What is Unforgiven is Reposited in Our Bodies

"Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache, and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life."

  - Joan Lunden

It's true.  The more we forgive, the more peaceful we feel.  And the more we forgive (which heals our minds), the more we actually heal our physical bodies, too. 

Our bodies are repositories for past pain and hurt.  Unfortunately, if we hang onto these old harmful memories, we are also holding onto the pain and, over time, that pain is likely to transform into disease.  

Using forgiveness, we can clear our bodies of the physical symptoms that are left over from old emotional hurts.

There are several ways to remove old deposited pain from our bodies. For serious past wounds, I find it helpful to use several forgiveness processes. 

First, if I can pinpoint an event in my life that caused the wound, I'll forgive all the people involved.  It only takes me a few minutes to do this and I always use the same words and thoughts.  They are simple to learn.  Most importantly, time and time again, they have helped me to switch my mind over from fear (hurt and anger) to love.  If you're not sure how to forgive people that have caused you injury, you might want to download an audio recording I've made to guide you though this process. Once you listen to it a few times, you'll be able to forgive anyone easily, too. This process helps you forgive individual people on a mental level. 

Download and transfer to your iphone.  Cost: $2.99

Next, I'll tackle the physical component of forgiveness.  I'll go to work on the places in my body those old painful memories are stored.  I do this by remembering carefully all the details of the past event.  I try to put myself back in that moment of hurt and anger and I try to jack up my memories and corresponding emotions as much as possible.  

As I re-experience this old wound, I observe my body, noticing any stress symptoms that might show up. Sometimes this is a racing heartbeat, a tightening of the chest, a feeling of warmth rising in my head or a stabbing pain in my stomach.  The physical symptoms are different for different past hurts.  

Now I just sit and observe, amplifying the emotions and memories as much as I can.  Sometimes the pain moves around and changes.  Other times, memories from similar events that occurred in other times and places come to mind.  I allow this all to flow through my mind and my body, simply observing and feeling whatever feelings come up.  It's important to let this process run its course thoroughly so that the memories will dissipate and lift from the body.  

There is a more detailed description of this in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  I've also created another guided audio meditation for this process.  It's easy to download to your computer.  You can then upload it to your phone so you can use it with your headphones whenever you have a quiet moment to yourself.  I like to do a lot of my forgiveness work in bed at night before sleep but you can do this anywhere you can find the quiet you need to concentrate. 

Easy to use, guided meditation to forgive and release physical symptoms from past hurts. $2.99

EFT, or emotional freedom technique is a process where you speak words that describe painful memories and feelings while tapping on acupressure points.  This tapping somehow disconnects and clears through the pain stored in the body from the memory.  It seems odd, but surprisingly, it works.  EFT has become a widely respected technique used by therapists around the world.  To learn more, watch this quickie video with Jessica Ortner.  

EFT is an effective technique for clearing stored and painful memories from the body and I do feel that this is a form of forgiveness.  However, the most healing work is mental.  It is important to combine EFT with some prior deep mental work such as the two guided processes above.  In this way, we are forgiving and clearing first in the mind and then following up with a clearance and healing in physical form.  

Of course, if we heal the mental, eventually the body will follow.  With EFT, we are just speeding up the process. 

Are You a Spiritual Warrior?

In church this morning, my minister said this:

"Forgiveness is the action of a spiritual warrior."--Reverend Liz Luoma

It is true that forgiveness is not for the feint of heart.  Real forgiveness work requires determination and fortitude.  Real forgiveness involves a willingness to look deep into your own soul and in that looking you may see much that you would rather not look at.

But it is in that looking that the true growth comes.  Only in that looking are we able to  understand and release the mental blocks that we have created in our minds which keep us separated from our Source and from our oneness with each other.

 

I want to be that spiritual warrior.  I want this to be the life in which I finally break through to a higher level of mind.

So I just keep doing my forgiveness work.  I forgive every day.  And I often work to forgive my past.  And I look deep inside my mind and examine my thinking.  Even when it means that I have to mentally relive some of the more painful moments in my life.  As I forgive on all these levels, I find greater happiness in all aspects of my life.  This is my forgiveness lifestyle.  I hope it will be yours, too.

