As a child, I spent my summers on Uncle Jimmy’s farm in Smithfield, Virginia. He was a livestock farmer who raised pigs and chickens. During the summer of my eighth birthday, Uncle Jimmy gave me a baby chick. He told me that he would take care of the chick in the winter, and I could care for her on my summer visits. Penny grew up to be a beautiful brown-and-white-speckled hen. Uncle Jimmy built a special coop for her so she wouldn’t be sold off as an ordinary chicken!
When I was ten, I made my usual summer journey to Smithfield. I had been there about two weeks when one morning I discovered that Penny was gone! I ran into the house to report the news to Uncle Jimmy, and I found Aunt Mattie in the kitchen plucking a chicken. Aunt Mattie had killed Penny to make soup because, “This cold was killing me, and I just grabbed the first old hen I saw!” Surely, I didn’t want a “sick old aunt” over a “fat healthy hen!” When I cried in protest, Aunt Mattie screamed at me, “Don’t you dare cry over an ole, stupid chicken! The yard is full of them! Go get another one!” I thought Aunt Mattie didn’t like me, and this was all the proof I needed!
Uncle Jimmy made her apologize to me, and he promised to get me a pony. “I’m sure Mattie won’t have any use for horse soup!” He gave me a dollar for ice cream. I ate three ice-cream pops that day, and, with each one, I vowed never to forgive Aunt Mattie! It took me 24 years to realize how damaging that day and my commitment to unforgiveness had been to me!
Doing Unto Others Is the Undoing of Self
Why do we hold on to negativity? For some reason, we believe that others are affected by our experience of remaining upset, hurt, or angry. They hurt us, and we want to hurt them back. We want them to experience our pain, so we hold on to it, believing that somehow they are suffering as well. Holding on to pain, anger, guilt, shame, or any other negative experience is the glue that binds us to the situation we want to escape. The longer we hold on, the deeper we hurt. In the meantime, each time we encounter a similar situation, the memory shifts from the unconscious to the conscious mind. We re-create the initial situation and respond, not to the present experience, but to the experience we had 5, 10, 20, or 50 years prior! Holding on to negative experiences burdens the spirit. It is an investment in hate, not healing. Spirit, our life force, knows only the universal law of love. When we hold on to the memory of painful experiences, we violate this law. When we hold on to negative emotions, we are denying our own spirit what it needs to grow and what it needs to help us grow. We limit our creative abilities, and we cause damage to the essence of our authentic being. The key to opening the way of spirit that leads to understanding and healing is forgiveness.
We all are held accountable for what we do and say, and even what we think! The responsibility of this level of accountability, however, is to the Creator. We are held accountable for the energy we create and release in life. Our life force, our spirit, is endowed with the knowledge of universal law, the Creator’s law, whether or not we are consciously aware that it exists. Those laws mandate that we strive for and master divine understanding, harmony, peace, and love. When your mind and spirit are burdened with memories of painful experiences, you are emitting and sending a discordant energy into the universe. It is your responsibility to neutralize this energy. Making amends for and neutralizing the initial wrongdoing is the responsibility of the others. That is, they are responsible for their behavior, and you are responsible for your response to that behavior. While the energy of your negative thoughts may reach the intended party, the spiritual burden for sending them remains with you, not the receiver.
By sending out negative energy, you unconsciously re-create the same or similar negative experiences. This is the foundation of victimization. As long as you hold on to negative memories, you will create more of the same. You become a victim of the memories, not the person who offended you. Remembering the first betrayal will attract more betrayal. The memory of the hurt or disappointment will attract into your life others who will behave in a similar disappointing manner. The person to whom you have attached the first memory may receive the energy of your anger or upset. She may or may not remember the initial experience. However, as long as you remember, you re-create the pain. The other person may hold or remember guilt as it relates to her experience with you. You, on the other hand, remember the anger! Although you may be thousands of miles apart, you are both locked into the energy of the negative situation, and you are not free to move and grow. Forgiveness is the foundation of freedom.
The Creator brings us to the world as unique individuals. We come to this life to learn our own lessons and to complete our unique mission. This process is what is known as your spiritual curriculum. Your unique curriculum will lead you onto the path of others who have similar lessons to learn. All spiritual lessons are taught through experiences. How we face, respond to, and come through those experiences determines the depth and breadth of our spiritual growth. In every situation, positive or negative, we must discover: Am I learning a lesson? Am I teaching a lesson? Am I functioning as the object through which a lesson is being taught? Once we understand our role in any given situation, we can accept our lesson and move on!
