How do you feel about forgiveness? Throughout the years as I talk about forgiveness to my clients, group coaching, and lectures, I find a lot of misconception around this idea.
When I encourage people to forgive a grievance, many of them feel I must not really understand the situation. They think my advice should be to never talk to the person again, NOT to forgive them. Let’s set the record straight about this all-too-common reaction.
The truth is Forgiveness Frees the Heart…. YOUR heart
Many times we feel a grudge as a heavy feeling in our heart. That feeling is constriction. All feelings are forms of energy, which is why we get a physical sensation from them. Since like energy attracts like, the constriction from not forgiving blocks the flow of your abundance.
When we release that negative bind to another person, that heaviness lifts allowing expansion (aka space) for you to love and trust again.
Forgiving is all about you. Deciding whether to hold anger or release it occurs in your mind. You decide how you want to feel. No one else does it for you.
So what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is not condoning the actions of the other party, rolling over, and giving up. It is not about losing anything or letting someone else dominate you. Forgiveness is about releasing you from the bitterness prison that negatively affects other areas of your life, like your ability to love and trust others based on a past scenario.
To help you move past the constriction and into the expansion of the universe, I have a forgiveness exercise for you. Make a list of all the people in your life you are holding a grudge against, close your eyes, and visualize a negative cord of energy (active resentment) attaching you to that person. Next take a deep breath and see yourself with a giant pair of scissors cutting that cord. Both you and the other party float away from each other, releasing the negative energetic bind. Continue to do this until you feel you have released the experience. If you are still struggling, write an unedited letter to the offender expressing all of your feelings. Read the letter to a trusted friend or simply aloud and then burn it someplace safe. Visualize the energetic cord being cut while you are burning the letter and silently repeat, I am FREE. Repeat the releasing process as needed and watch what shifts in your life.
Get honest about grievances and the energy it is stealing from your beautiful one-of-a-kind life. Why wait to forgive ourselves and our loved ones? Life can be fragile and fickle. It can pass in a brief moment. Our minds become lost, our bodies worn, our hearts ache, and our souls fractured. If there is someone to forgive, can you release that burden here and now before it’s too late?
To be open and vulnerable, one of my greatest fears is growing to be incapacitated in mind and body. To not let go and make peace with what I must because I was too scared, stubborn, angry, unwilling, (fill in the blank) when I could have.There is great freedom and equal evolutionary growth – a spiritual ascension of you like that comes from relieving ourselves from the pain of holding the gate, resentment, and regret.
We become obsessed and vigilant. Angry and distracted. We are kept in low vibratory states of expression and we lose ourselves in those moments. This compounds and we become bitter. Further identifying with hatred and rage. Not trusting others and worse, feeling deep shame and mistrust for ourselves.
Forgiveness is an inside job. Something we do for ourselves and for others. But the process and hero’s journey of forgiveness is within us. Our relationship to our own core is primary.
Can you forgive yourself for cheating in your last relationship?
Can you forgive yourself for getting frustrated with your son?
Can you forgive your father for not knowing how to say I love you?
Can you forgive your partner for lying to you?
Can you forgive your perpetrator for the abuse?
What can you forgive here and now?
I forgive myself for still holding on to needing to get it right and when I don’t project that as inadequate frustration upon myself and others.
One is glad to be of service.
With Love and Gratitude
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