All About Love & Forgiveness

"When you judge another, 

you do not define them, you define yourself."

                                    - Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

One of the things I have struggled with the most during this time of transition and enlightenment in my life is learning to forgive others for the pain I perceive to have been inflicted upon me.  The advice has always been to "just let it go" or "decide to forgive and move on".  But this was not working for me.  I think I have finally learned the key to success in this area of forgiveness and I want to share it in the hope that it might help other people as well.

The other concept I struggled with is the idea of learning to love myself.  My first reaction to this was that it sounded pretty narcissistic and selfish.  Once I made the connection that self-love is really about remembering your spiritual essence, which by definition is pure, perfect and always connected to the Universal source of being, and not about your physical self and ego, it was much easier to wrap my head around it.  Your real self, not your false self.  

I found that once I started to really embrace this concept of loving and accepting myself, forgiveness just naturally flowed through me without me having for force anything.  I think it's a mistake to try to 'force' any emotions - actually I think it's an exercise in frustration because in order to exist, emotions must be tied to a feeling.  So if you're not feeling it, the emotion will be false or fake.  This doesn't work at all and can be very frustrating.  

My advice in the area of forgiveness is to really focus on releasing any negative feelings that you may have towards yourself, such as hurt, blame, guilt, anger, judgement, fear, and resentment.  Once you can do this successfully, the rest will just flow naturally.  The concept of loving yourself becomes effortless and forgiveness almost becomes unnecessary because all you will be able to feel toward the offending individual will be compassion and understanding.  Don't try to force it - trust me, it won't work!

My spiritual teachers and role models have taught me that how you treat others is a direct reflection of how you treat yourself.  For example, if you are constantly berating and criticizing yourself, you will do the same to others.  The things you say to other people, either positive, loving and encouraging or negative, critical and judgmental, are the same things you are saying to yourself - whether you realize it or not.  

In this way, we can understand someone else's deepest insecurities and fears about themselves just by listening and paying attention to the criticisms they make toward other people.  I had an "aha" moment this morning when I realized that people who come across as angry, resentful, critical, judgmental and jealous are simply saying aloud the negative things that they perceive to be true about themselves - or greatly fear to be true.  Most likely these are all of the things that they were told was wrong with them as very young children.

This realization allows us to forgive others more easily and to understand that the criticisms are not a personal attack against us.  Rather, it's a sign of a person who is truly struggling with their own self-image and someone who is living with a significant amount of pain and fear.  Making this connection allows compassion and love to flow through us as opposed to anger, defensiveness and resentment.  

Once you stop judging, criticizing and blaming yourself, you will stop finding fault in other people and you will no longer be offended and hurt by other people's behavior toward you.  You will recognize that it's just about their internal pain and nothing to do with you.  I find that I am able to feel compassion and empathy toward mean, nasty or hurtful people once I understand how unhappy they must be. It's the equivalent of a protective armor against negativity penetrating your concept of yourself and who you are.  What other people say and do no longer has an effect on your self-concept, nor does it affect you negatively in any way.  It becomes their business, not yours. 

The spiritual essence inside of each one of us, your highest self, has always been there - we just need to remember it.  In order to do that we need to silence the negative self-chatter and "should's" and "have to's" that are constantly going on in our brain and only then can we recognize the truth that our highest self has been trying to tell us along.  In reality, we don't "have to" do anything - we have been programmed by societal norms and values to believe this but it's just not true.

Once I decided that I would only do things that I truly want to do, as opposed to things that I should do or feel obligated to do, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.  Forcing yourself to do things because other people want you to do them, whether it's family, friends, or societal pressure, just breeds suppressed anger and resentment, which in turn creates lack of harmony in your body and that can lead to illness and disease.  So you can see that everyone is better off in the long run if you just listen to yourself and follow your intuition about what is important in your life.  That is your higher self guiding you along your journey and once you are able to accomplish this on a regular basis, everything in your life will fall into place effortlessly.

There are reminders everywhere, attempting to trigger what we already know is inside of us, our beauty, limitless potential and permanent connection to the Universal source of consciousness.  

Everything in nature is a reflection of the perfection and purpose in every single one of us - nature flows so easily and effortlessly because it doesn't get in it's own way, like humans do.  Nature has no ego so trees, flowers and butterflies are not capable of feeling bad about themselves - they just are.  The unconditional love we receive from our pets is there to remind us that we are also, at our core, pure unconditional love or life-force energy - whatever you want to call it, it's the same thing from the same Source.  Somehow along the way we just forgot.  Let's all remember, people!  We need to stop thinking and start being.