Forgiveness is a Lifestyle

Most people, if they bother at all with forgiveness, use it only on occasion.  They save it for those times when something comes up in life that smacks them in the face.  In those kinds of moments, there is just no peace without forgiving a particular person or situation...and so they forgive.

There's no doubt that this kind of forgiveness is helpful.  Anytime we forgive, we feel happier about our lives. 

However, if we want to be truly happy, we need to live a forgiveness lifestyle.  We need to develop daily forgiveness habits and we need to do the deep introspective work that allows us to delve into our pasts and root out all the hurt, anger and guilt that lurks deep in our sub-conscious.

Daily Affronts   Let's start with the daily forgiveness habit.  Each day many things transpire that push our buttons.  Create a habit of reviewing your day each night before you go to bed.  Gather together all the memories from your day of hurts, upsets and annoyances and methodically forgive and release each one.  This only takes a few minutes to do and it will make a big difference in your life. 

Forgive Your Past  It's also important to forgive people and events from your past that hurt or angered you.  At the beginning of this process it helps to keep an ongoing list.  Every time you remember somebody or something that damaged you in your past, add it to your list.  Then each morning when you take your daily time to pray and meditate, try to tackle an item on your list.  (I recommend using Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms for this.  You can get them on his website, www.colintipping.com under free stuff.)  If you devote ten or twenty minutes to this process  each day you'll find that in six months or a year, you'll have released a big chunk of the surface pain in your subconscious mind. 

Go Deep   Once you forgive and release much of the obvious stuff from your past, it's time to start the really deep work.  So many of our responses to and perspectives on the world around us have roots in painful moments in our past.  Many of these moments have been forgotten, cloaked or suppressed  by us.  Even if we do remember them, we may have forgotten the depth of the hurt they created. This hurt is often the key to much of the crazy, irrational behavior we exhibit in our lives today.  It is also the source of much of our unconscious guilt.  Forgiving this guilt and pain  requires some deep introspection and releasing techniques.  There are several processes outlined in my book which will help to root out memories and forgive and release them. 

This may seem like a lot of work, but it is actually fascinating to do (of course, what's more fascinating than our favorite subjects; ourselves!)  More importantly, this work leads to inner peace. Each act of forgiveness releases fear.  Over time, the forgiveness you do begins to accumulate into something magnificent.

Not only that, but in time the actual forgiveness work becomes pleasurable to do and searching our pasts for little scraps of intel that shed light on the pain that runs our lives today becomes like a treasure hunt.  Each scrap is cause for celebration, because releasing it leads to greater awareness and greater peace. 

Create a forgiveness lifestyle and live a life of peace and happiness.  It all starts with baby steps and you can begin right now by simply scanning your day and forgiving what bugs you.  What have you got to lose...except your pain?  Just get started.  Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

 

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Fragments

We are so much larger than what we are here on earth.  This is only a fragment of our whole self.  In reality, we are made by God, exactly in his image.

We are endless and everywhere.  We are timeless and always.  We are everything and all that is.

We are in God.  We are of God.  We are part of God.  We are one with God.

However you look at this bigger picture, we are so much more than the mere fragments of ourselves that we project into this illusory dream that is our life on earth. 

When we see a brother behaving badly.  We must learn to take a leap in our minds to that place where we know his real truth.  He is not the fragment we are seeing here.  He is a Son of God and his real truth is only love. 

Knowing this for him is your true act of forgiveness.

 

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You Can Learn to Forgive

Yes, learning to forgive seems difficult, but learning anything new can take perseverance and courage. We all have those characteristics, however, and we’ve demonstrated them repeatedly. We used them to learn to walk, to read, to find jobs. In fact, we use them every day!

 Forgiveness is not any harder than most of the challenges we face in life. And it is the one with the biggest payoff...peace.
 
Mandela is a great inspiration, because he moved past his resistance and fear, accomplishing complete forgiveness and acceptance. Perhaps his single greatest legacy is that he has shown us the way. We can all do it, too.

 

 

 

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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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Forgiving our Food

So many of us have food allergies, diabetes, gluten sensitivity, cholesterol issues, weight problems or other food-related issues.   It's easy to fall into the trap of taking this all too seriously and allowing food to become a controlling issue in our lives, and to believe that our food actually has the power to harm us. 

Rather, when we find ourselves thinking thoughts like; "I need to eat lots of vegetables to be healthy", or "I can't have fats or I'll weigh too much", or "If I eat grains or dairy (or whatever), I won't feel well", we need to examine the fact that we are allowing the ego to create fear in our minds around our food.  
 

 

I acknowledge that I am perfectly whole and healed.  I have created the belief that I need certain foods to heal myself as a way to join with the ego and separate myself from God. 

 

The ego's goal is to distract us from our truth.  It wants us to become engrossed in worries and fears.  It wants us to create judgments that certain things are bad and other things are good.  When we are in a state of fear, we are separate from God.  The ego wins. 

The ego wants us believing that bodies are real.  It wants to keep us away from the truth that We Are MIND.  Nothing physical can harm, hurt or heal us.

I release my attachment to believing that the food I eat can either harm or heal me and I acknowledge that my well-being is created in my Mind.  I ask the Holy spirit to be with me whenever I eat and to bless my food

 

So where does all this metaphysical thinking leave those of us who get hives all over our bodies when we eat certain foods, or are overweight or have dangerously high cholesterol?  Of course, it is perfectly fine to follow a sensible diet for now, if we feel led to do so. We must meet our world where we are right now.  Until we can absolutely and deeply know that we are only Mind, complete and perfect, it is prudent to do what our body "seems" to tell us it needs.  However, when we eat our food, we should do so with Spirit, turning it over to Spirit, acknowledging that we have faulty beliefs that our food can harm us and asking Spirit to help us know that we are actually healed and whole.


