Why We Sometimes Feel Hatred for the People We Love the Most

The people we love most are in our lives for an important reason.  They are our biggest forgiveness lessons.

Colin Tipping, author of Radical Forgiveness, theorizes that before we incarnated,we made agreements with certain souls to come here together with the explicit intention to help each other learn our life lessons.  I don't know whether this is true or not, but I do find that there are a handful of  people that repeatedly give me my daily forgiveness lessons.

Although some of life's lessons happen with people we only know for a short period of time, most of our biggest lessons come as we learn to accept and forgive the people we deal with on a daily basis. Our families, our co-workers, our friends...we love 'em...and sometimes we hate 'em!  After all, whose flaws do we experience the most, red and raw and right in our faces?

As I work to forgive the same small handful of people again and again, I begin to feel a great gratitude for each one of them.  It is their presence in my life that is helping me to know myself and to release and forgive what needs to go from my own mind.  

When we feel annoyed with others, we are actually annoyed with a certain aspect of ourselves.  I had great resistance for this concept at first, but as I have worked with it over time, coming eventually to accept it, I now know that it is truth.  More importantly, I repeatedly see the evidence of it in my own life.

At first it seemed impossible that I was actually seeing my own negative traits in others and reacting to them. It was so much easier to project the things that were wrong with my life outward, to blame them on others. "They" were the wrong ones.  "They" were bad.  "They" were faulty, imperfect and flawed.  "They" were the ones requiring forgiveness.

For example, it used to upset me to be around people who expressed anger and short tempered-ness.  What was wrong with them?  Why couldn't they just get on with life without tantruming about everything?  It was all so hugely unpleasant.

However, when I finally worked up the courage to look deeply into my own psyche around this issue, I saw that there was suppressed anger lurking in the depths.  I grew up in a family where it was not okay to express anger.  We were always "nice" people.  However, I see now that I actually have a great deal of anger that I have been suppressing, hiding it from the world, and in the process, hiding it from myself, too. Now that I know it's there, I can work to forgive and release it.

Since we are here to learn love and acceptance, it stands to reason that we will draw into our lives people who will help us do this.  We will attract people that will sometimes annoy and even hurt us because they are here to show us what we need to accept and forgive, both within ourselves and in others.

The irony of all this is that when we finally deeply forgive and completely accept the people we love (and "hate") in our daily lives, we are not going to need these particular lessons anymore.  When this happens, the people we love will become more lovable to us.  We will feel less annoyed with them, or they will simply cease to be annoying.  Sometimes we mutually release each other and someone will move on.  Most people will stay, but under happier circumstances.  Whatever happens, with forgiveness, we can know that it will all be for the betterment of everyone involved.  That's because forgiveness 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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You are Beautiful!

 

God created each and every one of us in his own image.  We are all beautiful.  We are all perfect.  We are all infinite and powerful creators.  We are all perfect love.

 

Know this about yourself.  And know this also about each of your brothers...and this includes the "difficult" ones.  See them from God's perspective.  When you are doing this, you are forgiving them...and you are learning to forgive yourself.

 

 

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When Abundance Affirmations Don't Work...

Have you tried any of the popular New Thought practices about abundance only to have the same old problems and lack showing up repeatedly in your life?  Perhaps you've been told that you need to add "believing" or "faith" to thoughts of abundance in order to manifest them.  Have you tried this too, and again experienced little change in your circumstances? 

Why won't it work for you???

The reason why is that down deep in the darkest corners of your mind, you really don't believe you deserve abundance. 

We all have so much sub-conscious guilt built up from a life-time of what we believe to be our "sins".  (And, in fact, if you believe in reincarnation, just imagine how much guilt you might have from dozens and dozens of lifetimes of "sins".)  But beyond our belief that we are bad because of the "sins" we've committed, the whopper of all our guilt-producing acts is our original choice to separate from God. 

How do we reduce this monumental vat of guilt so that we can believe ourselves worthy of living happy lives?  How do we get back to God and live in peace and abundance?  We do it through our forgiveness, of course. 

Start to forgive the world around you and watch your life become rich.  A Course in Miracles calls this the "happy dream" life and it is something that each and every one of us is capable of achieving with a steady habit of forgiveness.  It doesn't happen over-night, but abundance will come to you, peace will come to you, love will come to you. 

When you learn to forgive the people and events that cause pain and anger in your life you will begin to forgive yourself. It's a universal law--you get what you give.  When you give forgiveness, you get forgiveness.   Months and years of forgiving others will ultimately lead to self-forgiveness.  And when you forgive yourself and release your guilt, you will begin to see that you really do deserve to live with all of God's gifts, including abundance.

It's a simple choice...do you want fear or love?  Fear creates lack and love creates abundance.  Which will you choose?

 

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What Could Bring You Greater Happiness?

All minds are joined.  Ultimately we are all part of the same universal mind.  When you forgive, you heal the universal mind just that little bit more.  As you heal yourself through your forgiveness you are also healing the world.  This is no small thing. 

"The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness."

 

"How holy are you who have the power to bring peace to every mind!  How blessed are you who can learn to recognize the means for letting this be done through you.  What purpose could you have that could bring you greater happiness?

 

You are indeed the light of the world with such a function.  The Son of God looks to you for his redemption. It is yours to give him, for it belongs to you."  

 --A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 63 

 

 

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For Peace--See the World Differently

I started studying A Course in Miracles during the 1990's, but frankly, it scared me a little bit, so eventually I put it aside.  At the time I didn't know how to reconcile the Jesus in the Course with the Jesus of my Methodist upbringing.

When I picked the Course up for the second time 15 years later, I went at it with an intense urgency and a strong desire to understand its message and to practice its teachings.  I began my studies in the Workbook and several months in, I began to hit lessons like Lesson 62 which is titled "Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world".  I started to realize that the Course was teaching forgiveness.  In fact, the Course was insisting that I learn to forgive. 

This was an immediate problem for me.  I had been brought up in a Methodist household and we were very involved with our church.  My dad ran the Sunday School and my mom ran the church office.  My sister and I attended Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, sang in the choir and were often running around the church halls after school while our mother worked.  I was, for the most part, a good kid and I listened carefully to our Sunday School lessons and tried to be a good girl.

I remember being taught about forgiveness one Sunday. My Sunday School teacher told us we should just drop our anger when we felt wronged. She told us the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and suggested that we should see ourselves as washing the feet of anyone who hurt us.

That week, my younger sister, Debbie, did something to make me angry.  Really angry.  I tried to drop my anger.  I sincerely tried.  But I was just too mad.  I thought about washing her feet and the idea utterly flummoxed  me.  I was so angry that I just couldn't even contemplate the thought of touching her "stinky" feet. 

I gave forgiveness a few more tries, but the idea of just dropping my angry or hurt feelings simply didn't work for me.  In fact, I actually liked those feelings quite a bit.  I spent a lot of time, reviewing in my mind how angry I was.  How wrong my sister always was and how right I always was!  She was selfish and bad, of course, and I was the righteous good girl. 

Now I have to laugh at this since my sister is my best friend today and I can't even remember what she could have done to make me so angry.  But I do remember feeling furious at her often during my childhood.  And since I never forgave her, it didn't take much of an affront for those feelings to flare up again, and they often did.  Each time I felt angrier and angrier at her.

Later in life I found myself judging others quickly and holding grudges for a long time.  If people behaved badly, I simply avoided them in the future or cut them out of my life.  If I was forced to work with or be around them, I often labeled them in my mind as "difficult" or "idiotic" and I would quietly fume under the surface in all our dealings

The truth is that forgiveness is the dirty little secret of Christians, spiritual people and truth seekers everywhere.  We all agree that it is important, but most of us haven't got the slightest clue how to really do it. 

In actuality, forgiveness is not only easy, but even pleasurable, once you get the hang of it. 

However, in order to forgive easily, most of us will probably have to significantly change the way we look at the world.  We will need to take a close look at who we really are and why we are all here.  It's not difficult to change how we see our lives and this world, but it does require an open mind and some thinking time.

See a different world.

In "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", I show you how to begin to see your role in the world differently.  Plus I've assembled practical easy-to-use tools to help you forgive everyone and everything that causes you pain and hurt.  As you incorporate forgiveness into your life, you'll find that your world becomes a better place.  Forgiveness becomes a pleasurable part of your daily life.  Everything gets easier.  Relationships improve.  Peace settles in.  Love becomes the way of things, and your connection to God becomes stronger and more powerful. 

 

"Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" is available in both hardcover and paperback at:

 

barnesandnoble.com

amazon.com

 

To download an ebook:

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