Let It Go

Here is the plain and simple truth...you can never be happy if you are judging and holding a grudge against someone else.  That is how this world works.  It's a universal law.  It just is.  

And yes, I know that it can seem scary to forgive.  It is the unknown pathway.  And we grasp on to our grudges and betrayals.  We cherish them...and nurture them...and our lives become all about them.  I know, I know.  I've been there.

The thing is, here's the truth.  Judgment and grudge-holding are the source of guilt in your life.  And guilt leads to separation from your Source.  

This is not happiness, this is life at it's smallest, most restricted and contracted.  It's not really what you want.  It's only what you think you want.  You simply don't know how to be otherwise.  No one has shown you a better way and a reason to follow it.  

But here it is, right now, right here...  

If you let your judgments and grudges go, you will be happier.  That's it.  So very simple and yet so very big.  You can be a happier person.  Your life can be easier for you.  You can feel safe and cherished in this world.  You can feel trust that you are protected and loved.  You can experience inner peace.  It's all there for you and you just have to do one simple thing...

Let it go.  

Repeating again from yesterday's post, because it bears repeating:

All this is so much bigger than holding onto that miserable pain-inducing, tight-fisted, life-long grudge against that most annoying someone in your life.  This is huge.  This is everything.  Do you see that?  Let it go.  Let it go.  LET IT GO.  Choose to live a happy life.  Choose to know your real truth.  Choose to be so much more than the smallness you are living now.  Forgive and be happy.

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Forgiveness is for YOU!

"Each time you forgive, you take yourself deeper into the purity of your own consciousness."  ---The Way of Mastery p. 25

Forgiveness is for YOU!  

It's not something you do because you ought to, or you think you should.  You don't forgive because way back when your Sunday School teacher told you to.

It's not something you do for others (although forgiveness is very healing for everyone else).  You don't do it because long ago your mother told you to forgive your sister when the two of you argued.

It's not something you do to heal the world, although it does contribute to the healing of the world.

It is simply for YOU.  It is through forgiveness that you discover your own magnificence.  You discover that you are loving and good inside at your core.  You are connected to the divine and that purity and innocence flows in your veins.  It is only as you forgive the world around you, however, that the awareness of your own beautiful divine nature begins finally to dawn on you.

When your forgiveness work begins to congeal into a new way of seeing the world, you subconsciously start the process of actually forgiving yourself.  You learn that if purity is at the heart of everyone you've forgiven, then it is at your own heart, too.  You begin to see yourself differently.  You recognize your inherent goodness and wisdom.  It is there, and actually has always been there.  But it is only as you practice forgiveness that you are able to recognize its presence.

And as you forgive more and more in your everyday world, your life begins to change.  It becomes easier, Lighter.  Good things flow to you.  Life's lessons become gentler.

You begin to see that you can trust life to take care of you and that allows you to accept more peace.  You understand inherently that you are safe.  That everything that is important in this life begins with forgiveness and love.  That as you forgive and love, you are tapping into the essence of your purpose.

And this makes you want to go further in your forgiveness.  So you probe into your past wounds and release and forgive.  You see the distorted, false, difficult world around you and you accept, accept and accept even more.  You release the old false beliefs that blocked you from seeing the truth in your heart.

More peace flows in.  Life lightens even more.  And one day you know that you have reached the beginning of living what A Course in Miracles calls "the happy dream".   It's not all always perfect, but it mostly is, and you know in your core that as you continue to live in forgiveness, it will become more and more so.

You've found happiness.

All this is so much bigger than holding onto that miserable pain-inducing tight-fisted life-long grudge against that most annoying someone in your life.  This is huge.  This is everything.  Do you see that?  Let it go.  Let it go.  LET IT GO.  Choose to live a happy life.  Choose to know your real truth.  Choose to be so much more than the smallness you are living now.  Expand into love.  Forgive and be happy.