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Another Ego Trick--Attachment

I've been writing lately about ego tricks.  These tricks are ways the egos uses to create separation between our spiritual selves and our earthly selves.

One trick the ego likes to use is attachment.  Here's how it works.  You get offered a choice.  Perhaps, "Do you want the red or the blue?"  You think about it a bit.  Actually, you could go either way, But finally, you choose blue.  "Oh," the ego says, "that's a fine choice.  A very fine choice.  In fact, you have excellent taste.  The fact that you knew to choose the blue makes you special. I'm glad you want the blue.  In fact, you should want the blue very badly, because wanting the blue makes you very special.  Now let me tell you a little bit about the blue.  It is a little harder to get the blue.  You have to work a lot harder to get the blue.  You have to do certain things.  The blue is a little illusive.  It might not come to you easily.  In fact, it might not come to you often or at all.  But that's okay.  Just wanting the blue makes you so very special.  And maybe if you try this....or that... or this other thing...you can have the blue."  And so it begins.

We spend our lives in pursuit of the "blues".  And we get more and more attached to having blue.  We work harder and harder for blue and we believe that when we finally get blue we will have happiness.  But ultimately one of two things happens.  Either we get the blue only to discover that it doesn't make us happy, or we never really get the blue and so we never feel satisfied because our goal of having blue is thwarted.

Here's where forgiveness comes in.  We can be happy without blue in our lives.  In fact, blue actually has nothing to do with our happiness.  But we do need to release our belief in blue.  We need to forgive blue for all the damage, disappointment, fear and upset it has brought into our lives.  We need to see that the only possible source of happiness comes from love and that love is acceptance.  And that includes acceptance of what is--whether our lives include blue or not.

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Solve One Problem...Get Another

The ego loves to keep us immersed in the "reality" of daily living.  It loves to create problems.  Problems distract us from noticing our separation from God.  If we weren't so busy solving all these pesky problems we might have more time to notice how insane this all is and start to pay more attention to solving our one real problem...that we need to get back to God.

(In previous postings, I've been talking about ego set ups.  There's the "I Can't Win No Matter What I Do", see here.  There's also "The Rug Got Pulled Out From Underneath Me", see here.)

One of the ways the ego keeps us wrapped up in worldly living and away from spiritual thinking is by giving us problems.  Lot's and lot's of problems.  In fact, we're never without problems.  If we solve a problem, not to worry, more will show up.  In fact, solve one...get two.  Problems are BIG and important!  They require our immediate attention, or they require ALL of our attention.  They are urgent.  They are critical.  They must be attended to or something TERRIBLE will happen!

Even worse are the never ending problems.  Most of us have at least one problem like this.  They stem from our false beliefs (for more on false beliefs, see here).  These are the kinds of problems that stick around...perhaps for a lifetime.  For some people, these kinds of problems have to do with money.  For others, with relationships, health or a lack of self worth.  We all know someone who has been sick with one illness after another practically from the moment they were born.  Or someone who can never seem to make a relationship stick.  There are also those people who self-destruct their lives on a regular basis because of their deep-seated false belief that they are not worthy, not love-able, and undeserving.

Okay, take a deep breath and let's look at the real "reality".  Problems are only perceptions.  There's nothing really wrong here.  We have air to breath and clothes to keep us warm.  The birds are singing and the sun still shines.  We have water to drink and food to eat.  Right now, right here, in this very moment, there are no problems here.  And in the next moment, and the next moment and the next moment.  There are no problems.  We are safe and we are loved by the divine.

We have the potential to fill our minds with love.  Or we can choose to indulge the ego and fill it with fear.

And since our thoughts are creative, when we fill our minds with fear thoughts, what are we creating in our lives?  Problems, of course!

So what are some good practical ways to end the perpetual problem cycle in our lives?

Well, first we can choose to cast out fear thoughts whenever we become aware of them.  This takes a great deal of strength of character and determination, but it can be done.  Thinking is habit and habits can be changed.  It is within our realm of power to insist on only allowing worthy thoughts in our minds.  And as our thoughts become cleansed, we create less chaos in our lives.  If we focus on loving thoughts and thoughts of gratitude, beautiful things show up in our lives.