A Course in Miracles teaches us that we are all teaching and learning at the same time. It encourages us to remain open to the voice and presence of the Holy Spirit so that the required learning, growth, and healing may occur. The universe may use you to demonstrate to another something about herself that she could not see without your participation. You are teaching, and inevitably, in the process, you will learn something about your consciousness, your behavior, and your level of development. By the same token, life will bring others into your experience who will behave in ways that trigger memories within your conscious or subconscious mind that require healing. As difficult as it may be to accept, you are the student and the other person is your teacher. Their behavior, as dysfunctional or neurotic as it may seem to you, is designed by life to be a teaching tool. Then there are those special times when you are minding your business, living your life, and things will happen around you or as a result of you that support others to learn, heal, and grow. The key to any of these experiences is to remain focused on your behavior, your responses and reactions, and your internal triggers, and to practice forgiveness.
Your connection to and remembrance of the presence of the Spirit of God in every experience relieves the need to figure out, Why did this happen to me? Look for your lesson, or be the willing object of the Creator’s work. Spirit has no reason to ask what you did to contribute to the situation. It was a necessary detour on your journey. It is a function of your curriculum. Spirit will not “blame” someone for “doing something” to you. All parties in every experience are teaching and learning, whether or not they know it or accept it. Spirit is indifferent to good or bad. It knows that by universal law we are all held accountable. Spirit is doing its work. We must train our conscious mind to be in harmony with Spirit.
Forgiveness is a major step toward spiritual growth and development. It must come from the heart, not the head or the mouth. Forgiveness is the foundation of being in alignment with universal law because it requires a conscious effort toward understanding who you are and what your mission is in this life experience. Forgiveness is a major step toward maintaining harmony in the universe, because it creates peace—inward and outward. Forgiveness allows us to be free of the negative experiences of anger, pain, disappointment, guilt, and shame. When we are free, we are open to experience love, joy, gratitude, success, and peace. When we forgive, we learn. When we learn, we grow—mentally, physically, and spiritually.
If you are not receiving good things in your life, you need to forgive. If you are not giving freely and feeling good about it, you need to forgive. If there is anyone about whom you have painful or negative memories, you need to forgive. If you are feeling lonely, desperate, and confused, you need to forgive. Forgiveness is the spiritual laxative that purges the mind, the heart, and the spirit. The Holy Bible instructs us to forgive “Seventy times seven.” The process for this depth of forgiveness is offered in A Course in Miracles, as the Forgiveness Diet. The Forgiveness Diet is a powerful and effective tool for releasing past hurts—those you remember and those you do not. It requires a commitment of 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night, and a brand-new notebook.
Giving Up for a Change
Select a time in the morning when you will not be disturbed. On a clean page in your notebook, number 1 through 35, skipping every other line. Write the following sentence 35 times:
“I [your name] forgive [a person you blame] totally and unconditionally.”
Do not pick and choose who you will or will not forgive. Do not think before you write. Write whatever names come to mind. Try to write 35 different experiences. However, if one name or experience continues to come forward in your mind, it is fine to write it as many times as you think about it. When you have completed the exercise, take five to seven long, deep breaths, and close the book.
Repeat the exercise just before you go to bed. This time, write the following sentence:
“I [your name] forgive myself totally and unconditionally. I am free to move on to wholeness and completeness.”
You may not know why you need forgiveness. It does not matter. Your spirit will know the reason.
You must repeat this exercise, every morning and every evening, for seven days, forgiving others in the A.M. before noon, yourself in the P.M. before midnight. If you miss a day, you must begin again. True forgiveness requires work. Missing a day reflects the resistance of your unconscious mind to releasing the pain. Be gentle with yourself and keep trying. Spirit will show you whether you have truly completed your task, so don’t be alarmed if you see or hear from the very person you are forgiving. Pay attention to how you respond to the situation. When you have totally forgiven others and yourself, you will experience a new sense of freedom!
What I thought love was, I discovered it was not. Who I thought
God was, I now know God is not. To recognize this was difficult. To
understand it was almost impossible. To acknowledge it was
heartbreaking. Learning you have been mistaken and maintaining your dignity
is one of the most awesome and humbling experiences life offers.
— Iyanla Vanzant
What I Know Now
Forgiveness is a powerful act of self-love and self-discovery.
Forgiveness does not erase the memory
of an experience, it neutralizes its impact.
The deepest healing occurs when you can forgive
what you have told yourself about someone else.
