Weekly Glow Wisdom: Forgiveness - The Spiritual F-Word (Part Three)

(An Excerpt from my Bestselling Spiritual Awakening Book I AM GOOD ENOUGH)

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you’re condoning what someone has done to harm you or your family and friends or complete strangers. It means you’re changing your perception to one of defenselessness. You’re creating space to heal your wounds instead of holding onto them. And you’re not allowing them to continue to hurt you.

You’re also not kicking other souls and their earthly forms out of your heart. You’re simply creating space around you and them, between you, if you will, so that you can heal.

A Course in Miracles says that “in our defenselessness, our safety lies.”

That we can step back and let God lead.

To “Be still and know I am,” as the Bible says.

I’ll admit it. When I first read this, I thought it was total bullshit. That ol’ bull in the china shop tendency of mine was ready to charge at another set of fancy dishes. What do you mean choose defenselessness? I thought it was ridiculous. People can’t just continue to hurt me and the people I love. They have to be stopped and put in their place.

What I didn’t get was that they were only continuing to hurt me because I was letting them. Because I hadn’t let go and let God. I hadn’t moved on while still leaving love in my heart for them. Simply put, I hadn’t Forgiven them.

By the same token, I can't force other people to let go of their hurts. They have to travel their own path in Divine Time. They have their own Forgiving to do.

So maybe there was something to this idea of defenselessness.

If I wanted to awaken further, I had to live in the now. Defending myself and others was staying stuck in the past.

Marianne Williamson takes this a step further and applies the idea to our childhood and the wounds we might have from that period in our lives. She says:

“There is no coming to consciousness without forgiving our parents.”

Whoa! Now I was really paying attention to the defenselessness bit.

When I thought about how it would work in my life, it was so easy to see that I felt rather silly because I hadn’t figured it out before.

What if I just stopped defending myself?

For example, what if I just listened on the phone while my mother told me yet again that whatever I was doing should be done in a different way? What if I didn’t argue with her that my way was better? What if I just thanked her for her opinion and her suggestions and changed the subject or better yet, told her I loved her and hung up?

All of this time, all I had to do was “shut the hell up.” (Note: My dad has been trying to teach me this for ages. Lol! He’s been using the method very successfully for almost 50 years.)

Remembering that I’m a child of God, that we all are, who came here to heal and be healed, I finally saw all of my challenges with my mother exactly for what they were. They were challenges that I could learn and grow and heal from experiencing. They were the challenges that I chose to experience by choosing my mother and father as my parents.

So, I surrendered.

I finally understood that they are what they are, perfect in every way, so that they could get me to this moment right now that I’m awake enough to write about. They’ve been of great help to me moving forward on my journey to spiritual awakening. As have every one of my life experiences and the people I connected with while having them.

What if I took this up a notch and changed my overall perception, putting Forgiveness into practice on a daily basis, so that my goal in every circumstance is peace of mind?

You don’t get that kind of peace by defending against every wrong that has been done to you.

Living with Forgiveness as my reset button means that I’m leaving my heart open and I’m creating space for God’s will, knowing there’s always my best interest at heart.

As a reset button, what I do is pray, either silently to myself or out loud, surrendering the situation to God, asking that it be used according to thy will, thanking God that my heart can remain open to give and receive love even in this challenging situation.

Hugs Love and Namaste --- DD