Forgiveness
Gail Goodwin © 2005

How do we move on and forgive? Forgiving another, even for the smallest of things is a very real challenge, let alone attempting to forgive horrible acts of greater proportion and impact.

So why should I forgive others? They don’t deserve my forgiveness anyway. With this frame of mind we remain stuck in our discontent and self righteousness thinking that we are being asked to give something of ourselves in the process when actually the reverse is true.

There are four stages we can work through that will bring us closer to forgiveness.

1. Acknowledge that a lack of forgiveness is costing you your personal power. It makes it easier to forgive another when we have been hurt by something someone has done and that person says sorry or is remorseful. If we’ve been hurt and that person is not at all remorseful, we are at greater odds with the forgiveness process. How do we get over this? What do we do when others won’t even acknowledge the result of their actions? The longer we hold a grudge or refuse to forgive another the more personal power and precious life force we loose every single day to the other person and the situation.

Holding a grudge or holding onto an inability to forgive feeds the situation and feeds the other person involved and so eventually depletes our health and well being. The other person or people involved, and the situation or the event has all the power, and it’s our power. And it’s costing us big time. After we’ve run the fuel tank in our heart chakra dry, we end up paying for our misery with our cell tissue. We develop illness either at the heart centre, or through the physical vulnerabilities we’ve inherited, and so manifest illness and disease in those susceptible areas.

It’s impossible to put a price on our health, but we may as well write a cheque for a zillion dollars and hand it over to those we hold back on forgiving. Forgiving another becomes the biggest investment we make for our own wellbeing.

2. Acknowledge that what has occurred is not personal. It’s not about us, but the process or what was going on at the time in the life of the person we need to forgive. The way we were treated has more to do with the difficulties in the life of the other person than it is about us.

3. Identify and seek to understand the challenge or lesson within the experience. Firstly examine how you feel about your experience. Do you feel rejected or abandoned? Are you feeling betrayed or humiliated? Are you left with a sense of injustice about the experience? Do what is necessary, without harming yourself or others, to release the emotional response held within the body.  Then consider what it is that you are learning. There are soul lessons and spiritual agreements we have set ourselves to work through in this lifetime and we can’t do this in isolation.

We need others to help us work through these challenges. I am not able to learn about or cope with betrayal until someone betrays me. I’ll learn to deal with disappointment when someone disappoints me. I may only be able to empower myself by standing up and taking charge of my life, once I’ve been taken advantage of, used or even abused.

4. Choose a spiritually symbolic perspective. Life is a journey of challenges and our purpose is to hold the vision of our highest potential in our experience as we work through those challenges. Having identified the challenge or lesson, see the situation from this higher perspective with understanding, love and compassion for the self and others. Then we can look back in gratitude knowing that the situation has served to strengthen our character.

Forgiving another will increase our personal power and so enhances our health and wellbeing once we can be objective, look for the challenge and focus on the higher meaning and purpose in our experience. We are then empowered, rather than disempowered, by the experience.

Gail Goodwin
www.bodysoulspirit.com.au