The second way to reduce problems in our lives is to release the habit of judging others (see here, here and here.)  When we judge others, we are damaging ourselves.  We get what we give.  It's just how things work.  When we view others harshly, we view ourselves harshly too.  And that creates guilt down deep in our subconscious mind.  Even worse, when we have guilt, we believe that we should be punished.  And how do we punish ourselves?  Why, with problems, of course.

Just as with clearing our minds of fear thinking, ending the habit of judging is challenging.  It takes work and commitment, but it can be done!  Go cold turkey on judging today.  Just stop it.  (See here.)  Stop creating guilt and begin to create peace.

Finally, the third and most effective way to significantly reduce the problems in your life is through forgiveness.  Start by forgiving every problem you have in your present and every person that is even vaguely connected to these problems.  Once you've taken care of today's forgiveness needs, begin to systematically dig into your past and forgive all the hurts, wounds, anger and upset you have from your past problems.  (See here.)  And then go to work on forgiving your mental blocks and false beliefs  (see here.) Again, this may seem like a lot of work, and it is.  However, forgiveness dissipates problems.  As you forgive and release the world you have created, you will have fewer and fewer problems.

It's your choice to make.  Problems or happiness?

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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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How to Release Our Stories of Worry

I just got back from visiting old friends in Los Angeles.  I met separately with four of my oldest friends and had some wonderful and joyful catching up time.

I did notice, however, that underneath the surface of everyone's busy lives, there was a story of worry.  One was worrying about illness, another finances and yet another some recent back surgeries.  It seems that few of us escape the "living hell" of fearful worrying.  And it seems to me that as we age, the worry often intensifies.

One friend was describing to me the overwhelming role worry is currently playing in her life. This friend has a grown son.  Although he experienced difficulties throughout his childhood and was given much professional help, it was only recently that he was diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrone.  He is in his early twenties and is living at home.  He has great fears of living independently and, in fact, refuses to do so. He also has refused to go to college.  He has a simple job at a local supermarket where he works a few days a week.   He comes home and plays video games.  He has two or three friends that he plays with online and that occasionally will come to the house. Beyond that he has little social life.  He rarely leaves the house for anything except work.

My friend is coming to terms with the fact that her son will probably never leave home, will never have a better job than the one he has now, will never have many friends and will probably never have a girlfriend and marry.  This is not the life she had hoped for him.  This is not the life she had hoped for herself.  She is grieving.  She is worried for him.  She is afraid.  She said to me, "I need help.  I don't know how to stop feeling so emotional about this."

Sometimes our grief and worry get lodged into our minds and bodies and it begins to cycle through in an endless repeating loop which seems inescapable.

In an effort to quell the insanely repeating thoughts, we might try "changing the subject" in our minds, but the worry thoughts just keep coming back endlessly plaguing us.  Or we may try to "stuff" the worry down deep where it won't bother us, only to then find that it shows up larger than life at 3:00 in the morning in the form of paralyzing night terrors.

So what can she do to feel better?  The process I outline in "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" that would be very helpful for my friend is what I call "Feel the Feelings".  In this process, we set aside some deep introspective time to really allow ourselves to go deep into these feelings.  When we authentically sit with our fear, worry and grief and just watch it, allowing it to be whatever it is, allowing it to fully express itself, it dissipates.

If my friend does this process, she will find that she will be able to think about her son from a calmer place.  The terrible negative emotions that she currently feels will be transmuted and in the future, although she will still have the same son with the same challenges, she will feel acceptance about the situation.

What's your story of worry and how is it wreaking havoc in your life?

If you have a need for the "Feel the Feelings" process,  I have created a guided meditation that you can use in the quiet of your own home, Forgive Your Past Now  which can be downloaded to your computer or iphone for $2.99.  Using the download will teach you the process which you can then apply whenever you find that you have circumstances in your life that are causing your to feel fear.

The "Feel the Feelings" process is also explained in depth in my book. 

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How to Forgive a Bully

Last night in my A Course in Miracles study group, a friend mentioned to me that one of her friends is currently reading my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  She is only partly though it, but she is coming to understand how important forgiveness is.  However, as many of us do, she has something big in her past that needs to be forgiven, and the idea of letting it go not only confuses but upsets her.  She was raped.  She said to my friend, "Why do I have to forgive someone who RAPED me??!!"

