Let's talk about forgiveness today.
And when I say forgiveness,
I mean that space that we find ourselves in when we know we are holding onto something because someone did something to us or we did something to ourselves and we're holding onto this thing,
This anger,
This frustration,
This pain,
This blame,
Like whatever that thing is.
And there's a part of us that goes,
There's no value in holding onto that.
If we have enough awareness,
We can go,
I don't need to hold onto that.
We don't need to hold onto that.
Now it takes a little bit of time sometimes to even get to that point where we don't need to,
Or where we see that we're holding onto something.
And it might take a while to get to even that realization.
And that's why we do things like practice,
You know,
We do things like practice and presence and mindfulness and yoga and things like this in order to help us have more presence in our life so that we can see more easily the energetic and the emotional world that is moving through us around us all the time.
So let's say we're holding onto some sort of anger towards somebody because somebody else hurt us.
This is a pretty common one.
Somebody said something,
Somebody did something or didn't do something that we wanted,
Expected,
Needed,
And it hurt us.
We feel hurt by it.
We feel hurt by it.
And there's a part of us going,
Well,
It's their fault.
They did it to us.
Why did they do that?
Why would they do that?
And there's this blame,
This finger pointing that happens,
Isn't there?
And in a sense,
We end up in those situations being in that place of victimhood.
And it's like we,
We choose to be the victim.
How did they do that?
Why did they do that?
Why would they do that to me?
And in that space of victimhood,
It's okay.
We are moving in,
Through and around victimhood to perpetrator,
To victimhood,
To perpetrator,
To victimhood,
To perpetrator,
All the time,
All of us.
Some of us are more on one end of the scale or the other.
But oftentimes,
If we're on this path of,
Let's say,
Awakening,
Of spiritual growth,
Of self-development,
We are noticing that we move between the two,
Depending on who we are hanging out with in life.
None of us are perfectly in the middle all the time.
That's not possible.
We are an orbing,
Ever-moving sea of energy.
Although I'm living on the other side of the world right now,
I'm British,
And I do like my morning cup of tea as I sit here in this beautiful Balinese jungle.
So we have the perpetrator and the victim,
And we're playing out that story of victim if we think somebody else has done something to us,
For sure.
We're even playing the victim if we are,
Let's say,
Angry at ourselves,
Frustrated at ourselves.
It's like,
Why didn't I do that better?
Why couldn't I have done that better?
Why aren't I doing it this way?
Whatever story you're playing,
The story exactly doesn't matter.
It's here I'm pointing to the emotional dynamics,
The energetic dynamics of the space that we are orbiting and moving through all the time in this field of energy we exist as.
So how do we forgive?
And why would we forgive?
Why can't I hold on to my hurt forever and always blame them?
Why don't I just always blame them?
Like,
Oh yeah,
I don't like that person anymore.
They did this to me.
I'm never going to talk to them again.
I'm just going to go this way and ignore them.
I'm just going to,
Yeah,
I'm just going to like blank them when I see them in the room or whatever it is.
You can come up with all these patterns that the mind wants to create in order to protect yourself.
And then we create all these levels of control in our system,
Which over time isn't going to offer you freedom.
In fact,
That's all the stuff that we unconsciously did when we were young.
And it's created who we are in adulthood.
And quite often,
If you look back to the beauty of that we were as kids,
Like how much light and love and power and joy,
Curiosity and excitement and just bliss we used to live in as kids,
Right?
And then we like create all these like levels of mind over the top of the pureness of our hearts.
And so this process of awakening,
Spiritual ascension,
Whatever you want to call it,
Is this process of returning back to the true nature of that which we are,
You are.
And we do that through the process of letting go and releasing,
Through forgiveness,
Through opening up.
So in forgiveness,
We are coming to the realization that actually if we are holding onto that resentment or anger or frustration with somebody else outside of us,
That itself is like drinking your own poison.
It's like,
I've got some poison here.
I want to give it to them.
But actually like I'm the one holding the emotions,
The negative emotions,
Even if it's right to say that that person treated me inappropriately,
Right?
It doesn't mean I have to live with the anger inside my own body for 20 years.
And that's where forgiveness comes in.
Forgiveness is an opportunity for you yourself to become more free.
It's not even about the other person.
We use the other people in our life.
