Discover the quiet miracle of
forgiveness - dispelling the myths.
How can you forgive a friend’s betrayal,
a parent’s limitations, and an unfaithful lover? Forgiving
is love’s toughest work, and love’s biggest risk. But you
have the power to free others – and yourself – from
undeserved guilt and pain.
I am guiding you
how to move from hurting and hating to healing and
reconciliation. With the lessons of forgiveness, you can
establish healthier relationships, reclaim the happiness
that should be yours, and achieve lasting peace of mind.
Are you not sick and tired of living with
the memory?
You can move from this state of
toxic thought process to a corrective thought
process, rather than it consuming you like a toxic poison
that you have been “drinking” rather than releasing.
What is forgiving?
The act of forgiving, by itself, is a
wonderfully simple act; but it always happens inside a storm
of complex emotions. It is the hardest trick in the whole
bag of personal relationships.
So let us be honest with each other. Let
us talk plainly about the ‘magic eyes’ that are given to
those who are ready to be set free from the prison of pain
they never deserved.
We forgive in four stages. If we can
travel through all four, we achieve the climax of
reconciliation.
The first stage is hurt: when
somebody causes you pain so deep and unfair that you cannot
forget it, you are pushed into the first stage of the crisis
of forgiving.
The second stage is hate: you
cannot shake the memory of how much you hurt, and you cannot
wish your enemy well. You sometimes want the person who
hurt you to suffer as you are suffering.
The third stage is healing: you
are given the ‘magic eyes’ to see the person who hurt you in
a new light. Your memory is healed, you turn back the flow
of pain and are free again.
The fourth stage is the coming
together: you invite the person who hurt you back into your
life; if he or she comes honestly, love can move you both
toward a new and healed relationship. The fourth stage
depends on the person you forgive as much as it depends on
you; mostly he/she doesn’t come back and you have to be
healed alone.
In hypnosis it is not possible to remove
the memory only to lessen the energy (or power) you have
given it, but this helps immeasurably towards the healing
process.
In several counselling sessions one
learns to come to grips with feelings holding you back and
the futility of wanting revenge, excuses or apologies when
it is well past their ‘use-by’ date. In this healing process
forgiveness can be achieved in a healthy way.
We must not confuse hate with anger, and
also look for the emotion underlying the anger. Would it be
that your anger is not what you think it is? It is hate and
not anger that needs healing. Hatred, bitterness and a
thirst for revenge bring them together.
Anger is a sign that we are alive and
well. We can learn to express and release our anger in
healthy ways. Hate is a sign that we are sick and need to
be healed. Healthy anger drives us to do something to change
what makes us angry, anger can energise us to make things
better. Hate does not want to change things for the better;
it wants to make things worse. It is as though they must
keep on punishing the one perceived to be the perpetrator.
There are people who are sick and tired
of living with the memory. They realize their bitterness is
a toxic poison they can pour out, but they end up drinking
it themselves
In sessions when I get a client saying “I
cannot or will not ever forgive the bastard” then we have
somewhat an impasse. It is as though he or she feels
empowered by retaining this state of mind. I think we all
can relate to this at some time or other and held that
belief for a time. I may say “are you forgiving the sin or
the sinner?” and work around this accordingly. It sometimes
works but maybe we have to be ready to let go. Certainly if
you do you feel more wholesome. Why is it so difficult to
say sorry? Do we have to know what we are really saying
sorry for?
People have lots of negative attitudes
towards forgiveness. They do confuse it with condoning;
justifying even with forgetting and they confuse it with
reconciliation.
Forgiveness is something the victim does
in relation to the perpetrator and at its core is a shifting
from a negative attitude to a positive one.
Here is quote from the book ‘Forgive and
forget’ by Lewis B. Smedes –
When we forgive, we perform a miracle
hardly anyone notices:
We do it alone – in the
private place of our inner selves
We do it silently – no one
can record our miracle on tape
We do it invisibly – no one
can record our miracle on film
We do it freely – no one can
ever trick us into forgiving someone
But when we forgive, we heal
the hurt we never deserved.
I hope you can learn that it is healthy for you to be able
to forgive your enemies and attain better happiness with my
help. First we must forgive ourselves (for feeling,
thinking, over reacting in the way we have done) then it may
be necessary depending on your belief system, to forgive
God, and a large amount of empathising with a couple of
spoonfuls of action on how to forgive the perpetrator.