What's Behind the Costume?

Even though I am a student of A Course in Miracles, I regularly attend a Science of Mind church.  My minister there, Rev. Liz Luoma, loves to refer to us all as adorable little packages of God.  We're all in different adorable packages, but underneath, we're really all just the same thing.

Last month when everyone was thinking about Halloween and costumes, she likened these packages to costumes.  When we come here to live on earth, we take on a costume (or a role or character), and we develop it and refine it throughout our lives.  In fact, our entire lives become about creating every little facet, characteristic, preference and circumstance for that very character.

Which costume have you chosen?

The Course likes to call these costumes the "ego".  The ego is our creation, not God's.  

Take away the costume, the role, the character, the ego and what is left underneath?  Why God stuff, of course.  That's all we really are.

We are really only playing a game of Charades. We fool ourselves into believing that our costumes are who we really are, but underneath the costume is actually our Truth.  Underneath the costume is the part of us that God created.  That part is timeless, endless, unlimited and perfect.  It is all that is and it is One with God.   And everyone of us shares in this.  We are all together, exactly the same, and One in God.

It all boils down to this...underneath our costumes, we are each actually only Love.

But...we get so busy living in our costumes, playing our roles, being that character, that we forget who we really are.  We are so good at it, in fact, that we've convinced ourselves that we actually really are our costumes.

Think of it like going to the movies.  The lights go out and if the movie is good, it becomes our world.  We are utterly lost in it.  It is everything to us for that brief ninety minutes or so.  We are completely consumed and we know nothing else.

Our lives here on earth are just like that.  We get caught up in the fantasy and we forget who we really are.

Drop the costumes to forgive--   Forgiving requires that we simply drop those costumes for a moment.  There is a larger part of us and it is not here in this silly playground of costumes.  We must back up for a moment and see both ourselves and our trespasser in our true states.  We must know that both of us are really only Love.  We are exactly the same and we are always One in God.

Forgiveness is the act of accepting that people come here to this 3D earth and put on a costume and do silly things.  They are deluded, they have simply forgotten who they really are.  When we forgive, we remember for them, who they really are.

We raise them up in our minds.  We know that they are really always with God, in God, One with God.  We see that truth.

Words for forgiveness:

You are Spirit,

Whole and Innocent,

I forgive you.

I release you.

I bless you with Love.  

I often start my forgiveness process with the words above.  But then I go deeper.  I have developed a set of words that walks me mentally through the process of seeing the higher truth for someone whom I am forgiving.  It takes me about five minutes to do this and when I am finished I am able to see anyone for who they really are.

And I really do mean anyone.  No matter how personally harmful or globally destructive their actions may seem, it is possible to shift your feelings about a trespasser from egoic fear feelings to those of Love.  

The words I use are in my book, Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness.  There is an entire chapter on this process.  If you'd like to be able to change your thinking, see through the costumes of this temporary world and focus on the bigger picture and the higher truth, I encourage you to get a copy of the book and practice this process for yourself.  You have only your happiness to gain. 

Grace Period

Sometimes, when feelings are recently raw, it's difficult to forgive right away...and that's okay.  It's okay to let a little time heal over the pain before getting down and dirty with the real forgiveness work.  Sometimes we just don't have the strength to face it right away and we know that if we even so much as try to, we'll melt down or be unable to do whatever it is we have to do to get through the day.

Raw feelings can be very painful.  It's actually a good thing to honor our feelings and sit with them a bit.  I always allow myself to experience the sadness or the anger for awhile.  Processing and working through feelings is a good thing (And, by the way, we're not going to stay in this stage for very long anyway.  In a little while, we'll be doing our usual forgiveness work.)

While we're feeling raw, however, we can help hasten the healing while we're mentally shoring up the strength to do the real work.  When we are utterly broken and wounded and obsessing about what happened, we can always practice turning all our thoughts, hurts and fears over to Spirit as often as possible.  I like to just give those thoughts over whenever they come into my mind.  Just saying the words, "Holy Spirit, I am giving this ________ over to you", is all we really have to do.  I'm pretty visual, so sometimes I like to picture a beautiful white and shining marble altar that I can lay my burdens down on.  Once I've placed my burdens on the altar they are surrounded by white light and dissolved.