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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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Happiness is Something You Decide On

"The 92-year old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with her hair done and makeup applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.

After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window. “I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy. 

“Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room ...” 

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged, it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it."  --The above story came from Chapter Two Blog .   

Mrs. Jones knows something big.  And this is something that most of us go our entire lives without learning.  Mrs. Jones knows that our thoughts are the one thing in life that we have complete and utter control over.  How we chose to look at the world is the one choice that is ours to make.  Mrs. Jones knows that each of us has the wherewithal to choose to allow only thoughts that ultimately contribute to our happiness to fill our minds.   

Choosing to be happy means that we choose to accept everything that occurs in our lives, even blindness. 

Choosing to be happy means that we learn to trust that whatever occurs is ultimately for our greater good, if we will only let it unfold, watching it with love and acceptance.

Choosing to be happy means that we let go of our habit of judging.  We stop judging the people we encounter, we stop judging the events that occur in our life and we stop judging the world and its conditions.

Choosing to be happy means that we commit to work to forgive the source of our disappointments, pains, losses, lack, discomfort, unhappiness, sadness, frustrations and fear, whatever it may be.  

Choosing to be happy means that it is okay for us to experience and feel real pain and hurt when it shows up in our lives.  It's okay to grieve.  It's okay to gnash ones teeth.  It's okay to howl with frustration.  But then, we release it and move on.  we don't fixate and get stuck in victim-hood.  We forgive.   

Choosing to be happy means that we develop a forgiveness lifestyle, that we practice forgiving whatever pushes our buttons each day in our present, that we forgive the painful events from our past and that we work to uncover the "false beliefs" that we have created as the result of these past events that are creating upsetting, confusing and painful patterns in our present.

And finally. choosing to be happy means that we flip the switch in our mind whenever the ego rears it's ugly head.  We flip the switch from fear to love.  We choose to think with Spirit in our minds.  Whenever we notice that the ego has returned with its thoughts of fear and worry, sadness and disappointment, frustration and anger, hurt and despair...we process, we inquire, we dig deep into our pasts to find the source of these thoughts, we examine, we feel and we release.  And then we kick the ego to the curb and get on with our happy lives.  

Happiness is an Attribute of Love

Happiness is an attribute of love.  It cannot be apart from it.  Nor can it be experienced where love is not. --A Course in Miracles, Lesson 102

This is why forgiveness is the key to happiness.  When we hold grievances and judge others we are out of alignment with love.  When we are out of alignment, it is not possible for us to be truly happy.

We may have fleeting moments of happy experiences, but deep true abiding happiness can never be a significant and lasting factor in our lives until we forgive the world around us.

Many of us look at our lives and think, "But I have a good job and I found the right spouse.  We have money to live on and a comfortable house and children that are healthy and busy.  I must be happy."

Comfort and busyness are not happiness.  They are pale shadows for true happiness.  In true happiness, we feel a deep trust and utter knowing that we are completely supported, infinitely valued and always cared for in every way.  We are joyful and loves flows from us and into us.

This is the happiness that a forgiveness lifestyle brings.

Two Ways to Get Happy Quick

1.  Scan your mind for whomever is annoying, hurting, upsetting or victimizing you today and forgive them.  (Need help forgiving?  Download this quickie forgiveness process for $2.99, here)

2.  Click play:

Self Forgiveness is a Choice for Happiness

In any moment we are making a choice between one of two things.  We are choosing to be happy or not to be happy.  We are siding with either fear or love.  Every moment in life, every perspective we choose to peer from, every action we take or don't take are all a version of this simple choice.

Guilt is a man-made creation.  God did not create it, nor did he create sin.  In fact God always chooses love and happiness.  He created us in love.  We are designed to be happy.

But, for better or worse, we have been given free-will.  We can use our free will to choose happiness, as God wishes for us.  Or, we can choose fear over love.  When we buy into the concept of fear, we choose to believe that we can be "bad".  And, of course, if we are "bad", then we are sinners.  And if we are sinners, then we need to feel guilt.  This is our system of fear.  It's man-made.  It's not God's.  God is always love.