In addition, I've been thinking a lot lately about people around the world who are right now dealing with powerful bullies, dictators and political enemies that need to be forgiven.

I admit that this is a difficult kind of forgiveness.  It takes a little more soul searching and growth to forgive on this level than just forgiving the guy that stole your parking spot at the grocery store.

What's a bully, really?  Bullies are people who experience a great deal more fear than you and I do.  That's why they act out in ways that we would never ever consider.

Remember that everything that any of us do here is either an act of love or it is a call out for love.  That's it.  In every moment, we are either in a state of love or in a state of fear.

Where most of us drift back and forth between love and fear throughout each day, bullies have indulged their fearful sides.  More, or practically all, of their daily thoughts (both consciously and sub-consciously) relate to fear.  As they allow their fear to grow, their behavior becomes more and more aggressive.  The fear is the cause and their aggressive behavior is the effect.

Whenever we act out our fear, we create guilt in our minds (again this can be conscious or sub-conscious).  This means that the more a bully behaves like a bully, the more their guilt increases, which in turn, leads to even more fear.  After all, if we believe we are guilty, we also believe we should be punished.  The increased fear leads to ever more vicious and harmful behavior patterns.

A bully can be someone you know whom is merely unpleasant to be around, but he can also be threatening, combative or violent.  He/she can be a dictator, a rapist, a spouse batterer or even a verbal abuser.

Before you begin to approach forgiving a bully, it helps to do a little self-introspection.  Even though you may spend a great deal more of your time in love thinking than the bully you are forgiving, it's important to remember that we all have many fear thoughts each and every day.  When we judge a bully for indulging in fear, aren't we really judging him for something we often do ourselves?

Think back and review your life.  Haven't there been moments when you yourself behaved as a bully, even just a little tiny bit?  Did you ever bully your little brother or sister?  Were you ever part of a "popular" crowd in school that excluded or made fun of less popular kids?  Have you ever bossed your spouse around?  Your children?  Your employees?  Are you ever just the teensy-est little bit bossy?  Do you like to get your way?  Have you ever behaved selfishly?

The scale of your actions may be much smaller, but again, bully thinking is bully thinking.  When you are thinking and acting as a bully, you are out of alignment with love.

We all have things in our past we're not proud of.  Looking back we might see that at the time that we were behaving badly, we had our rationalizations.  We did what we thought was in our best interest at the time.  Yes, our little mis-behaviors are nothing compared to rape in terms of their effects.  But at the causal level they are the same.  They come from fear based thought.  And all fear based thought is the same.  It is simply non-loving.

One more thing you might try before you attempt to forgive a bully is empathy.  It's actually extremely sad that your bully feels so very alone and afraid that he believes his only option is to behave this way.  What caused all that fear?  What was his childhood like?  He must have experienced terrible rejection.  On a deep down level he must believe in his worthlessness or he wouldn't be so desperately trying to prove his value to himself through abusive acts.  Take a moment and think about his pain.  Think about how he suffers each day from fear, loneliness, guilt and self-hatred.

You certainly don't have to condone his actions, but can you find a little love somewhere in your heart to offer this poor tortured creature?  Just the smallest scrap of sympathy?  This is very important because when you are able to see another side of this situation you are taking your first step toward flipping the switch in your mind from fear to love.  You are releasing your own fear, and as you do this, you release your own guilt and pain.  This is how you find your peace.




If you feel you need help forgiving a bully I have three guided meditations that will teach you a process for forgiveness.  To forgive a bully that is harming you in your present, try Forgive Someone NOW.  To forgive someone from your past try Forgive Your Past NOW.

Forgiveness is an Expression of the Soul's Deep Desire to BE Forgiven

"When you judge, you have moved out of alignment with what is true.  You have decreed that the innocent are not innocent.  And if you would judge another as being without innocence, you have already declared that this is true about you!  Therefore, to practice forgiveness actually cultivates the quality of consciousness in which you finally come to forgive yourself.  And it is indeed the forgiven who remember their God."  --Way of Mastery  p. 26

It is only when we come to a point that we are able to understand that everyone is forgivable, and that we are indeed putting this universal forgiveness into practice, that we begin to believe that we ourselves are worthy of forgiveness.

After all, it's only good logic.  If every one of God's Children is innocent, then I myself, being also a Child of God, must be an innocent, too.