I also find that simply saying the words, "I forgive you, I release you, I bless you with love" repeatedly (as one would an affirmation) helps alleviate some of the pain.  This is not my final forgiveness work, of course, but it is an easy start and helps me to ease into the forgiveness.

Once I actually start to do the real forgiveness, I find occasionally that I will do one of my forgiveness process and complete the forgiveness, only to find myself feeling utterly angry and hurt all over again a few hours later.  When this happens, I just repeat the forgiveness.  This can go on for days and weeks and sometimes, if the wound is big enough, years.  Again, that's okay.  We can only give it our best effort.  Our intention to heal is what's important here.

Also, asking Spirit to help us turn our feelings of anger, hurt and fear to love will often help us to make important progress.

There's no denying it, life can be painful at times and no-one escapes this.  However, supporting ourselves with understanding and acceptance as we go about the job of healing and forgiving is the fastest way back to peace.

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Forgive Someone You Love

I really believe that our biggest "forgiveness opportunities", as we A Course in Miracles Students like to call them, come from the people we know best.  The people that we are in relationship with can be our greatest source of joy...and they can also be our greatest source of annoyance or outright hurt.  Spouses, significant others, children, siblings, best friends or anyone else that we spend a great deal of time with, are often the people we find ourselves needing to forgive over and over.

I am going to give some tips on forgiving the people that we "love" the most, but first, I think it's important that we all give a good hard look at the reasons why we need to forgive our loved ones so often.  Remember that when we find that we need to forgive someone, it is because we have first judged them in some way.  We all need to ask ourselves some hard questions:

Are we too critical of our families, friends and loved ones?
Do we look at these relationships in terms of what we can get from them versus what we can give?
Do we have expectations for these people?
Are we accepting who they truly are or do we want them to be something else?
Are we looking at these people to be the source of our good in this world? 

No person is responsible for our happiness.  True happiness is something that comes from inside ourselves.  It comes when we know that we are loved and cherished by Spirit and are therefore able to love and cherish ourselves.  If we go looking for happiness elsewhere, we will never really find it.  Yes, we may find something that looks and smells a little bit like happiness for awhile, but it will always be fleeting.

Only the happiness we get from inside is the permanent kind that grows and deepens and sustains.  Forgiveness is the process through which we earn that happiness.  As we forgive others by offering them love, we begin to realize that we are worthy of that love, too.  It's a universal law, "You get what you give."  Happiness never comes from others, rather it comes when we give love to others.  Forgiveness is one of the ways we do this.

So first, let's all give a long hard look at each of our most challenging personal relationships and be honest with ourselves about how much of the discomfort we feel from those relationships is of our own doing.  This is not something that we will spend a quick few minutes on, but something that we will be studying and watching for the next few months as we really observe our own feelings and behaviors.

In the meantime, when we do find that someone we love is annoying us or hurting our feelings in any way, let's practice a little forgiveness.  My favorite forgiveness process for this situation is available in an audio format that you can download for $2.99, Forgive Someone NOW.

This audio takes 13 minutes to listen to, but it will teach you a process that takes less than a minute to complete once you get a little practice with it.  This is also forgiveness process #1, Seeing the Higher Truth, as outlined in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  This is by far the process that I use the most frequently.  In fact, I use it almost every day for just about every thing that hurts or annoys me in my present

And here's a little advanced forgiveness experiment I recommend.  The next time someone that you "love" is upsetting you try "flipping the switch" right then and there.  

Go right from fear to love.  See if you can just stop the ego rampage in your mind.  Just let go of all those critical thoughts, those needy thoughts, those "I have to be right" thoughts, those "I need you to complete me" thoughts.  Just drop them.  Just do it.  And then turn up the love.  Direct feelings of deep love toward your loved one.  Let them amplify until they engulf the two of you.  Just keep intensifying the love.

One fascinating by-product of forgiveness is that it actually changes the world around us.  If you practice forgiving the people you love every time they press your buttons, you will find that over time your buttons get pressed less frequently, until eventually, almost never.  Do the people we love actually become less annoying with forgiveness or are we less likely to be annoyed?  Who knows?  I believe that both actually happen, but try it and see for yourself.  One thing I know for sure is that your world will change.    