Here is a wonderful affirmation on food by Ernest Holmes in "The Science of Mind": 

My food agrees with me and I agree with it.  There is no condemnation in me or working through me.  I understand that food is a spiritual idea of substance and I am now in complete agreement with this idea.  Everything that I eat is perfectly assimilated and perfectly eliminated.  I have no trouble digesting my food for digestion is also a spiritual idea and works in perfect harmony with all that I take into my system.  My system is spiritual and harmonious with every idea that passes through it.  My food is spiritual and harmonious with my system.  Substance and supply for the physical body are both spiritual and cannot create any inner disturbance whatsoever. 

And another beautiful quote from "The Way of Mastery":

Those that know that only Love is real are not concerned with what they eat and what they drink.  For these things come into the body and leave through the body  They are concerned only with whether or not that which they consume for the sake of the body was consumed in Love.

For love is what allows the transmutation of anything that comes into the physical system and allows it to be turned to that which supports the energetic wholeness of the physical system itself.  It is far greater to have a bottle of Scotch for breakfast in a state of total Christed Love, than it is to have nine thousand vitamins with one tiny little fearful thought.

For you see, it is fear that causes you to be unable to digest what you place in the body.

 

 

I have been greatly inspired this week by some thoughts on food by Corrine Zupko on "From Anxiety to Love" who was asked the question: "What's the point of eating healthy or taking vitamins if the world is an illusion?"

 

 

 

Zupko says; "It all boils down to this.  "I exercise/juice/take medicine/take vitamins because I still haven't accepted that I am already healed.  I still haven't accepted that EVERYTHING is coming from my sleeping split mind and that all healing comes from within.  I still believe the cause of healing is outside of myself, and something that will be achieved "later".

Her whole article is terrific and very thought provoking.  I have read it over every day this week.  You can find it here.

 

 

The holidays are a time of food and togetherness.  Let's be mindful this year to turn our thoughts on food away from guilt and toward loving acceptance of the food we eat, the people in our lives and the world around us. 

 

 

 

 

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Forgive Your Family for Christmas

What could be a more beautiful gift than to free our families from old angers and hurts?  This is something we can do quietly on our own.  We don't need to have any "deep" one-on-one conversations or unpleasant family dramas to do this.  We can simply go inside, into our own mind where all the "real" stuff happens. 

Our own individual act of forgiveness will begin to change our personal relationships with each of our family members, and it might even change the overall family dynamics, too.  More importantly, whether or not our family changes dramatically, we will have a new perspective, one that is more loving and accepting.  We will be more peaceful and happier than before.

Because we have spent so many years with our families, feeling irritated, annoyed, hurt and even possibly abused by them, the wounds relating to our families run deep.  Even people who have relatively easy family relationships will have much to forgive when they really start to dig honestly into their pasts. 

Let's start by looking at our own beliefs.  If we experience feelings like these below (and everybody does), we can be almost certain that we will find their roots in our early childhood years with our family:

• I'm not worthy
• I always get abandoned
• Nobody likes me
• I always get what's leftover
• Everybody ignores me
• I'm not good enough
• I get rejected
• I'm not loveable
• What I feel does not matter
• Nobody listens to me
• They only like me when I'm good (or smart, or funny, or pretty, or whatever)

Go ahead and look at this list and decide which beliefs apply to your life.  Now set aside a little quiet time to spend with each of these thoughts.   Think back to your childhood and try to remember times when you felt these beliefs intensely.  What was happening?  Who was involved?  Now try to remember the very first time you experienced any of these beliefs.  Remembering the very first incident is a wonderful thing because it gives you a specific moment in time and specific people to forgive. 

Now its time for a little forgiveness work.  In "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", I recommend lots of different forgiveness processes.  I find that each processes works best for different types of forgiveness issues.  For deep family stuff, one process I like to use involves Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms.  You can get these at www.colintipping.com under "Free Stuff".  You have to register for the site, but it is well worth it.

The old pain and hurt we associate with our family took years to build up and develop, so don't expect to be able to root it all out over-night.  This is a process and it will take time.  However, you can accomplish miracles if you just get started on it.  Whatever you do before Christmas, even if it is only a small dent, will help you make it through the holidays with more peace in your mind and love in your heart. 

Forgiveness is really a lifestyle and it is something that happens over months and years of looking deep within to find acceptance for all the people and everything that occurred in our past.  A lifestyle of forgiveness creates a happy life.  Don't waste time living without peace.  Give yourself the best Christmas gift ever and get started on forgiveness now!

 

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What do you Choose?

"Nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace or upset you in any way."  --A Course in Miracles Lesson 70, Workbook

It's all a matter of choice.  How do we choose to see the world?  If we choose to see it through the eyes of forgiveness, the world will treat us gently.  If we choose to hold grievances, the world will continue to seem to be a fearful place. 

When we forgive, we are trusting God and knowing that everything we experience is for our greater good.  Sometimes it can be hard to understand this, especially when we are in the midst of  what seems nightmarish.  However, almost always, a purpose behind the pain comes clear at a later time.

In the meantime, we can look at the painful situations we have drawn to us and meditate on what we can learn from then.  What can we accept and forgive here?  How is this situation helping us to grow and purify and come to know more of love?

 

 

 

 

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