The problem is that down deep in our sub-consciousness, we struggle to believe this.  We have mountains of guilt.  We believe we're not worthy.  We believe we're unlovable.  We believe that we are "bad", that we have sinned and that we should be punished.  Removing the guilt from our sub-conscious minds can only be accomplished through our own acts of forgiveness toward others.

This is a process that takes some time.  We can begin by forgiving any trespasses we experience today. Once we create a habit of forgiving all of each day's hurts, we can begin to go into our pasts and release old grievances.  This stage requires much intense soul searching and quietude as we look deep into our minds to discover the wounds that lurk therein. Finally, in the third stage of forgiveness we can begin to forgive the conditions we see in the world around us.  We begin to forgive the war, famine, cruelty and selfishness that plays out on a world-wide scale.

As we move forward in our forgiveness, we will see a pattern emerging.  What we are most offended by in others is actually something that we find reflected in our own consciousness.  We fear the murderer, however, we come to know that there is so much anger deep within our own sub-consciousness that we are actually, ourselves, capable of murder.  We fear the dictator, but ultimately come to see the bossiness that resides within our own personality.  We fear the greedy ones, but we ourselves often take what we want.

"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."  --Way of Master p.26

As we forgive the world around us, our consciousness begins to purify.  Our own thoughts of fear, anger, greed, rejection and envy begin to release.  Our minds are cleansed.

This is where our happiness begins.  As we are freed of the tormenting thoughts and beliefs that our minds contain, we come to experience inner peace.

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Ways the Ego Sets Us Up

The ego loves to set us up in situations that create chaos in our lives.  The ego loves problems.  After all, while we are busy searching around in our earthly lives for the solutions to problems, we are distracted from our true purpose here, which is love.

Earlier this week I wrote about a classic ego set-up that a lot of us experience.  This is something I call "The rug gets pulled out from underneath me".  See here.  This almost always happens when we are the most elated about our lives.  Just when everything is going great, it all changes in an instant and everything goes horribly bad.

Another common ego set-up is "I can't win no matter what I do".  In this set-up, we have people in our life who are going to be very upset with us if we handle things one way and other people (just as important to us) who are going to be upset if we handle things the other way.  There are no alternative choices that will satisfy everyone.

I have a friend that is in this conundrum right now.  She and her sister receive a modest yearly stipend from her mother's trust.  There seems to be a problem with it.  Her sister has hired an expensive lawyer to fix it and expects my friend to share in the costs. My friend's husband believes that by the time the lawyer fixes the problem, his fees will eat up the stipend.  Her sister is angry at her because her husband is involved.  Her husband is angry because her sister is handling it badly, in his opinion.  If my friend let's her sister handle it, her husband will be hurt and angry with her.  If she gets her husband involved, her sister will be hurt and angry with her.  She can't win.

We all have themes we're working on in life.  I see this same friend in similar situations where she can't win occasionally.  This is her theme.

When you find yourself in ego set-ups, the only thing you can do is turn the whole mess over to Spirit.  You can do this two ways.  The first choice...you can just use words and make a statement something like this, "Holy Spirit, I am giving this whole situation regarding (X) over to you.  I know that you will know what to do with it and I trust you to find a solution that is in everyone's best interest."

Alternatively, if you visualize easily, you can create a big beautiful white marble altar in your mind.  Light it up with divine love.  Make it gorgeous, glowing and brilliant.  Just place your problem on the altar and watch it be consumed with heavenly white flames.

After you turn your problem over, what do you do?  Why, nothing, of course.  Spirit's got your back!  If Spirit decides there is some additional action for you to take, you will be informed.  Until that time, just rest in trust and enjoy the peace of knowing that it is not your problem any longer.   Let it go.  Release and forgive.

Turning your problems over is most definitely a form of forgiveness, but there's more forgiveness work we can do here.  When we find a pattern of ego set-ups in our lives, we need to do some soul searching to figure out why they're happening.  What events occurred early in our lives that caused us to create an unconscious false belief that we can't win?  Until we go back and really look at this false belief, we will continue to experience "can't win" ego set ups on a regular basis.  This will take some deep probing and thought.  However, if we ask Spirit for direction and knowing, we will receive the answers we search for.