This morning I was listening to a lecture with Louise Hay and Cheryl Richardson.  Cheryl Richardson mentioned that a former therapist had asked her an important question during couples' counselling.  The question was, "Do you want to keep redecorating hell or do you want to fix this?"  This is exactly the issue we face when we allow ourselves to stay in a state of annoyance, hurt or victim-hood with the people in our lives.  We can allow our egos to take over, amplifying fear and keeping us in hell, or we can connect to Spirit and switch to love.  One of those choices leads to happiness!

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Sometimes We Dread Forgiving Certain People

Forgiveness is actually very easy, once you get the hang of it.  However, forgiveness does take getting past one hurdle and that is letting go of the pleasure we feel in our victim-hood.  Does that idea surprise you?  Well, it's true that we enjoy being victims and the evidence of that is simply that we choose to be victims.  We stubbornly hang on to our victim-hood.  We love to savor our anger and outrage.  We love to get into our pain and we love to feel put upon and abused.  Our hurt feeds the fire of our indignation.

It can sometimes be a big step to let all that go.

But like any big step, if you want to make progress, you just have to do it.

Remember what it was like, learning to put your head underwater for the first time?  You just held your nose and dunked.  You just did it, even though you may not have known what it would be like.  You just trusted that it would be good.

Sometimes, when we are thinking about forgiving someone that we believe is particularly heinous, the idea of forgiving feels very distasteful.  Now that I am in the habit of forgiving everything, I don't feel that way anymore, but I do clearly remember how unpleasant it once was to offer forgiveness to the few people in my life that I believed were villainous.  I don't know why we sometimes resist forgiving so strongly.  Maybe we just want to hang onto our feelings of superiority.  "He's a horrible person and that makes me a good person."  Perhaps that kind of thinking just makes us feel better.  It's hard to give it up.

My best advice, if you're feeling that way, is to just do it.  Just hold your nose and dive into the forgiveness.  It will be over before you know it and you'll feel totally different about it afterward. You just will.  Forgiveness makes everything better.

In my meditation class today, we did a simple meditation from the book "Aging as a Spiritual Practice" by Lewis Richmond.  I'd like to share it with you, because I think it might be a good little exercise to ease into forgiveness, especially if you have some unpleasant people that you're feeling reluctant to forgive.  Here it is:

Find a quiet place and spend a few minutes calming your mind and listening to your breath.  When you are ready, imagine a small intense orb of white light in your heart center.  "On each in-breath feel the breath coming in from the world and refreshing the sphere of light.  On each out-breath, feel the breath going back out into the world with that light's generous energy."  Continue with this for a minute or two, feeling the flow of white light out into the world around you, healing, cleansing, offering love. 

Now, imagine that there is a mirror image of yourself sitting opposite you.  Let the cleansed out-breaths of white light surround and permeate the image of yourself.  Then as you breathe in, imagine that all the troubles, problems, pains and emotional hurts float out from the image of yourself and into your real self, down into the white light in your heart center where they can be cleansed and consumed in the light.  You are purifying and healing all the troubles away. Then breath pure white loving light out and into the image of yourself.  Let your breath circle generosity to and from yourself.  Continue on with this for a short time until you feel that all the problems and pains have been transformed. 

Next, imagine that there is someone you love sitting opposite you and continue the healing and loving breathing with them until they are cleansed (this should happen in five or six breaths or so).  Then switch to another person you love. Do this for three or four people. 

Now...here comes the good part, and it should be fairly easy to do because you are now in a very loving place.  Switch the person sitting opposite you into someone you need to forgive.  Continue to breathe out the loving white light, flooding their image with kindness and healing.  Then breathe in all their pain and difficulties to your heart center where the white light can transform them into pure loving energy.  Do this until you feel you have cleansed and healed them.   

This is another good example of the action of "flipping the switch" in our minds from fear to love.  At first it can seems almost inconceivable that we could look on someone that we loathe with love.  However, once we teach our minds how to do it, it becomes very easy.  In some ways the mind is very trainable.

So if you're feeling fear, reluctance or righteousness about forgiving someone unpleasant in your life, take the plunge.  Have a forgiveness baptism.  The water's fine!

