Forgiveness and Travel

I just got back from a short trip for a friend's daughter's wedding.  In looking back over my trip I see that there were a few forgiveness opportunities given to me and I'd like to share my thoughts with you about them.

Judging   Traveling provides us with ample opportunities to observe ourselves in judgment.  Airports, big cities and crowds of all sorts are full of every kind of person imaginable.  Observing our thoughts and judgments as we watch the crowds around us allows us to see our judgment habits in action.  Are we looking critically at people's appearances and behavior?

I confess that I love clothes and it's something that's just been a part of me since I was a little child.  I often find myself thinking, "Oh, isn't that person beautifully dressed", or "Yikes!  What is that person thinking, wearing that in public?"  It's a bad habit I have always had and I need to rid myself of it.  As our forgiveness lifestyle grows, we should be starting to see humanity with love and in appreciation of the equality and oneness that is an inherent part of each person's higher self.  I know that I need to let go of my attachment to beauty and my difficulty in accepting things that are not beautiful. I'm much better than I used to be at this and I am grateful for my progress, but this is an area I must grow more in.

People do the craziest things and once we observe odd or difficult behavior, we must find forgiveness for it.  While relaxing by the pool at our hotel on one of our travel days, I watched a woman sit minding her children swim while dangling her feet in the pool.  She actually pulled out a pair of toenail nippers and began to give herself a manicure and pedicure flicking all the bits of nail and skin into the pool water!  Yes, she did!!!  It's a little hard not to judge something like that when you see it, and yes I did judge it, but I have now performed one of my forgiveness processes on her.

Feeling Victimized   Traveling can be so trying at times, that it can easily throw us into victim-mode.  Are we feeling put upon, hemmed in or herded around by the experience of traveling, the waits, the lines, the delayed schedules and traffic jams?  If we do, feelings of frustration, anger and hostility may be rising to the surface.  These are feelings that need to be accepted and then released and forgiven.  Sometimes these feelings flare up so quickly because we are re-experiencing feelings of victimization or being out of control that come from events in our childhood.  If you find yourself getting upset while you travel, do some thinking about what situations in your past felt similar to your current situation and then do a little forgiveness work on whatever comes up.

Insecurities   Being in new places and situations can sometimes be stressful and even a little frightening.  Even being in old familiar situations can be upsetting if we are feeling worried about how we will be perceived or accepted.  I found myself falling into this trap.  I worried that the shoes I had brought to wear were not right for the wedding so I went out and bought a new pair.  Moments after I paid for them, my back went into spasm and I had to spend the next three days in discomfort and moving with difficulty.  When something like this happens, take a moment to reflect on its meaning in your life.  As I looked at my feelings about seeing old friends, I realized that I was worried about how I would be accepted.  We may be tempted to dismiss the importance of our feelings because we believe them to be irrational, and yet, if we are feeling them, they are important.  Whatever happens in our world is always created in the mind first before it out-pictures into our lives.  I realized that my insecurities had triggered the episode with my back.  This gave me the opportunity to look into my mind and forgive myself for the fears that lurk there.

Getting Buttons Pushed   Of course, our biggest forgiveness work usually has to be done on the person that we spend the most time with.  On this trip my husband was doing the driving while I was doing the navigating with the GPS on my ipad.  It always feels to me that he is not listening to my instructions.  This pushes my buttons and I had to do a little forgiveness work on him for it.  One of the ways I forgive him is to see the situation from his point of view.  I'm sure that from his standpoint it feels like I am nagging him.  Plus I appreciate that it is difficult to drive in new places while dealing with heavy traffic, busy freeways and lots of confusion and stimulation.  It probably simply takes him a few moments to process the instructions I am giving him while he attempts to deal with all of this at once.

As I start to recognize my husband's feelings and his humanity, I am ultimately recognizing his truth.  He is just as much a creation of the Divine as I am.  When I acknowledge that, he is forgiven, and I am also forgiving myself.  After all, his truth is my truth.  We are both perfect spiritual beings.

Growth Opportunities   Remember that we can choose to see everything that comes up in our lives as an opportunity to forgive.   The more we forgive, the more we purify and grow on our pathway to love and peace.

Repeat Offenders

Many of us have someone in our regular everyday lives that repeatedly presses our buttons.  For some of us, this person annoys or triggers irritation in us just about every time we see them.

What do we do about this?

We forgive them every time this happens.  Yes, every single time.  Even if that means that we are forgiving the same person over and over each day.

It is very important to keep our forgiveness current, because when we go about our day with an un-forgiveness, we have switched ourselves out of a state of love and into a state of fear-based thinking.  Our day will then be filled with further problems and upsets until we get ourselves back into a state of alignment through our forgiveness.

It's also a good idea to review each day before going to bed at night and forgive this person once again before sleep. This will help to keep our dreams free of further disturbance and entanglement with them.

