(123P)

 

I wrote this book because I truly feel that we teach what we want to learn, and forgiveness is the most important lesson that I have to learn.

 

I wrote this book for myself as a reminder that I really do want to end the suffering I cause myself and others through my judgments and difficulties and forgiveness.

 

Forgiveness gives me a sense of personal freedom, hope, peace and happiness which I get in no other way.

 

It is ongoing, always a work in progress. It is a never ending process because as long as we are living in these bodies their is a part of us that is going to be tempted, again and again, to make judgments.

 

What we need to forgive in others may be something in ourselves that we have hidden from our awareness.

 

We can choose to have peace of mind as our only goal

 

We are responsible for our own happiness.

 

Forgiveness means seeing the light of God in everyone – regardless of their behavior.

 

The happiest marriages are built on a foundation of forgiveness.

 

To not forgive is a decision to suffer.

 

To be happy, all I have to do is give up my judgments.

 

Forgiveness is the most powerful healer of all.

 

From the perspective of Love and spirit, forgiveness is the willingness to let go of the hurtful past. It is the decision to no longer suffer, to heal your heart and soul.

 

To forgive is to feel the compassion, gentleness, tenderness and caring that is always within our hearts, no matter how the world may seem at the moment.

 

Forgiveness is a way to a place of inner peace and happiness, the way to our soul.

 

Through forgiveness we receive all that our hearts could ever want. We are released from our fear, anger and pain to experience oneness with each other and our Spiritual source.

 

Forgiveness is the way out of the darkness and into the light. It is our function here on earth, allowing us to recognize ourselves as the light of the world. It allows us to escape the shadow of the past, whether that shadow is our own or another person’s.

 

 

 

Forgiveness is letting go of all hopes for a better past.

 

The power of love and forgiveness in our lives can produce miracles.

 

The key word in learning to forgive is the willingness to forgive.

 

Most of us would avoid taking drugs that we know have detrimental side effects. Yet much of the time we are not very selective about the thoughts we put into our minds – nor are we aware of the toxic effects these thoughts can have on our bodies.

 

 

It is the part (of our mind/mind field) that tells us that our happiness is found in the external world through the accumulation of things. It is the part that tells us that if we could only find the right relationship to be in, everything in our lives would be perfect. And it is the part which believes that when things go wrong, the only reasonable thing to do is to find someone or some situation to blame. We called this part of us the ego.

 

It can be helpful to think of the ego as having a belief system of its own. If we want, we can accept its beliefs or seek other ways of looking at the world. Of course, we have to remember that our egos are part of who we are. The greater our ability to recognize our fearful ego, the freer we are to choose a more loving and peaceful life.

 

Think of the ego’s thought system as being based on fear, guilt and blame. If we were to choose only to follow its guiding principles, we would always be in a state of conflict and any peace or happiness that we might have will completely elude us.

 

Given that this is how the ego works, it should come as no surprise that it does not believe in forgiveness. In fact, it will do everything it can to convince us that nobody in the world deserves forgiveness. I t even goes a step further than this and says that we do not deserve forgiveness ourselves! It clings fiercely to the belief that people do things for which they must never be forgiven.

 

The ego does, however, believe that we must constantly defend ourselves. It communicates this to us in feelings that we can easily recognize. For example, the unforgiving mind of the ego would try to convince us that the only way to protect ourselves from further harm is to punish the other person with our anger and our hatred, withdrawing from them so that they will feel bad for what they have done.

 

Our egos show up for us in the feeling that we would be foolish, stupid or just plain insane to forgive this person whose actions who have some way hurt or threatened us. And if that were not enough, our egos remind us that there are people in our lives who are quite willing to nudge us and say that such-and such a person hurt us and deserves our anger, not our forgiveness.

 

Of course our egos are very clever. They know how to pick and choose their witnesses. And you can be sure that they have a good eye for selecting only those who totally agree with them. The friends I pick today, now that I am on a spiritual path are quite different from the ones I had around me during those days when I was an addicted to alcohol.

