FORGIVENESS

HEALING THE HURTS WE DON’T DESERVE AND LEARNING TO FORGIVE

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.

E-Mail: John Bohn - HYPNOTHERAPIST

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