It's OK That We're Not OK

In a recent blog posting, Colin Tipping said:

"I love that line: I’m not OK, you’re not OK; but that’s OK! It captures the truth about who we are and the fact that we were never meant to be perfect. If we were, there would be no one to create opportunities for us to experience forgiveness. Our perfection lies in our imperfection.

I also love the following definition of Radical Forgiveness, which is along the same lines: It is the unconditional acceptance of what is, as is, because that’s how it is meant to be."

We're all together here in this world.  But we're also all together on the pathway home.  That's because, in truth, we're all part of the one universal mind.  We are one and collectively, we are learning and growing together. We grow through forgiveness and acceptance, which are, ultimately, only love.

Colin Tipping believes that we all cooperate with each other, creating situations that allow us to each receive our forgiveness lessons.  Of course, this cooperation occurs subconsciously, on the level of the greater mind.

At certain times in each of our lives, we are providing others with forgiveness opportunities.
Just as we are each sometimes annoyed, upset or hurt by others, we all occasionally annoy, upset or hurt someone else, too.  Every one of us is given the opportunity to forgive and grow many times in this lifetime.  And the more we overlook those opportunities, the more "in-our-faces" they get.  If we fail to forgive the first time, no worries, we'll always get another chance  But the next time it will be bigger and more painful.

The next time someone hurts your feelings, try to flop the situation around in your mind.  Are they at some level actually offering you a gift?

Have they volunteered to help you grow by giving you the chance to forgive?  Are these "devils" actually "angels" in disguise?  Can it be that their hurtful behavior is actually an act of love?

Forgiveness is much easier if you allow yourself to think in this way.

It Takes One to Know One

"There is nothing you can be aware of in the energy of another that you have not known in yourself.  There is nothing another can say or do, or even imagine themselves capable of saying or doing that you have not also known.  Again it takes one to know one.  When you perceive another acting out of hostility or fear, the only way you can recognize it is because you have been there."  --Way of Mastery p. 27

Some people just push our buttons.  That's how we like to think of it.  But what is really happening when we feel activated by the behaviors and attitudes of others?

When others annoy or irritate us, we feel that way because we are actually annoyed or irritated at the parts of ourselves we recognize in them.   Say, perhaps, we watch another person acting selfishly.  We identify their behavior as selfishness.  We are judging them for behaving badly.  However, the only reason we know what that behavior is about is because we ourselves have known selfishness in our pasts.  Perhaps we are even occasionally selfish in our present, too.  This behavior repels us in ourselves and that is why we feel put off by it when we see it in others.

We like to judge others because that puts the blame outside of ourselves.  It gives us the perception that they are wrong, or bad, or too this or too that--but that we ourselves are good, right and perfect.  We project our own weaknesses onto the world outside of ourselves and this allows us to feel better about who we are.  However, this behavior is only contributing to our feelings of separation.  

Again, it takes one to know one.  Or as Colin Tipping likes to say, "If you spot it, you got it."  The next time you find yourself judging someone else, take a moment to look deeply into yourself.  Ask yourself, "Where in my own mind do these same attitudes exist?"  "Where in my life have I acted out in this same way?"

And then let your judgments go.  Release and forgive.  It's so much easier to forgive others when we see that they are merely doing the same things we do.  We're all human.  We all slip up.  We're each here, simply learning our lessons.  Give others the freedom and support to learn their lessons in their own way, in their own time and place, without our interference or judgment.  This is what they need.  This is what we need.


Switch from fear and anger to love, understanding and support.   Remember that as we forgive them, we are forgiving ourselves.  Yes, you heard me right.  When we forgive someone else for behaving selfishly, we are actually forgiving ourselves for our own selfish behavior.  This is why forgiveness is essential if we want to be happy.  We can only forgive ourselves as we forgive others.

 

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Why is this Bugging Me?

"Therefore, in truth, understand well.  Forgiveness is essential.  What has not been forgiven in others, has not been forgiven in you.  But not by a God who sits outside of you, for He never judges.  What you have not forgiven in another or in the world is but a reflection of what you carry within as a burden that you cannot forgive of yourself."  --The Way of Mastery p.26

The next time you find yourself irritated with someone, ask yourself "Why is this bugging me?"  We are almost always most activated by those aspects we dislike in our own character.   Examining our irritations with others is a great way to learn what we need to forgive about ourselves.

For example, I hate a bossy know-it-all.  This is because these are repressed characteristics of my own personality.  I am always struggling to keep them at bay in my self and when I see someone who has let them loose, it just really irritates me!

