Forgiveness
Forgiveness and the Forgiveness Exercise
Forgiveness is a necessary part of daily life.
It is a conscious, deliberate decision to release our feelings of hurt, pain, resentment, and/or vengeance toward a person or group, regardless of whether they actually deserve forgiveness. It does not mean forgetting, condoning or excusing offenses. We do not forgive others for their benefit or because they deserve it.
We do it for our benefit because we deserve it.
Living with Earth at this time makes it almost normal to need to forgive on a regular basis just to maintain one's equilibrium.
This forgiveness exercise may be beneficial in handling grief, as well as shock, shame, anger, horror, feeling betrayed, and any other not so good feeling. This exercise may be done once, once a day, multi-times a day, or throughout the day. Do until you feel the emotion is lifted, that it has been let go. This is especially useful when someone has left us, when we have an issue with another person, and when we have to associate with someone we "can't stand". Forgiveness, forgiving, forgive all include "give". Giving allows the heart to grow.
Living with Earth at this time makes it almost normal to need to forgive on a regular basis just to maintain one's equilibrium.
This forgiveness exercise may be beneficial in handling grief, as well as shock, shame, anger, horror, feeling betrayed, and any other not so good feeling. This exercise may be done once, once a day, multi-times a day, or throughout the day. Do until you feel the emotion is lifted, that it has been let go. This is especially useful when someone has left us, when we have an issue with another person, and when we have to associate with someone we "can't stand". Forgiveness, forgiving, forgive all include "give". Giving allows the heart to grow.
The Forgiveness Exercise.
This exercise consists of repeating 4 statements: I love me. I forgive me. I love X. I forgive X, where X is the name of a person or group which is the source of our pain. We can substitute “everybody” for the name of the person or group.
Remember, pain is a catalyst.
We first affirm that we love and forgive our self. This gives us the strength to love and forgive whatever is challenging us. When we have learned the lesson, the pain disappears. We have integrated the emotion and the situation. This is especially useful for the current time when we are learning many things previously kept hidden. We are learning we have been lied to, have not been made aware of things we should know, have been cheated, disrespected, enslaved, "tricked" by those wearing "black" hats.
Note: “love” here means to wish the best for the one “loved”, that we respect their
existence and their rights. It does not imply any emotional attachment nor mean that we wish to associate with them nor give them any permissions.
Love is the balancer.
We May Need Only to Forgive Self.
Sometimes we need only to forgive our self. The following is an example of this: In the early 1990s when the Legacy conferences were first held in Virginia Beach, at year end I received an annual review from my immediate work supervisor which indicated there was a problem. This arose out of the blue and I did not understand it. I went to the Legacy conference in February where I had a reading as part of the conference. I asked about this situation and was told that when I was working on an evacuation, I had pushed those working with me really hard as we were racing against time and that I had never forgiven myself for treating others this way. My work supervisor was one of these.
I immediately forgave myself. When I returned to work the next week, the situation had evaporated. Everything was as it had been before the review only better.
This was a valuable lesson. I had learned that a difficulty [karma] with another can arise because of judging and condeming my self. And my decision to change had resolved a situation without further involvment of anyone else.
Forgiving myself was all that was required.
A Key Benefit
Another key benefit of forgiving is that the release of grief lets the trauma go for all generations, both ancestors and descendents, and for all aspects of self.
Grieving is saying goodbye. Forgiving is knowing it is finished.
The forgiveness exercise described here is a modification of one developed and shared by Wayshower John Yoder in handling emotions arising in dealing with his
ex-wife and with a lawyer who regularly appeared before him.