Then how do we forgive whatever we find in our past?  For something like this, I like to use the "Feel the Feelings" process in Chapter Three of "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".   An easy to use download of this process in the form of a guided meditation is available, Forgive Your Past NOW.  For just $2.99 you will be shown a process that you can use over and over to forgive all kinds of wounds and hurts from your past.  These old injuries are wreaking havoc in your present. Why not do a little forgiveness work on your past and make your life work better for you today?

"The Rug Got Pulled Out From Underneath Me"

I spent today leading a forgiveness workshop and afterward one of the participants asked if I might spend a few minutes helping her understand something about an event from her past.

While doing one of the forgiveness meditations, she became aware that there were various elements associated with a particular event and wanted to know why that was.  I let her know that, yes, our bigger forgiveness lessons often have many aspects associated with them.  Big painful events are often complicated and the emotion we feel about them tends to make then seem even more complicated in our minds.

When she began to speak about what happened, her face took on a confused clouded expression and she had a difficult time grasping what we were discussing, even though it was all easily clear and obvious to me. As we were making a list of the aspects of this event that she needed to forgive, she kept asking me to repeat each one over and over so she could write it down.  She would write down a word or two of my sentence and get completely lost and ask me to repeat it again. Now, this is a very smart woman, but her painful memories were creating emotional blocks that were keeping her from thinking in her normal clear head.

Here are the simple facts about the event that transpired in her past.  She was a young girl and she was given her first bicycle.  She was so excited that she could ride it that she wanted to share her joy and rode down the block to show her best friend.  She felt elated that she could ride, proud of her new bike and excited to share with her friend.  When she rode back home, her father greeted her standing on the corner with a willow switch in his hand which he then beat her with it.

Today in the workshop she was able to see for the first time that his response came from his own fear.  After all, she had ridden off without telling him where she was.  She asked me if her understanding of this now was forgiveness.  My answer is that yes, it is, but only partially.

Anytime you flip the switch from fear thinking to love thinking you are forgiving.  In this case, her willingness to put herself in her father's shoes is an offering of love to him.  This is definitely the start of the forgiveness for her.  

However, there's a lot more under the surface.  I said to her, "Let's talk about the fact that here was this incredibly big moment in your life.  Getting a bicycle is a giant step in the progression to becoming BIG, so important to us when we are children.  This was one of the most important, happiest and proudest moments in your childhood.   Here you are absolutely celebrating this big moment and then suddenly it all turned horrible...the rug got pulled out from underneath you."

When I said the words, "the rug got pulled out from underneath you", she looked stunned.  "Oh, my God", she said.  "That is the repeating theme in my life.  Just when things seem to be going their very best, the rug gets pulled out from underneath me."

Of course they do!  When we have an experience this big and emotional in our childhood, it creates subconscious beliefs that color our world throughout our lifetime. In Science of Mind studies, we call these false beliefs.  My friend's belief is that whenever things are going really good, there is going to be a nasty and painful surprise.  The rug will be pulled out from underneath her.

The only way for her to stop reliving this moment in her life is for her to forgive it.  When she accomplishes the forgiveness, the horrible repeating pattern will stop and she will be able to accept happiness knowing that it will not be shockingly, abruptly and painfully taken from her.

Here are some other aspects of this experience which may have created additional false beliefs she can be working to forgive:

I get punished whenever I feel big and free and I fly.
People I love can harm me.
Love has strings attached. Other people love me conditionally.
I am a helpless victim.
I get in trouble even though I do nothing wrong.
I can't trust life.
This is not a safe world.

True forgiveness takes some deep thinking and self discovery.  That's why I like to call it a forgiveness lifestyle.  It sometimes takes months and even years to unravel the emotions, fears and blockages we have created in our minds because of the events in our past.  However, if we ask Spirit to help us receive understanding about our pasts, it will be given to us.  It often comes in fits and starts over a series of weeks and months, but maybe that's because we need the time to process what we are discovering.

Filmed at Lake Tahoe (where I live). 

It's true that forgiveness is a commitment.  However, the process can be fascinating (after all, what's more interesting than ourselves?)  It's also easier than you may think.  Now that my friend has begun to forgive this important event from her past, she'll be given more information and greater understanding about it.  It will become easier and easier for her to forgive each aspect of it.  Pretty soon, she will have released the whole thing.  The emotion of it will leave her body and she will be at peace whenever she remembers it.  This will allow her to open herself up to new possibilities in her life.  Perhaps she will decide to trust the world a little more and open up to new experiences and relationships in a larger way than she has in the past.

