Showing posts with label painful memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label painful memories. Show all posts

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Don't Change the Subject

Unpleasant memories come upon us.  Sometimes it happens in our dreams.  We wake feeling troubled with past pain.  And sometimes something in our waking hours triggers a troubling thought and suddenly we're flooded with that same old aching wound. We've been here before...thousands of times.

The next time this happens, don't change the subject. These memories are returning to us over and over again because we are being given a chance to absolve them for once and for all.

Burn baby Burn. You can quickly burn through these memories and old hurts and once you do so, their pain will leave your mind permanently. They'll never again trigger intense emotional aching.



It's very simple to do.  Rather than chasing the painful thoughts from your mind, invite them in.  Let them become larger.  Intensify them.  Now move them into your heart area and ask for the heat.  Just watch now.  You'll actually start to feel the heat as the flames of your heart burn these memories to oblivion.  It doesn't take long, maybe ten or fifteen minutes.  Just keep digging up the memories and piling them onto the flames. Visualize the event in your past.  Remember as many details as you can.  Let yourself feel the pain you felt then, but feel it in your heart and let it burn up and leave you.  Find other similar memories if you have them and add them, too.  Get rid of the whole subject category in your mind!

Releasing old pain and forgiving the past is the pathway to happiness.  There are many forgiveness processes in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  Some are simple like this one and some go deep into our minds to help us identify, understand and work through complicated or intense emotional wounds.  One of the processes will work on whatever is troubling you.

Yes, forgiveness takes a little effort, but the rewards are boundless.  Happiness?  Inner peace?  Yes, please!


Available at:

amazon.com
barnesandnoble.com
balboapress.com

Monday, February 17, 2014

How to Forgive Really Big Betrayals

Once you get a forgiveness lifestyle happening, most of your forgiveness work will be fairly easy.  Lately I've been discussing the concept of "flipping the switch" from judgement to acceptance or fear to love.  This is a fairly easy process and once you understand it and have worked with it for awhile you'll find that you can forgive most of life's little annoyances and wounds in a minute or so of correct thinking.

However, there are other kinds of forgiveness needs in our lives and some are more challenging than this.  One is for big betrayals.  Not all of us have experienced a core-shattering betrayal, but if you have, you'll know how deeply painful this can be.  



My own experience with forgiving big betrayals has shown me that they require a lot of forgiveness work, often over an ongoing period of time.  Also, I've found that some deep betrayals need to be forgiven from a number of different angles and using a number of different processes.

Let's deal with the ongoing aspect of forgiving big betrayals first.  When we are deeply and utterly betrayed to our cores, there is so much hurt that it sometimes releases slowly.  In forgiving big betrayals, I found that I would forgive only to find that just a few days later, painful memories were running through my mind all over again. Much of the hurt, anger and other painful emotions had returned in almost full force.   

When this happens, there is nothing you can do, but forgive the whole mess all over again to the best of your ability.  Sometimes this means that you are forgiving the same event over and over again for weeks, months or even years.  It's important not to feel alarmed or overwhelmed by this.  Settle in to the fact that some of the biggest traumas of our lives take some time and effort to work through.  As we forgive, accept and release the pain, over time we will find that our forgiveness load lightens considerably every time we work with it and that eventually, the traumatic painful emotions lift completely away, never to return.  Have patience and keep chipping away at it.  You will come to the other side of it.

It's complicated!


One thing I've found is that there are often a number of different emotional aspects surrounding a big betrayal.  In other words, it's complicated.  As we forgive one part of it, other aspects come to the surface of our minds.  As each aspect comes into our awareness, we need to forgive that part of the betrayal.  We might find that we are forgiving one big betrayal, but that this event had repercussions that affected a myriad of aspects in our lives.  The trusting way we formerly looked at the world may have changed.  The betrayal may have forced significant changes into our daily lifestyles, perhaps financial, or we may even have had to move houses or change jobs.  If we have children, they may be affected.  Perhaps our betrayer was someone we spent a great deal of time with, and now we are mourning the loss of a best friend or spouse.  Our confidence levels may have changed and our sense of overall fear may be increased.  Perhaps this event tied into earlier memories of betrayal in our past that need to be dug up from the interior of our minds and processed.  

Understanding and forgiving all this needs contemplative time.  Think of this betrayal as a big knotted ball of yarn in our sub-consciousness.  We need to unravel every thread and release it individually until eventually, there is nothing left. 


