this for releasing deep hurts from the past called "feel the feelings".  You can learn about this process in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  


Available at:

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amazon.com
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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Express Yourself as the Magnificent Force You Were Meant To Be

I am just absolutely loving Anita Moorjani's book "Dying to be Me".  Over the years I've read a handful of books about near death experiences and after reading each, I've set it aside and thought to myself, "That's nice."

Moorjani's book is different, however.  She is a beautifully expressive writer, but more importantly, the expanded view she came away from her experience with is very real in her mind and clearly expressed in her book. There is a section about recognizing our magnificence that I am reading over and over again.  Here are several important paragraphs from that section:
"While I was in that state of clarity in the other realm, I instinctively understood that I was dying because of all of my fears.  I wasn't expressing my true self because my worries were preventing me from doing so.  I understood that the cancer wasn't a punishment or anything like that.  It was just my own energy, manifesting as cancer because my fears weren't allowing me to express myself as the magnificent force I was meant to be.
In that expansive state, I realized how harshly I'd treated myself and judged myself throughout my life.  There was nobody punishing me.  I finally understood that it was me I hadn't forgiven, not other people.  I was the one who was judging me, whom I'd forsaken and whom I didn't love enough.  It had nothing to do with anyone else.  I saw myself as a beautiful child of the universe.  Just the fact that I existed made me deserving of unconditional love.  I realized that I didn't need to do anything to deserve this--not pray, nor beg, nor anything else.  I saw that  I'd never loved myself, valued myself, or seen the beauty of my own soul.  Although the unconditional magnificence was always there for me, it felt as though physical life had somehow filtered it out or even eroded it away.
This understanding made me realize that I no longer had anything to fear.  I saw what I--what all of us--have access to.  
My magnificent, infinite self had decided to continue to live and express though this body.  
I want to clarify that my healing wasn't so much born from a shift in my state of mind or beliefs as it was from finally allowing my true spirit to shine through.  Many have asked me if something like positive thinking caused my recovery, and the answer is no. The state I was in during my NDE was way beyond the mind, and I healed because my damaging thoughts were simply out of the way completely.  I was not in a state of thinking, but a state of being.  It was pure consciousess--what I call magnificence!  This state of Oneness transcends duality.  I was able to get in touch with who I truly am, the part of me that's eternal, infinite, and encompasses the Whole.  This definitely wasn't a case of mind over matter."
This is what true forgiveness is all about.  It's about knowing the real "higher truth" about ourselves and the people in our world.  It's about recognizing not only our own individual magnificence, but the magnificence of each and every person in existence.  


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Monday, February 17, 2014

How to Forgive Really Big Betrayals

Once you get a forgiveness lifestyle happening, most of your forgiveness work will be fairly easy.  Lately I've been discussing the concept of "flipping the switch" from judgement to acceptance or fear to love.  This is a fairly easy process and once you understand it and have worked with it for awhile you'll find that you can forgive most of life's little annoyances and wounds in a minute or so of correct thinking.

However, there are other kinds of forgiveness needs in our lives and some are more challenging than this.  One is for big betrayals.  Not all of us have experienced a core-shattering betrayal, but if you have, you'll know how deeply painful this can be.  



My own experience with forgiving big betrayals has shown me that they require a lot of forgiveness work, often over an ongoing period of time.  Also, I've found that some deep betrayals need to be forgiven from a number of different angles and using a number of different processes.

Let's deal with the ongoing aspect of forgiving big betrayals first.  When we are deeply and utterly betrayed to our cores, there is so much hurt that it sometimes releases slowly.  In forgiving big betrayals, I found that I would forgive only to find that just a few days later, painful memories were running through my mind all over again. Much of the hurt, anger and other painful emotions had returned in almost full force.   

When this happens, there is nothing you can do, but forgive the whole mess all over again to the best of your ability.  Sometimes this means that you are forgiving the same event over and over again for weeks, months or even years.  It's important not to feel alarmed or overwhelmed by this.  Settle in to the fact that some of the biggest traumas of our lives take some time and effort to work through.  As we forgive, accept and release the pain, over time we will find that our forgiveness load lightens considerably every time we work with it and that eventually, the traumatic painful emotions lift completely away, never to return.  Have patience and keep chipping away at it.  You will come to the other side of it.

It's complicated!


One thing I've found is that there are often a number of different emotional aspects surrounding a big betrayal.  In other words, it's complicated.  As we forgive one part of it, other aspects come to the surface of our minds.  As each aspect comes into our awareness, we need to forgive that part of the betrayal.  We might find that we are forgiving one big betrayal, but that this event had repercussions that affected a myriad of aspects in our lives.  The trusting way we formerly looked at the world may have changed.  The betrayal may have forced significant changes into our daily lifestyles, perhaps financial, or we may even have had to move houses or change jobs.  If we have children, they may be affected.  Perhaps our betrayer was someone we spent a great deal of time with, and now we are mourning the loss of a best friend or spouse.  Our confidence levels may have changed and our sense of overall fear may be increased.  Perhaps this event tied into earlier memories of betrayal in our past that need to be dug up from the interior of our minds and processed.  