I say, scrap it.  Let's just toss out this painful, miserable, system of fear from our minds.  It doesn't serve our best interests.  After all, it is in our best interest to be happy.

Release the fear.  Release the belief that you are bad. Release the feelings of guilt.  In the short term this is always a very simple thing to do.  Just think about what makes you happy and keep your mind focused on that.  This is a habit you can develop.  It's a choice you make.  This is step one to becoming happy.

Step two is to go deep into your mind and uncover all the dark hidden unconscious feelings of shame and inadequacy.  The belief that you are a worthless, undeserving, selfish and ridiculous creature is stashed away in the farthest reaches of your mind. You'll have to do some serious forgiveness work to uncover these beliefs and eradicate them.  But you can do this  Anyone can do this.

It's actually very easy to do this work.  It does take thinking time and a development of self-awareness, but there are processes that make it simple work to do.  It all has to do with your intentions for your life.  What do you intend?  What do you choose?  Is it your choice to learn to be happy...to live the life that you were created for?

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Are you an eternal victim?

A friend sent an email this morning saying she had found this statement thought-provoking: 

"When you forgive someone, you make a promise to not hold the unchangeable past against your present self. 

Free yourself of the burden of being an eternal victim."

These are quoted from an article called, "10 Painfully Obvious Truths Everyone Forgets Too Soon." http://livelearnevolve.com/10-painfully-obvious-truths-everyone-forgets-too-soon/

When we are wrapped up in thoughts of victim-hood, reviewing over and over in our minds how we have been wronged and put upon, we are stuck.  We are stuck in fear, negative emotion, anger and hurt.  We are contracting.  There is just no way to go truly, happily and creatively forward when victim-hood is the pattern of our reality. 

As the quote above says, the past is unchangeable.  Why are we allowing it to rule our lives today?  What insanity possesses us to allow events that happened twenty years ago to create our worlds today?  

Forgive and release the past.  Let it go.  Flip the switch from fear to love and watch your life change.  All things are possible but only when we are expanding.  In contraction we cannot create anything of true value.  But, when we are in a state of love and acceptance,  we create happiness and inner peace in our world.  It's just that simple!

If you want to start forgiving your past but are not quite sure how to start, there are many easy forgiveness processes outlined in "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  

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Get started right now!  If you want to to try a simple 20 minute forgiveness process today, download "Forgive Your Past Now".  It's a guided audio that will allow you to forgive and release a painful memory from your past today.  It's easy and it works.  Why not start creating happiness in your life today?

There's No Separation

"Many of us still believe that we have to work at being loving, but that means living in duality, because there's a giver and a receiver. Realizing that we are love transcends this. It means understanding that there's no separation between you and me, and if I'm aware that I am love, then I know that you are, too. If I care for myself, then I automatically feel the same for you!"  --Anita Moorjani in "Dying to be Me" 

This is how we forgive. We recognize that there is no separation between ourselves and our tresspasser. We are all connected. We love ourselves and we extend love to our trespasser. It's that simple. It all happens in the mind. We simply offer love in our thoughts. We flip the switch from angry, sad, hurtful thoughts to loving thoughts. That's all it takes.

The simple act of switching our thoughts from fear-based exclusion thinking to love-based inclusion thinking is the start of the creation of inner peace. Make this way of thinking a habit and happiness will become the dominant characteristic of your life.

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Take a Deep Breath and Just Do It

Forgiveness can seem distasteful when we are feeling very wronged by or annoyed with someone.  In fact, forgiveness can seem like the very last thing on earth we want to do.  I admit it...there have been plenty of times when I felt so disgusted by someone that the thought of forgiving them felt very uncomfortable.

