What's to Forgive About the 4th?

Perhaps your 4th of July celebrations went off quietly and without a hitch.  Your 4th was peaceful or uneventful.  If so, you are free of forgiveness homework for now, but do remember that forgiveness opportunities are a part of everyone's life and if you're not being given a forgiveness assignment this weekend, you'll get one soon enough.

If, however, you had a crazy busy 4th with lots of family and friends treading on each others toes, travel traffic to deal with, crowds, summer heat and burnt BBQ, you might have a little forgiveness work to do.  Spend a few quiet moments quickly reviewing your holiday today.  Were there disappointments or moments of frustration and anger?  Did anyone insult you or hurt your feeling?  Did your buttons get pressed at any point either by people you know and love, by strangers in the crowds or traffic or simply by the events of the weekend?  If you find that there were any moments where you felt any negative feelings at all, it's time to do a little forgiveness work.

Send a little love to whomever or whatever activated your emotions over the holiday.  Go ahead.  Just flip the switch from fear and negative thinking to love.  If you find forgiveness easy, just see the people or events you need to forgive enveloped in white light.  You can say the words, "I forgive you.  I release you.  I bless you with love."  Or, you can envision them floating skyward in their brilliant white light and say the words, "I raise you. I praise you." over and over until you feel the switch has been flipped from fear to love.  You'll know it in your heart when that has happened.  If you're in the habit of forgiving, a quickie forgiveness process like one of these usually does the trick.  Congratulations...job done!

However, if you're new to forgiveness or if you had a particularly unsettling run-in with someone, you can try a more structured forgiveness process.  You can go to Colin Tipping's web-site and download one of his radical forgiveness forms.  Or, you can download my audio forgiveness meditation, "Forgive Someone Now",https://www.tahoedreaminteriors.com/forgive-someone-now/ which will guide you through forgiveness for only $2.99.  You can load it onto your computer or cell phone so that you can listen to it anytime you need it.  It will teach you an easy forgiveness process that you can use anytime and anywhere.

Get in the habit of reviewing your weekend every weekend and clearing through any unsettling events with forgiveness.  A forgiveness habit will create peace in your life over time.  You'll be amazed at how much your life and the world around you will change with a forgiveness lifestyle.  Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

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Sometimes We Dread Forgiving Certain People

Forgiveness is actually very easy, once you get the hang of it.  However, forgiveness does take getting past one hurdle and that is letting go of the pleasure we feel in our victim-hood.  Does that idea surprise you?  Well, it's true that we enjoy being victims and the evidence of that is simply that we choose to be victims.  We stubbornly hang on to our victim-hood.  We love to savor our anger and outrage.  We love to get into our pain and we love to feel put upon and abused.  Our hurt feeds the fire of our indignation.

It can sometimes be a big step to let all that go.

But like any big step, if you want to make progress, you just have to do it.

Remember what it was like, learning to put your head underwater for the first time?  You just held your nose and dunked.  You just did it, even though you may not have known what it would be like.  You just trusted that it would be good.

Sometimes, when we are thinking about forgiving someone that we believe is particularly heinous, the idea of forgiving feels very distasteful.  Now that I am in the habit of forgiving everything, I don't feel that way anymore, but I do clearly remember how unpleasant it once was to offer forgiveness to the few people in my life that I believed were villainous.  I don't know why we sometimes resist forgiving so strongly.  Maybe we just want to hang onto our feelings of superiority.  "He's a horrible person and that makes me a good person."  Perhaps that kind of thinking just makes us feel better.  It's hard to give it up.

My best advice, if you're feeling that way, is to just do it.  Just hold your nose and dive into the forgiveness.  It will be over before you know it and you'll feel totally different about it afterward. You just will.  Forgiveness makes everything better.

In my meditation class today, we did a simple meditation from the book "Aging as a Spiritual Practice" by Lewis Richmond.  I'd like to share it with you, because I think it might be a good little exercise to ease into forgiveness, especially if you have some unpleasant people that you're feeling reluctant to forgive.  Here it is:

Find a quiet place and spend a few minutes calming your mind and listening to your breath.  When you are ready, imagine a small intense orb of white light in your heart center.  "On each in-breath feel the breath coming in from the world and refreshing the sphere of light.  On each out-breath, feel the breath going back out into the world with that light's generous energy."  Continue with this for a minute or two, feeling the flow of white light out into the world around you, healing, cleansing, offering love. 

Now, imagine that there is a mirror image of yourself sitting opposite you.  Let the cleansed out-breaths of white light surround and permeate the image of yourself.  Then as you breathe in, imagine that all the troubles, problems, pains and emotional hurts float out from the image of yourself and into your real self, down into the white light in your heart center where they can be cleansed and consumed in the light.  You are purifying and healing all the troubles away. Then breath pure white loving light out and into the image of yourself.  Let your breath circle generosity to and from yourself.  Continue on with this for a short time until you feel that all the problems and pains have been transformed. 

Next, imagine that there is someone you love sitting opposite you and continue the healing and loving breathing with them until they are cleansed (this should happen in five or six breaths or so).  Then switch to another person you love. Do this for three or four people. 

Now...here comes the good part, and it should be fairly easy to do because you are now in a very loving place.  Switch the person sitting opposite you into someone you need to forgive.  Continue to breathe out the loving white light, flooding their image with kindness and healing.  Then breathe in all their pain and difficulties to your heart center where the white light can transform them into pure loving energy.  Do this until you feel you have cleansed and healed them.   

This is another good example of the action of "flipping the switch" in our minds from fear to love.  At first it can seems almost inconceivable that we could look on someone that we loathe with love.  However, once we teach our minds how to do it, it becomes very easy.  In some ways the mind is very trainable.

