My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it’s not really forgiveness. It’s Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you’re trying to live up to but you’re just using it against yourself as a reason why you’re not okay.

Pema Chodron

A friend of mine turned me onto Pema Chodron when she recommended I listen to Getting Unstuck.  I loaded it on my iPhone and have heard it countless times and each time I listen I get something new out of it.  Ms Chodron has become another of my mentors as has Wayne Dyer and Jon Kabat-Zinn.

As a follow up to Wednesday’s Holding On To Anger, forgiveness, letting go, dropping the hot coal doesn’t happen by forcing the issue.  Take it from someone who knows.  I spent a lifetime forcing the issue.  It only made me more miserable.

You have to live through your own turmoil.
You have to go through the storm.
You have to see the miserable.

Everyone has misery in their lives.  There is no getting around that fact.  It’s how you cope with that misery.  It’s how you deal with that turmoil that determines your emotional health.  Are you going to stew in the depths of despair?  Are you going to live with your anger?

Or will you face it head on and kick it out of your life?  Are you going to forgive?  so that you can live a happy successful life?  Are you going to wake up and remove your blinders?

When you decide you’ve lived a life of turmoil long enough, when you decide that the person or events that have caused you despair have done more harm to you then they they’ve done to themselves you will understand that the pain you’re feeling, the anger you’re feeling, the turmoil you’re experiencing is NOT hurting them, it’s killing you, that’s when you’ll feel as if the forgiveness you bestow, IF you bestow it will feel spontaneous.  It REALLY wasn’t spontaneous, however.

You lived through a lifetime of turmoil to get to this point.  It was all a lesson to teach you to forgive.

There is no bad.
There is no anger.

These are simply tools that are used to teach us that there is REALLY ONLY one way to live.  That way is:
Love, Forgiveness, Blessing.

How do we learn this lesson?  By experiencing the opposite.

Spontaneous forgiveness comes from years of living in anger, living in fear, living in turmoil.
Can you learn the lesson?
Can you learn to spontaneously forgive?

Be Happy!  Be Well!  Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
—
Chris