Forgiveness is a state of being that
supports the unfolding of your authentic self.
Forgive everything! There are simply no words that adequately describe the power and efficacy of forgiveness. I will, however, offer you two words of advice: Do it! Until you are willing to forgive everyone for everything, every dastardly thing you believe they have done to you, you will be stuck in the muck and mire of recycling your past. You will have enough room in your heart and life for only temporary and fleeting moments of pleasure. You will live on the edge of waiting for someone else or something else to knock you down and run over your face. You will be unable to express true and authentic gratitude for the grace and blessings of your life. You will spend most of your time looking over your shoulder, comparing yourself to others, wondering why you can’t have what they have. In essence, there will be a seed of misery in your mind, heart, and soul that will gnaw away at you, making even the brief moments of joy you experience difficult to hold on to. In the short run, you can become suspicious, anxious, sarcastic, and mean. In the long run, you will be bitter and wrinkled!
You can forgive, no matter what the person has done to you. As long as you do not forgive, you are locked into the memory of the event. One way to begin is to forgive yourself for anything negative you have ever thought, said, or done against anyone. When you begin the forgiveness process, you probably will not believe or feel what you are saying. Do it anyway! And, yes, you can forgive people after they die.
Make no mistake about it, to forgive someone you believe has hurt, harmed, or violated you is, in some way, no easy feat. However, doing so is a spiritual mandate for your healing, learning, and growth. To forgive the parent who abused, neglected, or abandoned you; to forgive the person who molested, raped, or violated you; to forgive the friend who betrayed or stole from you; to forgive yourself for the myriad of mistakes you have made has nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with forgetting what happened. What I know now is that forgiving any or all of these experiences is about practicing good spiritual hygiene. It is the only way to cleanse your heart and mind of your interpretations and judgments of the people and events designed by God to advance and support your spiritual evolution. Forgiveness leads to a shift in perception. It takes your attention from why something happened to the grace that supports and allows you to move through the experience. It transforms the blame into a blessing, the hurt into healing.
There is a deeper aspect of forgiveness that few of us recognize, and others refuse to accept. I admit that it is a difficult concept to grasp and heart-wrenching to practice. What I know now is that true forgiveness has nothing to do with anyone else. True and radical forgiveness is about forgiving yourself. Take a breath! Take a long, deep Cleansing Breath before you consider closing this book or throwing it across the room. The premise at the foundation of this concept is this: At all times, in all situations, under all circumstances, there is no one in the room but you and God. How you view, react to, and handle the experiences and circumstances with which you are confronted is a function of how you view and treat yourself and how you view and treat God. Everyone you encounter is an aspect of you and an aspect of God. How they behave is an aspect of your own consciousness calling forth an aspect of the consciousness of God within you. How you respond to their behavior points to the aspects of your consciousness that are either healed or require healing. The deeper your connection to the essence of God within, the more likely your response will be God-like—forgiving, merciful, compassionate, loving. The greater the level of disconnect or unconsciousness to the presence of God within you, the more human, helpless, and internally violent your response is likely to be. You will conjure up more anger, shame, guilt, and fear internally as a reaction to what you have been through. Forgiveness levels the playing field, allowing the human in you to surrender itself to the God in you.
Forgiveness, when you truly forgive yourself and others, will take you headfirst into a miracle: the miracle of release. Release is an experience of inner freedom, peace of mind, and clarity. Forgiveness releases your heart and mind from the stranglehold of anger, hurt, woundedness, and the other toxic emotions associated with what they did or didn’t do. W hen the release happens—and it will happen—you have more energy to experience life and express love. Forgiveness, unconditional forgiveness, also releases you from the need and desire to watch for other people to get their just rewards—the big payback. Even when you are not aware you are watching for it, you are watching and waiting, mentally and emotionally. Once the release occurs, your mind is free to explore new horizons because you are no longer looking over your shoulder. The most important release occurs when you get the message, the lesson, the clarity that, as a result of whatever happened, you are stronger and wiser. Release therefore is experienced as a benefit, a bonus of forgiveness. There is nothing else you need to do to make it happen.
God’s Ways Are Not Your Ways!