Some people are just difficult for us.   I've mentioned before that we come into this life with forgiveness challenges.  Life is a classroom and we have particular lessons to learn.  Some of us are given certain people that we need to learn to forgive.  It's part of our growth and purification process.  That means that we might find ourselves married to a spouse that irritates us frequently, or we might have a boss or an employee that is a constant challenge for us.  Perhaps one of our children is difficult for us to deal with.

Rather than letting this situation unduly frustrate or upset us, it's important to view it as what it is, a forgiveness opportunity.  This person is in our lives giving us the chance to grow and learn.

It's also important to take a good long deep hard look at why we feel annoyed with this person.  Chances are this person is mirroring back to us something we don't like about ourselves.  Look at what it is that makes this person difficult for you.  Are they too critical, short-tempered, easily frustrated, quick to lose control?  Whatever it is, you will probably find a little of that same characteristic in your own make-up.  As part of your forgiveness work, you'll need to go deeper in developing a more realistic understanding of this aspect of yourself and releasing and forgiving it in your own psyche as you work to forgive it in theirs.

Now, here's the good news.  Over time as you forgive this person again and again, you will find yourself becoming less frequently annoyed by them.  Part of this is because as your forgiveness washes over them, they will actually begin to lesson up on the annoying behavior.  Additionally, as you work on releasing this aspect of your own mind, you will feel less and less activated by their behavior.  This might be a slow process and take weeks, months and even years to resolve completely.  However, keep at it and you'll find that your life steadily improves as you do this work.

Remember, we're all here to see the truth about the world.  And that truth is that we are all really only LOVE, that we are One and that each and every one of us is the same.  We are going to have to figure out how to live this belief one way or another.  Be in a state of gratitude that this irritating person is in your life, showing you the way to Truth.  You have an easy everyday assignment that will get you there.  Just forgive this one person that annoys you over and over, every day.  Bless them and show them love through your forgiveness and bring on a happier state of mind for both of you.

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The Man in the Mirror

We judge the most that which reflects back to us the worst parts of ourselves.  When someone is really and truly irritating us, most often it is because we are irritated with parts of our own self that we dislike.

In order to grow, sometimes we have to look deep within at that which we don't want to see.

I am easily upset by people that get angry quickly at little things in life.  Nothing makes me more uncomfortable than sitting in a car with someone who is raging away at all the bad drivers of the world. I hate rages, upsets and rants.  I want everyone to behave like my father who would calmly and quietly steer the car clear of any road insanity or simply wait patiently for whatever difficulties were happening on the road to clear up.  Even in a sudden emergency, he would simply react, jerking the steering wheel or braking suddenly as needed but with little or no comment or judgment.  This is the behavior I crave.   

And yet, I see that the trait of impatience and anger resides deep within me.  

Of course, it used to be much stronger.  My years of forgiveness work have taken me to a place where I am usually calm in most situations.  However, I am perfectly capable of feeling a "disturbance in the force" under the right circumstances.  Or should I say wrong circumstances?  

When I feel angry that I am trapped in a car with someone who is angry at everyone else, aren't I just judging the angry person for being exactly what I am--angry?

When I become aware of something like this, I know it is time for me to do a little looking in the mirror.  Where is my anger coming from?  Have there been times in my past when I have felt frustrated or impatient with life and unable to move forward?  That is often the feeling we have when we are driving behind slow drivers or drivers that seem confused or unable to decide where they are going.  

Or, when in my past have I felt victimized or put upon?  When have I felt that my possible moves were being controlled or blocked by others? 

As Colin Tipping likes to say, "If you spot it, you got it".   Because our lives out-picture the contents of our mind, when we see something unpleasant in our world, it's time to ask ourselves the question, "Where in my thinking, did I bring this into my world?"

When we discover our own negative and fearful thoughts, it is time to do a little forgiveness work.

We can start right in front of us by forgiving whatever appeared in our own lives today that triggered all this introspection.  Then we can forgive whatever we find deep in our psyche that is our own version of negativity and fear related to today's events.  Finally, we can ask ourselves the question, "When did this kind of thinking first show up in my life?"  And, "At what other times has it surfaced?"  We can then forgive the people and circumstances involved in these earlier versions of today's issue.  If we are able to pinpoint it's source in our lives, this is the very best place to focus our forgiveness.  

Watching what we judge and doing this kind of forgiveness work around the things that press our buttons is a very effective way to clean and purify our minds.  In just a short time, we can come a long way toward releasing a great deal of fear and negativity.

Surprisingly, this work can be very pleasurable.  First, because it helps you feel so much better.  But secondly, because the sleuthing into our minds and our pasts is intriguing.  After all, what's more interesting than ourselves?  

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Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want

This was my reading for this morning in A Course in Miracles.  It's words on forgiveness are so beautiful that I wanted to share them with you.  From Workbook lesson 122:

What could you want forgiveness cannot give?  Do you want peace?  Forgiveness offers it.  Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world?  Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always?  Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you and more.  It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day.  It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack.  And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace.  All this forgiveness offers you, and more.  

Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world.  It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind.  What would you want forgiveness cannot give?  What gifts but these are worthy to be sought?  What fancied value, trivial effect or transient promise, never to be kept, can hold more hope than what forgiveness brings? 

Why would you seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything?  Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, halfhearted willingness to hear, and less than halfway diligence and partial trust.  Here is the answer!  Seek for it no more.  You will not find another one instead.  

If ever I find myself feeling less than content, I know I have forgiveness work to do.  I search my mind for the source of my unforgiveness.  Who am I feeling annoyed with?  Is there anyone or any thing that is bringing this particular form of fear into my life?

Even if it is only a vague feeling of discomfort, I know it must be forgiven.  I may not understand what it is that is making me feel uncomfortable, but I go ahead and apply one of my forgiveness processes to it anyway.

Then I think.  I look into my past and I look deep into my heart.  What is it about this situation that is unsettling me?  What false beliefs do I hold in my unconsciousness that are causing me to experience fear or anger or hurt or frustration?  How can I tie the feelings I am experiencing this day to experiences in my past?

What do I believe about the world and about myself?  Deep down in the dark recesses of my mind, do I secretly believe that I am not worthy of happiness, love and safety?  Do I believe there is not enough good for the rest of the world and me too?  Do I believe I am unloveable?  Do I believe I am guilty and deserve to be punished?  Beliefs like these and many others silently run our lives, causing us to behave eradically and often in ways that harm ourselves and others.

Looking deep at our beliefs, tracking them down to their source, remembering which events in our lives originally created these beliefs and forgiving, forgiving, forgiving is the way to happiness.  I try to forgive every aspect I can dig up.  I forgive the people and events causing me discomfort today, the people and events from its source in my past, the false belief I have embedded in my unconscious mind and any other experiences or thoughts I can discover in my consciousness that relate to this topic.

Doing this kind of mind cleaning and purifying does take commitment, but it pays off in spades.  As we forgive the world around us, slowly but steadily our trust and comfort in our world begins to build.

Forgive and be forgiven.  As you give you will receive.  --Also from Workbook Lesson 122

Peace flows into our minds and we become happy.

If you are unsure how to begin to forgive on this level, my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" explains how you can successfully use forgiveness to create happiness in your life.

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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:

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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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".

 

 

"Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" is available at:

 

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Be "On Alert"

I often get asked what my forgiveness practice is like.  The best answer I can give is that it is always "on alert".  And if you really want to make headway on your spiritual path, you'll put your forgiveness "on alert", too.

Throughout the course of our days, we are going to encounter all kinds of "forgiveness opportunities". Sometimes we are simply forgiving the little annoyances of life, like the person who jostles us in the supermarket and doesn't apologize.  Other times, our lessons may be huge, overwhelming and even extremely painful such as when someone we care for deeply dies.  Some forgiveness opportunities take only a few minutes to forgive and some may take a lifetime. 

My policy is to forgive what I can when I can.  This means that I am always up-to-date with my forgiveness work.  I try to forgive the supermarket jostler on the spot if I can.  If the environment is too busy and I can't concentrate for the minute it takes to forgive, or if I just can't take the time at that moment, I'll forgive when I climb into bed for the night.  I find that this is the perfect time to review my day and forgive anything that pushed my buttons.

Some days memories and unresolved issues from my past come into my mind and trigger painful feelings.  Again, with these, I try to be always "on alert" with my thinking, carefully watching for thoughts that are resentful, angry, worried, painful or fearful in any way.  If I'm feeling victimized, I know I have something to forgive. If I'm feeling rejected or unworthy in any way, I know I have something to forgive.  I add these feelings to my nightly forgiveness work.

Sometimes an awareness of a memory of something from the past will cause me to feel physically uncomfortable.  I might feel stress symptoms such as a pounding heart and tight muscles, or I might feel a sharp pain in the area of my heart. These physical feelings also alert me to the fact that there is something here that needs to be forgiven. 

Of course, we all have experienced at least a few big painful events or betrayals in our lives.  I try to pull every aspect I have associated with these feelings into my awareness.  I work at forgiving these often.  Some nights I'll deliberately bring these painful events to mind to see if anything new about them occurs to me.  If so, I'll do some deep thinking and feeling about the issue, intensifying any memories or emotions associated with it.  It is surprising how often new aspects of the same old issues come to the surface.  I've found that it is possible to train myself to be vigilant and always aware of the tiniest threads of an issue.  I know that when I tug at these threads, a bigger piece of that ugly wound-up knot of pain will come free. 

There are days when there is simply nothing to forgive. Sometimes, this can be the way of things for several days in a row.  I go about my business in peace.  Other days there may be a small thing or two to forgive.  Of course, sooner or later the lessons of life will occur.  That's when it's time to buckle down and devote the time it takes to do some serious forgiveness work. 

I'm at peace with this process now, but regardless of what kind of a day I'm having, I remain always "on alert" looking for my forgiveness opportunities.  After all, I know I need them if I want to get back to God.