Forgiveness, A Spiritual Laxative.

Let’s talk about it, the #SelfCare provided by #Forgiveness.?

Forgiveness is one of the most empowering characteristics available. It’s sad it is as misunderstood by as many as it clearly is. Because: it instantly decreases the level of bitterness in anyone’s mindset, heart, and soul.

Forgiveness does not mean accepting the unacceptable or allowing the unallowable to continue. It does mean getting over things that can be gotten over, and allowing light into where there was once darkness. Forgiveness does not mean allowing someone to continue their mistreatment. It is getting over the mistreatment so that the experience doesn’t own you, define you, or continue.?

Because that is what eventually happens if we don’t forgive the really big stuff. We become bitter and owned by anything we can’t get over. It is invited to re-manifest into ever bigger and uglier instances for us to keep getting over.

?? An inability to forgive eventually defines all aspects of a person’s life and, eventually, their health.

So how does one forgive?

How does anyone truly, genuinely, authentically forgive the unforgivable?

This is often an exercise in futility; some empty gesture to show forgiveness rather than accepting it honestly into our lives. Who amongst us has written a grievance on a piece of paper, burnt it to a distant ash, just to continue feeling as badly as before about the situation??

Does that mean we didn’t believe in the exercise enough?

Is it like clapping for Tinker Bell? Tinker Bell dies unless the clapper believes enough. Is getting over a grievance technically based on our belief in the magic of the process??

?? Then, if it doesn’t work, the burner of paper is simply not trying hard enough to forgive. Is?that?the case?

But what action has been taken to change anything?

There must be things we can do, actual steps to follow, to actively forgive and finally "feel better?"

We must admit to ourselves,?the absence of our forgiveness hurts us much more than the ones we resent. Very often, the ones we resent (no matter how justifiably) aren’t even aware we have an issue with them. Or, if they are aware, they don’t care; perhaps they even blame us for the situation.?

Whatever they feel or don’t feel, there’s no comparison to the turmoil our resentment causes our own hearts and souls.

That is why everyone touts the importance of forgiveness;?without it our hearts cannot fly freely, and we cannot soar above our sores.

Rather than reminding you about Buddha comparing resentment to personally ingesting poison and expecting our offender to die, I would like to share a brand-new analogy, one I read Wednesday night.

Kimberly Snyder wrote about Forgiveness in her book, You Are More Than You Think You Are, and gifted us all the very best way of looking at forgiveness I have ever heard. She says:

“…just like holding on to food inside your digestive system can cause blockages, holding on to pain can lead to mental, spiritual, and emotional obstructions as well.” She continues, “forgiveness is like taking a spiritual laxative…”

I believe we can all relate to constipation much more than poisoning our enemies.

Kimberly doesn’t stop there, though. She hits it home when she explains:

"And to be perfectly straight, when we hold on to pain – to the wrongs someone has done to us – we are also holding that experience over another’s head. And that can give us a false sense of power. It’s a form of revenge – often passive aggressive revenge.”?

Would you prefer not to be a constipated, passive-aggressive, bitter human being?

Then, simply practice forgiveness today.

Your Self-Care found within Forgiveness

?? The first step to forgiving others is conquering compassion.

Compassion for yourself is paramount and needs to be mastered for so many reasons, especially this one.? Compassion is the missing component to so many people’s balance and wellbeing. In this instance compassion has nothing to do with the person who hurt you; it is 100% for you alone!?

Once you compassionately embrace your own mistakes, your own missteps, it becomes easier to see how the errs in another's judgments (their actions) are based on anything other than malice. Removing malice of intent and looking at actions as mistakes in judgment, or misunderstandings in perspective, makes our grievances more tangibly understood. It makes them easier to let go, allowing them to truly be 'burnt away.'

This is where the hardest step for most people comes in.?(Thankfully, you aren't most people.)

?? The second step is dropping the protective barrier held around an offense magnifying it to the level of needing forgiveness.?

We all have our own boundary of where and how an action or statement warrants our feelings hurt, when resentment builds to a point that forgiveness is needed.? Some find offenses everywhere, in an aggressive driver being less than polite on the roadway, to the person who cuts in a line at the store. While others hold out for more audacious abuses, abandonments, and abasements. Wherever there is a hurt, wherever there is a scar, there is an excuse to forgive someone.?

?? Start small and work up to the really big ones when you are ready.

People have a habit, possibly a need, to magnify their own scars above those of others'. The reason it's easy to defend holding on too tightly to any offense is because it has been justified that no one else could even understand, let alone recover from, the same thing.

In fact, I can hear the argument against taking my advice being first and foremost:

?‘Ya, but...if she lived through what I have, she wouldn’t be so quick to forgive.’

My resume of scars is plentiful, and essentially unimportant. The things I have forgiven ample, yet inconsequential - here and now.?

Know this fact: The more we compare and isolate our scars and grievances, the more healing we will eventually need.

What I know is I resented a lot for a long time. Enough that it ruled my entire existence; the fabric of who I was became ‘victim of’ rather than ‘survivor of.’ Being a survivor is what changes everything.

?? You ?? cannot come this far and not understand,?forgiveness is not about letting the offender off the hook. Forgiveness is about letting yourself off the hook. It isn’t about being weak and walked on.?It is about having the strength to be bigger than any event, stronger than what could make you the most bitter.

The most important aspect of forgiveness to embrace today:

?? Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person (or people) involved in your pain. You forgive 100% for the benefit of your own psychological, spiritual, and eventual physical wellbeing.?Forgive because it releases your soul from a grievance that can slowly erode you to your core - not because it releases any burden from the one you resent. Because, as we already determined, they may not even be aware, let alone care, about why your soul is clouded in darkness, clamoring in disharmony.?

You can even forgive without letting the other(s) know!

?? It is for you, not them. That is where people become the most confused about forgiveness.

You do all the work, so you should get all the benefit; right?

Right!?

The process of forgiving may take time, in the beginning. Trust this 2 step process. Keep practicing each step and you’ll get better and better and the process will become smoother and faster, eventually becoming second nature.?

Without the burden of resentments your newfound strength will feel super!

If that isn’t enough to convince you, let me take it a single step further.

The greatest revenge most of us can take is simply not caring.?

Not caring robs any situation of all power or importance in our life. Therefore, robbing a perpetrator of our resentment ??STOPS?? the negative impacts on us. And that, my friends, makes them inconsequential nothingness.

Thankfully, you never allow inconsequential nothings to get YOU down!

If you are ready to trade a bitter pill for a spiritual laxative, hypnosis helps when nothing else ever has.?

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