 

The go is filled with contradictions. It has to hide from us for example, the fact that when we hold on to our anger to punish others, we imprison ourselves. (And poison ourselves.) Another secret it has to keep is that our unforgiving thoughts create a whole in our hearts, not only causing a sense of loss and sadness but keeping us from experiencing inner peace and love. That hole separates us from each other and from our spiritual connection with each other.

 

If you believe in God, the ego may be busy telling you that your god is judgmental and angry. The ego may be busy telling you that God is ready to drop a brick on you to punish you for your misdeeds and “wrong” thoughts. The ego may be busy telling you that you cannot trust or feel safe with God.

 

The ego frequently tries to tell you that unconditional love from God is nothing but an illusion which you create and that as long as you hold on to this silly notion, you are deceiving yourself.

 

Our egos would have us believe that God is truly wrathful and ready at a moment’s notice to cause people to die, to create natural disasters such as earthquakes and tornados that kill many people and leave them homeless. The ego would even have us believe that these are ways to punish people for the misdeeds and wrong thoughts.

 

The unforgiving mind of the ego is always has a good stock of fear, misery, pain, suffering, despair, weariness and doubt. It is a mind that views mistakes as sins that should never be forgotten.

 

 

The side effect of holding unforgiving thoughts in our minds can have a very negative impact on our well-being. Here are just a few of the physical problems that may be associated with an unforgiving mind: headaches, backaches, pains in the neck, stomach aches and ulcer-like symptoms, depression, lack of energy anxiety, irritability, tenseness and being on edge, insomnia and restlessness, free-floating fear (fear not attached to any particular event), and unhappiness.

 

The unforgiving mind hides from our awareness the fact that we imprison ourselves by holding on to anger and hate.

 

Forgiving others is the first step to forgiving ourselves.

 

Our immune systems can become stronger when we forgive.

 

It is difficult to forgive when we listen to the advice of the ego, which tells us that we are doing the healthy thing by punishing the person who has hurt us and withholding our love from them. It is difficult to forgive because we have stubborn egos which attempt to convince us that it is better and safer for us to hate than to love.

 

It is important that we do not make our egos the enemy or be attached to their advice. But it is equally important to recognize that our egos lead us astray. Our egos preach to us constantly. They cling to a belief system that makes fear, conflict, indifference, and unhappiness top priorities, and they insist that expressing love is just insane.

I like to think differently – that perhaps we are really insane only when we are not allowing ourselves to experience and express love.

 

When we become attached to listening to the voice of the ego, which we are especially prone to do during times of stress or when things are not going as we’d like we will hear or feel in our minds the silent messages that tell us not to forgive.

 

There is always a choice to be made: We can listen to the voice of love or to the voice of the ego. How can we tell when it is the ego talking? The voice of the ego always comes from fear. It leaves us in a state of conflict, not peace. When we listen to the unforgiving mind of the ego, it will give us countless reasons why we should not forgive, always hiding the fact that when we don’t forgive we are the ones who suffer and lose our sense of peace.

 

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Forgiveness releases us from the painful past.

 

You either totally forgive or you do not forgive at all.

 

To forgive, have a willingness to give all your anger and anguish to God.

 

We can choose the thoughts we put in our minds.

 

Only through forgiveness can we stop the cycles of destruction and pain on our planet.

 

We can begin by letting go of the ego’s belief that we must find someone to blame whenever something goes wrong. We can take new beliefs into our hearts, ones that allow us to see the value of letting go of self-condemnation and condemnation of others and surrendering to love.

 

If we can adopt a willingness to look upon ourselves and each other as eternal spiritual beings and not just as bodies, it becomes much easier to see the value of forgiveness.

 

…What kept me from experiencing peace of mind was my unwillingness to see the value of forgiving myself and others. I was caught in a whirlpool of shame and guilt and denial and anger about things that had happened in the past. For many years I saw myself as a victim. I blamed the world and everyone in it for my own unhappiness.

 

The first obstacle we need to overcome is our unwillingness to change our belief systems. Perhaps the biggest block to forgiveness is having a belief system that is based on fear rather than love. That block begins to vanish as we affirm a willingness in our lives to see other people either as being loving or as being fearful and giving a call of help for love. That means no longer interpreting other people’s behavior to determine if they are guilty or innocent. It means seeing other people not as attacking but either as loving or fearful and giving a call of help for love.

