The Power of Forgiveness
A few weeks ago, I led a call on the subject of forgiveness. Although I have been involved in this work for thirteen years and probably led or been a part of close to 100 different forgiveness processes, I am still blown away by the power of forgiveness.
What has become so abundantly clear to me is how intricately connected our inner world is to our external reality and when you truly come to a place of neutrality and let go of a grudge that you have been holding on to, your outer world will quickly shift and change.
In her book The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse, Debbie Ford talks about “the gift of forgiveness.” She writes:
Without forgiving all those you have harbored bad feelings toward, you continue to be imprisoned by your past. If you do not cut the cords of resentment, you will be held captive by the very people you were trying to get away from. Without activating this most powerful agent of change, forgiveness, you will continually have hooks binding you to the incidents that caused the resentment in the first place. Because the outer world is a reflection of your inner world, these hooks throw out energy and will ensure that you re-create, in other situations, the same bad feelings that you are holding on to inside yourself.
In the past few months, I made a commitment to myself to work through any lingering resentments that I have and to find compassion and understanding for the people who I felt “have hurt me.” I have gone back and extracted the gifts of the situations that caused me pain and literally mapped out how they have served me and led to my evolution. As I continue to dig deep, it is astonishing to me what has opened up. People who I have not heard from in years have amazingly reappeared and somehow they have the exact insight or words of wisdom that I need to hear. Opportunities are popping up from out of the blue. Situations where I have felt stuck have started to open up. Even though there is no direct correlation between the issues I worked on and what is showing up in my life, by releasing the toxicity I have inside I am creating space for new possibilities to emerge.
When we imprison others, we imprison ourselves. When we release others, we release ourselves! I will admit that for me forgiveness has been a process, but now I am able to see the power of the practice. As Debbie wrote, “To live in the moment and open yourself to every new great experience to come, you must forgive that past and leave it where it belongs – in the past.” I am excited to continue to dwell in this conversation of forgiveness and to watch the miracles unfold! I invite you to do the same.
Transformational Action Steps
(1) Dwell in the conversation of forgiveness and this concept: “When we imprison others, we imprison ourselves. When we release others, we release ourselves!”
(2) Journal about the following questions:
a. Who do you have imprisoned?
b. What benefit do you get from imprisoning others?
c. How does imprisoning others impact you?
d. What would be possible if you released these people? What would you have more of or be able to create more of in your life?
(3) Pick one person that you have imprisoned and allow yourself to see how the experience you had with this person actually served you and helped you to grow and evolve.
(4) Write a forgiveness letter to that person and really focus on releasing them and yourself. You do not need to send the letter and you can even write the letter to someone who has passed.
(5) Set yourself free at The Shadow Experience or The Shadow Process where we spend all of Sunday morning doing liberating forgiveness work.
