Forgiveness and Understanding

Sometimes it's not so easy to forgive.  We find that we are stuck and can't move ahead in our lives.  When this happens, it is most likely because somewhere in our psyche we are holding onto emotional injury.  But the best way to free ourselves, when we are stuck like that, is through forgiveness.  So, this presents a challenge, because forgiveness is the key that opens the pathway to love in our lives.  

It is important to remember that forgiveness is not condoning the wrong doing of another person.  Forgiveness is simply letting it go.   Our emotions can be like broken records sometimes, playing an event over and over again.  And this takes our energy.  The negative emotions or feelings that we may have toward another person have little to no impact on the wrong doer, but they have a big impact on ourselves.  So it is a good idea for us to figure out how to clear those angry or resentful thoughts and let them go. 

Given our own situations, our past difficulties, challenging upbringings and what have you, sometimes it can seem impossible to forgive.  But a very wise friend of mine once shared with me that in those tougher times, she could become "willing to forgive" or "willing to let go."  This is a good step in the right direction.  Another strategy is to, "Fake it until you make it "    

Years ago, I came across this forgiveness affirmation that Louise Hay teaches.  It goes like this:
 "I forgive you for not being the way that I wanted you to be.  I forgive you and I set you free and thereby free myself."  I love this one because it includes some self-responsibility for our own assumptions and expectations that we so often hold about other people.

I also like to use this set of three forgiveness affirmations.  I don't remember where I got them.  But they have certainly served me well.  These let us see forgiveness from three unique perspectives.  And again, they remind us of our own self-responsibility.  They also help us to remember that pain is most often a two way street.  Here they are:
I forgive you for any pain that you may have caused me.
I ask that you forgive me for any pain that I may have caused you.
I forgive myself for allowing you to cause me any pain.

A practice of forgiveness helps us to move beyond our holding patterns.  As Gabriel Roth, the modern dancer said, "If we are not holding on, we don't have to let go."  But, if we are holding on, spirit is not free to move…and our healing becomes stuck.   My spiritual mentor, Jana Massey used to refer to forgiveness as "The Law of Erasure."  She would say that it erases the hurt so the truth can be made known.

Another mentor of mine is Peace Pilgrim.  Her book is titled: Peace Pilgrim, Her Life and Work in Her Own Words.  Peace Pilgrim would often say that our problems in life are here to help us grow spiritually and that a life without problems would be a barren life.  I've come to see the truth of this  because our problems are our teachers.  They help us to learn and grow.  

When speaking about forgiveness, Peace Pilgrim once said, “One thing that helped me a great deal was the realization that no outward thing, nothing, nobody from without, can hurt me inside.  I realized that I could only be harmed spiritually by my own wrong actions, which I have control over, or my own wrong reactions.  They are very tricky things, but I have control over them also.  When I realized this, I just felt so free.  And I stopped hurting myself.  Now, someone could do the meanest thing to me and I would recognize that person as a sick person, as an out-of-harmony person.  I would put him in the same category as a mentally sick person.  I would feel great compassion for this sick person who is capable of doing mean things.  I would pray for that person.  I would certainly not hurt myself with a wrong reaction of bitterness or anger.  You have complete control over whether you will be hurt inside spiritually or not.  And anytime, you can stop hurting yourself.”    

I find the insight in this statement to be so very profound.  Here, Peace Pilgrim is teaching us that with deeper introspection we can reach for understanding.  This can help us to move, even beyond the need for forgiveness, because we come to see that those who have done us wrong are coming from their own set of circumstances, which might even be deep psychological imbalance.   If we look at a situation like that, from Peace Pilgrim's perspective we can see that someone who is that unsettled, actually needs our compassion.   Sometimes this can be very hard to swallow but, digging deeper for understanding is the key that helps us to keep our own souls from becoming entangled. 

Our job when we feel that we have been wronged is to rise up out of the mire and not stay there, or to not even fall into it in the first place if we can.  We can take a different street and avoid the whole mess.   We can realize that no matter what someone else may have done, they can not harm us inside.

© Josephine Laing, 2015

Gracefully Knocking On Heaven's Door

There can come a time when it is well and good for us to go.  When I was in my teens, my elderly grandfather and I were sitting together side by side, quietly musing in the sun.  He turned to me, placed his hand gently on my knee and said, "I think I'll be going soon.  It's time for me to move over and make room for other people on the planet, so they can come here to live."  I immediately said, "No, Grandpa, don't talk like that."  But he calmly held his place in silence, smiled to himself and nodded.  He did indeed die, quite peacefully, six weeks later.

Sometimes we go to our death kicking and screaming.  Sometimes it's so sudden we don't know what hit us.  But one thing is certain, we will all of us cross that river into the great hereafter one day. 

What we can be most grateful to death about is how it helps us to live while we are here.  Carlos Castaneda said, "When you know that death is stalking you in every moment of your life, your life will become magical because your priorities will change."

To live in grace is to honor all of our spiritual laws: to be kind with one another, to love each other, to give and to receive, to forgive and to understand.  When we live our lives this way, we can meet our deaths with open hearts. 