What I know now is that there is a temptation to apply human logic to things of a spiritual nature. We attempt to use language, logic, and the reasoning of our finite and tangible world in an attempt to understand and resolve experiences designed by the infinite, intangible mind of God. The result is confusion. The finite can never rationalize the infinite. The tangible cannot evaluate the intangible. Things of the Spirit can be discerned, understood, only by the Spirit. If it is of God and from God, it is only through a connection to God that you will be led to embrace, understand, and neutralize the impact on your tangible physical mind. This is where faith and trust inevitably kick in. When you know God and the spiritual nature of God in an intimate way—the kind of intimacy that grows from a consistent spiritual practice—you develop faith in your connection to the essence of God. You learn to trust that that connection—rather than what you know, what you can do, or what you wish to happen—will bring you through the experience. There is no logic, no reasoning, no rationale that can explain the connection. Either you have faith or you do not. Either you trust or you do not. What I know now is that through the experiences of life, even the ones I thought I would not, could not live through, my faith in my connection taught me to trust that, no matter what, I would be okay.
Here is another juicy tidbit that I have discovered about forgiveness. Most of the time when I thought I was angry, upset, or hurt about another person, including myself, I was really in a state of high pissosity with God. I believed that God had made a mistake, or that God was treating me unfairly, or that God was allowing someone to get away with something I determined was unfair or unjustified. I was superimposing my human logic onto the order of God’s universe. I was trying to out-God God. I was attempting to reconcile the depth of the pain I was experiencing with the loving mercy I attributed to God. If God loves me, why would He let Boo-Boo or Fifi hurt me like this? If there is a God, why is this happening to me—again? Why aren’t some of the people who hurt me or betrayed me repeatedly suffering the way I am suffering? That, I discovered, was the crux of my problem. I was mislabeling the experiences. I was judging my experiences and the people in those experiences as right/wrong, good/bad, fair/unfair without realizing that I was either teaching, learning, or functioning as the object of some higher plan and purpose.
What, you might ask, is the purpose of a child being raped, abused, abandoned, or neglected? Children are innocent! How do you rationalize a working mom on her way to the supermarket being killed on the freeway? Or a loving and devoted father being gunned down in the street and robbed of the $40 in his wallet? The short answer is that you cannot rationalize these events, and you may not understand that. You must remember that all people are here in life to work out their own personal and unique spiritual curriculum. How you respond to the events of your life and the lives of those you love is also a function of your curriculum. Forgiveness will help you to graduate from “special education”—the need to repeat a lesson over and over until you get the point.
When I was nine years old, I experienced a sexual violation by my uncle. Notice how I have labeled the experience. In common vernacular, I would have said: “He raped me.” What I know now, after many years and layers of healing, is that to “language” it as a common human experience (“I was raped”) makes me a victim rather than a teacher, student, or object of a lesson. It puts the emphasis on what happened to me and what he did, rather than on my response to the experience. For many years, I felt dirty, damaged, bad, and wrong. The sad part is that I didn’t even realize the connection. Well into my adult life, the shame, hurt, and anger that I had not given my nine-year-old self permission to feel or express at the time seeped into my adult relationships, my finances, and every aspect of my consciousness. I would overcommit and underdeliver in an attempt to prove my worthiness. I would lie about who I was and what I could do in order to gain acceptance. I had a keen eye for the shortcomings of others, always trying to convince myself that I was better than they were because, deep inside, I did not believe I was. I could go on and on about the depths of my pain and dysfunction. Suffice it to say, I was a hot mess—internally and externally.
When the God-ordained time comes for you to heal, you will heal. Despite your greatest efforts to stay mad, be broken, or absolve yourself of taking full responsibility for the condition of your internal landscape—your mind, heart, and spirit—when the universe of God and life determines that enough is enough, you better buckle up! Healing will come to you in a seemingly inconvenient way. The first level of healing for me came as a result of a conversation with my stepmother. Although we had our ups and down, I knew in the core of my being that this woman loved, honored, and respected me. On this particular day, she was my Bible. She spoke into my soul, into my very DNA, words that were so filled with the essence of God that my brain went into suspended animation and the Holy Spirit entered to realign my mind with the mind of God.
We were drinking coffee and talking about nothing in particular when all of a sudden she looked me squarely in the eye and said to me: “What do you think he took from you? Did he take a cup of you? A pound of you? Did he take anything that really matters? Did he take anything that you cannot give back to yourself? As long as you stay mad at him, you are giving him way more than you think he took. You may never be able to forgive him for what he did, nor do you need to, but what you must do is forgive yourself for giving him your soul.”
