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Forgiveness

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Forgiveness Empty Forgiveness

Post by Sparrowhawk July 2nd 2010, 9:23 am

What is Unconditional Love and Forgiveness?
The Eight Steps of Forgiveness of Another
Five Steps to Self-Forgiveness
The Experience of Forgiveness
The Nine-Month Self Mastery Program


What is Unconditional Love and Forgiveness?

"It’s not hard to forgive — you just need to know how." - Dr. Edith Stauffer

Unconditional Love and Forgiveness are laws of the Universe that are inter-related, and that allow our lives to proceed harmoniously within Life’s creative flow. We need to draw on the unconditional love available to us from the level of soul and Spirit in order to accomplish the act of forgiveness. And the act of forgiveness opens us up to experience greater unconditional love in our relationships and harmony in our interactions with others. Unconditional Love and Forgiveness are spiritual practices that keep us physically healthy and help us evolve to greater levels of worldly success and spiritual freedom.

Unconditional Love can be understood in two ways:

1. Personally, as an act of mental will in which we choose to see the good in a person or situation.
2. Transpersonally, as a divine energy that freely extends itself to all beings without expectation, condition, or demand. This energy fosters blessing, good will, and optimal thriving for both the giver and the receiver of this love.


Forgiveness is to cancel any expectation, condition; or demand that I am holding in my mind that prevents the free extension of unconditional love and forgiveness between myself and another being.

top of pageThe Eight Steps of Forgiveness of Another

1. State your will to make a change in attitude

2. Express your emotions about what happened

3. Cancel the expectation(s) you are holding in your mind
a. Shift expectation to positive preference
b. Acknowledge reality
c. Re-state your will to move on; open up to getting your needs met in a different way
d. Release the expectation with words and inner letting go

4. Open up to the Universe to receive exactly what you need

5. Sort out the boundaries: give them responsibility for their actions and take yours; visualize your personal space like a sphere of light around you

6. Send unconditional love to the person

7. See the good in them or in the situation

8. See the good

Notice the physical change and take time to gently integrate it

top of pageFIVE STEPS TO SELF-FORGIVENESS

STEP ONE: Prepare for self-forgiveness.
Mary Hayes GriecoSit on the floor or a chair. Align your will to make a change and stop carrying this issue against yourself. Picture your Higher Self above you, listening compassionately and waiting to grant you the relief of self-forgiveness. Use an image that works for you.

STEP TWO: Talk out your problem in detail with your Higher Self, and ask it to help you. Allow your full misery to surface and express it with trust and vulnerability, feeling and releasing your emotions about it. Remember there is nothing you can say or do that is unforgivable.

STEP THREE: Connect with the Higher Self and lift yourself to its level of consciousness. Lift above the emotional level by first seeing the good in yourself and saying a few examples of that out loud. Then visualize your image of the Higher Self again and meditate on some of its qualities: peace, wisdom, compassion, etc. Imagine you can lift yourself as a soul to the level of that Self, leaving your personality down in the chair. Stand up and turn to face the personality from above as you continue to fully resonate with God’s great qualities. Allow your consciousness to shift to it’s highest level and perspective.

STEP FOUR: Forgive yourself from this higher level.
When you feel you are in this higher consciousness, look down upon where you were sitting and picture your personal self there awaiting your help. Allow yourself to view your personality and his/her situation from a wise and compassionate and expansive perspective. Extend your hands in healing and blessing, imagining light flowing from you and God to bathe and release the person below from all burdens. Speak words of advice and comfort out loud to your little personal self from your new perspective. Or just enjoy the silence and light of the Self. When you feel complete, make a statement like, "... and I forgive you completely," or "I release you from your shame."

STEP FIVE: Give thanks for the forgiveness and take in your new perspective. Take your sitting position and quietly allow this experience to settle and integrate. Note the relief and new understanding. Say: "Thank you for this forgiveness."

Adapted from The Peaceful Heart by Mary Hayes Grieco

top of pageThe Experience of Forgiveness

What does it feel like to forgive someone? How do I know I really let go of something that hurt me?

The experience of forgiveness is so profound and refreshing that there is no doubt about it when it happens. Forgiveness changes us physically and emotionally, dissolving the stagnant weight of resentment and flooding our bodies with fresh new energy. It mends our tattered personal boundaries, and empowers us to move forward with more hope and creativity in operation than when we were holding our grudges. When we do the thorough and gritty work that goes into releasing the trauma from the past, we reestablish our connection with our spiritual Source, and that Source gifts us with a palpable sense of light and lightness. We find ourselves on new ground.

