"Compassion is an attitude that upholds the memory of wholeness for people when they are lost in separation, pain and conflict."

I often talk about "flipping the switch" from love to fear.  Forgiveness happens at the very moment that we flip that switch.

One moment we are feeling thoughts of fear; anger, hurt, resentment, frustration, annoyance, irritation, victim-hood, upset, pain, rage and most importantly a sense that we are ultimately unloveable.  We flip that switch by dropping the fear thoughts of separation and isolation and replacing them with love thoughts.  We don't have to go all the way to full love, the switch happens the moment we start up the road to love; sympathy, understanding, compassion, hopefulness and a sense of sharing and oneness.

"Love is also grounded in an attitude of compassion.  Compassion is necessary for our survival and our evolution.  Compassion is an attitude that upholds the memories of wholeness for people when they are lost in separation, pain and conflict.  Compassion is love's holding environment.  It is how love whispers to us, "I will remember the truth of who you are even when you cannot remember this for yourself."  This compassion sees through what Einstein called the "optical delusion" of separation.  Einstein taught us that we can free ourselves from identifying with this ego-consciousness by 'widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.'" --Robert Holden in Loveability p. 29 (emphasis in italics are mine)

And just what exactly is "the truth of who you are when you cannot remember this for yourself"? Everyone's truth is the same--that we are all one, that we all are a part of God's creation, that we are all one thing and one thing only...love.  We are perfect, whole and complete.  We are created by God in his own image.  God loves us infinitely and our one and only task is to extend this love by returning it to God and to each other.

When we flip the switch from fear to love, all we need to do is acknowledge this truth for the other person.  We simply need to know that they are a Child of God.  In a sense we are actually switching from the smallness of our ego minds to a much bigger and more truthful picture, in fact we are switching to the whole picture.  It's a matter of changing the perspective of our thinking and broadening our minds so that we see and think as God himself does.

This life of separation is only a dream our egos created anyway.  It's not real.  Nothing involving fear really exists. Fear is only an invention of the mind.  it is an illusion.  Yes, living here on 3D planet earth, we think it's real, but we've only forgotten the truth that we are all one and that in that oneness, we are love.

"To love and be loved is the true joy of every human heart.  There is no higher happiness than this.  Alas, in any human dramas there are also wounds and disappointments, mistakes, betrayals, pain and heartache.  Even so, love comes to our rescue.  Love offers us a solution, which is a process called forgiveness.  Forgiveness is an angel that comes to us when we sleep and wakes us from the hypnosis.  It is the ground of love that supports you when you are falling, breaking apart, and coming undone.  Forgiveness undoes the blocks to loves awareness.  It shows you that a universe of love doesn't ever stop, even when all you can see is pain.  Love always loves you, even when you can't or won't love yourself." --Robert Holding Loveability p. 29

Oddly, flipping the switch from fear to forgiveness is surprisingly easy once you get some practice with it.  It's true that when you are in the throes of anger and hurt, the thought of forgiving can feel very distasteful.  But once you learn that a feeling of love and relief flows over you with forgiveness, you will become more motivated to do it sooner.

Also, there is that little matter of increasing annoyances.  While you are in a state of separation and amplifying those fear feelings by cherishing the anger and hurt, your 3D earthly life will reflect this separation.  This is the time that you will stub your toe, lose an important business contract, upset the feelings of those you care about and wake up with a bad hair day.  This is absolutely true, and if you don't believe me about this yet, just watch how it plays out in your life.

So, learn to get over it quickly.  Drop the feelings of fear and let the hurt and anger switch over to love as quickly as you are able to.  Remember that when you give love, you get love.  Find the love and happiness you are seeking.  It's there waiting for you and all you have to do to receive it is practice forgiveness.

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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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Are You Choosing Separation from Spirit?

Words from Jennifer Hadley:

"I’ve come to realize that all feelings of fear are the result of choosing separation from Spirit in some form or another. It always comes down to a judgment, an opinion.