Just get over it!  Yes, you heard me.  Just take a deep breath and do it.  Forgive.  Flip the switch from fear to love.  From anger, pain and judgement to acceptance.  Use one of my quickie forgiveness processes and it will all be over in a moment.

You'll be so glad afterward that you did this.  The twisted up feelings of hurt and anger will leave.  You'll feel so much better. Don't do it because "you should".  Don't do it because "God wants you to", or "It's what Jesus would do."  Do it for yourself.  You need it.  Forgiveness leads to happiness. Your happiness.

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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Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

One trick I use to help me forgive people who are behaving badly is to put myself in their shoes.  I try to see the world from their perspective.  Why are they doing what they're doing?  What rejections, abuses, hurts and scars from their past are motivating their actions today?  Might I behave just as badly under similar circumstances?

Also, is it possible that I might be pushing their buttons, just as much as they are pushing mine?  Why? 

I try to imagine what they were feeling and thinking when the upset occurred. I let my imagination go and create a story in my mind about what they may have been faced with.  It doesn't matter whether I come up with the actual truth of what was going through their minds.  My willingness to swap places with them for a moment is the act of forgiveness.  In that moment, we become brothers as I drop my judgment and release my hurt and anger. 

Sometimes the thought of feeling any sympathy whatsoever for someone who is behaving badly is very distasteful at first.  I have a strong resistance against seeing things from their side.  I know from experience, however, that I will feel so much better if I just turn it around.  It takes courage to face it, but if I do it, I will heal myself and this healing leads to happiness.  

 

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Get on the Forgiveness Gravy Train

Forgiveness changes your life.  If you want to stop living a nightmare and move your life into the "happy dream" life the Course of Miracles promises, only forgiveness can get you there. 

Some ways a steady habit of forgiveness will change your life:

Your life begins to feel lighter, easier, more pleasurable.  This brings you happiness.

The people you've forgiven change and actually become less annoying.  The more you forgive them, the more they change.  This brings you peace.

Life eases up.  Nightmarish things occur less often or not at all.  This brings you security. 

You begin to feel powerful in the role you play in healing the world around you. This brings you joy.

As your forgiveness work accumulates, you find that you are actually forgiving yourself on a deep subconscious level.  You allow yourself to accept God's gifts because you actually believe you deserve them now.  This brings you abundance.

The more you forgive yourself, the more you see the false self and the false world you've created.  This brings you truth. 

As you  begin to see your false self you begin to really see the insane lies you've been telling yourself and the insane things you've been doing, and you develop humility.  This brings you dignity.

Life slows down.  You take more time with what's important.  You know the difference between crazy ego schemes and the simple truth of God's love. You see the "real world" all around you.  This brings you beauty. 

You see your brother in every person you encounter.  This brings you love. 

Forgiveness will bring you everything you truly want!

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Forgiveness is Easier Than You Think

Yes, it actually is easy, once you get the hang of it.  In fact, it's not only easy, it's pleasurable!

However, easy forgiveness requires a shift in the way we view the world.  We have to stop thinking about the world from the same perspective we've seen it from all of our lives.  We have to let go of a world where "me" and "them" are two different things. 

In order to forgive easily, we need to see the world as a place where we are split off from our normal home in the Oneness of God.  We are here to learn some lessons and purify, but our real home is with God.  In our real home, we all live in perfect bliss, forever. 

When we come here to earth, it's set up so that we forget everything about our true reality.  Then we start to get all caught up in the illusions that make up our lives on earth.  We start to want things.  First we want toys and playmates, but later we want houses and cars and relationships.  We might want success, fame, power or glory.  Wanting these things can set us at odds with other people.  Often, one person wrestles these things away from someone else.  One of us wins, and one of us loses. 

When we lose, we can feel hurt, angry or fearful.  When we win, we feel guilty, although some of us are not aware of this in our every day consciousness.  Rest assured, however, that whenever we win at the expense of someone else, we create guilt deep in our sub-consciousness. We all have mountains of this guilt hidden deep in our minds and it is the source of our real anxiety, worry and fear.

