You Get What You Give

This is one of the Universal laws. What you give out, you get back.  When you give out love and forgiveness, that is what comes to you.  When you live in judgment and hold grudges, you will be judged and left un-forgiven. 

 

Which world do you want to live in? 

The one where you are gifting everyone around you with your love and forgiving every trespass?  In this world everyone around you loves and supports you and overlooks your shortcoming and mistakes.

Or, do you choose to judge others and hold your grievances?  In your world you will feel alone and afraid.  Everyone around you will judge your actions and find them lacking.  There will be no approval for you.  And there will be no forgiveness when you slip up.

Think about what it must be like to live in each of these two opposite worlds.  Imagine what a working life will be in each. In the first your work meets with approval and you are appreciated.  In the second you are attacked and scorned.

What about family relationships and friendships?  In the first you have friends and family that enjoy your company and have your back.  In the second world, you meet with constant criticism and nobody is there for you. 

How about romance in these two worlds?  In the first, you take your time getting to know your romantic partners.  You trust the world to bring you what's good for you so there's no rush.  Your love is mutual as you both love and respect each other. As time goes on your relationships develops into a deep caring and sharing partnership.

In the second world, early relationships might seem intense and exciting but after awhile, there is betrayal and rejection, no deep abiding love develops, there is no sense of strong partnership and ultimately there is no harmony, safety and peace in the relationship.

Forgive and accept the world around you and the people in your life.  Create a world that is safe, loving and supportive and where good things come to you.  A Course in Miracles calls this the "Happy Dream Life".   It doesn't happen overnight.  It takes a forgiveness lifestyle to create this world.  However, if you learn to practice forgiveness on every aspect of your life, it will come to pass that you will live a life in which you are surrounded by love and goodness. 

 

Available at:

 

Barnesandnoble.com

Amazon.com

balboapress.com

 

So....How Did it Go?

Okay.  Many of us have just made it through a major family holiday.  As we are getting our houses back to order, placing the good china back into the cupboard, and collecting all the shreds of wrapping paper, let's clean up our minds, too.

It's time to stop and review.  Quickly, mentally wind back the clock and review the time spent with your family members.  Were there any large blow-ups or small upsets?  Was there any moment at all when you felt that someone in your family was pushing your buttons?  Did you have any quick flashes of anger or annoyances?  Were you with anyone that just bugs you...period?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you have some forgiveness work to do.



Blow Ups   Let's start with the large blow-up.  If something like this happened in your family then set aside a little time in the next few days to do some deep soul searching around this.  A big blow-up is usually triggered by memories and behaviors from the past.  Take a look at whatever triggered the blow-up and see if you can relate it to events or feelings in your past, or the group's past.  Spend some time with this and keep asking your higher self questions until you get the answers you need.  Dig deep and really do some serious contemplative thought.  If you really want to know the answers, they will come.  Maybe not immediately, but eventually, you'll have them.

Once you can pin-point the issues involved, you can do the forgiveness work.  Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms are great for something like this.  You can get them for free at www.colintipping.com under free stuff. 

Fill out as many forms for as many people, memories or emotions that come to mind.  It's important to forgive as many aspects of a complicated group issue as you are able to.  Be sure to forgive each individual involved separately.

Small Upsets, Annoyances, Flashes of Anger   If these situations happened more than once, be sure to forgive each episode individually as well as any person involved individually.  Even if logic tells you that it wasn't someone else's fault, if they were at all involved, just go through the motions of forgiving them.  If you're not sure how to forgive, there are many processes outlined in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  Try them all and settle in on what works best for you. 

If you see any larger issues coming to the surface in your mind as you do this forgiveness work, then either get one of the Colin Tipping Radical Forgiveness forms, or use any of the other deep forgiveness processes from my book. 

Finally, be thankful for your family and their/your issues.  With each act of forgiveness we grow immensely.  Your family members have given you a beautiful gift of this opportunity to release old hurts and wounds.  Forgiveness unblocks sub-conscious barriers our minds create that keep us separated from God.  Forgiveness is the way home.

 

Available at:

Barnesandnoble.com

Amazon.com

Balboapress.com

Did Santa Bring You What You Want?

Let's broaden this question a little bit.  What do you want?  What do you really want? 

Are you wishing for a beautiful new pair of boots.  Or are you hoping for new Bose speakers?  Perhaps you covet an island vacation trip.  You may think that what you really want is a new car or a flat stomach or for someone to truly cherish and appreciate you. 

However, all these things are only representational of what you really truly want...you want real love.  You want the real love of God that calls to you from your ancient memories.

Every one of us knows down deep what this love feels like, but we've forgotten it.  Our egos have blocked out the memory.   Our egos have created football and presents and pancakes and twinkly lights.  Christmas music and airports and eggnog are all distractions the ego has created to keep us from our true knowing of God's love. The ego wants to keep us away from real love.  That's why his distractions can be so attractive and alluring.  Of course we want eggnog and a roaring fire.   The ego knows these things will keep our minds on the busy-ness of our days and away from real love. 

We've all seen that the ego has other tricks to play.  He has disease, disappointment, hardship and death.  These keep us distracted, too.  The ego plays dirty and he'll do whatever it takes to keep our minds from truth.

Today he plays his happy tricks.  That's fine.  Enjoy the Christmas pleasures.  Have a beautiful day.  I fully intend to enjoy my Christmas dinner.  Just keep in mind, along with me, that truth is not all about a fine Christmas ham.

It's about the love of God, the love that enfolds you in peace, perfection, safety and happiness.  A love that is infinite and never ends.  It's always there for us.  In order to have it, all we need to do is to see the false world the ego has set up around us.  When we do that, we can forgive this false world. 

The act of forgiveness brings us closer to thinking like God and when we do that we are entitled to accepts his gifts of love. 

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.

 

Available at: 

barnesandnoble.com

amazon.com

balboapress.com

 

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.

 

Available at:

 

barnesandnoble.com

amazon.com

balboapress.com

 

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.

 

 

 

Available at:

 

Barnesandnoble.com

Amazon.com

Balboapress.com

 

 

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.  

 

Available at:

 

barnesandnoble.com

amazon.com

balboapress.com