We use the mirrors in our life to help us grow ourselves.
We utilize community and a family to see ourselves.
Everybody is a mirror.
Everybody has something to teach us.
So in this sense,
What is it that we do?
We forgive.
We forgive.
And we forgive because we know it's the best medicine for ourselves,
Not to smooth things over with the outside world.
Of course,
That it helps in forgiving and offering forgiveness to ourself and the world around us.
It does smooth things over,
But we don't do it for that.
We do it to find our heart again.
We do it to not drink our own poison and we do it not to hold on to pain inside of our body,
Which will over time turn into dis-ease.
Disease.
Literally all physical manifestations come from unprocessed trauma and emotions.
Everything.
Because everything is energy and that's everything is emotion.
Emotional motion.
Emotions,
Energy moving.
And that creates,
Is in this dance with the physical world.
The sense is the physical world.
So we forgive.
There's many ways to go through the process of forgiveness.
If it's a small thing,
It might happen quite fast.
If it's a big thing,
According to what you experience as a big thing,
Then it might take longer.
It might need some more power.
When I say longer,
I don't mean time-wise actually.
It's not necessarily about the length of time it can take to forgive somebody.
The forgiveness can happen like that.
It's more about the intent and the power behind that particular sort of emotional resonance in the moment to bring about the alchemy of what is there.
So let's say in this situation,
My partner said something to me that caused me pain or suffering.
Maybe tried to control me or threatened me and that has hit something core in me.
It's one example.
I can run away.
I can ignore her.
I can hide.
I can lash out.
Or I can be with her in my mind's eye.
I can be with her and see where she's at.
This is where this word compassion can come in.
Anything that she said to me,
Expressed to me,
That wasn't coming from a place of love,
Was coming from her own suffering.
It's coming from her own pain,
Her own traumas,
Her own patterning in life.
And I can think it's all about me and be her and play victim and blame her and react in unconscious ways.
Or I can find another level,
If I can,
If I can find another level of that compassion inside myself to see her for who she is.
To see her for who she is or was in that exact moment.
And it's not easy to do that sometimes.
But this is what I try to do and what I'm sharing with you in this moment about how to forgive.
How to really forgive.
How to really forgive.
So you take that person in your mind's eye.
You bring them into your field of awareness.
That person that you believed hurt you.
You hold them here.
You see them.
You feel them.
You can even drop that awareness,
Your focus of them into your own heart.
And there might be some resistance to doing that just as we hit 11-11.
There might be and likely will be,
If there's some pain there,
Resistance to bringing your awareness,
Your conception,
The idea,
The seeing of this person in your mind's eye,
Your focus,
Your attention,
Bringing them into your heart.
See them or the experience or the sensation or the pain,
Whatever you are connecting to,
Into your heart.
The heart is the great transmitter.
It's the bridge of worlds.
It's the unconditional connection to the all.
It's not a metaphor.
It's an energetic truth.
It's not a conceptual thinking.
It's a resonance of power.
And this is what we do.
We sit here.
We sit here with that in our heart.
The person,
The place,
The thing,
The part of us that we are forgiving.
We bring it into our heart.
We feel.
We feel what's there.
We don't think about what's there.
We feel what's there.
And if you're on,
If you're with me on this journey,
You can see me feeling here.
You can experience me feeling with my words,
The shakiness of my voice,
The aliveness of the vibration of it,
Which I am.
And maybe you are going through a similar thing yourself right now.
If you are learning to forgive deeper,
What are you holding in your heart?
What are you holding there for you?
Be there.
Be there.
Be in your heart with whatever and whoever you feel as if might have hurt you or discounted you or made you afraid or a part of you that you're forgiving.
Whatever it is,
Bring that awareness of whatever that is,
Whatever space,
Shape,
Color,
Emotion,
Sensation,
Picture you have inside here into your heart.
And I know I'm repeating myself because the more I say it,
The more that your conscious parts and your unconscious parts will follow along to this experience and be here.
Feel what's here inside your body.
We truly live in a very disembodied world,
A deeply,
Deeply disembodied world.
We are a very cerebral species at this time space.
And so sometimes we can have resistance just feeling our body,
Being with that heart,
Being with that heart,
Being with that heart.
And there isn't even any love you have to do.