Having had numerous close brushes with death during the course of my life, I know that any one of us could go at anytime.  This helps me to keep my emotional plate very clean.  If I have a hunch that something is up between us, I ask.  If I wake up thinking about someone, I call.  If I haven't recently told you, "I love you," I do.

So, here we go,  I Love You.  And the truth is, I do.  I'm so grateful to you, yes, you, for your support in reading this blog.  It helps me to have readers, and you know that.  I feel your love and I hope that you can feel mine.  Because, the truth of it is, life is too short for us to be doing anything other than sharing our love.  So, I thank you and I give my love to you.

With that, I want to wish you all a very happy Memorial Day.  May we come to know greater and greater levels of love as we learn how to walk this earth together, blooming and growing, finding our way into the Golden Age of Peace, while we live each of our days, gratefully and gracefully knocking on heaven's door.


© Josephine Laing, 2015

Pray for the Healing of the Memories

In this video Josephine relates how to move through the difficult memories of our life to a place of forgiveness and understanding.  Learn how to go forward in life with clarity and understanding without the injuries and damage from the past. 

 

© Josephine Laing, 2015

Our Hearts Know Best

Our dear friend Bob Banner of HopeDance Magazine brings so much awareness and wisdom to those of us who live on the Central Coast.  He recently showed a film called "The Power of the Heart" which left a profound impression on me.  There was so much goodness in it that if you get a chance, you really must see it.  I'll share a little of what I can recall with you here.

The HeartMath Institute has been researching the intelligence of our hearts for nearly twenty years and not long ago they conducted an interesting experiment.  In it, they showed volunteers different randomly selected photographic images that were chosen specifically to elicit strong emotional responses.  The photographs ranged from puppies and sunsets to violence and destruction.  Electrodes were placed on the bodies of the volunteers which could read the responses of their nervous systems.  Information was gathered from several areas on their bodies: the heart, the brain and the gut.

As the volunteers watched these images, a very intriguing pattern began to reveal itself.  Several seconds before an image was shown, the heart responded either positively or negatively depending on what the image would soon be.  This heart response immediately sent a message to the brain which would then send the information to the gut.  When this happened, the subject would feel the result, either relaxed or agitated.

The experiment showed that not only are our gut feelings accurate, but our heart knows the truth of our feelings first.  The brain is next in line.  And the gut brings it to conscious awareness. 

Our hearts tune us to our life.  They are faster and wiser than our heads.  They let us know if we are loved and welcomed.  Our heart knowledge pervades the Universe.  It teaches us that our soul is not in the intellect.  

The Sioux nation has a saying, "The longest journey you will make in your life is from the head to the heart."  And there is a lot to this.  Here in the west, we constantly defer to our minds.  We dwell in the past and in the future, always trying to figure things out.  But it is the heart energy, which knows the power of the present moment, that is meant to guide us.  My teacher and mentor, Jana Massey used to remind us of this.  She would say, "The heart is meant to be the true leader in our lives."

Maya Angelou said, "I believe the heart is the only thing you can trust."  Deepak Chopra said that we need to ask our hearts everything.  "Where do I want to go?"  "Who should I spend my time with?"  "What should I do with my life?"  Your heart will bring you alive.  It will guide you true by the voice that comes forth from inside of you.

© Josephine Laing, 2014


                  (The amazingly beautiful begonia in the photo was grown by Paul Carlisle)

Gratitude Brings More Blessings

Years ago a friend asked me if I'd like to be president of my own division of the Life's Beautiful Club. I said, "Absolutely! How do I sign up?" And he said, "You just have to say at least once, everyday, 'Life's Beautiful.'" And I've been doing it ever since. You too can be the president of your own chapter, simple simple. Just say it everyday. And you know what? Our gratitude always brings us more blessings.

There is a branch of Hawaiian spirituality that has an invitation to see everything as beautiful.  When we are in gratitude everything IS beautiful.  

My friend Lee has a daily affirmation that goes like this, "I love my life and my life loves me." Our thoughts are so important.  A Course in Miracles says that a change in perspective changes everything.  It's not what happens to us in life, it's what we do with what happens that's important. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison he said, "As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew that if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind I would still be in prison." Nelson Mandela was all about forgiveness, and as a result, he lived a life of gratitude. 

One of my favorite poets, Rabindranath Tagore wrote, "The clouds that come floating into my life no longer carry rain or usher in storms, but add to the color of my sunset sky.  May you all enjoy this holiday time with grateful hearts. 

© Josephine Laing, 2014

Guided Imagery Meditation

              


One of my favorite types of meditation is the Guided Imagery Mediation.  This type of meditation engages our image center or our imagination.  It stimulates our clairvoyant function by activating our third eye.  Meditations of this nature guide us through an idea or an image.  When we do a guided imagery meditation, we can either listen to a prerecorded meditation or we can guide ourselves through the process using our own thoughts. 

My first exposure to guided imagery meditation was with a prerecorded forgiveness meditation.  This was on an audio tape that was made by Louise Hay, who wrote You Can Heal Your Life.  I listened to this almost every night on my little tape player while I was healing from a painful and long term injury.  Louise's gentle, loving voice, playing through my ear-buds, helped me to more easily manage the pain and often lulled me into sleep.  In this meditation, she asked her listeners to imagine our parents as little children, to see them as innocent, to forgive them, to pick them up, hold them lovingly, and then place them right into my heart.