I was rendered speechless, not so much by what she said, but because of what I thought was her betrayal. She knew what had happened. She knew how my aunt had not responded to it, how my aunt tried to ignore what had occurred, and, in doing so, how she silently communicated to my nine-year-old self that I was not important. In fact, it was my stepmother, my best friend in the world, who had rescued me from my darkest memories of that God-awful experience. Now, she was, in essence, telling me it was my fault. I thought she was implying that it was up to me to clean up the mess he had contributed to in my life. This was unfathomable! I thought she had lost her mind. The good news is that I was so mad at her that I stopped being mad at him. The bad news is that it took me two years to realize that what she said was the God-ordained truth.
What I ultimately discovered is that I had, in fact, given that experience a front-row seat in my life. Everything I did not like about me became a function of having been raped. Everything I declared I could not do or had not done was an outgrowth of the trauma of that one experience. Every man who left me left because I was unworthy of love, because I had been violated. I was dirty and unworthy. Every experience of betrayal or disappointment opened the wound of that violation and poured a handful of salt onto it. What I know now is that I was using that one experience as an excuse to be irresponsible in my life, unaccountable for the condition of my heart, and derelict in my spiritual duty to lean on God rather than on my own understanding. I did not understand why it had happened to me. I know now that I chose not to understand. Instead, I had chosen to stay angry.
If I’m Okay, Then It’s Okay, So Let’s Get to Work!
The introduction of A Course in Miracles states the following:
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching you the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.
I was first introduced to the Course in 1978. At that time I understood it to be a book that would change the way you think. When I tried to read it, I did not understand a single word. Thirty years later, after much study, I understand that the Course is a way of life that supports you in experiencing and expressing more of God’s presence in your life. God is love. The Course teaches you how to find the love, see the love, and be the love in every experience, because it shifts your perception from the past to the present moment. The Course taught me that my uncle was a teacher who came into my life because he loved me enough to teach me how to love myself. The Course taught me that I am never angry for the reasons I think I’m angry, and that if I seek the peace of God, I will find it. The Course taught me that my holiness in God can never be disturbed or diminished by a physical experience, and that forgiveness offers me everything I want. The Course taught me that my life has a function that God would have me serve, and that all things are lessons that God would have me learn. It was not an easy path or process but I learned that the only reason I had experienced everything I had experienced was to learn to love myself and others more. The only way I learned that lesson was to forgive myself for believing that I knew what anything meant in my life. That, too, was a lesson from A Course in Miracles.
I remember the day vividly. It was a warm Sunday afternoon in August. I was exhausted, sitting on the deck outside of my bedroom. My husband, the love of my life, sat down in the chair across from me and announced that he had decided to go forward with the divorce. Although we had been separated a little over a year, I was under the impression that we were endeavoring to work things out so that we could resume our lives and the vision for our lives as loving partners. It is probably good that I was in such a weakened state or I would have said or done something I would long regret. His words hit my heart like a plate filled with spaghetti in a greasy sauce. His words stuck to the fibers of my soul, then slid down the walls of my being slowly, very slowly, burning my insides with an indescribable heat. The response I recall giving was, “If that’s what you think you need to do, I will support you.” Liar! Liar! Pants on fire! He left, and I fell into a heap on the floor.
For the next year, when we did talk, it was not pleasant. He experienced me as trying to convince him to change his mind. I experienced him as giving up on us. When we did not speak, I cried, and prayed. I freaked and panicked. I blamed and projected. There was really little else I could do because at the time my eldest daughter was extremely ill. I felt as if I was being asked to choose between what I could do, needed to do, as a wife to save my marriage and my responsibilities to my child. There was no question that my daughter and my participation in her healing was my first priority. Rather than lean on my own will and understanding, I did what I knew I needed to do: I asked God to help me and show me what to do. From the depths of my soul came the words, Be still and let him take the lead. I knew enough to be obedient.
On what would have been our fifth wedding anniversary, I received a certified letter that contained the notice indicating that he had filed for divorce. I lost it! I literally lost every ounce of my good sense and all of my loving nature. I drove to the courthouse and filed a counterclaim, alleging all manner of misbehavior. I was not going to allow him to get away with suing me for divorce! He left! He broke his commitment to me! He violated our marriage! I was going to countersue so the world, or at least that one judge in that one court, would know what a lowlife he had really been. Then I heard it again: Be still and let him take the lead. Two days later I went back to the court and withdrew my petition. My daughter was ill, my husband was leaving me, and I was insane. Insane people must not be left alone with a pen! I did my best to stay away from him, and he returned the favor. Although we exchanged a few heated e-mails, what I know now is that it was all a part of my learning, growing, and healing. He was simply my teacher.
