HOME
I believe that the first step to giving is receiving; that when we are genuinely self-forgiving, the benefits automatically (or with minimal effort) spill over into the lives of others. When we practice genuine self-forgiveness, we will naturally live according to a positive value system that includes respect for – and a desire for the well being of others.
Is it the spiritual person who has the wisdom to forgive themselves understanding that restoring inner peace will do more to keep them from acting in harmful ways than holding onto guilt and shame? Or is it the shallow person who doesn’t really penetrate the surface, who denies the impact that their own behavior is having on others and deludes themselves into thinking that they are somehow more entitled to self forgiveness than the other guy? Or both?
The Mastery of Love
By Don Miguel Ruiz
Chapter 11 ~ Healing The Emotional Body
"Whoever does NOT forgive SELF, cannot enter into the kingdom of HEAVEN"
LET'S IMAGINE AGAIN THAT WE HAVE A SKIN disease with wounds that are infected. When we want to heal the skin, and we go to a doctor, the doctor is going to use a scalpel to open the wounds. Then the doctor is going to clean the wounds, apply medicine, and keep the wounds clean until they heal and no longer hurt us.
To heal the emotional body, we are going to do the same thing. We need to open the wounds and clean the wounds, use some medicine, and keep the wounds clean until they heal. How are we going to open the wounds? We are going to use the truth as a scalpel to open the wounds. Two thousand years ago, one of the greatest Masters told us, "And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
The truth is like a scalpel because it is painful to open our wounds and uncover all of the lies. The wounds in our emotional body are covered by the denial system, the system of lies we have created to protect those wounds. When we look at our wounds with eyes of truth, we can finally heal these wounds.
You begin by practicing the truth with yourself. When you are truthful with yourself, you start to see everything as it is, not the way you want to see it. Let's use an example that is emotionally charged: rape.
Let's say that someone raped you ten years ago, and it is true that you were raped. Right now, it is no longer true. It was a dream, and in that dream someone abused you with violence. You didn't look for that. It was nothing personal. For whatever reason, it happened to you and can happen to anyone.
But by being raped, will you condemn yourself to suffer in your sexuality for the rest of your life? The rapist is not condemning you to do that. You are the victim, and if you judge yourself and find yourself guilty, for how many years will you punish yourself by not enjoying something that is one of the most beautiful things in the world? Sometimes being raped can destroy your sexuality for the rest of your life.
Where is the justice? You are not the rapist, so why should you suffer the rest of your life for something you didn't do? You are not guilty for being raped, but the Judge in your mind can make you suffer and live in shame for many years.
What about the rapist, does he not also deserve a healing?
Of course, this injustice will create a strong emotional wound and a lot of emotional poison that could take years of therapy to be released. The truth is that, yes, you were raped, but it's no longer true that you must suffer this experience. That is a choice.
This is the first step in using the truth as a scalpel: You find that the injustice that created a wound is no longer true, right now, in this moment.
You discover that perhaps what you believe hurt you so badly was never true. Even if it was true, it doesn't mean that now it is true. By using the truth, you open the wound and see the injustice from a new perspective.
The truth is relative in this world; it's changing all the time because we live in a world of illusions. What is true right now is not true later. Then it could be true again. The truth in hell could also be just another concept, another lie that can be used against you.
Our own denial system is so powerful and strong that it becomes very complicated. There are truths covering lies, and lies covering truth. Like peeling an onion, you uncover the truth little by little until in the end, you open your eyes to find out that everyone around you, including yourself, is lying all the time.
Almost everything in this world of illusion is a lie. That is why I ask my apprentices to follow three rules for seeing what is true.
The first rule is: Don't believe me.
You don't have to believe me, but think, and make choices. Believe what you want to believe according to what I say, but only if it makes sense for you, if it makes you happy. If it guides you into your awakening, then make the choice to believe it.
I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand. We live in a completely different dream. What I say, even if it is absolutely true for me, is not necessarily true for you. The first rule, is very easy: Don't believe me.
Rule number two is more difficult: Don't believe yourself.
Don't believe all the lies you tell yourself - all those lies that you never chose to believe, but were programmed to believe. Don't believe yourself when you say you are not good enough, you are not strong enough, you are not intelligent enough.
Don't believe your own boundaries and limitations. Don't believe you are unworthy of happiness or love. Don't believe you are not beautiful. Don't believe whatever makes you suffer. Don't believe in your own drama. Don't believe in your own Judge or your own Victim. Don't believe the inner voice that tells you how stupid you are, that tells you to kill yourself.
Don't believe it, because it isn't true. Open your ears, open your heart, and listen. When you hear your heart guiding you to your happiness, then make a choice and stick to it. But don't believe yourself just because you say so, because more than 80 percent of what you believe is a lie - it isn't true. The second rule is a difficult one: Don't believe yourself.
Rule number three is: Don't believe anyone else.
Don't believe other people because they are lying all the time anyway. When you no longer have emotional wounds, when you don't have the need to believe other people just to be accepted, you see everything more clearly. You see if it is black or white, if it is or is not. What is right now, maybe in a few moments is not.
What is not right now, maybe in a few moments will be. Everything is changing so fast, but if you are aware, you can see the change. Don't believe others because they will use your own stupidity to manipulate your mind. Don't believe anyone who says she comes from Pleiades and she wants to save the world.
