It is easy to speak of ‘forgiving’, but it is not easy to do it. We can feel when we have been wronged, betrayed, or hurt. The feelings in our heart are real, and the anguish we go through is palpable. But can we continue living this way? Is it really in our best interest to continue feeding the pain that someone else’s actions, words or energy caused in us? Did they really cause anything, or is it just how we choose to see it and feed it? Many times, the hurt we feel is due to things not happening the way we expected, or someone behaving in a way we believe is wrong. So maybe, just maybe, forgiving has more to do with releasing how we feel or think things should have been. It is inside of us, not outside of us.
Energy is the source of everything. Where or what we put our energy into, grows. If we think about this for a moment, do we want our pain to grow or do we want to heal from that pain? I believe it is the latter. So if we want to heal from the pain, let’s consider the following. The perpetrator of our pain is just a messenger to help us grow, to make us stronger and more courageous. Their intention is not to destroy us, but rather to nudge us (sometimes very strongly) into healing an aspect of ourselves that no longer serves us. Maybe we have grown accustomed to a way of living, or a way of relating, or maybe we are just afraid of change. In any case, someone or something comes along that stops us dead in our tracks. It forces us to reconsider…to reevaluate ourselves in the Present. And then we face the choice of whether we want to heal and change for the better, or remain stuck in a space of suffering and self-pity.
Another scenario is when we agree to help others learn their soul lessons. This happens when we encounter people that refuse to take responsibility for themselves and/or their actions, and blame everything and everyone for what happens to them in their lives. They play the victim archetype perfectly, and truly believe they have been wronged. What they don’t realize is that this way of thinking keeps feeding the victim archetype, perpetuating the scenario in their lives over and over…sometimes different situations or different actors, but continually being victimized. It is not easy being on the receiving end of these types of people. But forgiving them allows us to unplug from feeding them our energy, and allows us to courageously move into the hero’s journey of compassion.
So how do we forgive? Our Energy Body holds the Divine blueprint for our health and for our healing, and within it is a roadmap to full forgiveness. We utilize the main organs of our Energy Body, the chakras, as our guiding light. If you are not familiar with the chakras, just follow the general concepts described below.
We begin by putting the weapons down, deciding that engaging perpetuates the situation, plus it creates a continuous leak of energy in ourselves. This lesson is contained in our navel chakra, located just under our belly button. It releases the need to be right and the desire to control the situation/person. Once we have consciously decided not to engage, we begin our journey up to our internal wisdom.
The next stop is our heart chakra, and forgiveness at this next level involves sending genuine love to those we perceive have hurt us. We wish them well in their path, pouring compassion out towards them. This helps us disconnect from their lessons, as well as begin to heal our energy center of unconditional love. They may or may not heal, and sometimes aren’t aware that they need to heal. But that is not part of our path of forgiveness.
The last step in forgiveness is the hardest and requires we engage at the level of the soul. It deals with our crown chakra and involves us taking responsibility for having asked the perpetrator to help us learn a major soul lesson. By taking responsibility for the situation we are involved in, we have the power to heal ourselves and move forward. We look at the lesson we have to learn, see the gifts within the depths of our soul, and then move forward in gratitude. If we choose to deny that we could have asked someone to hurt or negatively affect us at the soul level, we have given our power of healing ourselves away.