Understanding and forgiving all this needs contemplative time.  Think of this betrayal as a big knotted ball of yarn in our sub-consciousness.  We need to unravel every thread and release it individually until eventually, there is nothing left. 


A great starting place for forgiving a big betrayal is with Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms. (available for free at www.colintipping.com under "free stuff")  They really force you to do some deep thinking about how the betrayal has affected you.  If you are really deeply hurt, be prepared to do quite a few forms.  Try to tackle a form every day or so for awhile until you feel that the forgiveness is taking effect.  Every time you become aware of a new aspect of the betrayal that needs to be forgiven, write it down on an ongoing forgiveness "to do" list.   This way, you'll know the direction your forgiveness will take each day.  

I also like using a number of other forgiveness processes on something big like this.  There are several great ones outlined in my book "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", particularly "Feel the Feelings".  Also, my "Forgive Your Past NOW" audio meditation can be of significant help in breaking through a lot of the pain and hurt in one quick blow.  

Just remember that forgiveness is a lifestyle.  It is something we do everyday.  We are all given forgiveness assignments in this lifetime. Everyone of us has bruises, bumps and deep wounds to forgive.  It is as we forgive, accept and release that the true meaning of love begins to flow into our lives.  It starts off slowly at first, but as our forgiveness lifestyle grows, our understanding of the true meaning of love does, too.  And when this happens, we begin to know the deep inner peace that is our divine inheritance.  It's always ours to receive, but forgiveness is the way that we convince ourselves that we are worthy of accepting it.  


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Audio download with the "feel the feelings" forgivness process:




  

Saturday, February 15, 2014

There's No Separation


"Many of us still believe that we have to work at being loving, but that means living in duality, because there's a giver and a receiver. Realizing that we are love transcends this. It means understanding that there's no separation between you and me, and if I'm aware that I am love, then I know that you are, too. If I care for myself, then I automatically feel the same for you!"  --Anita Moorjani in "Dying to be Me" 

This is how we forgive. We recognize that there is no separation between ourselves and our tresspasser. We are all connected. We love ourselves and we extend love to our trespasser. It's that simple. It all happens in the mind. We simply offer love in our thoughts. We flip the switch from angry, sad, hurtful thoughts to loving thoughts. That's all it takes.



The simple act of switching our thoughts from fear-based exclusion thinking to love-based inclusion thinking is the start of the creation of inner peace. Make this way of thinking a habit and happiness will become the dominant characteristic of your life.


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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Olympics--Oneness vs. Separation?

Many people like to think that the Olympics are about oneness.  And in some ways they are.  After all, people come together from around the world to participate in the same events.  That seems like oneness, doesn't it?

This kind of thinking can be a sneaky trick of the ego mind.  Beware of it.  Yes, people are coming together in certain ways, but they are also separating in distinct ways, too.  They are separating into winners and losers, winning teams and losing teams, winning countries and losing countries.

As, one by one, we watch each athlete compete, we are secretly judging them.  Who has the greatest skill, the highest speed, the most grace, the best physical body, the best uniform, the superior coach, the most interesting story.  We are judging a multitude of aspects for each of these athletes, teams and countries.  We pick our favorites and we cheer them on.  Worse, we pick our least favorites and we secretly hope they will fail.  We are attacking them in our minds.



Judging is not oneness.  In fact, judging is the opposite of oneness, it is the act of separating individuals or groups of individuals out for "specialness", as the Course of Miracles call it.  We can be special because we are better than others or we can be special because we are less than others.  Either way, "specialness" thinking is separation thinking.

Seeing every one else as equally important is the goal.  Why not try to watch these Olympics from a new perspective.  Can it be done without judgment?  Can we simply watch to celebrate everyone's beauty, effort and accomplishments?  Can we enjoy the creation of participation?  Can we love each and every athlete for who they really are...a child of God, created in His own image whom He loves infinitely?  When we can do this, we are thinking with love, accepting and forgiving the world as it is.


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Download a guided meditation in acceptance, only $2.99. 





Monday, February 10, 2014

Painful Memories from the Past

Do you sometimes find your mind running through important moments from your past?  Do the same old unresolved issues pop up in your mind repeatedly?



When these memories come, give yourself a little emotional check-up.  Are you feeling calm and comfortable with what you're remembering or is there a tightness in your chest, an upset feeling in your stomach, an elevated heart rate or a shallowness of breath?