Bad news! We don't need anyone to come and save the world. The world doesn't need the aliens to come from the outside to save us. The world 's alive; it's a living being, and it's more intelligent than all of us together. If we believe the world needs to be saved, soon someone will come and say, "Okay, a comet is coming, we need to escape from the planet.
Kill yourself and boom! You will reach the cornet and go to heaven." Don't believe these mythologies. You create your own dream of heaven; no one can create it for you. Nothing but common sense will guide you to your own happiness, your own creation. Rule number three is difficult because we have the need to believe other people. Don't believe them.
Don't believe me, don't believe yourself, and don't believe anyone else. By not believing, whatever is untrue will disappear like smoke in this world of illusion.
Everything is what it is. You don't need to justify what is true; you don't need to explain it. What is true doesn't need anyone's support. Your lies need your support.
You need to create a lie to support the first lie, another lie to support that lie, and more lies to support all of those lies. You create a big structure of lies, and when the truth comes out, everything falls apart. But that's just the way it is. You don't need to feel guilty because you are lying.
Most of the lies we believe simply dissipate if we don't believe them. Whatever is not true will not survive skepticism, but the truth will always survive skepticism. What is truth is true, believe it or not. Your body is made of atoms.
You don't have to believe it. Believe it or not, it is true. The universe is made of stars; this is true, believe it or not. Only what is true will survive, and that includes the concepts you have about yourself.
We have said that when we were children, we didn't have the opportunity to choose what to believe and what not to believe. Well, now it is different. Now that we are grown, we have the power to make a choice. We can believe or not believe.
Even if something is not the truth, if we choose to believe it, we can believe it just because we want to believe it. You can choose how you want to live your life. And if you are honest with yourself, you will know you are always free to make new choices.
When we are willing to see with eyes of truth, we uncover some of the lies and open the wounds. Still, there is the poison inside the wounds.
Once we open the wounds, we are going to clean the wounds of all the poison. How are we going to do this? The same Master gave us the solution two thousand years ago: Forgiveness. There is no other way but forgiveness to clean the wounds of all the poison.
You must forgive those who hurt you, even if whatever they did to you is unforgivable in your mind. You will forgive them not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because you don't want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you remember what they did to you.
It doesn't matter what others did to you, you are going to forgive them because you don't want to feel sick all the time. Forgiveness is for your own mental healing. You will forgive because you feel compassion for yourself Forgiveness is an act of self-love.
Let's take an example of a divorced woman. Imagine you have been married for ten years, and for whatever reason you have a big fight with your husband over a big injustice. You get divorced, and you really hate your ex-husband.
Just hearing his name, you feel a strong pain in your stomach and you want to throw up. The emotional poison is so strong that you can't stand it any longer. You need help, so you go to a therapist and say, "I am suffering so much. I am full of anger, jealousy, envy. What he did is unforgivable. I hate that man."
The therapist looks at you and says, "You need to release your emotions; you need to express your anger. What you should do is have a big tantrum. Get a pillow, bite the pillow, hit the pillow, and release your anger."
You go and have the biggest tantrum, and you release all these emotions. It really seems to work. You pay your therapist $100 and say, "Thank you very much. I feel much better." Finally, you have a big smile on your face.
You walk out of the therapist's office, and guess who is driving through town? As soon as you see your ex-husband, the same anger comes up, but even worse.
You have to run to the therapist again and pay another $100 for another tantrum. Releasing your emotions in this way is only a temporary solution. It may release some poison and make you feel better for a while, but it does not heal the wound.
The only way to heal your wounds is through forgiveness. You have to forgive your ex-husband for the injustice. You will know you have forgiven someone when you see him and you don't feel anything anymore. You will hear the name of the person and have no emotional reaction.
When you can touch a wound and it doesn't hurt, then you know you have truly forgiven. Of course, a scar is going to be there, just as it is on your skin. You will have a memory of what happened, of how you used to be, but once the wound has healed, it won't hurt you any longer.
Perhaps you are thinking, "Well, it's easy to say we should forgive. I have tried, but I cannot do it." You have all these reasons, all these justifications why you cannot forgive. But this is not the truth. The truth is that you cannot forgive because you learned not to forgive, because you practiced not to forgive, because you mastered not to forgive.
There was a time when we were children when forgiveness was our instinct. Before we caught the mental disease, it was effortless and natural to forgive. We used to forgive others almost right away.
If you see two children playing together, and they start to fight and hit each other, the children cry and run to their mothers. "Hey, she hit me!" One mother goes to talk with the other mother. The two mothers have a big fight, and five minutes later the two children are playing together again as if nothing happened. Now the mothers hate each other for the rest of their lives.
It is not that we need to learn forgiveness, because we are born with the capacity for forgiveness. But guess what happened? We learned the opposite behavior, and we practiced the opposite behavior, and now forgiveness is very difficult. Whoever does something to us, forget it, that's it, she Is out of our life. It becomes a war of pride.
Why? Because our personal importance grows when we don't forgive. It makes our opinion more important when we can say, "Whatever she does, I will not forgive her. What she did is unforgivable."
The real problem is pride. Because of pride, because of honor, we add more fire to the injustice to remind ourselves that we cannot forgive. Guess who is going to suffer and accumulate more and more emotional poison? We are going to suffer for all kinds of things people do around us, even though they have nothing to do with us.
We also learn to suffer just to punish whoever abused us. We behave like a little child having a tantrum, just asking for attention. I'm hurting myself just to say, "Look at what I am doing because of you."
