How to Forgive a Bully

Last night in my A Course in Miracles study group, a friend mentioned to me that one of her friends is currently reading my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".  She is only partly though it, but she is coming to understand how important forgiveness is.  However, as many of us do, she has something big in her past that needs to be forgiven, and the idea of letting it go not only confuses but upsets her.  She was raped.  She said to my friend, "Why do I have to forgive someone who RAPED me??!!"

In addition, I've been thinking a lot lately about people around the world who are right now dealing with powerful bullies, dictators and political enemies that need to be forgiven.

I admit that this is a difficult kind of forgiveness.  It takes a little more soul searching and growth to forgive on this level than just forgiving the guy that stole your parking spot at the grocery store.

What's a bully, really?  Bullies are people who experience a great deal more fear than you and I do.  That's why they act out in ways that we would never ever consider.

Remember that everything that any of us do here is either an act of love or it is a call out for love.  That's it.  In every moment, we are either in a state of love or in a state of fear.

Where most of us drift back and forth between love and fear throughout each day, bullies have indulged their fearful sides.  More, or practically all, of their daily thoughts (both consciously and sub-consciously) relate to fear.  As they allow their fear to grow, their behavior becomes more and more aggressive.  The fear is the cause and their aggressive behavior is the effect.

Whenever we act out our fear, we create guilt in our minds (again this can be conscious or sub-conscious).  This means that the more a bully behaves like a bully, the more their guilt increases, which in turn, leads to even more fear.  After all, if we believe we are guilty, we also believe we should be punished.  The increased fear leads to ever more vicious and harmful behavior patterns.

A bully can be someone you know whom is merely unpleasant to be around, but he can also be threatening, combative or violent.  He/she can be a dictator, a rapist, a spouse batterer or even a verbal abuser.

Before you begin to approach forgiving a bully, it helps to do a little self-introspection.  Even though you may spend a great deal more of your time in love thinking than the bully you are forgiving, it's important to remember that we all have many fear thoughts each and every day.  When we judge a bully for indulging in fear, aren't we really judging him for something we often do ourselves?

Think back and review your life.  Haven't there been moments when you yourself behaved as a bully, even just a little tiny bit?  Did you ever bully your little brother or sister?  Were you ever part of a "popular" crowd in school that excluded or made fun of less popular kids?  Have you ever bossed your spouse around?  Your children?  Your employees?  Are you ever just the teensy-est little bit bossy?  Do you like to get your way?  Have you ever behaved selfishly?

The scale of your actions may be much smaller, but again, bully thinking is bully thinking.  When you are thinking and acting as a bully, you are out of alignment with love.

We all have things in our past we're not proud of.  Looking back we might see that at the time that we were behaving badly, we had our rationalizations.  We did what we thought was in our best interest at the time.  Yes, our little mis-behaviors are nothing compared to rape in terms of their effects.  But at the causal level they are the same.  They come from fear based thought.  And all fear based thought is the same.  It is simply non-loving.

One more thing you might try before you attempt to forgive a bully is empathy.  It's actually extremely sad that your bully feels so very alone and afraid that he believes his only option is to behave this way.  What caused all that fear?  What was his childhood like?  He must have experienced terrible rejection.  On a deep down level he must believe in his worthlessness or he wouldn't be so desperately trying to prove his value to himself through abusive acts.  Take a moment and think about his pain.  Think about how he suffers each day from fear, loneliness, guilt and self-hatred.

You certainly don't have to condone his actions, but can you find a little love somewhere in your heart to offer this poor tortured creature?  Just the smallest scrap of sympathy?  This is very important because when you are able to see another side of this situation you are taking your first step toward flipping the switch in your mind from fear to love.  You are releasing your own fear, and as you do this, you release your own guilt and pain.  This is how you find your peace.




If you feel you need help forgiving a bully I have three guided meditations that will teach you a process for forgiveness.  To forgive a bully that is harming you in your present, try Forgive Someone NOW.  To forgive someone from your past try Forgive Your Past NOW.

How to Reduce The Guilt in Our Lives

"For to forgive means to choose to release another from the perceptions you have been projecting upon them.  It is therefore, an act of forgiving one's self of one's projections".  --The Way of Mastery p. 25

All things are neutral.  All people, all events, all experiences, all words ... all of it is, simply, neutral.

We are the ones that put our own personal spin on everything.  We are the perceivers and we project our own opinions onto all we encounter.

We decide whether what we see in the world around us is "good" or "bad".  We decide whether what we see is "beautiful" or "ugly", "interesting" or "uninteresting", "right" or "wrong".

And yet, everything in our worlds, simply is.

When we see something and decide it is "bad", we are creating a judgment about it.  This judgment will, ultimately, have to be forgiven.  But before we forgive it, it will cause us much pain.  What we give out comes back to us.  When we judge others harshly, we will suffer.  Judging always leads to feelings of guilt.  Sometimes we are acutely aware of the guilt and sometimes we repress it.  But judging always creates guilt, even if it is only in our sub-consciousness.  And guilt, especially sub-conscious guilt, causes us to feel restless, unhappy, empty and deeply dis-satisfied.

"Each time that you judge anything or anyone, you have literally elicited guilt within yourself.  Because there is a place within you, yet still, that knows the perfect purity of your brother and sister, and sees quite clearly that all things within the human realm are either the extension of love or a cry for help and healing."  --Way of Master p. 25

Why not skip all the pain and upset and just learn to accept everything as it is?  If we don't judge it, we won't need to forgive it, and more importantly we won't need to forgive ourselves.  Acceptance of everything in our world is the only way to create inner peace.

Available at:

Amazon.com

Barnesandnoble.com

Forgiveness is an Expression of the Soul's Deep Desire to BE Forgiven

"When you judge, you have moved out of alignment with what is true.  You have decreed that the innocent are not innocent.  And if you would judge another as being without innocence, you have already declared that this is true about you!  Therefore, to practice forgiveness actually cultivates the quality of consciousness in which you finally come to forgive yourself.  And it is indeed the forgiven who remember their God."  --Way of Mastery  p. 26

It is only when we come to a point that we are able to understand that everyone is forgivable, and that we are indeed putting this universal forgiveness into practice, that we begin to believe that we ourselves are worthy of forgiveness.

After all, it's only good logic.  If every one of God's Children is innocent, then I myself, being also a Child of God, must be an innocent, too.

The problem is that down deep in our sub-consciousness, we struggle to believe this.  We have mountains of guilt.  We believe we're not worthy.  We believe we're unlovable.  We believe that we are "bad", that we have sinned and that we should be punished.  Removing the guilt from our sub-conscious minds can only be accomplished through our own acts of forgiveness toward others.

This is a process that takes some time.  We can begin by forgiving any trespasses we experience today. Once we create a habit of forgiving all of each day's hurts, we can begin to go into our pasts and release old grievances.  This stage requires much intense soul searching and quietude as we look deep into our minds to discover the wounds that lurk therein. Finally, in the third stage of forgiveness we can begin to forgive the conditions we see in the world around us.  We begin to forgive the war, famine, cruelty and selfishness that plays out on a world-wide scale.

As we move forward in our forgiveness, we will see a pattern emerging.  What we are most offended by in others is actually something that we find reflected in our own consciousness.  We fear the murderer, however, we come to know that there is so much anger deep within our own sub-consciousness that we are actually, ourselves, capable of murder.  We fear the dictator, but ultimately come to see the bossiness that resides within our own personality.  We fear the greedy ones, but we ourselves often take what we want.

"Therefore, in truth, understand well.  Forgiveness is essential.  What has not been forgiven in others, has not been forgiven in you.  But not by a God who sits outside of you, for He never judges.  What you have not forgiven in another or in the world is but a reflection of what you carry within as a burden that you cannot forgive of yourself."  --Way of Master p.26

As we forgive the world around us, our consciousness begins to purify.  Our own thoughts of fear, anger, greed, rejection and envy begin to release.  Our minds are cleansed.

This is where our happiness begins.  As we are freed of the tormenting thoughts and beliefs that our minds contain, we come to experience inner peace.

Available at:

Amazon.com

Barnesandnoble.com

The Dalai Lama Speaks on the Power of Forgiveness

My good friend, Patrick, forwarded this to me.

Who Are You Forgiving Today?

We are

                     all one.

We are simply only forgiving......

                                                                                      .....Ourselves

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there.  Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness.  Now you are holy and perceive it so.  And now the mind returns to its creator, the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all.  God is not seen but only understood.  His Son is not attacked but recognized."

A Course in Miracles, Manual for Teachers p 84 

Available at:

amazon.com

barnesandnoble.com

Forgiveness is the Release of all Judgment

"All suffering is a by-product of judgment".--Jennifer Hadley

Yes, dropping the habit of judging is very difficult.  I am struggling with it, too!  But I do realize acutely that the more I simply drop my judgments on every subject in my life, the happier I am.  When I just accept whatever is, I am happiest.

Why do we want to label everything?  Something comes into our awareness and we feel compelled to create an opinion about it.  We judge people (smart, skinny, tall, bossy, beautiful, etc).  We judge our physical world (The ocean is calming, cities are crowded, today's weather is too cold, her house is elegant.)  We judge situations (painful, uplifting, confusing, undesirable).  

What would life be like if we just watched it unfold and just accepted whatever it was?  How does creating an opinion about anything contribute to the quality of our lives?  

When I tell myself that my feelings are hurt, I feel bad.  When I tell myself that she is smarter than I am, I feel bad.  When I tell myself that I don't like his behavior, I feel bad.  When I tell myself that it is a sad thing that she is sick, I feel bad.  

Is it my goal to feel bad?  Of course not.  Then why do I indulge in behavior that makes me feel bad?  

Today I am renewing my intention to drop all judgments toward everyone, everything and every situation that is a part of my world.  When I meet my world with acceptance I am showing up with love and I know that the more love I give out, the more love comes to me.  This is the most important way I can create happiness in my life and in the lives of others around me. 

Radical Forgiveness

I love Colin Tipping!  His radical forgiveness forms have played a large role in my own personal forgiveness process.  When I first began to forgive my past I used them over and over again.  I kept an open forgiveness "to do" list and anything that would occur to me from my past that had hurt or upset me was on that list.  Each morning or so I would fill out one of his forms.  These forms helped me to clear through and release a lot of the most obvious hurts, disappointments, frustrations and upsets from my past in a matter of months.  I probably did about thirty or forty of them at first.

Then a few years later my father died and all sorts of more abstract hurts came up and I used the forms again, perhaps about sixty or seventy of them.  Now I use them on occasion whenever I need the kind of forgiveness work they provide.

I love these forms.  If you don't really know how to forgive, they will teach you how to flip your feelings from anger and fear to love.  And Colin Tipping is a wondeful, kind and intuitive teacher.

 This Thursday Colin Tipping is offering a free webinar training on how to use the Radical Forgiveness forms.  You can register here.