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The More You Give, the More You Have

Lesson 105 in the A Course in Miracles workbook presents a very nice little exercise in forgiveness.  It instructs us to think of our "enemies" a little while and tell each one, as he occurs to us:

   "My brother, peace and joy I offer you, 

That I may have God's peace and joy as mine."  

Remember that all minds are joined.  Even though consciously your "enemy" is not aware that you are offering forgiveness, on an unconscious level he knows.

In lesson 105, the concept of giving is discussed.  It is explained that there is a big difference in giving and receiving when we are talking about Godly gifts as opposed to earthly gifts.  Here in our earthly world, when we give something away it is gone to us.  For example, you have two cupcakes and two friends.  If you offer a cupcake to each of your two friends, there is no cupcake left for you.  

In God's world, however, giving Godly gifts works differently.  (God's gifts are higher concepts such as love, truth, beauty, happiness, peace.)  The more you give, the more you have:

"God's peace and joy are yours.  Today we will accept them, knowing they belong to us.  And we will try to understand these gifts increase as we receive them.  They are not like to the gifts the world can give, in which the giver loses as he gives the gifts, the taker is the richer by his loss.  Such are not gifts, but bargains made with guilt.  The truly given gift entails no loss. It is impossible that one can gain because another loses.  This implies a limit and an insufficiency."  

You will find the evidence of how this works is in the doing of this exercise.  If you take it seriously and go to a quiet place where you can still your mind for a few minutes by listening to your breath, you will find that your peace and joy truly does grow as you sincerely give it away to your trespassers.

Our math:  1-1=0 ... God's math 1-1= Infinity

This is one simple example of how forgiveness creates happiness in our lives.  When we embark on a large-scale forgiveness life-style, forgiving everything we can in our present, past and in the world around us, we are giving away our love all around us in our world and all the time.  What happens then?  Why, all this love comes right back to us multiplied.  Forgiveness is the key to happiness!

Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”--Luke 6:38 

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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:

Easy Guided Meditations to Help You Forgive

Yes, we all agree...forgiveness is important.  But how do we do it?

If you would like to forgive, but you're not sure how to get started, here are three easy processes that you can download and listen to.  All three are easy, relaxing and simple.

  Forgive Someone NOW  $2.99   In this 13 minute meditation you will forgive someone from your present whom you feel is hurtful, annoying, or damaging to you in any way.

  Forgive Your Past NOW  $2.99  In this 18 minute meditation you will forgive a person or event from your past that caused you harm.  Often times, we suppress old hurts and are unaware of how much damage their subconscious memories are causing to our present day lives.  

  Forgive the World NOW  $2.99  Part of being human is creating a story, the story of our life.  Once we create it, we get attached to it.  Forgive the World NOW is an 18 minute meditation to help you release, accept and forgive the story you have created.   

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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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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I Raise You and I Praise You

An easy forgiveness exercise for situations where it is easy to forgive...

                                                             I Raise You and I Praise You
                                                       I Raise You and I Praise You
                                                 I Raise You and I Praise You
                                           I Raise You and I Praise You
                                    I Raise You and I Praise You
                             I Raise You and I Praise You
                       I Raise You and I Praise You
                I Raise You and I Praise You
          I Raise You and I Praise You
    I Raise You and I Praise You

 

As you think these words, visualize the person you want to forgive floating upward to the light.  Keep saying the words in your mind until you really feel that the person is raised to the highest place, is filled with light and in the presence of God.  Bless them with your love.

 

 

"Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" by Sue Pipal is available at:

 

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Quickie Forgiveness

Here's a quick little forgiveness practice that works for most smaller forgiveness challenges.  I use this if someone whom I know well and really love is annoying me momentarily.  I also use it on people I barely know or don't know at all when they are annoying me just a little bit. 

I forgive you,

I release you,

I bless you with love.

 

Repeat this over and over and truly feel yourself blessing and loving the person you are forgiving.  It won't work if you repeat these as empty words.  You've got to really send the love.  When you feel the charge of annoyance, angry emotion or hurt dissipate, you are finished!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Forgiveness Blessing

Try this sometime on someone you feel annoyed with.  Simply close your eyes and feel these thoughts going out to them, blessing and healing.  All thoughts are shared.  When you know your brother's truth, it becomes available for them to know, too. 

You are immense, because you are everywhere. 

You are magnificent, because you are what God is. 

You are always, because you live in eternity.