It's a big joke, but that's exactly what we do. What we really want to say is, "God, forgive me," but we will not say a word until God comes and asks us for forgiveness first. Many times we don't even know why we are so upset with our parents, our friends, our mate. We are upset, and if for some reason the other person asks us for forgiveness, right away we start to cry and say, "Oh no, you forgive me."
Go and find the little child in the corner having a tantrum. Take your pride and put it in the trash. You don't need it. Just let go of the personal importance and ask for forgiveness. Forgive others, and you will see miracles start to happen in your life.
First, make a list of everyone you believe you need to ask for forgiveness. Then ask them for forgiveness. Even if there is not enough time to call everyone, ask for their forgiveness in your prayers and through your dreams.
Second, make a list of all the people who hurt you, all the people you need to forgive. Start with your parents, your brothers and sisters, your children, your spouse, your friends, your lover, your cat, your dog, your government, and God.
Now, you are going to forgive others by knowing that whatever anyone did to you had nothing to do with you. Everyone dreams her own dream, remember? The words and actions that hurt you are merely a reaction to the demons, in that person's own mind.
She is dreaming in hell, and you are a secondary character in her dream. Nothing anyone does is because of you. Once you have this awareness, and you do not take it personally, compassion and understanding will lead you to forgiveness.
Start working on forgiveness; start practicing forgiveness. It will be difficult at first, but then it just becomes a habit. The only way to recover forgiveness is to practice again. You practice and practice, until in the end you see if you can forgive yourself.
At a certain point, you find that you must forgive yourself for all those wounds and all that poison you created for yourself in your own dream. When you forgive yourself, self-acceptance begins and self-love grows. That is the supreme forgiveness - when you finally forgive yourself.
Create an act of power and forgive yourself for everything you have done in your whole life. And if you believe in past lives, forgive everything you believe you did in all of your past lives. The concept of karma is true only because we believe it is true. Because of our beliefs about being good and bad, we feel ashamed about what we believe is bad.
We find ourselves guilty, we believe we deserve to be punished, and we punish ourselves. We have the belief that what we create is so dirty that it needs to be cleaned. And just because you believe it, then, "Thy will be done". It is real for you. You create your karma, and you have to pay for it.
That is how powerful you are. To break old karma is simple. You just stop that belief by refusing to believe it, and the karma is gone. You don't need to suffer, you don't need to pay anything; it is over.
If you can forgive yourself, the karma is gone just like that. From this point on, you can start all over again. Then life becomes easy, because forgiveness is the only way to clean the emotional wounds. Forgiveness is the only way to heal them.
Once we have cleaned the wounds, we are going to use a powerful medicine to accelerate the process of healing. Of course, the medicine also comes from the same great Master: It is Love. Love is the medicine that accelerates the process of healing. There is no other medicine but unconditional love.
Not: I love you or I love myself if. There is no if. There is no justification. There is no explanation. It is just to love. Love yourself, love your neighbor, and love your enemies. This is simple, common sense, but we cannot love others until we love ourselves. That is why we must begin with self-love.
There are millions of ways to express your happiness, but there Is only one way to really be happy, and that is to love. There is no other way. You cannot be happy if you don't love yourself. That is a fact. If you don't love yourself, you don't have any opportunity to be happy. You cannot share what you do not have.
If you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else either. But you can have a need for love, and if there's someone who needs you, that's what humans call love. That is not love. That is possessiveness, that is selfishness; that is control with no respect. Don't lie to yourself; that is not love.
Love coming out of you is the only way to be happy. Unconditional love for yourself. Complete surrender to that love for yourself. You no longer resist life. You no longer reject yourself, You no longer carry all that blame and guilt.
You just accept who you are, and accept everyone else the way he or she is. You have the right to love, to smile, to be happy, to share your love, and to not be afraid to receive it also.
That is the healing. Three simple points: the truth, forgiveness, and self-love. With these three points, the whole world will heal and will no longer be a mental hospital.
These three keys to heal the mind were given to us by Jesus, but he is not the only one who taught us how to heal. Buddha did the same; Krishna did the same. Many other Masters came to the same conclusions and gave us these same lessons.
All around the world, from Japan to Mexico to Peru to Egypt to Greece, there were humans who were healed. They saw that the disease is in the human mind, and they used these three methods: the truth, forgiveness, and self-love.
If we-can see our state of mind as a disease, we find there is a cure. We don't have to suffer any longer; if we are aware that our mind is sick, that our emotional body is wounded, we can also heal.
Just imagine if all humans could start being truthful with themselves, start forgiving everyone, and start loving everyone. If all humans loved in this way, they would no longer be selfish; they would be open to give and receive, and they would no longer judge each other. Gossiping would be over, and the emotional poison would simply dissolve.
Now we are talking about a completely different Dream of the Planet. It doesn't look like the planet Earth. This is what Jesus called "Heaven on Earth," Buddha called "Nirvana," and Moses called "The Promised Land." It is a place where all of us can live in love because we put our attention on love. We choose to love.
Whatever you call the new Dream, it is still a dream as real or as false as the dream of hell. But now you can choose which dream you want to live in. Now you have the tools in your hands to heal yourself. The question is: What are you going to do with them?
Self forgiveness has always been the foundation of compassion. Without it, there is no true happiness. A lot of us won't let go of our past mistakes and regrets because we fear that by letting go of the grudge and anger, we may become vulnerable, and fall back to the same situations again.
If you believe you can't forgive yourself because of this reason, I want to let you know that your concern is totally legitimate. Without a proper structure, it is possible that we may relapse into the same situations.
The anger, hurt, grudge and defensiveness do serve a purpose, and that is to remind us not to make the same mistakes again. This mentality of not letting go has its biological roots, evolution favors animals that are able to learn how to avoid dangers, animals that can adapt to change tend to survive better.
Let me acknowledge that any kind of forgiveness is not easy, and that includes self forgiveness, this is especially the case if our past mistakes are still haunting us today. For example, it could be difficult to forgive ourselves for our reckless spending habit if our outrageous behaviors resulted in debts.
If our mistakes are not readily undoable, such as participating in porn and regretting it, we may be trapped in this sea of negative emotions that made us feel worthless, despair and angry. When we are still suffering from the consequences from our past mistakes, we are least likely to forgive ourselves.
But be reminded that we need to move on at some point. There is no benefit for ourselves, or for people around us, if we stay stuck in this hole forever. Take all the time you need to heal and bring closures to these upsetting events, and at the same time, take actions everyday to use these mistakes as a catalyst for an extraordinary life.
The power of forgiveness
Forgiveness is a gift you can give yourself. To forgive has nothing to do with another person. It is a decision you make within yourself. Not to forgive means choosing to remain a victim and that would be more hurtful in the long run with endless negative feelings and senseless loss of energy.
It is really not difficult: on a quiet moment, simply identify the situation and ask yourself: Do I want to waste my energy further on this matter? If the answer is No, that is it; to forgive is the best way out.
If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.
Mother Theresa
Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.
William Arthur Ward
The weak can never forgive. Forgiving is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
Bruno's commentary:
Forgiving is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of inner strength and positive self-esteem. It is a message to ourselves that we don't want to live with anger, hatred and pain. Forgiveness is not forgetting the past, but learning from it and accepting reality. It would be nice to be able to turn back the clock, but that just isn't possible. Forgiving also doesn't justify what others have done to us, nor the pain we have suffered.
It does, however, allow us to look at old scars and see them for what they are. And it allows us to see how much energy we have wasted and how much we have damaged ourselves by not forgiving. Most importantly, the pain from our past can no longer dictate our life and determine our future. Finally we are free.
Right now, is there somebody in your life where you could practice the art of forgiveness?
What is self-forgiveness?
Self-forgiving is:
* Accepting yourself as a human who has faults and makes mistakes.
* Letting go of self-anger for your past failures, errors and mistakes.
* No longer needing penance, sorrow and regret over a grievous, self-inflicted, personal offense.
* The act of self-love after you have admitted your failure, mistake or misdeed.
* The spiritual self healing of your heart by calming self-rejection, quieting the sense of failure and lightening the burden of guilt.
* The act of letting go of the need to work so hard to make up for your past offenses.
Negative consequences of the absence of self-forgiveness
In the absence of self-forgiveness, you run the risk of:
* Unresolved hurt, pain and suffering from self-destructive behaviors.
* Unresolved guilt and remorse for self-inflicted offenses.
* Chronically seeking revenge and paybacks toward yourself.
* Being caught up in unresolved self-anger, self-hatred and self-blaming.
* Defensive and distant behavior with others.
* Pessimism, negativity and non-growth oriented behavior.
* Having a festering wound that never allows the revitalization of self-healing.
* Fear over making new mistakes or of having the old mistakes revealed.
* Being overwhelmed by fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of non-approval, low self-esteem and low self-worth.
Signs of the absence of self-forgiveness.
Lack of self-forgiveness can result in:
* A loss of love for yourself.
* Indifference toward yourself and your needs.
* An emotional vacuum in which little or no emotions are shown or shared.
* Chronic attacks or angry outbursts against self.
* Disrespectful treatment of self.
* Self-destructive behaviors.
* Self-pitying.
* Chronic recalling and reminding of past failures, mistakes, errors and offenses.
* Suspicions about others' motives, behaviors, attitudes and beliefs when they are accepting of you.
* Chronic depression.
* Chronic hostility, sarcasm and cynicism.
* Self name-calling, belittling and self-demeaning behaviors.
* Unwillingness to change and/or unwillingness to seek the help necessary to change.
* Resistance to doing what is necessary to heal within and recover from low self-esteem.
Irrational thinking preventing self-forgiveness
* I hurt myself so much; how can I ever expect to be forgiven for that?
* No one deserved the treatment I dished out, and I do not believe that forgiveness is deserved in this situation.
* I am sick over what I did; how can I ever forgive myself?
* I must be inherently evil, and I am despicable. No forgiveness will ever change that.
* I am vicious and cruel, and I always need to be on guard because of that; so why try to forgive what I have done?
* It is a sign of weakness or softness to forgive myself. I must always keep my guard up so as never to repeat my wrongdoings.
* There are some things I can never forgive myself for.
* Only God can forgive me, though at times I don't believe He can for what I have done.
* What has happened in my life is God's seeking revenge for all the evil I have done in the past.
* I have done too much for which I can never be forgiven.
* I am just seeking my forgiveness so that I can come back and hurt myself again.
* I do not deserve any self-kindness, self-compassion or self-forgiveness for what I have done to myself or others; I'll see to it that I am never able to forget it!
* All people who do wrong deserve the worst that life has to dish out.
* I resent myself for hurting myself or others. It is better for me to be hidden behind my wall so I don't hurt anybody again.
* If I could treat myself or others that way, then I am undeserving of being forgiven, loved or cared for.
The act of self-forgiveness changes the energy and physical structures of your cells, and of your DNA. Guilt is a very powerful and deadening emotion. Guilt in itself can, as it were, close down the energy systems of your body, and thereby lessen, and in extreme cases, cut off the flow of Divine Energy and Love
to the body entirely. Because each and every one of your cells has consciousness, they too can carry the essence and energy of guilt within them that makes their energy denser.
Forgiveness: Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness
By John Payne
The act of self-forgiveness changes the energy and physical structures of your cells, and of your DNA. Guilt is a very powerful and deadening emotion.
Guilt in itself can, as it were, close down the energy systems of your body, and thereby lessen, and in extreme cases, cut off the flow of Divine Energy and Love to the body entirely. Because each and every one of your cells has consciousness, they too can carry the essence and energy of guilt within them that makes their energy denser.
With this denser energy that flows throughout the body and in the nuclei of the cells themselves, the illnesses that you have worked upon in your striving towards spiritual growth and enlightenment, leave a residue.
Although to you, they have been cured. This residue that is held in the body through lack of self-forgiveness, acts like a blueprint for the creation of the same or similar illnesses. It is, however, possible that this blueprint of denser energy can migrate from one part of the body to another.
This is how it works. You follow a spiritual discipline and you choose to work consciously upon one are of growth or another, or even on a particular illness, or on forgiving a particular person.You do the energy work, and what you see as the forgiveness work, but in doing so, you concentrate more on releasing the other and forgiving the other without really working on the real issue of forgiving yourself.
Many of you are doing this half heartedly because the part of you that is now spiritually aware, condemns the other parts for having been so wrong and for having wasted so much time.
I cannot express the importance of self- forgiveness enough, for self forgiveness and self acceptance are the keys to surviving the upheavels of a turbulent world. Forgiveness of the self and acceptance of the self have a direct positive influence upon the functioning of the immune system.
Many assume that the act of self-forgiveness to improve your health causes a conflict of motives. They assume that they will only forgive for the reason of improving their own health. However, I say to you, that the act of forgiveness itself, and I speak especially of self-forgiveness, will bring you more in contact with the light of your soul, where there is no conflict of motives.
The very fabric of the Universe is love and light, and in order that love and light may flow to the places where love and light cannot, the flow must be opened to even more flow.
Forgiveness is one of the universal qualities of grace that helps to unblock and allow love and light to flow. The act of self forgiveness and the process that you go through on physical, emotional and mental levels will teach you much about the workings of the human psyche. Therefore, it will enable and empower you to embrace others with compassion and true forgiveness.
True forgiveness can only come from a guiltless heart, from a soul that has truly forgiven itself and is in the full light of self acceptance. So what is forgiveness? How can we learn to forgive and what is the process behind forgiveness?
Many of you are afraid to begin the process of forgiveness because your motives seem unclear, and then you feel that you are not really forgiving. Forgiveness is choosing to change a thought, belief and an emotion with respect to other people and situations.
As everything in the Universe is energy, forgiveness is also a process of transforming energy. Forgiveness is a choice as is not forgiving. When there is someone in your life that you think you cannot forgive, then the energy of that person and situation remains within your aura.
This means quite simply, that forgiveness is like any other process of self-healing. For forgiveness in itself is a process of untangling those parts of the mental and the emotional bodies that are tangled up in the denser energies that the situation with the other person carries.
In addition to this, there are lines of energy that exists between you and every other person you have ever had an exchange with, no matter how trivial these exchanges may have seemed. In essence, your aura carries with it energetic memory and this is what triggers intuition, deja vu and sometimes warning bells.
So when you find it impossible to forgive another, you remain energetically connected to that person. Therefore, you are allowing the pain, the abuse and the trauma to remain with you. This, my dears, is a choice. Forgiveness is not something that you can or cannot do. It is simply a matter of choosing to change your thoughts, beliefs and ideas about a given situation or person in your life.
Forgiveness is the most important aspect of your spiritual growth, and it is the forgiveness of the self that hands you the key to the light of your soul. When you go to see a healer, or doctor you are in essence taking part in the practice of self- forgiveness. This is so, because the active healing releases energies that had been solidified within your aura and the healing takes place based upon either a conscious or subconscious decision to forgive yourself or another.
All is energy in the Universe, so free yourself from the question of motivation when it comes to forgiveness. Many of you who have been on a path of spiritual growth for some time, see the benefits of bringing more light into your aura and don't question your motives for working consciously on your aura as energy.
So why question working on yet another aspect of the Universe that is also energy? It is your intention to live in more light that counts. The Guides and Spiritual Masters do not look at all the misconceptions of the personality, we experience the intent of the soul.
In essence beloved ones, by not forgiving another, or by not allowing their energy to leave you, you are allowing the pain and the abuse to continue. It is as simple as that. So the only decision that you have to make regarding forgiveness is this: Am I willing to let go of the pain and abuse, or will I allow this person or situation to persecute me for the rest of this life?
Additionally, the act of forgiveness also allows the other person to move on, be they still in your environment, an other city or town, or even in another dimension. When you change the energy pattern that this person or event has stimulated you to create in your aura, then you also let go of this person on an energetic level.