If you feel any physical symptoms associated with these memories, then it's probably time to forgive and release them.   After all, they are returning to you over and over again for just that purpose.  You're getting another chance to do your forgiveness work.  Perhaps you were too young the first time around and couldn't really process what was happening.  Perhaps you didn't know how to forgive then.  That's all perfectly okay, because you can take up now what you left off with then.

There is no time and space.  (This is not just a "spiritual" belief.  It is now scientifically proven thanks to Einstein's theory of relativity.)  What it means for your spiritual life, however, is that you can forgive anybody any time and any place and make things right.  You can forgive something from your past today.  It doesn't matter where the other person is now and it's perfectly fine if they are not even living.



You don't need to be with someone to forgive them.  In fact, it's not necessary that you even see them ever again.  Forgiveness is something that happens in the mind.    It is a mental shift in your thinking.  Because all minds are joined, when you shift your thinking now, you are offering healing to any other minds involved wherever and whenever they are (and you are allowing your own mind to begin its healing process, too.)  You don't have to apologize, take them to lunch, write them a letter or wash their feet.  You do, however, have to look at people and events from your past differently.  You have to flip the switch.  When we flip the switch we go from fear to love.

It's important to watch what the mind is bringing to our awareness.  Unresolved issues will be presented over and over again.  Sometimes they come as actual remembrances of the past.  However, when issues are left unforgiven, unaccepted and unreleased, those same issues will be given to us again as a real-life 3D event.  A similar situation to the original will show up in our lives, giving us one more chance to make a better decision and to forgive.

Just a word of warning here.  It's your choice whether to forgive or not.  But just know that each time you get the same lesson over again, it's probably going to be bigger, more in-your-face, more painful.  Unresolved issues don't go away, they fester in our sub-conscious minds and each time they come back, they are much more obvious.  It's best to face it now.

In fact, why not just feel grateful for the opportunity to clean up your mind on this issue right here and now.  It's a blessing. The memories are coming back to you as a brand new chance for you to get this right, finally.  The universe is offering you what you need most to grow and learn.  In the classroom of life, we are always being offered another chance.

Be vigilant in monitoring your mind, always looking for these gems.  They are the chance to see something from your past differently.  Forgiving, accepting and releasing old wounds from the past leads to inner peace.  It takes constant thoughtfulness.  This is what a forgiveness lifestyle is all about.  We must develop the habit of reviewing our thoughts each day to see what is coming up for healing, but it is so worth the effort.  Isn't inner peace worth it?




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This downloadable guided forgiveness process is a wonderful way to learn how to forgive people and events from your past:




Sunday, February 9, 2014

Recognize the Oneness of All Life

We are all the same.  We come from the same source.  We are all a permanent part of that source.  This can never change.

It is only our perception that we are separate.  We come here to earth, and we think we separate into individual beings, but that is only a perception that we create as part of our adventures here on earth.  We can never change the fact of our true nature.

We are each and every one of us actually all a part of the same one source.  We forget that a lot here, but our forgetting does not change its truth.



Forgiveness is simply the act of remembering.  We remember the truth about the other people in our lives.  We see and know their oneness with us, with all others and together with our source.  They are perfect, whole and complete.  We are perfect, whole and complete.  There is only one.

"Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself.  It is the wish that you be joined with him and not apart."  --A Course in Miracles Chapter 26, VII, 9, 1


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Download a beautiful forgiveness meditation that helps you remember and experience this feeling of oneness:




Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Take a Deep Breath and Just Do It

Forgiveness can seem distasteful when we are feeling very wronged by or annoyed with someone.  In fact, forgiveness can seem like the very last thing on earth we want to do.  I admit it...there have been plenty of times when I felt so disgusted by someone that the thought of forgiving them felt very uncomfortable.

Just get over it!  Yes, you heard me.  Just take a deep breath and do it.  Forgive.  Flip the switch from fear to love.  From anger, pain and judgement to acceptance.  Use one of my quickie forgiveness processes and it will all be over in a moment.

You'll be so glad afterward that you did this.  The twisted up feelings of hurt and anger will leave.  You'll feel so much better. Don't do it because "you should".  Don't do it because "God wants you to", or "It's what Jesus would do."  Do it for yourself.  You need it.  Forgiveness leads to happiness. Your happiness.


Monday, February 3, 2014

Forgiving is Easier Than You Think

It really is.  It's just a change of habit.  It's a swapping out of old ways of thinking and a welcoming in of a new one.

Forgiveness is a lifestyle change.  And like any other lifestyle change it may seem strange and difficult, even overwhelming at first.  Not to worry.  It will get easier as you practice.  And once it's a habit, it WILL be easy.



You can do it.  You really can.

Just dive in where you are now.  Find someone who's irritating you and let it go.  Here's how.  Do it today.  Do it now!


