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Forgiveness
Without a doubt, the process of forgiveness is the fastest, straightest path possible to healing. When Eldon Taylor’s subliminal recordings were tested on correctional facility inmates with the message of forgiveness, it had a significant demonstrable impact. When interviewed, a majority of inmates had the belief that life had “done them wrong” and they held a lifetime belief of victimhood. When the subliminal messages of forgiveness were played over and over again, these inmates showed a remarkable improvement in their behavior.
So long as we stay in a place where we feel victimized by our circumstances, we can’t fully heal both physically or spiritually. Not surprisingly, one of the steps of the Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT) involves forgiveness of self and others. Although we can’t control everything that happens to us, we can influence our lives through our moment-to-moment choices. One of those types of choices is either to accept or resist our circumstances. When we accept our circumstances, it doesn’t mean that we necessarily like what is going on. Acceptance means that you surrender your need to control all aspects of your life and instead, realize that you can take action from either an empowered place or a victimized place.
When we resist what happens to us, we literally cause energy to stagnate in our bodies. This stagnation can cause real pain. The resistance is often in the form of thoughts and emotions. Here are some examples of resistance:
This shouldn’t have happened to me.
What did I do to deserve this?
I’m a good person, aren’t I? Why is this happening?
He should pay for what he did to me!
Life is a bitch!
An easy way to tell if you’re in resistance is to notice how often you use the words “should” or “should have” in your everyday language (or your thoughts). Another tell-tale sign you’re in resistance is if you’re always asking “why” something is the way it is. I often notice that I’m “should-ing” myself and I have to remind myself that this type of thinking can be quite non-productive and even toxic. When we are in resistance, we lose a lot of energy. This energy could be used to heal our bodies instead of being burned off in resistance.
Why Forgive?
To answer this question simply: because it makes your life work better. Resistance to what is present in our lives leads to mental and emotional suffering and eventually to physical suffering. It isn’t easy, however, to let go of our resistance. Why? Because we’ve taken decades to learn it from our parents and our community? Vengeance and justice are commonplace concepts that have become ingrained in our mass consciousness. Unfortunately, just because it is ingrained doesn’t mean it serves us.
Imagine yourself in a kayak paddling upstream against a forceful current. It isn’t much fun is it? It expends an inordinate amount of energy. It’s also near-impossible to get where you want to go. On the other hand, if you turned the kayak around and paddled with the current, quickly maneuvering past any obstacles such as rocks, you’d be traveling with little resistance. It would take much less energy. Life is much like a river. You can either resist what experiences it gives you or you can go with the flow and maneuver around any obstacles you may encounter. The more practice you get at maneuvering around obstacles, the faster and more enjoyable your life.
Forgiveness helps us let go of mental and emotional obstacles that serve to block the flow of our energy. As I mentioned before, energy blockages cause real physical pain in the body. Many people have experienced that by adopting new habits of forgiveness and acceptance, they enjoy their lives more and experience less pain.
Who to Forgive?
Think back to everyone who ever hurt you in your past. Is there anyone who, when you think of them, still brings up painful emotions? If there is, don’t feel bad about it. Instead, rejoice that you’ve actually discovered a pathway of lost energy. Even if the painful emotion is just 2 out of 10 on the pain scale, it is worth addressing it. You can use Tapping, TAT or any other modality you choose to neutralize the negative emotions that still bind you to that memory.
Many people erroneously think that by forgiving someone, they are automatically condoning that person’s behavior. Quite the contrary. When we hang on to our grudges and hurts, we mostly hurt ourselves. We prevent ourselves from moving forward in our lives with our full energy and instead leave parts of our energetic body behind in different places and times in the past. Having more energy in your body will hasten your healing.
Even if you can’t think of anyone specifically that you want to forgive, sometimes we have inadvertently taken on other people’s battles. I used to do this all the time. Before I recognized that my ex-husband might have had some depressive tendencies, I used to feel extremely protective of him, taking his side in any argument. In fact, it was always someone else’s fault when things went wrong and I used to feel so sorry for him. It took almost a decade of personal transformation before I realized that I was doing my ex-husband a disservice. By supporting his victim mentally, I was actually adding to his misery! Instead of seeing him empowered, I was seeing him just as he saw himself, a victim.
I’ve noticed that sometimes I get angry when I hear about the lying or corruption that abounds in modern society. If getting angry gets me to moving into positive action, that’s one thing, but if I become stuck in anger and resentment, then it is harmful. How many times have you witnessed some sort of atrocity on the news and then absorbed that negative energy, the energy of battle, into your body or your psyche? I’ve done it plenty of times, and it has been an autopilot response. It takes conscious awareness to catch ourselves when we go into battle or judgment. Understanding that this battle wages war inside our physically painful bodies may help us ease up on this habit.
Forgiveness Exercise
Let’s check where in your life you still have judgment and where you could use forgiveness. The purpose of this exercise is for you to become more aware of your judgments, rather than trying to change them. Chances are, you will naturally resist any attempt by me to change your mind. That’s okay. This is an awareness exercise. As you read the scenarios I present to you below, I want you to honestly gauge your reaction. It is okay to feel the full gamut of emotions. Just tune into whether you have a feeling of “it’s not okay” or “this shouldn’t happen”. Please note that some of these scenarios can be disturbing, so if you are super sensitive and wish to skip this exercise, I completely understand.
Scenario 1: Your neighbor’s cat defecates on your lawn regularly and your neighbor denies this is happening.
Scenario 2: Your child’s teacher calls her a “lazy pig” and gets away with it.
Scenario 3: A car cuts you off on the freeway and you almost have an accident.
Scenario 4: Your colleague takes credit for work that you did and gets promoted
Scenario 5: You find out that genetically modified foods are harmful to animals and humans yet the food corporations are still allowed to sell it without labeling
Scenario 6: You learn that the government decides to give millions of dollars to corporations to bail them out of bankruptcy only to learn that most of that money went to the CEO’s and boards of directors instead of to workers who were laid off
Scenario 7: A raw milk farmer was jailed and tortured by government officials for sharing his milk with friends and neighbors
Scenario 8: A thief broke into your home and stole all your prized possessions and ruined your family photo album
Scenario 9: Your child was bullied by another child in school and came home with a black eye and severe anxiety
Scenario 10: A three year old was repeatedly sexually abused by her father
Scenario 11: You find out that in some countries, women are still considered property, just like cattle
Scenario 12: The vaccine that is heavily marketed to young women to prevent cancer is not only ineffective at preventing cancer, it might be promoting it
I’m sure you can think of many more scenarios that might shift someone into judgment and anger. There is nothing wrong with having judgment and anger as we are only human. But when the judgment and anger festers and becomes an underlying foundational element in our lives, then we’re in trouble. Instead of being able to forgive and let go, while pursuing our mission and our purpose, we can get “stuck” on seeing only what is wrong with the world rather than what is right with it. The toxicity of watching nightly television news takes advantage of our minds and emotions this way.
Forgiveness Doesn’t Mean Condoning
Many people automatically equate forgiveness with condoning. These are two different things. Although I may choose to forgive someone for hurting me, it doesn’t mean that I condone their actions. Condoning harmful actions means that you’re okay with someone’s actions. Forgiveness means that you let go of your desire for vindication or vengeance and that you understand that being human means having flaws.
You can both forgive someone while at the same time taking action to protect yourself and those you love. If someone tries to hurt you, it would be appropriate to take action to protect yourself. Doing so means that you have healthy self-esteem and courage, and is a form of self-love. Protecting yourself may mean communicating what isn’t acceptable to you or it may mean taking someone to court.
For example, if I’m with my beloved niece and I see someone bullying her, I’m not going to stand there and do nothing. You better believe that I’ll jump right in and protect her, even if that means physically restraining the other person or calling the police for support. Even if that happens, I can still choose to forgive that person, knowing that their actions were probably learned, and that deep down, we are all one. I don’t have to take pleasure in that person’s punishment. I can choose instead to pray for healing for that person, while at the same time, upholding the boundaries that I’ve decided are acceptable to me.
Loving Your Shadow
One of my abundance teachers, T. Harv Eker, likes to ask in his seminars, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” After I heard this the first time, it really affected me. Self-righteousness was one of my “best” traits. I was often right, and through the years found myself pointing out the wrongdoings of others. It wasn’t until I heard T. Harv’s question that I paused to think about my consistent habit of wanting always to be right. I still have a hard time letting go of winning an argument. I’m not Einstein, but I’m smart enough to be right a lot of the time. That’s been a major stumbling block for my healing.
Now, I like reminding myself, “Do I want to be right or do I want to be healthy?” It’s taken me a lot of work to understand that my addiction for being right stemmed from low self-esteem and low self-compassion. I really didn’t accept my shadow side and instead prided myself as being extra-responsible, extra-honest, extra-hard working, extra-tolerant etc. Anything I couldn’t stand in another (lying, cheating, laziness, rage), was something I couldn’t accept in myself. Debbie Ford, author of The Shadow Effect, shares that our shadow carries gifts. If we do not accept our shadow and learn to integrate it into our wholeness, we will have a hard time being happy in life. Many of us have learned to shun our failings, our shadows. Apparently, that’s like disowning your left arm and preferring your right arm. You wouldn’t cut off your left arm would you? Of course not!
As I mentioned in the chapter on self-acceptance, the ability to accept who we are today is part of holistic healing. Part of that self-acceptance is the acceptance of your shadow. When you can accept and even love the shadow side of you, you will no longer need to be right all the time. Instead, you will be able to compassionately accept other people’s shadows, which will help them heal, as well as yourself.
In case you’re not clear on what is considered our shadow selves, the parts we’ve often disowned, here’s a short list:
Our laziness
Our dishonesty
Our addictions
Our lack of integrity
Our fearfulness
Our rage
Our jealousy
Our manipulations
Our lustfulness
Our greediness
Our superiority complex
Our vengeance
Our ignorance
Our selfishness
Can you think of more? If you haven’t already seen Debbie Ford’s video, The Shadow Effect, I highly recommend it. Forgiving yourself, accepting your shadow, and letting go of being right, will catapult you to an exciting new place of healing. Not only will this process aid you in healing physical pain, but emotional and relationship pain as well.
So aside from the benefits to healing, why accept our shadows? The answer is that each of our shadows carries with it gifts. Now that I’ve been able to own more of my anger shadow, I am more able to create and uphold healthier relationship boundaries.
In one intensive workshop I participated in, the students had to bring up their angry “enforcer” energy in order to tell a potential perpetrator to “back off” from harming a loved one. Although the teachers were only pretending to be the perpetrators, the energy in the room was tense and at first, many people couldn’t do the exercise. Some people just swore, some cried and some laughed nervously. But until we gave the teachers the precise energy they were looking for, they wouldn’t let us end the exercise. They pushed us (compassionately of course) into bringing up our shadow until we could use it consciously for a positive goal.
So aside from anger, can you think of some benefits from being lazy? Dishonest? Ignorant? Greedy? All these shadow qualities have their gifts. Personally I have great difficulty owning my lazy shadow. If anyone criticizes me for being lazy, my defenses fire up automatically. Why? Because I have difficulty accepting my lazy side. I equate being lazy with being a bad person. Now I realize that in owning my lazy side, I can finally rest my body instead of pushing it to the limits like I did when I first burnt out. I can forgive myself for wanting to plop on the couch and watch movies instead of working on the computer.
In the recent past, no personal attack could be more wounding to me than someone accusing me of my unacceptable shadow qualities: selfishness, laziness, and dishonesty. When I say wounding, I really mean wounding to the core! The worst reaction I’d have is when the criticism came from my parents. The accusation, “You’re so selfish”, would send me on a tailspin of co-dependent people-pleasing and overworking. These days, I’m learning to own my selfishness and realize that this part of me is only trying to show me that I deserve to receive the gifts of the Universe. Being selfish has now transmuted into conscious self-care. Some of us really need to be more selfish so that we can better take care of ourselves. I was one of them.
Welcome Your Mirrors
If you’re not really clear just yet what shadows you have not integrated and accepted in yourself, it is pretty easy to figure them out. Just jot down all the things that drive you crazy about other people! Our spouses and parents are great places to start. Whatever you judge as unacceptable in others is usually a shadow part of yourself that has not healed. The people in our lives are just mirrors.
If your experience of life has attracted people who criticize you, judge you or otherwise demean you, then you’ve really got some empowerment work to do in your life. Those mirrors in your life are there to give you the opportunity to step up and find your inner strength. Although most people are not going to easily love someone who abused or hurt them, at some point when they can rise above the experience to heal, they may realize that their new place of empowerment could only have come from the entirety of their past experiences, including their traumas.
Sometimes my mirror is someone who is currently at a spiritual developmental level that I’ve already worked through myself. By seeing where this person is at and how far I’ve travelled in my journey, it gives me the opportunity to pause and appreciate myself. A good friend of mine is a consummate people-pleaser. By watching him people-please and say “yes” when he really wants to say “no”, it reminds me of what I used to do and how much happier I am now. In addition, I can be completely compassionate towards him instead of judging him. There is nothing greater in friendship than unconditional acceptance of another.
One of the greatest gifts of forgiveness and owning your own shadow is compassion. By accepting our own shadow sides and integrating them into our wholeness, we can choose compassion for others who are stuck in their shadow. The energy of compassion is extremely powerful. When it runs through your physical body, you receive healing, as well as well as the person you’re in relationship with.
Compassion-Forgiveness Exercise
Here’s a quick compassion and forgiveness exercise for you. The next time you choose to watch the television news and witness disasters or murders, see if you can catch yourself going into judgment, and immediately shift this into becoming compassionate. If there are victims in the story, send them the energy of compassion. Feel free to cry in the moment to share their pain, then consciously disengage your energy from the situation and go about the rest of your day.
If you’re an extremely sensitive person, I wouldn’t recommend that you do this exercise just yet because you may not have enough practice disengaging your energy from another’s. The purpose of this exercise is to be able to dive in, feel someone’s pain, then dive out moments later and (this is the important part) still enjoy your life. Remember how young children are when they fall down and hurt themselves? They may cry for a few minutes, but then something else interests them and within moments, they’re back to playing. They don’t wallow in the past for very long, unless they are old enough to have learned this habit from an adult or older sibling.
In the above exercise, see if you can also practice the energy of forgiveness for the perpetrators, if there are any. See if you can connect with their shadow via your own. As I often like to say, every one of us is a potential Hitler or a potential Mother Theresa. It all just depends on your circumstances and your choices. Even though this exercise seems simple, it isn’t necessarily easy. Yet, in its simplicity, it is extremely powerful. It is similar to a Buddhist meditation called Tonglen whereby you consciously breathe in the pains of the world and breathe out compassion and love.
Chapter Summary
Forgiveness and compassion are two of the most powerful healing energies on the planet
Learning to forgive yourself and others prevents resistance and energy loss which contributes to all sorts of pain
Learning to accept and integrate your shadows helps you heal at a very deep level
Accepting our shadows means accepting the gifts they bring to our lives
Others are just mirrors to us. If we see something we don’t like in someone, it often means we have a shadow quality we have disowned