The more I cultivate a pristine awareness, a release of all opinions and judgments, the more peaceful I feel. The more safe and secure I feel. The more I feel free to Love and be loved.

Fear is not caused by anything other than choosing to value a belief in separation from each other and from God.  Practice non-judgment and watch the peace emerge and the fear recede.

Don’t take my word for it.  Prove it.  When you choose to block Love from your heart and mind, you feel afraid.  When you choose to block Love from your heart and mind, you are cutting the communication with the ALL in ALL – and that’s why you feel afraid.

If you don’t enjoy feeling afraid, choose again." 

You can find more of Jennifer Hadley at: jenniferhadley.com/blog.

When Thoughts Go Bump in the Night

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and find that your mind is filled with worry and fear?  Even those of us that work hard to eradicate fear thoughts during the day may find that our mind sometimes floods with upsetting thoughts in that state between waking and sleep.

The Witching Hour

This is a sign that we have some clean up work to do in our mind.  A forgiveness lifestyle will help lessen the fear.

In the meantime, what can we do when we wake to find ourselves in the dark shadow of the night?  We have two choices.  We can elect to deal with the subjects that are coming up right then and there.  If we are willing to just go with it and lose a few hours of sleep, this is a perfect time to do some forgiveness work.  The Feel the Feelings process which can be found in Chapter 3 of "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" is perfect for these times.  (There is also a downloadable audio meditation of this process available here for $2.99.  Why not just slip the headphones on and do the work right in bed?)

Or, for those of us that have to be up early in the mornings to deal with jobs or kids, getting back to peace so that we can sleep is essential.  It's important to "flip the switch" in our minds from fear to love.  One way to do this is with affirmations.  When we concentrate on repeating positive words over and over, there is no room left in our minds for the fear thoughts.

Flip the Switch from Fear to Love

Before starting the affirmations, it is a good idea to give the fear thinking over to Spirit.  You can just say in your mind, "I am giving this over to you, Spirit."  Or, if you are visual, you can create a beautiful white and gleaming marble altar in your mind.  Make it all lit up, glowing and gorgeously bright.  Place your fear thoughts on the altar and watch them be consumed with white flames of Infinite love.

What affirmations are best?  I like "I accept the love of God" or "Thank you God, for creating me."  An affirmation I'm currently working with is "I accept the happiness that God intends me to have."  Of course, you can choose any affirmation that works for you personally and flips you over from fear to love.

I once read someplace that an hour of meditation is equal to three hours of sleep.  Is this true? If this is so, you can calmly enjoy your affirmations, knowing that each moment you spend with them is contributing to a positive, powerful and energetic day tomorrow.

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Does Victimhood Feel Good?

It must.  After all, we so often choose it.  We choose victimhood over peace and we make that same choice repeatedly throughout our lives.

When events transpire to leave us feeling like victims, we relish and cherish those feelings.  We fan the flames of our emotions, firing up the feelings of betrayal, hurt, and pain.  Our minds run amok with thoughts like "I can't believe he did that to me.  He is such a jerk.  I didn't deserve that!  Why would he do that to me?  I am always so good to him and then he turns around and does this to me!"

Or perhaps we simply run through the moment of betrayal and hurt repeatedly in our minds reliving the hurt.  We indulge in these thoughts.  Each time we experience it again in our minds it gets bigger and bigger, always more horrible, more hurtful, more painful.

Or maybe we harbor fantasies of revenge. Like the day we show up having lost twenty pounds and looking amazing.  That will make him regret what he did.  Or maybe we fantasize about hurting him just as badly as he hurt us and making him pay for what he did.  Or maybe we hatch elaborate plans about how we could take back whatever it is he took from us.

Sometimes we choose to stay in victim thoughts for years at a time.  Most of us have certain events in our past that are still defining us as victims, even though twenty or thirty years may have passed.  We are allowing our belief in victimhood to run our minds.  And when something runs our minds, it runs our lives.