Another great teacher of this type of meditation is Shakti Gawain.  She headed me down the path of guided imagery meditations with her remarkable book, Creative Visualization.  I welcome you to discover for yourself this little book and the life changing wisdom within it for yourself.  One of her readers said that it was like being led by the hand into a beautiful garden and being given a single flower, one after another, to marvel at and enjoy.

I'd like to share with you today a few of my favorite guided imagery meditations. The first one is the pink bubble technique.  Take a minute to imagine a pink bubble, with your eyes either opened or closed.  Place into the bubble any worrying thoughts you may have.  Close the door on that bubble if there was one, and see the bubble lift off and start to float away.  Let it float over the distant horizon, perhaps even over a mountain, and know that it has gone to its next, most highest placement in the universe for its transformation.

A dear friend of mine who has since moved to the east coast taught me about the healing modality of Regenesis. This is a technique where the practitioner imagines a beautiful blue light entering into each and every cell of the client's body.  This is the light of regeneration.  I have taken this idea and altered it slightly to create a wonderful guided imagery meditation for myself that I do every day.  In it, I imagine the blue light of Divinity entering in through the crown of my head and igniting all of my cells, one by one.  In just a few moment's time it fills my whole body with the loving light of my higher self.  This guided imagery meditation is part of what I do when I clear myself before I do my clairvoyant healing work for a client.

Another beautiful guided imagery mediation is to imagine a golden disk or a golden halo over the top of your head.  Let this halo be a filter.  Your thoughts can come and go, but all the thoughts of others are naturally sifted away.  This lets us really focus on being who we are in accordance with our original blueprint, our natural being, our true self.

I'll leave you with these few meditations to enjoy this week. May they serve you as well as they have served me. 

© Josephine Laing, 2014

Grumble, Grumble, Grumble vs. Wow! That Was Great!

We do have free will.  One of the things that we can absolutely choose is where we place our thoughts and our mind.  This can be like simply picking up the reigns on a runaway horse.  It is easier than you would think. We all experience hardships.  Life is rife with them.  But our difficulties are here to help us grow.  They are the obstacles that cause us to leap even higher.

There are common obstacles that we encounter, these blocks seem like they prevent us from spending every moment rejoicing in gratitude.  Grief of course, is huge.  So is lack of forgiveness, along with a lack of compassion and understanding. 

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identifies the five stages of grief.  They are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  After having experienced 18 deaths in 24 months and crying buckets full of tears, I became aware that the time we spend in grief can vary greatly, depending on the loss.  It also depends on, dare I say, our choice to stay there, or move through it and move on.  Some loss really knocks us for a loop.  And it's just going to take its sweet time.  Grief never fully leaves us, but there are instances where we can actually get in there, do some inner work, and bring our thoughts, minds, and hearts to some resolve. 

In the advanced course I find that when I have really moved through my inner work, with lots of understanding and self-love, I can even come to a sixth stage, which is gratitude.  This is the point where I have come to see the blessings that the loss has brought to me.  Sometimes we learn how to better care for ourselves.  Sometimes we move on to a relationship that is even more compatible.  It's not so much what happens to us in life, it's what we do with what happens that matters. 

Another major block to gratitude is lack of forgiveness.  Sometimes we're holding on so tight to something we think is terrible that we just can't move forward.  Louise Hay helped me with this obstacle in my own life with her affirmation, "I forgive you for not being the way that I wanted you to be.  I forgive you and I set you free, and thereby free myself."  There is a lot of personal reflection in this thought.  And it often helps us to see the deeper view.  My spiritual teacher Jana Massey taught us that forgiveness is the law of erasure.  It erases the hurt so the truth can be made known.  When we forgive we release that tight grasp and over time, often we see further. 

There is one more set of forgiveness affirmations I'd like to share with you today.  Sadly, I don't remember where I got them.  But never mind, they go like this, "I forgive you for any pain that you may have caused me.  I ask that you forgive me for any pain that I may have caused you.  And I forgive myself for allowing you to cause me any pain."  With these we see the situation from three unique perspectives.  They also help us understand that pain is a two way street.

With deeper introspection we can even move beyond the need for forgiveness because we come to see that everyone is always doing what feels right given their set of circumstances.  Often in a worst case scenario, the perpetrator is so tortured themselves, so lost within, that they are looking for any way to have someone else know their experience.  Those who are this unsettled truly need our compassion.  We wouldn't punish a baby for pulling a cat's tail.  We would understand that's the stage of growth the child is in.  Similarly, someone who has done us wrong is experiencing their own version of the world.   As hard to swallow as this may be, understanding is the key.

So, grumble, grumble, grumble is a choice we sometimes make.  And it's fully understandable. But how much nicer it is to turn our focus to what is beautiful in every given situation, to see how we are growing our souls and the souls of others.  Appreciation always shifts the energy.  We can take the time to look for it and say instead, "Wow! That was great." 

© Josephine Laing, 2014