A little over a year later, I received an e-mail from him. At the end of the e-mail he wrote: “Oh, by the way, the divorce is final.” I must have read that line 100 times, and each time my heart and mind sank deeper into despair. Surely he had lost his mind. He must be smoking or drinking some mood-altering substance, because I know this man, the man I have loved all of my adult life, did not just write me an e-mail about some insignificant thing, and then casually mention that we were now divorced. It is a really good thing that I had been deeply engaged in daily spiritual practice. It is even better that God knew I was in trouble, because in that moment I heard it again: Be still and let him take the lead. The “lead” had led us straight to the divorce court. The “lead” had led him right out of my life.
Surely, I thought, this is not the voice of God speaking! This is a mistake! This is wrong! Then I heard the voice once more: What is the most loving thing you can do right now? Kill him? I thought. No! No, no, that would not be a loving thing for me to do. What I can do is tell him how I feel. So, breathing and praying, I wrote to him and shared how I did not deserve to be notified in that way, that I felt it was both dishonorable and disrespectful. He wrote me back. He agreed and he apologized. I spent the next two years forgiving myself for believing that he was wrong for marrying me, that he was wrong for divorcing me, and, in my opinion, he was just wrong for being alive! It took me most of that two-year period to realize that I was wrong about believing he was wrong. What can I say except that I had to learn that it is okay to be wrong?
When it comes to forgiveness, the spotlight is always on you. As the Course teaches, you are never upset for the reasons you think you’re upset. There is always something coming forward from your internal landscape that causes you to read more into an experience than is necessary, required, or productive. What I know now is that what we impose onto our current experiences are the shadows of past similar experiences. My husband divorcing me was a reminder of my daddy driving by with his other women in his car and acting as if he did not see me. It stirred up the feelings I could not express when I was pregnant at 16 and my son’s father made it known to me and the rest of our high school that he had another girlfriend. It led me right back to the place in my heart where I had given my all to what I knew was a dysfunctional relationship, only to get beaten and left for another woman.
The experience of having my fairy-tale marriage end brought forward in my consciousness every ounce of unworthiness and self-loathing that I had hidden, buried, denied, and failed to acknowledge. I was angry with myself for all the times and all the ways I had ignored the urgings of my own soul, chasing what I thought would make me feel better; when it failed to do so, I would blame the other person. The simple truth is that he had changed his mind. He had decided that he did not want to be in a relationship with me any longer. His manner for coming to that decision was not pretty for either of us, but it was just that simple. Anything I imposed on it was my lesson, not his.
In the book Radical Forgiveness, author Colin Tipping offers four steps for us to consider when we find ourselves judging others, feeling self-righteous, or wanting to change the outcome of a particular experience. The steps include recognizing whether (1) you agree, (2) are willing to agree (even if you cannot do it right now), (3) are open to agreeing, (4) are skeptical about agreeing, or are unwilling to agree, that somehow you have created the situation in which you find yourself. The premise is that every experience is a creation of your own mind to support you in recognizing a core belief or wound that needs to be healed. The level of your willingness to accept your responsibility in the creation of the experience will move you toward or away from peace.
The second step Tipping offers is to recognize how you are judging yourself and others as right or wrong, good or bad. At this level, you must acknowledge and own your true feelings and love yourself anyway. Denying that you feel what you feel sets you up to be unforgiving. Instead, radical forgiveness requires that you feel it, acknowledge it, and forgive it. The third step asks you to be willing to see the hand of God in the experience, even when you do not understand why it is there. The fourth and final step is to choose peace over the toxic or disturbing emotion attached to the experience.
What I know now is that, had I not put my faith in the power of forgiveness, I would be babbling and drooling on some park bench, feeding the pigeons scraps of dry bread. Or I would be writhing in the pain of the foolish, self-debasing, ego-driven choices and bad decisions I have made. Without forgiveness, I would be saddled with so much guilt and shame about who I have been, where I came from, and the many, many missteps I have made along the way that you would not be holding this book. I am humbled and motivated to forgive when I think about all the times that I have been forgiven—by those to whom I have caused harm and by God. When I think about the awesome wisdom of God to provide us with a foolproof way to erase our minds, cleanse our hearts, and step into the healing grace of His love, my heart weeps with sorrow for all the time I wasted. Simultaneously, it weeps with joy and understands that any moment can be the moment when we can surrender, forgive, and experience God’s love.
Got pain? Try forgiveness.