Until the moment you are able to forgive and release a person from guilt, or from the responsibility for your pain, this person remains energetically aligned with you at one or more levels. Forgiveness creates harmony in the Universe because you are handing the other person a passport to more freedom and joy. In doing so you are buying for yourself a first class ticket on a journey to paradise.
In essence, if you have been raped, physically or sexually abused, or verbally denigrated by a parent, teacher or other authority figure, you are still living as the raped, the abused and the denigrated by not forgiving and letting go of these people and situations. You can choose to live your life with an other identity if you so wish. This is a choice.
Many of you believe that you have to in some way greet the person or meet them on a physical level in order to truly forgive them. This is not so. Their higher self also allows them to be in the situation where they become the abuser for the purpose of their own spiritual growth.
Although it may be difficult for you to accept, your abuser truly does have a Higher Self and a Soul that loves you. This Higher Self is aware of your non-forgiveness and of your forgiveness.
It will assist the personality to grow as a response to the energetic changes you will make in the process of forgiveness. So, although you may never see someone again, they will know on a deeper level that you have released them to grow and to move on.
It is also true of those people in your life who you are yet to truly forgive, and who are no longer focused within physical reality. These souls who have passed on to other worlds and dimensions can often become more sensitive on a conscious level of your lack of forgiveness towards them. One of the greatest gifts that you can give someone who abused you whilst physically present on Earth, is to release them with joy and with forgiveness. This allows them to move further in their growth.
Realise, beloved ones, that the world is a stage and that YOU chose all the actors, and the scenes, also of your childhood before you arrived. You, together with the Souls of your abusers and tormentors wrote the script together. It is up to you whether you allow the soap opera to be repeated time and time and time again.
Exercise in forgiveness
Take a deep breath into the lower belly and breath out again as if you are letting go of all your daily cares and worries.Do this several times.
Begin also to breath into the upper chest and imagine for yourself that the back of your neck is opening, creating a tunnel through which energies can flow up through your body into the cosmos and from the cosmos down through your spine into your legs and feet. This visualisation will assist you in flowing with the energies of divine and creative essence.
Next visualize a light in the centre of your chest, your Heart Centre. See this light becoming brighter and brighter as you continue to breath into the upper chest. Start opening your heart even further and allow more and more light to flow in and out of this centre of divine love.
Imagine the most beautiful light that you possibly can visualise, be it white, gold or any other combination of colours that you feel express the love within your heart. Continue with this visualization until you feel that you are centred within yourself and are at peace with yourself and the world.
Now imagine that you are standing or sitting in the middle of a triangle that is composed of rods of golden light. See how bright, shimmering, and radiant that these rods of golden light are. Notice that these rods are of a higher vibration than you normally experience, and feel the energy that they are transmitting to you as you sit or stand in the middle of this triangle.
Now visualize for yourself that rods of golden energy are coming out of your heart, and are attaching themselves to each of the points of the triangle. You are now one with the triangle.
Place at one of the points of the triangle the image of someone that you love very dearly, and send them your wishes of love and peace, and feel how this love reverberates around the triangle, and feel how every particle of light within the triangle and yourself begins to resonate with this love.
In another point of the triangle place the image of someone or something that you hold very dear to yourself. This can be a favorite pet, your guide, the image of an angel, or your favorite landscape. Use your imagination. And allow the same resonance of love to emanate from your heart towards this corner, and feel how the intensity of the entire triangle is stepped up in vibration.
Finally, place the image of someone that you have not yet forgiven into the remaining corner of the triangle and feel how the resonance of love flows automatically towards this person from around the triangle and from your heart. Concentrate once more on the first two corners of the triangle and allow the resonance of love to flow automatically around the triangle, and become this triangle of love.
You may do this exercise as often as you feel is appropriate. The purpose of this exercise is to raise the vibration of any energy you are holding in your aura from other people and situations in your life that you are yet to let go of. This exercise is the beginning of discovering Mastership, for true Masters transform all energies into light. Welcome on the path of the Masters.
Forgiving The Self
Forgiveness of self is the most fundamental aspect of spiritual growth. It cannot be overlooked whilst on the path of ascension out of the denser energies of fear and guilt that have enveloped this planet for many millennia. Humanity carries deep within its cells the vibration and frequency of guilt and shame that is acting as a wall of doubt between the personality self and the soul self.
This shame originated at the point at which humanity began to question its own validity and place within the Universe. It originated at the point in which the intuitive mind asked itself Who Am I as illustrated in the Genesis parable.
The shame that you have all felt over millennia has now reached a point of transformation. It is coming free from the cellular structure and the aura of humanity. This shame originated from the time that an amnesia set in, so that the experiment of exercising free will to create love as co-creating gods could begin
I have said that there are only two true emotions present within your world, they are love and fear. Love is the only true emotion, and it forms the building block with which Light and all matter is created. Fear came into existence when you began to experience separation from the Light and therefore felt the illusory separation from the source of Love.
As this fear gradually built up over the millennia, and from incarnation to incarnation, humanity began to back itself into a corner of fear from where many lashed out in violent acts, as if to defend themselves from imagined enemies. The true fear has always been: God doesn't love me, I am alone, abandoned, and I am not worthy.
With these two fears firmly in place, mankind began inventing external gods to which he had to measure up to, please, or get the approval of, in order to be counted worthy.
This has lead to wars, violence, a belief in limitation and scarcity, poverty and hopelessness on the planet. As a result of these beliefs, humanity has also set about defending itself from the imaginary enemies that lie within these beliefs.