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And for easy to use downloadable audio forgiveness processes:


Sunday, February 2, 2014

A Forgiveness Practice Happens Everyday

Forgiveness is not something we pull out for special occasions.  It's not only for those moments in life when we are desperate with fear and hurt.  If we want to develop authentic happiness and peace in our lives, we need to get in the habit of forgiving on a daily basis.

Things to Forgive on a Daily Basis:



Annoying and Upsetting People  Each night before sleep scan through your day and forgive anything and anyone that pressed your buttons during the day.  Even if it seems illogical for you to have been upset by whatever occurred, forgive it.  If you got activated, you need to release it.  (I use Practice #1 Seeing the Higher Truth which is explained in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" for my nightly clearing and releasing of events and people that upset me during the day)


Yourself  Each night before sleep scan through your day and forgive yourself for anything you feel you did or did not do, said or did not say, thought or did not think, which is creating feelings of discomfort for you now.  (I use Practice #1 for this, too.)




Other Worlds  Each night before sleep think back to anything you saw on television, the internet or in any reading you did that pressed your buttons.  Yes, we have to forgive the Housewives of Beverly Hills as well as anyone from the news that harmed anyone else during the day.  If it activated your emotions and you judged it as unfair, wrong or scary, you need to forgive and release it.  (I also use Practice #1 for this.)  Also in this category would be any bad experiences you remember from your dreams.



Frequent Protagonists   We also need to forgive the people that repeatedly press our buttons over and over.  This might be a spouse, boss, child, friend, co-worker.  There are just certain people that annoy us over and over.  These people will continue to upset and annoy us until we have forgiven them on a deep level.  (You can use Practice #1 to forgive them, but it will probably take some deeper work such as Radical Forgiveness, or a Feel the Feelings Process which are Process #3 and #4 in my book.)



Your Past   On a regular basis, be alert to any memories from your past that trigger any level of upsetting emotion when you think of them.  Save these for your nightly work and before sleep use Practice #3 Feeling the Feelings, or deal with them the next morning using one of Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms (available at www.ColinTipping.com under "free stuff").



Mental Blockages   These create areas where you are experiencing lack, disappointment, frustration and fear in your life.  Mental Blockages exist due to beliefs you created early in your life. These might include beliefs like "I'm not good enough", "Everyone abandons me", "I'm not loveable", "I don't deserve to have what I want", and "I'm not worthy", among many others.  These beliefs prevent us from living in the fullness of life.  If we do not dig them up, look at them and clear them through, we will continue to experience some form of lack in our life, whether it be financial difficulties, relationship difficulties or health difficulties.  As long as we believe that we are not deserving of better, difficulties will be a part of our world.  In order to clear these up, I use Practices #3, 4 and 5 in my book.  I also work with a mentor who asks me the questions I'm not always willing or able to ask myself.  Together we route out and heal the pain from my past that created these mental blocks.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by all this, go easy on yourself.  Start your forgiveness practice by simply focusing on forgiving the things that occur each day.  In a few months time you'll be ready for the deeper work.  In fact, you'll want the deeper work because you'll be starting to feel better about your life and you'll want to see how much better you are capable of feeling.  Start out slow, but make the mental commitment to become a regular forgiver.  If you do so, the universe will deliver you gifts.  You'll receive the tools and knowing you need to make this happen in your life.




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For downloadable recorded audios of guided forgiveness processes:





Saturday, February 1, 2014

No Bad

When we're living here in our earthly world, it's easy for us to get caught up in worry, fear and anguish.  We focus on everything that's wrong with us, all our mistakes, everything we've done wrong.  We convince ourselves we're "bad".

And we convince ourselves that the other people in our life are "bad", too.  They're bad drivers because they cut us off in traffic, bad husbands because they don't cherish and adore us the way we'd always hoped to be loved, bad children because they don't pick up their rooms, bad bosses because they are impatient and sharp-tongued...and on and on it goes.

Bad Baby


None of this is true.  We are all exactly as God created us.  He created us in his own exact image and God is only Good.  In this earthly world of dreams, we've created pain, hurt and fear.  But in the "real world" where the bigger part of us is always with God, there is only good.  One self is true, the other is not.

 "Try to experience the unity of your one Self.  Try to appreciate Its Holiness and the love from which it was created.  Try not to interfere with the Self which God created as you, by hiding Its majesty behind the tiny idols of evil and sinfulness you have made to replace It." --Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 93



We are all exactly as God created us.  When we see and know this for the people in our lives, we are forgiving, overlooking the silly things they do here in this dream world where they have forgotten their true identity.  We accept their flaws knowing the real truth behind them.  This is what true forgiveness is all about.

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God.  Over and over this must be repeated, until it is accepted.  It is true.  Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God.  Nothing can touch it, or change what God created as eternal.  The self you made, evil and full of sin, is meaningless.  Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God and light and joy and peace abide in you."  --Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 93



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To download a $2.99 guided process for forgiving someone who is causing pain in your life today: