Forgiveness: A Path to Healing

In our journey to inner peace and healing, both guilt and forgiveness of self and others have a profound effect on this process. Guilt is defined as a feeling of culpability especially for imagined offences or from a sense of inadequacy; a self-reproach; and forgiveness as the act of forgiving or the ceasing of feeling resentment against an offender. Guilt and lack of forgiveness of self and others, burdens many people with the heavy weight of inappropriate shame and the destruction of deep-seated resentments. In recent years, much has been written about the destructiveness of repressed emotions and particularly anger and resentment in contributing to life-threatening illnesses.

The belief that feeling emotion means we are weak is a dreadful legacy to burden people with. Teaching people that strength means not feeling or denying our feelings is tantamount to creating illness. Beliefs such as 'big boys don't cry' and 'good girls don't get angry' has resulted in men and women who are unable to get in touch with what they actually feel. Depression is thought to be caused by anger turned inward and is only one of the symptoms of the need to protect ourselves from the scorn associated with expressing feelings. Many other illnesses and particularly the addictions are theorised to be expressions of a deep level of emotional pain.

Why won't we forgive? I believe it starts from our unwillingness to forgive ourselves. We believe that we are undeserving of love, respect, acceptance, appreciation, and the right to live a life where we walk in peace, joy, harmony, and abundance. Somewhere along the line, we started to believe that all the rules and regulations of the society in which we live defined who we were supposed to be. We stopped trusting and believing in our own inherent worth and came to believe that we were 'not good enough.' Messages such as 'you failed' or 'you should' became a litany for us to abuse ourselves with guilt. I call it abuse because it is just as painful when we do it to ourselves as when others do it to us. We became judge and jury and found ourselves guilty of our perceived offences. When the primary caregivers such as parents, teachers, and other societal influences are unable to love themselves unconditionally, this 'learned attitude' is passed on to the next generation as shame in an attempt to control behaviour.

This sense of shame differs from guilt in that guilt is about behaviour. Shame is deeper and more pervasive. It is about your being and feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, being bad and unlovable become the conviction underlying your life. Children grow up believing they are 'not good enough' and become the caregivers for the next generation. And so it goes, on and on. I am not blaming the parents and caregivers here as we parent the way we were parented. My own definition of maturity is that maturity is achieved when we are able to forgive our parents and other significant adults for being human.

What Is Self-forgiveness?

Self-forgiveness is the willingness to believe that you are worthy, that there are no mistakes rather, you are on the planet, or in Earth School (as some people call it) to learn about being human. The opportunities to learn are just that - not mistakes - just opportunities to learn.

Practical Steps to Self-forgiveness

1. Examine how you perceived a certain situation and how you can chose to change your perception. Remember that the thoughts we think create the feelings, and it is our perception that creates our interpretations of the situation.

2. Accept yourself and your humanness - you are not supposed to be perfect.

3. Admit when you make a mistake.

4. Remember that everybody is doing the best they can with what they know, and that includes you.

5. Let go of past-future thinking, stay in the ‘Now.’

6. Confront your emotional pain - own your own ‘stuff.’

7. Appreciate the lessons that have contributed to your growth and made you who you are now.

8. Say 'I forgive myself for ____________ (whatever).'

Forgive or Else You Are Shackled Like a Prisoner to Your Past!

By your choice of not forgiving, you have chosen to shackle yourself like prisoners to your past! This holds you back from experiencing your true Divine Potential. You carry the great weight of shame upon your shoulders, the burdens upon your back, the grudges and revenge reek havoc in your mind and the ball chained to your leg impedes your forward growth. You hold the power and one of the keys that can potentially heal you physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, ultimately setting you free!

When we carry grudges, resentments, old hurt and pains we end up hurting ourselves more than the ones that we perceived did the hurting! Being unforgiving is detrimental to our entire being! Coaches, counselors and doctors attest to the damage that is done by failing to forgive ourselves and others. The majority of illnesses that are treated are due to emotional problems. Depression, anxiety and destroyed relationships are normally caused from carrying resentment and bitterness which is unforgiveness.

Forgiveness has to be given without resentment and in honesty. It must be completely genuine or else it is not truly forgiven. You are only fooling yourself if you do not truly forgive from the heart. What if the person we are forgiving does not feel that they have done anything wrong? It doesn’t matter, forgive them anyways! As with all choices presented to each of us during our course of life, they have choice on taking responsibility for their own role. If the other person involved chooses not to accept responsibility, that is ok! Self-empowerment is taking care of yourself and doing things for yourself. You do not need another person’s permission to heal yourself! Take back your power, forgive them, rid the energy and move on with your life! You do not need their permission or approval for you to forgive them. You owe this to yourself. You are only responsible for your own healing. In truth, when you do forgive the other person, a higher part of this being, knows and accepts your forgiveness. So in essence, you are helping the other person by your unselfish act of forgiving them! Really it is a win-win for all involved. Although the person not taking responsibility for their involvement will stay stuck in their life where they are at. But as with all things, they will evolve when the time is right for them.

A lot of hurts and pains are buried deep within our subconscious mind. We do not remember them therefore we feel we are free of them. This is not so! This hurt and pain IS an energetic memory stored within our being. It runs our lives! It is a program that keeps replaying over and over, one that stifles your growth forward as it holds your consciousness in victim mode. Forgiveness is something that needs to be done in order to heal yourself physically, raise your vibration, leave victim consciousness, and move forward in your life. Forgiving someone does not mean you are accepting the person’s behaviour. Forgiveness is more about releasing the harmful energies that are overshadowing your personal health and wellbeing than letting someone else off the hook for their misdeeds. When you hold onto the pain, resentment, fear, hurts and other emotions you give your power away to the one whom has done the hurting. When you do not forgive this person and yourself you allow subconscious programs to run your life. You keep yourself locked in a repetitive victim cycle until you are ready to release these energies and programs.

I am ready to heal myself. I am ready to forgive everyone that has ever done me wrong, how do I do this? Here is an exercise that you can do by yourself that is very powerful and freeing! It takes some time but is definitely worth every ounce of effort you put into it.

Go into your physical sacred space, sit and start a list. Go back into your life as far as your memory can remember and start writing down every single name that you ‘see’ or ‘hear’ that you feel has created any type of hurt, pain or suffering. Go right back to the very beginning. Think of your parents, siblings, relatives and neighbours. Go back to your school days. Go into your work place. Write down every single name without judgment. When you feel your list is complete, go back again and this time, write down all the names that you feel you have hurt either intentionally or unintentionally. Be as honest with yourself as you can. Remember you are the only one suffering by not taking responsibility for your own actions! After you are done, go through the list and for each person say, “I AM the Violet Flame. I forgive (name) and I forgive myself now. I release all karmic energy that we have together in all directions of time. I send you love and bless you on your way. I call upon the power of God to cut any and all psychic cords between myself and (name) now. These psychic cords are now lovingly severed, lifted, loved, healed, released and let go into the Violet Flame. I therefore accept fully and completely the healing of my relationship with (name) now. Thank you! So be it and so it is! ”

This does take awhile but it is very powerful! Free yourself and move on! If you feel like there was someone you still have trouble forgiving, keep coming back and repeating the affirmation for this person or people daily, until you feel you have forgiven them and yourself completely. I would like to also say that just because you have forgiven someone for their part in your learning experience, this does not mean you have to resume a relationship with this person if it has already been severed! You forgive and move on.

Some other very powerful ways to free yourself with forgiveness are through energy work, meditations and visualizations that work specifically to deprogram your subconscious mind.

You have the power within to change your life, who do you need to forgive right now?

If you have any questions, would like to purchase the energetic clearing program, self-healing CDs or would like to schedule a spiritual life coaching session with Lisa Whatley, please email lisa@infinitylighthealing.com

Connecting the Past and the Present: Healing Abandonment and Abuse through Awareness

Many people I work with in therapy or in my writing-as-healing classes discover stories that surprise them—stories about the mistakes they felt their parents made, power imbalances in the family, or stories about physical or sexual abuse. The darker stories are often a surprise: when writers sat down to write, those issues were not directly on their minds, but deep, revealing stories erupted from the pen. Though they were unexpected, for some they were a relief. People who have been in therapy have had the same kind of experience—the subject matter in the forefront of the mind is not the material that “accidentally” arises during the session. The therapy session begins with a particular subject in the present—for example dissatisfaction at work or trouble in a relationship, but often travels back in time with associations to parents, school, or past relationships.

It has become a cliché to talk about “dysfunctional” relationships and families, but most people do not have perfect families, and many have had to struggle with a range of problems—alcoholism, abuse—physical, sexual, or emotional, eating disorders, and depression, to name a few. No one likes to be reminded of the past but when it keeps coming up, we are pushed to learn new responses as we search for more peace and positivity in our lives.