In reality, we're all the same, each of us created exactly in God's image and loved infinitely by him.  God wants us to know this about each other.  The way we do this is through our forgiveness.

When we forgive, we drop our earthly view of the person we are forgiving and we see their higher truth.  We know them as God's beloved son.  We recognize that if God loves them unconditionally, then they are truly worthy of our love, too.

Of course, in the beginning, this is not always easy.  It takes practice to get good at this.  What happens, however, as we start to forgive others, is that we find that we feel so much better afterward.  Over time, we realize that we can feel better NOW, if we will only let it go, shift our perspective and see the higher truth of our trespasser.

Another benefit of forgiveness is that as we begin to forgive the people and the world around us, that horrible guilt that has been building up in our sub-consciousness is dissipated.  Over time, through our weeks, months and years of forgiveness, a significant release of this guilt occurs and we find our lives become peaceful and happy, even blissful. 

If you are just starting out with forgiveness, try this beautiful forgiveness process from Lesson 68 in the Workbook from A Course of Miracles.

As a beginner, I would recommend that you not start out with the most difficult forgiveness task in your life.  Rather, select the people who are only mildly annoying you, people who are not wreaking major damage to your life. Let's go for success and ease this first time out of the box!

"Think of the minor grievances you hold against those you like and even those you love.  It will quickly become apparent that there is no one against whom you do not cherish grievances of some sort.  This has left you alone in all the universe in your perception of yourself. 
 
Determine now to see all these people as friends.  Say to them all, thinking of each one in turn as you do so:

 

I would see you as my friend, that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself. 

 

Think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world that protects you and loves you, and that you love in return.  Try to feel safety surrounding you, hovering over you and holding you up.  Try to believe, that nothing can harm you in any way.  Tell yourself: 

 

Love holds no grievances.  When I let all my grievances go I will know I am perfectly safe." 

What about the people who do real damage to our lives...how do we forgive them? Obviously, serious injuries require serious forgiveness work. In my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", there are many forgiveness processes explained. There is a process that works on any problem in your life. Rest assured, however, that even serious forgiveness work can become easy and pleasurable. And the rewards of living a steady forgiveness habit are simply too fabulous to pass up!

 

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What's on Your List?

Stuff to Forgive...

• barking dogs in the neighborhood
• your spouse for not appreciating you enough
• your kids for making a mess all over the house, yet again
• the girl that made fun of your skirt in the fifth grade
• the first guy that broke up with you
• your former "best friend" for dating your x-boyfriend
• your aging parent for getting old
• yourself for creating clutter in your house
• your friend and neighbor for dying unexpectedly
• the deep hurt you feel that everyone ignores you much of the time

We all have lots of stuff like this.  Go ahead...make a list.  Take ten or twenty minutes and jot down everything you can think of.  Nothing is too big or too small.  Don't bother even thinking about trying to forgive anything on the list right now.  Just get it down.  Just write.  Do a brain dump. 

Once you have your list, start to work on forgiving one thing on the list each morning when you do your daily meditation and prayer work.  Take it slow.  Don't worry if you don't always forgive something new every day.  Sometimes I work on the same thing for many days at a time.  And sometimes, I just stew.  I think about forgiving, but I'm just not ready to face it, yet. 

That's OK.  Just know that it is right, however it is.  Don't be surprised if the universe gives you a little shove.  It might gift you with a little more information or insight about what you are forgiving or it might be another forgiveness "lesson" that is similar.  Chances are you'll be gently nudged in ways that will help you tackle each item on your list.  Let it unfold and do the forgiveness work you can as quickly as you are ready. 

As you move forward, remember that you are doing this FOR YOU!!  YOU want to be happy.  YOU want the peace. 

 

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

 

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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:

Amazon.com

Barnesandnoble.com

Balboapress.com