Forgiveness

At this point in your journey you may becoming aware of some patterns, conversations, and judgments that you have been living into on a subconscious level. Where some of these conversations have functioned as motivators in the pursuit of your vision, others have acted more as hindrances…a barrier of sorts to living fully into the gift and power that comes from keeping your commitments.

With this swirl of emotion it’s easy to feel the tension. A tension between what you have declared you are going to be about and a very powerful opposition that has the potential to sabotage your success.

Yet, derailing this pattern is painfully simple. It is living in un-forgiveness. But the opposite is also true. The disciple for deconstructing the sabotage is equally as simple: forgiveness. Remember I said it was simple, not easy.

In my last post about unfinished business I noted that forgiveness as one of the components for going back to complete tasks or relationships that you may have left undone. But I want to take things a step further. I want you to begin the process of letting go of the relationship-based dynamics that keep you stuck by releasing those patterns of living in which we have used in the past as a means to determine the future.

Question: So how do we look into the future without the past having control over what we see as possible?

Answer: By not allowing the judgments you hold against yourself, hold against others and against life in general, to be the determining factor on how you consider your future. To put it simply…take care of the areas of un-forgiveness that jade your perspective so your commitment can move you forward, rather than your past.

But before we do so, we got to get rid of some misconceptions:

Forgiveness is the same thing as excusing the event that has created the wound or offense. Meaning, you excuse what took place, justified it as something minor while feeling significantly hurt, and as a result became bitter. And once you become bitter, you become the one who actually suffers.
Refusing to forgive because we feel that forgiving is the same as condoning the event as something as small and of no consequence. In other words, if I hold forgiveness equal to excusing, I will not forgive and I still get to keep my right to seek revenge…which is unrealistic to state the obvious. Either way, you are left with a perpetual state of un-forgiveness and bitterness.

But forgiveness is not about excusing, it is about release. It is the willingness to release the judgments of yourself, circumstances, life or others. Forgiveness releases the judgment and allows you to re-engage possibility. In its essence, forgiveness is releasing the debt owed to you. Sound familiar?

Seriously though, how do I forgive? How do I break free of the aspects of my past that hold me back?

In order to move forward, we first need to acknowledge that we have experienced the event as betrayal. Honestly, it doesn’t even matter if the betrayal is real or perceived. If it is something that you carry inside of you and that keeps you stuck in the past, then you have work to do.
Acknowledge the pain of the event, and allow yourself to feel whatever is there for you there. Allow yourself to get vulnerable and admit that you have experienced hurt or offense, even now. Take a few minutes and experience whatever comes to the surface.

The goal in all of this is not for you simply “get over it.” If you do that, you’ll get stuck in a circular pattern of feeling stuck and helpless.

What we refuse to forgive, we eventually become. Forgiveness is no magic wand, it requires your participation.

And lastly, as you forgive the people that may have betrayed you, be willing to forgive yourself for the betrayals you have caused…or for the mistakes you feel you have made. In this you create an opportunity in which to declare a new future. A future steeped in possibilities and the excitement of the unforeseen.

Here’s my challenge for you: Notice the areas in your life in which you have been living in un-forgiveness.

Because when we forgive, not only do we realize the burden of the debt we have been carrying around with us, we also open up the possibility for our declarations to become reality and generate an invitation in us to carry on our journey toward our vision.

The ball is in your court…will you do the work? Who do you need to forgive this week? What do you need to let go of and what bitterness do you need to cast out of your body and life?

We will unpack more in this conversation in our next post as we move our declarations into a reality. We will be talking about making it happen.