Does this feel good?  In some twisted way, it does.  We cherish these feelings.  If we didn't, we would let them go. Or perhaps we simply don't know that there is another pathway available to us.

The truth is that at any moment in time we can stop being victims.  Our victimhood requires our continued belief that we have been wronged or harmed in some way.  We need to buy into the game in order to be victims. However, if we choose forgiveness, we are no longer victims.  We can be free of  the pain.  We can heal the wounds.  The contents of our mind is something that we have total and utter control of.  We can choose what we allow to exist in our minds.

Perhaps victimhood feels good.  However, wouldn't freedom feel better?  Wouldn't peace feel better?  Wouldn't living in love be vastly better than this experience of fear we are creating in our lives?  After all, choosing to be a victim is to choose fear over love.

Take a few moments and examine where in your mind you are allowing victimhood to rule. Is this really the choice you wish to make?  If not, forgiveness is the pathway to peace in your mind.  If you're not sure how to forgive, there are many easy processes outlined in "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  One of them will be the perfect way for you to let go and release victimhood permanently from your mind.

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Flip the Switch

Forgiveness is a matter of flipping the switch.  We go from fear to love.  From attack to generosity.  From thinking with the ego to thinking with Spirit.  From thoughts of torment, worry and trouble to thoughts of calm and inner peace.

At first, it's difficult to flip the switch.  We love our grudges.  They are cherished by us and we think we'll be giving up something we need if we release them.  But actually, they are nothing.  They bring us only pain.  Once released, we are happier.

With practice, we find it easier to just drop our grievance thinking and forgive.  Like anything else in life, the more we do it, the better we get at it.  Forgiveness becomes easy.  Most importantly, as we live the rewards of forgiveness we watch the happiness growing in our lives.  The more it grows, the more we want to forgive.

So come on, come on....get happy!

Start your happiness today.  For an easy guided forgiveness process, download Forgive Someone NOW for $2.99, here. You can load it onto your computer and then sinc it into your smart phone to listen to on head phones at night before you go to sleep.

Or download a copy of "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness";

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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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Are you really, truly happy?

When I was in my early 30’s I joined a book club.  One meeting, I made the remark to the girls that it seemed like all the books we had been reading were filled with  angst.  “Where are the happy people and the happy stories?” I wondered. 

I was surprised that my book club friends all looked at me blankly.  “Sue, the world is not about happiness”, they said.  I was shocked.  “Is that true?  Aren’t all of you happy?”  Now, this was a group that included successful career women.  Many had corporate husbands with good paychecks, lovely houses, and small children with nannies to care for them.  On the surface, every one of us looked like the epitome of happiness. 

Not so, however!  As we went around the room, one by one each woman confessed that she did not actually feel happy much of the time.  Rather, they spent most of their lives fighting to navigate their monstrous “to- do” lists, to keep their refrigerators stocked with food, to get ahead and make something of themselves at work, to keep organized households, to provide for their children and their husbands needs. 

Every one of them was secretly bitterly disappointed that their husbands did not love them in the way that they had once hoped they would be cherished and loved, that their bosses and co-workers did not see them as shining saviors for the companies they worked for, that they struggled with feeling unconnected and distant from their closest friends, and were heart-broken to find themselves physically separated from parents and families who often lived significant distances away.

Their lives were a constant state of worry, inadequacy and disappointment.  Each one battled daily with fears of rejection and abandonment.  Each one lived a surface life of success and happiness but underneath resided a deep-seated terror that the gig was about to be up.  Each lived with a terrible and secret fear that their real truth would somehow rise to the surface, and the whole structure they had worked tirelessly to create would shatter to the ground.

The truth is that when the lights go out in the middle of the night and we’re alone with our thoughts, every one of us feels achingly lonely, remorseful and terrified.