Forgiveness is a chance to take a good long look in the mirror.  As Colin Tipping likes to say, "If you spot it, you got it!"

Sometimes it's hard to recognize yourself in another's abhorrent behavior.  Keep looking and you'll find yourself there.  It's not always obvious. You might say, "I am upset at a man who murdered his wife, but I'm not a murderer".  Yes, but do you ever have murderous thoughts?  Do you ever wish that someone who annoys you would just be gone?

I am learning to bring these "unattractive" elements of myself to the light of forgiveness.  I can only love others when I am capable of truly loving myself and loving myself means that I love and accept all parts of me.

In The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Debbie Ford recommends that we not only forgive our most unattractive characteristics but that we actually learn to accept and even celebrate them.  They can become our strengths.

For example,  my tendency towards bossy know-it-all-ness is the same characteristic which enables me to be a good teacher.  Yes, I have to reign it in and keep it under control, but if I wasn't such a bossy know-it-all, I would never have the courage and confidence to teach.  It's when I enfold my bossy know-it-all-ness in love that I am at my very best.

The universe serves us up the lessons we need the most on a platter.  It seems that everywhere I look there is another bossy know-it-all.  This is because this is a lesson I need to repeat often.  Importantly, as I forgive the bossy know-it-alls in my world, I forgive this same characteristic in myself.  And the more I forgive myself, the more I come to peace.  

Radical Forgiveness

I love Colin Tipping!  His radical forgiveness forms have played a large role in my own personal forgiveness process.  When I first began to forgive my past I used them over and over again.  I kept an open forgiveness "to do" list and anything that would occur to me from my past that had hurt or upset me was on that list.  Each morning or so I would fill out one of his forms.  These forms helped me to clear through and release a lot of the most obvious hurts, disappointments, frustrations and upsets from my past in a matter of months.  I probably did about thirty or forty of them at first.

Then a few years later my father died and all sorts of more abstract hurts came up and I used the forms again, perhaps about sixty or seventy of them.  Now I use them on occasion whenever I need the kind of forgiveness work they provide.

I love these forms.  If you don't really know how to forgive, they will teach you how to flip your feelings from anger and fear to love.  And Colin Tipping is a wondeful, kind and intuitive teacher.

 This Thursday Colin Tipping is offering a free webinar training on how to use the Radical Forgiveness forms.  You can register here. 

Judgments, Expectations and Behaviors of Wanting

I really love Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms and I have used many to forgive people and events from my past.  There is an entire chapter on Radical Forgiveness in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", and I recommend them in my forgiveness workshops.  (The forms are available for free at www.colintipping.com under "Free Stuff").

If you are a regular follower of this blog, you know that I often encourage readers to "flip the switch" from fear to love as a part of the forgiveness process.  Flipping the switch occurs the moment we stop judging and condemning and offer any sort of love, understanding or compassion to our trespasser.

In Colin Tipping's form he asks a number of questions that build upon each other culminating in the flipping of the switch.  One of the questions I love is this (substitute your trespasser's name for the X):

"My discontent was my signal that I was withholding love from myself and (X) by judging, holding expectations, wanting (X) to change, and seeing (X) as less than perfect. List the judgments, expectations and behaviors that indicate you were wanting (X) to change."

So often, our hurt and pain occurs when we want either someone in our lives, or the world around us to be a certain way.

When we dis-attach ourselves from expectations, wanting and emotional needs, then we are free to live in peace and joy.

We often create "needs" in our minds.  We might think, "I can't be happy if (X) doesn't love me." Or, "My life is a failure if I don't get a job with an important company."  Or, "I need to live in a beautiful house to be happy."  Or, "I need to be healthy to be happy."  All of these kinds of beliefs are just things we tell ourselves. Think about each of these statements above.  Are any of them really true?  Happiness and inner peace come from  releasing judgments and accepting whatever is.

When we create desired outcomes in our minds and get attached to them, we are only setting ourselves up for failure and misery.  In fact, attachments of any kind only set us up for pain.  Attachments to people, to places, to things are what create most of the pain in our lives.  When we just allow what is to be and accept the world around us as it is, we begin the process of creating inner peace in our minds.

There is a great big, beautiful, joyful world right here in front of us and in our minds.  And it is "what is".  There is plenty here to keep us satisfied if we will only flip the switch from fear to love and allow ourselves to see the truth around us.

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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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Colin Tipping...You Rock!!

"What is forgiveness if it is not extending the energy of Love to another and joining with him or her? What is forgiveness if it is not the key to our awakening? What is forgiveness if it is not the ONLY way to overcome the illusion of separation?"--Colin Tipping

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