This in turn has lead to acts of great cruelty, torture and torment that have been wrought against all life forms, against fellow humans and against Earth herself. The illusion of separation from the Godhead has created an atmosphere of fear that is indeed visible to us from the Higher Realms, and has caused humanity to being lost within a mist, or a veil, of illusion for a very long period of time.
Now is the time to begin removing these layers of denser energies that are self generating the fear. You can do this by moving into a space of self forgiveness.
Many of you are carrying layers of shame and fear within your aura and cells and much of this shame is not even rationally explicable, even to yourselves, because it has lain energetically within you with no apparent cause.
The first step in forgiving the self is being willing to let go of shame. It is being willing to move beyond limitation and fear, and accepting that, just maybe, God does love and approve of you as a child of the light. It means being willing to accept your divinity, and being willing to exercise compassion towards yourself.
Once you have stated your willingness to do these things, and have set your intention to release all pain, guilt and shame from your being, and then your soul, supported by the higher forces of light in the Universe, can go to work assisting you to release all your pain to the light.
However, it is not until you state your intention and your willingness to release yourself, that the Universe can do anything to help you. This is a Universe of free will and if it is your choice to remain in fear, then there is nothing that can be done to alleviate that. The Universe always empowers those that express deliberate intent.
From the perspective of the Higher Realms of Light, there is not one thing that you could have done in this life, or in another, that would hold the heavenly hosts and your soul back in giving you their love and light, or that would cause them to judge or condemn you in any way. You are the only one that is capable of judging yourself, or of punishing yourself. Un- conditional love begins with the self, as does forgiveness.
We cannot emphasize enough, how important it will be over the coming years, to release all guilt and shame from your body, because the Earth changes that are taking place activate and intensify any energies that are present. Therefore, if you concentrate on beauty, peace, abundance and health, then these things will increase. Likewise, if you concentrate on fear, poverty, danger, and disease, then these things will increase.
The very nature of matter, and the energies present, upon this planet are changing. With these changes, the power of your thoughts is also increasing. The energies present are becoming more fluid and supple,reacting more swiftly to your thoughts and desires, therefore, your thoughts and feelings are able to have a greater effect than previously possible. You can choose to use this power for the greater good of all by focusing on the goodness in your life.
Exercise in self forgiveness
For the process of self forgiveness, a daily practice of meditation is recommended, where you can become quiet and will not be disturbed for at least twenty minutes. Make this time special for yourself, play your favorite soft and relaxing music, maybe light some candles or burn some incense. Do whatever it is that helps you to feel peaceful and centred.
As you begin this meditation, state your intention that you are willing to release all pain, guilt and shame from your body and energy systems and that you call upon the Forces of Light in the Universe to assist you in this release work. Close you eyes, quiet your breathing, and imagine a bright white and golden light entering your body through the crown of your head. Gradually bring this light with your breath to every part and cell of your body and visualize that any dense, grey energies are released and cleansed by the light.
Finally thank yourself and the light for the transformation that has taken place.
A Father's Apology to His Son
BY JOYCE AND BARRY VISSELL
Reprinted with permission
This forgiveness anecdote illustrates the power of reconciliation by acknowledging our mistakes and asking for forgiveness.
Hal, a participant in one of our workshops, felt moved to write the following letter to his now 24-year-old son, who he had not seen in over a year.
Dear Brian,
I need to apologize to you for some big mistakes I made in my fathering. I hope this allows us to feel closer to one another. My greatest hope would be for you to forgive me.
Although we have never talked about it, there were maybe half a dozen times in your childhood when I struck you in anger. One of those times stands out sharply in my memory, and I imagine in yours as well. I think you were about eight. I came home from a job that I hated, more frustrated than usual.
You were throwing a ball in your room, which I had previously told you not to do. I heard the crash of broken glass and ran into your room to see you had just broken your window. I lost it and started hitting you, even several times in the face. I think it was the worst as well as the last time I have ever beaten you. Afterwards you were crying and I felt terrible, but I never let you know my remorse or apologized for my cruel actions.
I want you to know how sad I feel for every time I hurt you, but especially for that one particular evening. It weighed heavily on my heart for many months, and over the years it has caused me much grief. I have often judged myself a bad father because of that episode alone.
I want you to know it was never your fault when I hit you. No child deserves to be hit by a parent or anyone else. I was needing to let you know how upset I felt in each situation. I was needing to express my anger, my disappointment with words rather than my hands. But I had never learned this from my own father. What I did to you I learned from him. It's terrible how abuse can get passed down from generation to generation. My greatest hope is that this terrible legacy stops with you.
Although I believe I never hit you again after that night, it has taken me till now (with help) to understand that it is never too late to apologize and ask for your forgiveness. I am so very sorry for taking out my own frustrations on you. It was clearly wrong for me to ever hit you. I need your forgiveness, and also understand you might need time to forgive me. Someday you may be a father. If that comes to pass, I think you will be a better father than I was to you. I sincerely hope my apology helps. I love you.
Dad
Writing this letter helped relieve Hal of a burden he had been carrying for years. But there's more. Two months later he received the following reply, showing what is possible through asking for forgiveness.