 

By the time I was in my twenties, I had become an expert at attacking or belittling myself and others. I looked for and found many people in the world who were more than willing to cooperate with me in this kind of behavior. In those days, my ego was like an automatic pilot, instantly switching on, God help any one who happened to be in the line of fire! I would go instantly into my attack and defend mode.

 

If we have fearful or hurtful things happen to us when we are young, we not only remember them, but we tend to cling to them for judging the present and the future.

 

Our minds are like a motion picture projectors. Our memories of the past become images we project out onto the screen. And the screen of our projections is often whatever person we are talking with at the moment. If the film running in our mind is one of guilt or anger, we are going to project those perceptions onto the present situation. We may see the other person as trying to make us feel guilty, or we may see them as deserving our anger.

 

While perception and projection are part of being human, our egos are quite capable of using projection for their own purposes. They will convince us that what we are projecting onto other people from our own perceptions is true and real. The outcome is that our egos convince us that all our uncomfortable thoughts and feelings are caused by people or situations in the external world. The last thing our egos want us to know is that what we experience is determined by the thoughts in our own minds.

 

Regardless of the description of the pain and suffering we experience, it is always wise to look for the presence of unforgiving thoughts that may be preventing us from healing.

 

Clinging to its usual weapons, our stubborn egos will tell us it is ok to sort of forgive – but never to totally forgive.

 

Remember that your thoughts and beliefs determine how you will experience your life. The purpose of forgiveness is to release us from the past. It is to free us from grudges and grievances we have with other people. Rather than putting us in danger, our forgiveness lets us live more fully in the present. The peaceful present in turn, helps us view the future with feelings of peace. The peaceful present can then extend into the future, where present and future becomes one. Unfortunately, most of us live in reality where the fearful past and fearful future become the same, and our beliefs create a reality where the worst is yet to come.

 

Forgiveness creates a world where we do not withhold our love from anyone.

 

It becomes easier to forgive when we choose to no longer believe we are victims.

 

Forgiveness is a continuous process, not something we do just once or twice.

 

Forgiving is the pathway to happiness and the quickest way to undo suffering and pain.

 

Hidden anger becomes the thing that makes it so difficult for us to forgive.

 

Forgiveness is the shortest route to God.

 

Forgiveness is the eraser that makes the hurtful past disappear.

 

Forgiving can be a most important process not only for a person who is dying but for people who are left behind.

 

Let peace of mind be your only goal – not changing the other person or punishing them.

 

Preparation for retraining our minds begins with learning to quiet them so that we are not caught up in the busyness of the day. Prayer can be helpful for this. If you meditate you might start there. Meditation simply means having a peaceful mind. You may have had the experience of hiking in the mountains and coming upon a quiet lake so clear and pure you could see the bottom. Let that image or a similar one be your symbol for a peaceful mind.

 

A peaceful mind is our natural state, one that is tranquil, still, joyous and loving. Its clarity becomes possible because there are no conflicting thoughts, judgments or fears.

 

Resist any temptation you might have to compare yourself to others or to measure your progress.

 

Have a willingness to be open minded. Remind yourself that it is alright to disagree with or reject any of your thoughts. Forgiveness is a choice, and you do not have to forgive or believe in forgiveness. But do your best to look at the consequences of your choice to forgive or not to forgive, letting your heart help you to decide.

 

Willingness, gives you the power to move ahead in the forgiveness process…. It is your willingness to seek help from a Higher Power that allows you to transform your anger into love.

 

Forgiveness makes our load in life much lighter.

 

When we each take responsibility for removing the blocks to the presence of love through forgiveness, what we will experience is going to be peace, joy, and happiness that is beyond our imagination.

 

Forgiveness is the bridge to God, love and happiness. It is the bridge that allows us to say good-bye to guilt, blame and shame. It teaches us that love is letting go of fear.

 

Forgiveness clears the air and purifies the heart and soul. It puts us in touch with all that is sacred. Through forgiveness we connect with that which is greater than ourselves, with that which is beyond our imagination and full understanding. It allows us to be peaceful with the mystery of life. It creates the opportunity for us to do what we came here to do: Teach Only Love, for That is What We Are.