So if you're feeling fear, reluctance or righteousness about forgiving someone unpleasant in your life, take the plunge.  Have a forgiveness baptism.  The water's fine!

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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!

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When Forgiveness Seems Difficult

Yes, it's true...forgiveness can seem overwhelming when we're not in a regular forgiveness practice.  The first time we sit down and truly tackle forgiving someone, it can feel almost impossible.

That's happening for two reasons.  The first is that our ego loves to hold tight to our grudges, cherishing our wounds and flaming up the intensity of our pain.  The second reason is that we simply don't have the tools we need to forgive.

The first step is to use logic against the ego.  After all, it's actually very logical to forgive.  Holding grudges prevents us from experiencing happiness and inner peace.  We need to firmly tell our egos to get out of our way and to let us try forgiveness.

Baby steps.  Then, for our first time out of the box, let's just try a tiny forgiveness baby step.  Just sit quietly, with closed eyes and visualize that we are sending a huge stream of white light to our trespasser.  It's really that simple.  We are flipping the switch.  We're going from anger and resentment to love.  It may not feel like deep love yet, but we're making a very important step with our gift of white light.

And that's all it takes!  It's not necessary to call and make up with this person.  It's not necessary to apologize or take them out to lunch.  In fact, it's OK if we never see them again. We don't have to be friends with someone who has hurt us in the past.  But we do need to let our hurt feelings and anger release.   Just flip the switch from fear to love with the gift of white light and we will have made a great step forward in the act of forgiving.

It's likely that a few hours from now, or a few days from now, we'll find ourselves once again feeling annoyed or hurt and upset about this same person.  That's OK.  Just go back to using a little more white light whenever our thoughts go dark.  We are flipping the switch again from fear to love. Each time we forgive with our white light, the fear will be lessened.   And we'll keep sending white light until we have completely forgiven...because we know that a lifestyle of forgiveness leads to a life of happiness.

If you like this experience and would like to learn deeper forgiveness processes:

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And if you would like to gently guided through a quick and easy to use but very effective process for forgiving someone, download "Forgive Someone NOW".  Only $2.99.

Choose Again

A Course in Miracles tells us that in every moment we have the opportunity to choose again.  This means that we can always change our thinking.  It's only thought.

Thought changes surprisingly easily.  It really does.  But it requires a decision on our part to want it to change.  Try it sometime.  When you find yourself stewing about somebody or something, make a decision to let it go.  Send light and love to whomever you are annoyed with or hurt by.

You'll probably feel resistant to this for a moment.  That's because the ego loves to flare up the flames of resentment.  It's in the ego's best interest to keep you stewing.  Just push past those feelings and force yourself to change your thought.  Get past any feelings of distaste you have toward forgiving whomever is upsetting you and just do it!!

Surround your trespasser in light and then surround yourself, too.  Give these grievances over to the Holy Spirit.   In a few moments you'll be amazed at how differently you can feel.

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Another Quickie Forgiveness Process

Although I am primarily a Course of Miracles student, I love the way the Science of Mind folks pray.  They are so good with words and their intentions are so clear.  Just read some Ernest Holmes if you want to see what I mean.

This is a lovely little prayer which is commonly used in Science of Mind practice and can be directed toward another person.  It is often used for healing or aiding a prayer partner.  However, I think it also makes a perfect little forgiveness process.  Just insert the appropriate name in the blank.

Affirmation for Self and Prayer Partner

There is one life.  This life is good.  This life is God.  This life is my life now.  In knowing that I am one with the life that is God, I know that I am whole, perfect, prosperous and complete in Mind, Body and Spirit.  I rely on Spirit revealing a healing in my life and in the Life of __________.   I know for ____________ that s/he is an expression of the Divine and that Divine right action is the truth of ____________'s experience in all ways.  Gratefully, I release this word, knowing it is so.  And so it is.  

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Who is Irritating You Today?

Make it a practice to search your mind each day to discover all the people you feel annoyed or upset with.  Don't miss anyone.  This is important. 

Maybe a stranger cut you off in traffic on your way to work this morning.  Perhaps you stopped in for coffee and some pushy lady gave you a good jostle without saying sorry.  Was your spouse in a grouchy mood?  Did your children leave a mess in their rooms?  Do you have a client who is not returning phone calls?  Is a co-worker talking too much and wasting your time?  Maybe a friend is calling on the phone to whine about her relationship with her boyfriend, once again.

   

Gather all these people up in your mind and, one by one, forgive them all.  It only takes a minute or so for each person.  Just get it done!  If you can't do it right now, be sure you do it before the day is over.  In fact, the best time might just be as you crawl in bed tonight.  Forgive every one of the day's offenders and sleep peacefully.

If you create a habit of forgiving everyone, everyday, your life will change. 

Here's a quick and easy forgiveness practice you can use.  Picture each person you want to forgive individually and say: 

You are Spirit

Whole and Innocent

I Forgive You, I Release You

I Bless You With Love

 

You may have to repeat this a few times, but stay very sincere.  Really think about what these words mean.  When you say "You are spirit", know that each person is a beloved Son of God, made exactly in his own image.  And when you say the words "I bless you with love", visualize yourself gifting this person with as much love as you can. 

 

If you find that you are simply too deeply angry to forgive one or more of these people, you may need some hard-core forgiveness practices.  No worries, tools for handling the people and situations that really, really press our buttons can be found in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".

 

 

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

 

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A Forgiveness Blessing

Try this sometime on someone you feel annoyed with.  Simply close your eyes and feel these thoughts going out to them, blessing and healing.  All thoughts are shared.  When you know your brother's truth, it becomes available for them to know, too. 

You are immense, because you are everywhere. 

You are magnificent, because you are what God is. 

You are always, because you live in eternity.