The past is not dead—it’s not even past. -William Faulkner

Different kinds of abandonment

For people who have been abandoned, either literally by actual physical absence, or emotionally—a parent can be in the home and not there for us—the abandoned child syndrome may remain years later, showing up through insecurities and fears, clinging behaviors or its opposite—walls to intimacy. The abandoned child inside the adult can create havoc such as alcohol abuse, repeating their own abandonment by abandoning children, or refusal to have children out of fear of repetition. Depression, lack of energy and creativity, anger, and trying to fill up the emptiness may be manifestations of these issues.

When the abandoned child is feeling its pain and loss, the rest of the adult person is unable to find emotional balance. New skills are needed to help sort out the confusion, and to create new, healthier patterns. Part of the healing may include grieving and anger, as those repressed feelings are released. But it is equally important to look at strengths: how well you are doing and what you want to contribute to the world as well as the positive side of parents and caretakers. Most people do the best they can.

Healing is a process of peeling the onion, so to speak. Revealing one layer after another, with time for rest and integration, leads to inner peace, resolution, and forgiveness.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Write about parallels between the past and the present. Become more aware of old patterns finding their way into your current life.

2. List all the ways you feel you were abandoned. Don’t worry if the list doesn’t make logical sense or is too long or short. Just write what you feel and remember.

3. Look at photographs of you and your family from those time periods as a way to help you remember details. Becoming more aware of the past can help you sort issues in the present.

4. Write an “unsent letter”—do not send it!—to your mother, telling her all the ways you appreciated her.
5. Now write an “unsent letter” listing the ways she let you down. DO NOT send unsent letters in the exercise—these are just ways for you to help yourself to heal.

Do the same for your father.

1. Write about your intentions for today, this week—what do you want to change? What are you goals in your life now?

2. What are you doing well now, and how is it different and better than what you or your family might have done in the past?

3. What are your strengths? Name 10 things your friends would say are your best traits.

4. Write about how you are your best friend. How you take care of yourself and like yourself.

Abandoned Again—How We Repeat Our Childhood in the Present

The woman on the couch looks up at me miserably, tears in her eyes, as she tells me about her most recent bad relationship. “I’m sick of choosing guys who aren’t there for me. They seem great, they want me, they tell me how terrific I am, then either they have an affair, or turn on me once we are involved, getting that cold look in their eyes. I can see they don’t care after all. I can’t stand this. Why do I do this over and over?”

In my work as a therapist, I help people discover repeated patterns. Despite our conscious desire and urgent efforts to make our lives better, we end up feeling the same as we did as children, but the feeling of despair and depression can deepen if we see that we are simply repeating our abusive or abandoned childhood.

This may seem confusing to understand, but this is how it works: Rooted deep in the unconscious is a desire to make the story turn out right—to find someone who will finally come through and love us the way we want. But the pattern of repetition, until it is resolved, will cause us to choose people who will do exactly what was done to us as children. If you were abandoned, they will abandon you. If you were hurt physically, this may be what you experience all over again.

For instance, most women involved in relationships where there is domestic violence either were beaten as children, or observed it for many years. If you were verbally abused, you will find yourself hearing the same phrases and feeling exactly the same as you did when you were a child. There you are, thinking you have just found the love of your life, when a terrible feeling comes over you—“I have been here before,” says the voice inside your head, a feeling of dread running through your body. It’s not déjà vu; it is an unconscious repetition of the past.

There is good news about all this: You can change these old patterns. It takes time, awareness, determination, and work on your part, but it can be done.

How to help stop repeating abandonment and abuse in your life now:

1. First, you have to recognize you are repeating your past patterns. Become aware of a familiar, sinking feeling, or the feeling that you are a bad person, or not good enough, or feel awful about yourself. Ask yourself: is there something going on now that reinforces that feeling?

2. Consider your past patterns with parents. It helps to write down these patterns, as you can be objective about them if you see them on the page.

3. Write about being a child of about five years old; nine years old; 12. What was life like in your household? Who was there connecting with you, and how?

4. After making that objective list of patterns in family and in the past, write down any parallels between then and now, paying particular attention to feelings. Sometimes the action is different but the feeling is the same.

5. When you are drawn to a new person, get to know him better before getting involved. Spend time to find out how he treats you when he is having a bad day, or how he acts when you say no. How you are treated at the beginning of a relationship when you are not being pleasing or saying yes, when you make boundaries for yourself, is only a hint of how it will be later on.

6. Keep your need to be loved and accepted in balance with who the other person is and his or her needs. Take your time to find out more before getting too involved.

7. Write in your journal to become more aware of patterns, concerns, and actual events. You can refer back to them later. This documentation may clear up any future confusion about reality.