A great starting place for forgiving a big betrayal is with Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms. (available for free at www.colintipping.com under "free stuff")  They really force you to do some deep thinking about how the betrayal has affected you.  If you are really deeply hurt, be prepared to do quite a few forms.  Try to tackle a form every day or so for awhile until you feel that the forgiveness is taking effect.  Every time you become aware of a new aspect of the betrayal that needs to be forgiven, write it down on an ongoing forgiveness "to do" list.   This way, you'll know the direction your forgiveness will take each day.  

I also like using a number of other forgiveness processes on something big like this.  There are several great ones outlined in my book "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", particularly "Feel the Feelings".  Also, my "Forgive Your Past NOW" audio meditation can be of significant help in breaking through a lot of the pain and hurt in one quick blow.  

Just remember that forgiveness is a lifestyle.  It is something we do everyday.  We are all given forgiveness assignments in this lifetime. Everyone of us has bruises, bumps and deep wounds to forgive.  It is as we forgive, accept and release that the true meaning of love begins to flow into our lives.  It starts off slowly at first, but as our forgiveness lifestyle grows, our understanding of the true meaning of love does, too.  And when this happens, we begin to know the deep inner peace that is our divine inheritance.  It's always ours to receive, but forgiveness is the way that we convince ourselves that we are worthy of accepting it.  


Available at:
 Barnesandnoble.com
Amazon.com
Balboapress.com


Audio download with the "feel the feelings" forgivness process:




  

Monday, February 10, 2014

Painful Memories from the Past

Do you sometimes find your mind running through important moments from your past?  Do the same old unresolved issues pop up in your mind repeatedly?



When these memories come, give yourself a little emotional check-up.  Are you feeling calm and comfortable with what you're remembering or is there a tightness in your chest, an upset feeling in your stomach, an elevated heart rate or a shallowness of breath?

If you feel any physical symptoms associated with these memories, then it's probably time to forgive and release them.   After all, they are returning to you over and over again for just that purpose.  You're getting another chance to do your forgiveness work.  Perhaps you were too young the first time around and couldn't really process what was happening.  Perhaps you didn't know how to forgive then.  That's all perfectly okay, because you can take up now what you left off with then.

There is no time and space.  (This is not just a "spiritual" belief.  It is now scientifically proven thanks to Einstein's theory of relativity.)  What it means for your spiritual life, however, is that you can forgive anybody any time and any place and make things right.  You can forgive something from your past today.  It doesn't matter where the other person is now and it's perfectly fine if they are not even living.



You don't need to be with someone to forgive them.  In fact, it's not necessary that you even see them ever again.  Forgiveness is something that happens in the mind.    It is a mental shift in your thinking.  Because all minds are joined, when you shift your thinking now, you are offering healing to any other minds involved wherever and whenever they are (and you are allowing your own mind to begin its healing process, too.)  You don't have to apologize, take them to lunch, write them a letter or wash their feet.  You do, however, have to look at people and events from your past differently.  You have to flip the switch.  When we flip the switch we go from fear to love.

It's important to watch what the mind is bringing to our awareness.  Unresolved issues will be presented over and over again.  Sometimes they come as actual remembrances of the past.  However, when issues are left unforgiven, unaccepted and unreleased, those same issues will be given to us again as a real-life 3D event.  A similar situation to the original will show up in our lives, giving us one more chance to make a better decision and to forgive.

Just a word of warning here.  It's your choice whether to forgive or not.  But just know that each time you get the same lesson over again, it's probably going to be bigger, more in-your-face, more painful.  Unresolved issues don't go away, they fester in our sub-conscious minds and each time they come back, they are much more obvious.  It's best to face it now.

In fact, why not just feel grateful for the opportunity to clean up your mind on this issue right here and now.  It's a blessing. The memories are coming back to you as a brand new chance for you to get this right, finally.  The universe is offering you what you need most to grow and learn.  In the classroom of life, we are always being offered another chance.

Be vigilant in monitoring your mind, always looking for these gems.  They are the chance to see something from your past differently.  Forgiving, accepting and releasing old wounds from the past leads to inner peace.  It takes constant thoughtfulness.  This is what a forgiveness lifestyle is all about.  We must develop the habit of reviewing our thoughts each day to see what is coming up for healing, but it is so worth the effort.  Isn't inner peace worth it?




Available at:
Barnesandnoble.com
Amazon.com
Balboapress.com


This downloadable guided forgiveness process is a wonderful way to learn how to forgive people and events from your past: