We all have old wounds from our past. There are people whom we cannot forgive whom we feel have wounded us and wronged us, perhaps stole our lover or spouse, and, consequently, ruined our lives. However, if you reflect on that wound in the present moment, you might be surprised to realize that you didn’t really lose anything—your mind and thoughts are just creating the same, repeated scenarios. You’re simply perceiving from your past experiences.
Forgiveness shifts your perception. Forgiveness can rewire your neural networks and set you free mentally, emotionally and physically. When your mind and your emotions are in sync, your body will respond.
Although you don’t consciously realize it, you are living in a program of your own making, constructed from your past experiences. You continue to have the same feelings and experiences because you dwell on things that are powerfully upsetting or shocking to you. Repeated thoughts and feelings create an emotional pattern which results in a neural network, a cluster of neurons in our brains. These networks are ingrained into your mind and are repeated when triggered. If you do not interrupt this network, you are destined to repeat the same habits and patterns over and over again and constantly get the same result. If you feel stuck or that you are not living the life you dreamed you could live, you may want to practice and incorporate radical forgiveness.
Charlotte’s Story
Charlotte consulted me for an intuitive reading. Her husband had left her for another woman, while Charlotte was pregnant with their third child. As she spoke, I recognized her strength of spirit. The problem was, Charlotte was so angry and bitter that she could not muster any strength besides the strength it took to raise her kids and complain about how much she hated her husband. She began to emotionally break down and was building thick, solid walls of defense around herself.
Although this was a terrible situation, something kept popping up during her readings – the fact that this was actually a blessing in disguise. Charlotte couldn’t see this because she wanted revenge. Of course, I could relate to what she was feeling and would never have tried to take away her right to feel the grief and pain she suffered from being cheated on and lied to. But her behavior was not empowering her – on the contrary, it was actually creating a very destructive, negative habit which was becoming her mood.
During Charlotte’s divorce settlement proceedings, I encouraged her to take a large sum of money as a settlement and accept child support, in lieu of alimony. Intuitively, I knew that something was not right. She agreed to take the joint properties that they had acquired together instead of alimony, and accepted child support.
Not more than a year later, Charlotte’s husband, a very well-known business executive, was found guilty of embezzling company money. He was tried, convicted and imprisoned for his crimes. Because she had followed the advice from our reading, her property settlement and the lump sum of money that she had accepted would take care of her and her children for at least 20 years.
However, Charlotte’s money wasn’t making her happy. She kept going to the doctor for random aches and pains, and he finally diagnosed her with depression. He wanted to put her on medication. Charlotte called me for another reading and I told her, “The problem is not depression. Depression is the result of the emotions from the thoughts that you are carrying. The root of the problem is that you will not forgive your ex-husband. You won’t let go because you’re comfortable in your anger and your bitterness. You need to be in a place of acceptance. You need to forgive yourself and him.” Charlotte screamed back at me, “How can I forgive him for what he’s done?” I didn’t back down, knowing that she was screaming at me to force me to agree with her. I refused to agree with her, knowing that to do so would be to feed her ugly demon of revenge. This demon was creating her emotional and psychological depression.
Charlotte’s state of depression was resulting from her suppressing her feelings. She would drone on and on to anyone who listened about her ex-husband leaving her for another woman. People began to avoid her. Her kids started having trouble in school. She continued to blame her ex-husband for her life. She was becoming a victim to her own anger. She was in dangerous territory, and I knew it. Although she had three very young children who needed her, she didn’t want to let go. She was afraid to forgive her ex-husband because she would lose not only the familiar feeling to which she clung, but also the identity she had built around that feeling.
Like most people, Charlotte couldn’t see herself. She was acting from a subconscious place. Psychologist Peter Bregman wrote, “In different circumstances…who’s to say what choices we might make? Any one of us is capable of just about anything. And unless we acknowledge that, we are at greater risk of becoming the person we fear the most. We’re more likely to lash out against others to defend our view of ourselves.”
You become very comfortable when you are in the familiar. You think the same thoughts that create the same feelings. The next thing you know, you have created a state of being. You feel awful and don’t even realize it. You believe that this feeling means that you’re alive, but it does not. It is just familiar. This familiar state of being for Charlotte was making her sick. She had started drinking too much wine and smoking way too many cigarettes.
Two weeks later, Charlotte asked me for another reading. I told her fine, but this time she really needed to listen to what I was going to say. At the beginning of the reading, I asked her, “Do you want me to tell you what you want to hear, or do you want me to tell you the truth? Because it seems like every time we’ve done a reading, you don’t hear a thing I say.”
I began to lay it all out for her – the life that she was creating for herself based on this familiar state of being. I told her she was going to be uncomfortable listening to this, but that she needed to be uncomfortable and to feel these feelings, because her familiar state of comfort was actually making her ill. When her husband left her, he really did her a favor. If she would have stayed with him, she would have ended up penniless. I told her that I know that him cheating on her and leaving her didn’t feel good, but that she had three beautiful children who needed her, and she needed them just as much.
“Start right now, today, in this moment and be grateful that he left you,” I told Charlotte. “Forgive yourself for what you’ve been doing to yourself, and you must forgive him. Because at the end of the day, you’re going to wish you did, because you keep giving your power to him.” Those words tipped the scales for Charlotte, because that was exactly what she did not want. She wanted her ex-husband to see her succeed, being happy, raising three beautiful children without him.
I also assured Charlotte that there is a man out there who is waiting to be with her. She had inner wisdom, the force that guides us all and that she must trust, guiding her. I ended our reading with the words, “Forgive him, heal yourself and open your heart. A closed heart hurts only you.”
It was a while until I heard from Charlotte again. I received a card in the mail from Fiji. Written inside were the words, “I forgave him, myself, and opened my heart. I met a new man and now listen to and follow my inner wisdom. Who would have guessed that what seemed like a Cat 5 storm would bring a double rainbow!”
The Power of Forgiveness
Forgiveness heals and creates inner freedom. When we forgive, we are releasing the past. If we stay in the past, we remain stuck, feeling the pain, reliving the thoughts and feelings over and over again, even though they don’t exist anymore. When we forgive, we set ourselves free. When we forgive others, we set them free. We must forgive ourselves as well as we must forgive others. You can’t have one without the other.
Forgiveness means you forget. Forgetting creates even more freedom. You receive freedom from the past and pain, setting yourself and others free.
There is a power in forgiveness. If you want to succeed, don’t let your mind dwell on your past mistakes. Forgive your past and forgive the past of others. If you make a mistake, forgive yourself and let it go. As long as you desire something good and you are not harboring any resentment, nothing in the universe will oppose you. The only person that damns you is yourself. God does not damn you.
You live in a world of your own making. If you speak only words and think only thoughts that you wish to see manifested in your life, you will see inner results. Think about what you want to experience. Then feel that experience as if it’s already done. Yes, it takes discipline but it pays off. As you sow, so shall you reap. These are the laws that govern life.
