Day 12: Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the beginning of all emotional healing.  Forgiveness is an internal acceptance of your own history and requires nothing from an external party.  Forgiveness is the ability to release the memories, images and sensations which haunt you with physical and emotional pain. Yesterdays exercise was an exercise in forgiveness.

Traditional forgiveness can be difficult because it is typically based on the belief that the offending party must offer an apology or condolence before one can forgive another.  This belief can leave people carrying emotional pain, anger and resentment for years, if not an entire lifetime, waiting on the actions of another.  This is a disempowered position to take and leaves the wronged person carrying the burden of these memories and emotions indefinitely.

Radical forgiveness, on the other hand, is a process for taking responsibility for one’s own burdens.  Whoever you believe harmed you cannot make you carry this memory and torture yourself with anger and resentment.  Your anger does not harm the other person, it only harms you by keeping you trapped in the past, afraid and separated from yourself.  It is your choice to drag this baggage along with you through life, and it can also be your choice to leave it behind and walk with freedom into the truth and joy of the present moment.

The Truth

The truth is that everything in our lives that is not happening right now, is nothing more than a memory.  Your entire life is only a memory.  Memories are not real, they are not tangible things, like a chair or table.  Memories are ideas, ideas that we believe are real.  If something is “real” than we cannot change it without a lot of external effort, but ideas are ephemeral, magical thought processes which we must actively create in order to experience.  You must create an idea inside of yourself in order to experience it.  Right now remember something that got you really excited and notice how it makes you feel.  Notice that if you really imagine this experience vividly you will feel a visceral sensation of excitement.

Where did this excitement come from?  You.  You created it by using your imagination.  It doesn’t matter that you believe this thing really happened to you. What matters is how viscerally you create the idea inside of your mind.  You can try the same thing with something you have never experienced before and you will get the same result.  It doesn’t matter what is real, what matters is what you create inside yourself, this is what determines your experience.  So if you can create a state of excitement this easily you must realize that you can create sadness, anger and resentment this easily as well.  But do not imagine that these things come from outside of yourself.  If you do, you are powerless to change them.  You have made yourself a victim of your environment.  But, if you realize that you actively create your anger and resentment with effective use of your imagination by recreating certain experiences for yourself over and over again, then you suddenly have the power to create something different for yourself instead.

The Tools

EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and is one of the most powerful ways I have ever experienced for releasing the traumas of the past and using radical forgiveness to bring ones self back into the freedom of the present moment.  EFT is a beautiful combination of simple NLP techniques mixed with simple accupressure points in such a way that one is able to desensitize the body’s involuntary reactions to certain ideas or memories.  Because all emotion is experienced through sensation in the body, when we  desensitize the body to the thought processes that create uncomfortable feelings the fear and resistance to the thoughts themselves evaporates.

The process is very simple and is quite similar to the Emo Trance technique we have already learned.  First you find a memory which creates an emotional reaction. Second you tap on a series of accupressure points while you focus on this trigger and say a series of simple affirmations.  Finally, you test the change by attempting to recreate the emotion all over again.  If it is still there, do the process again and again until you can no longer feel any emotion connected to this trigger.

Exercise:

Take three deep breaths and close your eyes.  Find a memory that has been haunting you for a long time, even one that goes back as far as childhood.  On a scale of 0-10, 10 being the most intense, how intensely do you feel this emotion?  What name would you give this emotion?

Now focus on the trigger which creates this emotional sensation and with your right hand tap gently about 10 times in the center of your forehead as you say silently or out loud, “I release all anger, pain, and resentments”.  Move to your right temple and tap again as you say, “I release all sadness, fears and regrets”.   Move to  your cheek right beneath the right eye and tap some more as you say, “I release all traumas, guilts, and betrayals”.  Tap underneath the right collar bone and say, “I have chosen to carry this memory in my body”. Tap on the outside of the right rib cage and say, “Now I choose to let it go.”  Take a deep breath and say, “Peace” out loud as you exhale.

Now try your best to recreate this emotion and notice how intense the sensation is on the 0-10 scale.  The sensation probably lessened didn’t it?  Do the process again and then try to recreate the emotion again.  Do this process again and again until you cannot create any emotional reaction with the initial trigger.

Now visualize the trigger on a screen in front of your minds eye and move it over to the left. On the right create a new screen and fill it with the happiest memory you can recall. Make this image vivid and visceral and feel the happy sensations it creates inside you. Now slide the happy picture behind the previous trigger image and naturally let the happy image burn through the trigger and blow the ashes away with a deep exhale. Say, “peace” as you allow the happy feeling to fill your entire body.

This process energetically rewires the relationship between the minds neural networks and the body’s stored sensation patterns.  Once these connections are severed we are free to respond any way we desire to any stimulus the mind happens to create.  This is the doorway to emotional freedom.

Assignment:

In the comment section below, tell me about your experience with forgiveness.  Did you struggle with this process or were you easily able to allow the energy to shift?  If not, why do you think that is?  What are you getting out of this story?

Forgiveness of one’s self and others is the simplest route to inner peace.

Love,

SaTek