What Most of us Feel is Really Guilt.   However our denial of guilt causes us to run out into the world chasing accomplishments, laurels, activities, possessions and all the symbols of happiness. In reality, on the deep level of truth, most of us are simply not happy.  We feel guilty because we are living separately from God.  And clinging to these trappings, activities, and illusions only moves us further and further from living with God.  It’s the pride of self our egos cling to that separates us from knowing our true relationship with God. 

It’s by our own choice that we live in unhappiness.   This is because the “world” is actually structured so that we can be happy.  There is only one thing that we need to do to attain it.  And this one thing is forgiveness. 

In my book, Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness, there are many easy to use processes that will help you to forgive anybody and any event in your life, current or past.   Develop a daily habit of forgiveness and watch your life change from fear to love.

Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness is available at:

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Made by God.

I am made by God.  He made me exactly in his own image.  Therefore I am holy.  I am beloved by God.  I am perfect in every way. 

"My holiness is my salvation."

"Since my holiness saves me from all guilt, recognizing my holiness is recognizing my salvation.  It is also recognizing the salvation of the world.  Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid.  And because I am unafraid, everyone must share in my understanding, which is the gift of God to me and to the world." --A Course in Miracles  From the review materials for Workbook lesson 39 (see page 97). 

When I forgive myself all I need to do is know that I am made by God.  I am cherished and precious to him and I am only love.  There is nothing at all evil, sinful or wrong about me.  I am perfect in every way.  I am part of God.

Guilt is self attack and it is always insane. --Living A Course in Miracles, Jon Mundy

When I am struggling with forgiving myself I find it helpful to create an altar to God in my mind.  This altar is shining white marble, huge and very beautiful.  I simply lay anything that I feel guilty, angry, hurt, or pained by on this altar and give it over to the Holy Spirit.  He will handle it for me.  He will wash me clean and remove my fear. 

Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness is available at:

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God is the Love in Which I Forgive--Workbook Lesson 46

Many of us were brought up believing that we must ask God to forgive us.  However, God doesn't forgive!!  Does this idea surprise you?

God never judges and therefore he never finds it necessary to forgive.  I find this message to be of great comfort. 

"God does not forgive because He has never condemned. And there must be condemnation before forgiveness is necessary. Forgiveness is the great need of this world, but that is because it is a world of illusions. Those who forgive are thus releasing themselves from illusions, while those who withhold forgiveness are binding themselves to them. As you condemn only yourself, so do you forgive only yourself." --A Course in Miracles, Workbook, Lesson 46

 As our creator, God always knows his own truth about each of us.  We are perfect.  We are only good. We are love always and everywhere. 

Since God made us exactly in his own image, we can only be these things.  If we judge ourselves to be anything other than this, it is only our own self-created illusion.  We perceive that we are not perfect and therefore need God's forgiveness.

When we forgive others, we are actually acknowledging their truth--that there is nothing to judge them for, because they are also created in perfection.  They are only good.  They are love always and everywhere. 

The reason why it is so essential that we forgive others and see their truth is that as we see their truth, we actually begin to convince ourselves of our own truth.  If they are perfect, then we must be too.

"Yet although God does not forgive, His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear."  --Lesson 46 

Lesson 46 is the first place in the workbook that the concept of forgiveness is explored in any depth. Personally, I love the beautiful safety of knowing that I never need feel that I must ask for God's forgiveness.  Asking implies that it is possible that forgiveness might be withheld. 

Our fear of exactly that is the root of all of our problems.  We all live with deep and massive unconscious fear and guilt.  Our worry that God may disapprove of us, withhold his love from us, or feel angry toward us, causes tremendous and constant anxiety in our minds.  Here, in this very first Workbook message about forgiveness, we are being reassured that we need not worry about being judged by God.  God has only love and support to offer us. 

"I cannot be guilty because I am a Son of God.
I have already been forgiven.
No fear is possible in a mind beloved of God.
There is no need to attack because love has forgiven me."--Lesson 46