For the last twenty years, I have been privileged to receive the benefits of practicing unconditional love and forgiveness as a spiritual path. "Unconditional Love and Forgiveness" is a body of work I stumbled upon in 1986 when I met my mentor, Dr. Edith Stauffer. Dr. Stauffer crafted an elegant 8-step model of forgiving others, and another one to forgive yourself, out of her spiritual studies and forty years’ experience as a psychotherapist. The result is a tool that enables people to directly tackle any injury, large or small, and find permanent healing for it. Dr. Stauffer trained me in her work and since 1990 I’ve enjoyed the lucky job of teaching others how to forgive, in workshops and in private sessions. I want to share with you some of the things I have witnessed along the road about the experience of forgiveness, and to invite you to my next workshop.

First of all, nobody really wants to do forgiveness, we just want to feel better. It’s kind of like having a tooth ache and recognizing the need for dental work. You don’t want to go to the dentist and feel more pain for an hour, so you stay in denial for a while. But the pain persists and you know that you’ll feel better if you do something about it. So you muster the discipline to make that appointment, go through the experience and get the job done. In the same way, we often put off naming the fact that we need to do an act of forgiveness, because then we have to go do something about it! Maybe we want to do it but it seems hard and we don’t know how. Maybe we are afraid that if we forgive someone who has hurt us, we will make ourselves too vulnerable and set ourselves up for further hurt. Perhaps we can’t forgive because we feel that what was done is unjust, and we think that forgiveness implies that we condone injustice.. (It doesn’t.) Or it could be that we find so much satisfaction in feeling " right" in our judgement of another, and we’d rather be right than be at peace. Usually, people are ready to forgive when they tire of the struggle and the story playing over and over in their heads. The need for peace finally outweighs the need to be right.

The relief of forgiveness comes to us if we are able to work through a wound through all the parts of our being. This is a process that breaks down into steps. Dr. Stauffer crafted these steps because of what she observed in over forty years of work as a psychotherapist. It goes like this: first we need to strongly assert our willingness to make a change in attitude and move forward in our life. We need to thoroughly share the painful emotion of our experience with a compassionate person. Then we dissolve our attachment to the unfulfilled expectations we are addicted to in the mind that prevent a natural flow of acceptance and love between ourselves and another. We set new boundaries and get into right relationship to responsibility for the hurtful event. Then when we reach to Spirit for healing, energy---grace--- it comes flooding in! When we truly forgive, we are physically and emotionally transformed, and our Higher Power picks us up and sets our feet on new ground. We can walk forward.

I’ve seen a man forgive the death of his six year old son in a violent home accident...a woman forgive her father for chronic incest as a child... a mother forgive the man who raped her daughter...a man forgive his wife for suddenly divorcing him and leaving him with a miserable alimony and custody contract... a woman whose new husband went into a strange state of emotional isolation for months... a person whose fiancee and best friend had an affair three weeks before they were to wed... It goes on and on, the baffling circumstances and unpredictable traumas and suffering of human life. In this boot camp experience of life on Earth there is so much we are asked to endure! I don’t know how we do it, except for the gift of the experience of unconditional love and forgiveness from time to time. Whether we stumble into it through the clever machinations of our Higher Power, or we consciously cultivate it and practice it as a spiritual discipline, it looks like a way through all this.

I am so grateful for what was given to me twenty years ago and how it is still unfolding as my path today. Even as I write this, my heart is heavy with pain from stories of war and injustice that are playing in the daily news. Some of the wrongs I see there seem impossible to forgive, and I feel that familiar desire to withdraw, to contract, to seal off my heart. I am still working up to the first step--- the willingness to forgive. Fortunately I can draw on past successes to know that I won’t regret it if I take the leap to heal this pain. I know I will feel better. I hope and imagine that when I am a white-haired old woman, I will still be deepening into and serving from my growing understanding of unconditional love and forgiveness.



[i]My dad always said "Forgive your enemies".
I did not understand.
He repeated it over and over and over again.
I did not understand.

Later in life after many battles and many wounds, I came close to death. All the inner pains/betrayals began to be lived all over again! It was going to kill me once and for all, I could feel my heart as it was about to explode.
I did what is taught on this page..............I do not know how, I just did.

If you knew........if I could give you what was received after I did that, you would forgive every experience no matter what. But I can not give that to you. You must choose for you. I cannot make anothers choice no matter the desire that all share in its reward. I can only teach it, spread it, show it, point to it. After that I can do nothing but observe and accept...........all as it is.