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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:

Hurt And Fear Accumulate

We all encounter people and events that hurt our feelings or deprive us of our core desires. As we go through life, we collect hundreds of little hurts and bruises to our psyche. Many of us experience some real heartbreaking events or true tragedies. In order to move forward in our lives, we stuff these hurts down deep and we don’t like to look at them. Looking at them reopens the pain.

As the weeks, months and years of disappointments, betrayals and rejections build up deep inside our subconscious minds, they begin to block our capacity to truly love. If we don’t heal and forgive them, they grow and fester. We become fearful in our approach to the world around us. Some of us may look confident, yet most of the time, we are just faking it. We’re not truly happy.

This low-level repressed anxiety and fear we feel drives us to keep ourselves busy as a distraction. We attend parties and dinners and meetings. We travel, have big “to do” lists, and raise families. We have crises and we have moments of joy. Most of this busy-ness, which we create to keep our minds occupied, is simply there to distract us from the monster of hurt deep inside us. We are afraid to really look at the monster, to acknowledge that we are deeply wounded inside and that we are, in actuality, sad, angry and fearful much of the time.

 A Course in Miracles says that there are really only two states. We are either in a state of love or we are in a state of fear. Since we rarely are truly feeling love, we spend most of our time in . . . you guessed it . . . fear. Of course, the biggest part of that fear is suppressed, controlled and locked away. However, it is always ready to rise roiling to the surface in full-out, hair-raising, panic-inducing, gut-wrenching, screeching, sniveling, and terrifying FEAR. And it sometimes does.

Who are we fooling?  Ourselves, really. We go on like this for years, racking up hurts and pains, pushing them down deep. There they fester, creating profound subconscious beliefs in concepts like rejection, worthlessness, disease, death or lack. The bigger these beliefs become, the worse our lives become. This is because the more we subconsciously believe in these limiting fearful concepts, the more rejection, worthlessness, disease, death and lack show up in the reality of our daily lives.

It becomes a vicious cycle. We attract more painful events and we push those new hurts down where they attach to other similar memories in our subconscious minds. The pain and the fear beliefs get bigger and bigger, each time attracting to us a more “in your face” real-life event.

These events often stay within the theme of our sub-conscious beliefs. In fact, we spend much of our lifetime experiencing the same painful types of events over and over. We rework a theme. For example, if our early experiences were with rejection, we keep experiencing larger and ever larger events having to do with rejection.

The Reward Of Forgiveness  Our only hope of ending all this fearful madness is forgiveness. When we stop the vicious cycle, begin to identify our beliefs, and forgive the events associated with them, we heal these beliefs deep in our subconscious minds. If we heal enough of these beliefs, we begin to release the fear and free ourselves up to live from love.

In fact, A Course in Miracles promises us that the more we forgive, the more the Holy Spirit will release guilt and pain from our subconscious minds. It’s a process and it takes effort and time. After all, we didn’t acquire these wounds overnight.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” If you want to see peace around you, start within. Forgive your older sister for ridiculing you in front of her friends. Forgive the next door neighbor for harping on you about your barking dog. Forgive your boss for speaking to you in a degrading tone, the clerk at the supermarket for ignoring you, and your first boyfriend for breaking up with you.

Most importantly, forgive your spouse, your father, your mother, and your children. Our families are our very best forgiveness opportunities, mostly because they are there for many years. Years of rubbing up against each other can create deep wounds. Each day, the causes of these wounds are re-enacted within our families. Each day we are gifted with the opportunity to end the pain and start the healing through our forgiveness.

An amazing by-product of forgiveness is that it really does change our world. You will find that as you forgive your family, friends and co-workers, old and uncomfortable behavior patterns and annoyances simply slip away. Life becomes easier. As all good Course students know, life is a classroom and as we learn our lessons through the process of forgiveness and acceptance, there is less pain to experience.

The Course has a term for this freer, happier life of joy and love. We call it the “happy dream” and it is available to each and every one of us if we make forgiveness a habit in our life. 

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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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