Dad,
Thanks for your letter. I have to admit it came as a total surprise, even a shock. I've been busy with my life, so I haven't thought about the "beatings" for a long time. Those memories were difficult. When I first read your letter I couldn't get past the bad feelings it brought up. I actually had to put it down for a few days. But when I picked it up again and read it more carefully, I got what it was all about. Wow. Thank you for apologizing. I guess better late than never.
Yeah, I can begin to forgive you now. It helps a lot to know how bad you felt. I only wish I would have known that sooner. All these years I've felt it was all my fault, that I deserved to be punished. From your letter I can understand that, of course, I never deserved to be hit, not by you or anyone. It's probably going to take me some time to let all of this sink in. It's kind of like having a new dad.
I love you too, dad. Thanks for writing.
Brian
When we do self-forgiveness, the channel that opens up is inside. We initiate a channel from the basic self through the high-self. Through that channel, we stand in the light and reconcile our belief with the truth of self.
In essence, we align with the Holy Spirit and declare to the basic self that the limiting belief or separation is discontinued and replaced with essence of virtue it was blocking. For example, you may forgive yourself for believing you are unlovable. By so doing, you tell the basic self to align with your innate loving as an internal and transcendental source.
The sense that the energy is outside comes from the awareness that the source of transformation is outside the system of the belief, which is the self-concept, or status-quo.
The transformative energy is embedded in our depth. In quantum fashion, when we forgive ourselves the inner and outer source act as one. The self-forgiveness tells the basic self to change and invites the high-self to transform the limitation. This action communicates a change in our relationship to the unconditional love that is God.
This changes the way we are nested in the personal and universal field. The self-forgiveness changes how our consciousness is nested in the One. So the transformational energy is outside and inside of us.
A simple movement of the heart, like kindness, has a similar effect. It is a technique. It is also a remembrance of self. We re-place our selves into the givingness of self that preceded the taking from self.
Self-forgiveness is as effective as it is sincere; yet, is activated according to the individual ability level. Sincerity is a skill. You may be at a level of sincerity and tell me that you will do this or that, yet in ten minutes you may have grown in sincerity and discover that in reference to now you lied, yet it seemed true then.
If you take on guilt or try to justify the discrepancy you will lose the gain you made. However, if you confront your lie and take action to fully utilize the gain, the lie becomes a positive action and moves into a corrective law. We may re-experience a distorted moment and forgive ourselves and release much.
Self-forgiveness is a conscious choice, a subconscious realization and a higher -consciousness acceptance (It is not a belief). Self-forgiveness is not a belief -- it is a knowing and as such our choice and statement places it as an active element within us.
When we re-experience the past and choose consciously to change, corollary patterns occur subconsciously and super-consciously. There is a realization of the impact of the conscious choice: the experience of release and change of meaning is recorded in place of the old interpretation.
Super-consciously new vistas present themselves to the conscious mind. Reprogramming can change patterns in the subconscious mind through repetitious affirmation but self-forgiveness changes the patters in the subconscious mind through direct intervention of the Higher Self.
Self-forgiveness is spontaneous in people who have gained the ability to relate to the unity of life with the entirety of their being. Even though we may be self-realized beings and all our conscious levels are highly synthesized, we are still here, still growing, and still confronted with choices and mistaken choices.
The difference is that when our growth is more progressive than evolutionary, realization of the mistakenly applied energy is sufficient to release it. Release and understanding, both act and consequence, become spontaneous.
Self-forgiveness carries the implication that all events are purposeful and ultimately worthwhile. If self-forgiveness allows us to claim an understanding that we did not possess before, then the purpose of difficulty is to solve that difficulty, to understand, to extend and expand the ability level of our Soul -- it seems that all souls are equal in their perfection but not in their ability level.
In this context, we conceive that we have never done anything that was not worthwhile. We were always worthy in in ourselves; it was the belief in attachment to error that created a sensation of unworthiness. When the sense of inherent worthiness returns, growth accelerates and balance is enhanced. Our quest is to learn to use our inherent worth to master life.
Self-forgiveness is economical, the best use of human energy that can be made out of any event, for experience is only wasteful when it is not used for growth, for greater understanding; we are wasteful to the degree we are ego-attached to our mistakes. There is a moral imperative in the understanding of energy and its exchange and perhaps the only moral imperative:
"Unto thyself be true"; THYSELF not the belief patterns of the mind that masquerade as self. The personality is a garment, a vehicle by which our Being might enter the real of Earth to gain the wisdom thereof. It is to the Being that we are true. There is no dogma to re-alignment of the personality -- mind, emotion, and body with the Soul and Spirit, only self-forgiveness. We hold within us a vision of what we could be and an image of what we are how we handle this discrepancy is crucial.
alternative medicine energy healing
"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much. There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force, which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together.
We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter"
Max Planck from his Nobel Prize for Physics acceptance speech.
If we can all learn to forgive ourselves and to forgive judgments that we've placed out, that one thing, to my way of thinking, would do more toward healing in all of the systems than any one single thing that I know of.
It's also very challenging, because most of us have not been brought up that way. We have been brought up to make people and things and situations wrong.
SHIVA: I can't make anything more important than loving myself. There's nothing I could do or say or any way I could be that could be bigger than my love for myself; or if I do that, the consequence is really negative. But when I make my loving more important and override anything else, that's what self-forgiveness is.
Do dolphins look for God? If they have never been separated from God, why would they look? Maybe they swim in God as they swim in the ocean. Maybe Dolphins know this already, but because of religious superstition, we humans have forgotten this Great Fact.
No comments:
Post a Comment