Namaste
Sparrowhawk
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Forgiveness Empty Re: Forgiveness

Post by Sparrowhawk July 2nd 2010, 9:37 am

To forgive means to cancel the emotional debt owed by an offender. It is a conscious decision to give up resentment, release the pain and reaction to the hurt, and let go of the right to retaliate. Total forgiveness ultimately benefits the forgiver more than the offender. Psychologists confirm that people who are unable to forgive report more stress in their lives, more illness, and more visits to the doctor than do people who practice forgiveness. To avoid these outcomes and respond correctly when forgiving others, take these six steps.
Difficulty: Moderate
Instructions
Things You'll Need:

* Willingness to cancel emotional debts owed by others
* Holy Bible

1.
Step 1

Tell yourself the truth about the offense. Be honest and acknowledge to yourself that you've been hurt. Refuse to play the victim or martyr to gain sympathy from those around you or to try to force the offender to own up to the offense.
2.
Step 2

Allow your feelings about the offense to surface. Admitting any hurt or shame helps to eliminate negative emotional energy and possible mental and physical damage caused by bitterness. Ask God to help empty the anger, resentment, and any feelings of vengeance and bitterness you have towards the offender--Proverbs 29:11. Stop holding the hurt inside, or waiting for feelings and emotions to go away.
3.
Step 3

Release the offender from all emotional debts. A great deal of the hurt and rejection you experience is unintentional. The seeming lack of concern by an offender is often not an attempt to be insensitive. But, even if an offense is intentional, refrain from enforcing your right to retaliate or punish--Matthew 18:35. Show forbearance and avoid taking any action you think is due. Spend time praying and following the Holy Spirit's leading until you accept that the offender no longer owes you anything.
4.
Step 4

Look past your hurt to see God in the offender. This requires empathy--applying understanding, sympathy and compassion to the offender. You can't do this on your own. The very thought of having empathy for someone who has wronged you can be a tough nut to crack. Only God can make the healing and restoration of damaged relationships possible. A practical and genuine demonstration of empathy is what God requires of you.
5.
Step 5

Forgive yourself. Understand and accept your identity in Christ. You have been totally forgiven. Allow the offense to help you mature spiritually. Become vulnerable and be willing to be hurt again and again. Extend forgiveness as many times as it takes--Matthew 18:21-22.
6.
Step 6

Seek reconciliation. Be ready to move beyond past feelings of pain in order to develop a mutual relationship with the offender--Philippians 3:13.


Read more: How to Experience Total Forgiveness | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_4446433_experience-total-forgiveness.html#ixzz0sX2ZySJc
Sparrowhawk
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Forgiveness Empty Re: Forgiveness

Post by Sparrowhawk July 2nd 2010, 9:48 am

[i]My personal experiences go something like this:


I can feel the negativity of those around me.

I can feel/observe the reactive energy in me become aroused.............

I can feel the desire to lash out.

I hold the feeling and detach my tongue from it!

I begin to mentally "bless" the other........

I mentally say "I do not wish to feel this way"

I mentally say "Show me this another way"

I listen closely within........

I mentally say "I forgive you"

Then I mentally say "I forgive me too."



Then .....

Something just happens........

The energy shifts to a higher place/feeling.

It moves from the primitive sector of the brain to the Higher Creative centers. Unconditional Love returns to my Awareness.


Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It does affect those around but not nearly as much as it affects you.

Do this in every moment and you will one day be free of the field of opposites, the war within will end for good.
Sparrowhawk
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Forgiveness Empty Re: Forgiveness

Post by Sugars September 6th 2010, 2:53 pm

I forgive releasing in the pond of trusting that bargain that I in my emotions can not carry everything unless I move on with the news that strengthens me and keep to that and not to unfamiliarity.

I do not want to forgive mechanically, I even like to not even have to bother myself to bother myself in such a way, but I ask God directly to strengthen reaction every time a need for forgive plays so that every unsure step can lead to perfection.
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Forgiveness Empty Re: Forgiveness

Post by d-knots September 29th 2010, 10:17 pm

Perfection or Protection....
If only the World were a Safe
place/haven for Perfection.....
hmmmm......
It's just me
Forgiveness Hugs is a Divine trait,....really it is.
Life really isn't much fun if Forgiveness
isn't explored at one time or another....
Jesus Christ's symbolism is a good example
of man's forgiveness on life's journey....
Charity is a forgiving action too....SHARING
with others not just for a tax break but
because you may only have this lifetime to
experience Compassion for life itself....
Wow, what a loaded topic Forgiveness is......
d-knots
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Forgiveness Empty Re: Forgiveness

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