Grace Period

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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. 

Son, Your Sins are Forgiven

I'm reading a wonderful book right now by Adyashanti called Resurrecting Jesus, Embodying the spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic.  Adiyashanti is himself a modern day mystic and his take on Jesus's life and teachings is fresh and beautiful.

This morning I was reading in Resurrecting Jesus about a healing Jesus performed in Mathew 2:5.  In it, a paralyzed man was brought to Jesus for healing.  Jesus simply said to him, "Son, your sins are forgiven." and the man was healed.

Adyshanti points out that the word sins, at that time, had simpler connotations than they have been given in the following 2,000 years.  The original Greek meaning for the word hamartia or sin, was to miss the mark. Another meaning is simply the word flaw.  Our current meaning of sin is so much darker and deeper.  We think of our sins as being evil and they are strongly attached to feelings of shame and guilt.

What if, instead of thinking of sin as the source of guilt and upset in our lives, we merely choose to see the ways we have missed the mark?  After all, we are simply trying to do what it takes to survive and find a few comforts here in our earthly reality, our space and time reality.  We all make mistakes here, we misjudge, we miss the mark.  We all have flaws.  Having a flaw is not inherently evil.

Adyashanti makes a second point; that the paralytic had to do nothing to be healed by Jesus.  He was merely brought into Jesus' presence.  "And this is really Jesus's greatest healing power, the power of his presence."

Jesus bestows his forgiveness on people as a kind of healing balm.  For a human being to receive true forgiveness is a potent thing.  When the forgiveness is authentic, it has a very deep and powerful effect.  Sometimes another forgives us, and sometimes we are called to forgive ourselves so that we can move on in a really heartful way.  When we repent (repent means to have a change of heart), our sin (missing the mark) is forgiven.  Then we are realigned with the wisdom of the unified heart.  --Adyashanti

Adyashanti goes on to say:

The healing balm is forgiveness; that's what heals the flaw.  That's what allows us to rebalance ourselves, to find our equilibrium-- psychic, emotional and spiritual.  That is really what Jesus does: he is righting the person,  helping them to quickly find internal balance.  When they find balance, when their inner state is unified, the healing takes place.

I really enjoy Adyashanti and I admire what he has to say here, but I think he misses one important point in what Jesus has to say.  The first word that Jesus says to this man is Son.  Jesus addresses him as Son, not as in "young man", after all, Jesus himself was only 30 at the time.  But rather as Son, Son of God, the Son of God, an essential member and vibrant part of the Sonship.

When Jesus uses the word Son, he is reminding the paralytic of his true identity, and Jesus is raising his own thinking.  He doesn't see a poor broken sinner in front of him.  Rather, he sees a true Son of God, one whom God created in his own image and whom is loved by God infinitely.  This man is just as God created him to be.  He is perfect, whole and complete.  He is eternal, everywhere and always, unchanging in his true state.

Let our own forgiveness be as Jesus's.  Let us know that everyone misses the mark sometimes.  We all have flaws.  Let us always be firmly anchored in the presence of the divine which resides in each of us.  And finally, let us look deep into the mind of our trespassers and know their deepest truth.  They are Sons of God.