So, I was telling y’all in my last post about forgiveness, that it is exclusively about you giving love freely. More importantly, forgiveness is not really about anyone else.
That’s true.
Today, I am going to further explain who forgiveness is not for nor about and why. Then, we’ll get into the process of how to forgive.
Whose business is your forgiveness?
It’s yours and yours alone.
Furthermore, it’s no one else’s business when you have forgiven them.
For example, someone may ask for your forgiveness. You may not be ready. Even when you are, you might not want to involve them in your process of forgiveness. As crazy as it seems, it’s perfectly appropriate to tell someone who hurt you and whom you no longer feel you want in your life experiences that you will get around to forgiving them when you are ready for your own sake, but when it happens, it won’t be any of their concern.
Most people think they have to get your forgiveness to forgive themselves.
That’s not true.
Furthermore, your forgiveness doesn’t change anything about what they did as far as they are concerned. It changes nothing whatsoever on their end. Your forgiveness doesn’t make what they did right and it does not make them right. Nor does forgiveness make them more lovable nor worthy of anyone’s love. That’s all stuff they need to work out within themselves, for themselves. You are responsible for a grand total of none of that.
Your forgiveness is the love in your heart working properly, flowing properly to anyone you want to, whenever you feel so inclined without inhibitions- regardless of your personal history.
What does that got to do with anyone else?
Nada.
So, how do you forgive?
This is tricky.
I have worked on the practice of forgiveness from so many angles. It can start intellectually by finding things you are grateful for about the person or situation you need to forgive, how you met, what this person or situation meant to you, what you learned from the person or situation, even what you learned from the pain the experience may have caused you or even how the absence of this person or situation after the fact made room for magnificent people and experiences in your life.
One of my mentors says to take the words of Jesus literally when he says, “forgive 70 x 7”. Edwene Gaines recommends writing out or repeating aloud, “I deeply and profoundly forgive you, (forgiveness recipient’s name here)” 70 times each day for 7 days.
Edwene’s practice is similar to a Hawaiian tradition called Ho’oponopono. In this practice, one repeats, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you” as a mantra. You may also listen to various recordings of this mantra, some recordings last hours. You can find them on YouTube to play while falling asleep and during sleep. You can reprogram your subconscious mind for unconditional love and forgiveness this way.
I mentioned last week that once you deeply forgive yourself, it becomes easy to forgive all others. Using this mantra, with a focus toward self-love and personal forgiveness is an extremely effective tool to strengthen the muscles of forgiveness when time comes to extend your forgiveness to others.
Lately, I have been connecting directly to my heart with a process called Source Point. In Source Point, you sit silently and breathe, focusing on your breath. Then, you take everything in your head, all your thinking about your breathing or whatever comes up and allow all your consciousness to settle into your heart. Allow all your mental machinations to just come to rest in your heart space. Then, gradually, you become aware of your heart and how it feels. Doing this practice daily feels almost tickly at first, if you are not accustomed to feeling your heart, but it quickly grows into unabashed excitement, joy and boundless love welling up from within. It can be overwhelming at first and for some, there may be unaddressed pain lurking in their heart space. All this will quickly clear out so love can reign.
The most important part of this process or any process of forgiveness is to keep it up. It’s like a muscle which for many of us is extremely out of shape. At first, it might hurt to work out and you may not see much point or improvement. Over time, you will come to know forgiveness as your instantaneous and spontaneous second nature.
You will see improvement over time. That improvement will transform your entire life.
When you suppress the natural flow of love, you can feel empty, detached or separated from love. Once you tap into love, and it starts to flow freely again, you begin to feel alive and jubilant. Life takes on a sort of buoyant quality, elevating you above the fray. The thing is, sometimes we have to forgive life itself for not living up to our expectations and disappointing us. One might start to cut off one’s love of and for life on account of hit after hit, disappointment after disappointment. But cutting oneself off from the joy and love of life just leaves less opportunity for good things to happen or to acknowledge them when they do.
If you have disconnected yourself from the love and joy of life, reconnecting with your heart may be the best place to start.
I want to point out that there’s no one magic way to forgive. Some of these will feel better for you. Play with forgiveness. Don’t make it into a chore. Make it into a game. Do what feels the most fun.
I’m sure many of you have your own methods. Please share your personal forgiveness practices and techniques in the comments below. It may help other readers start to expand their freedom to love themselves, to love others and to even enjoy life itself!
Keep working on forgiveness and report back here with your own observations.