Finding Freedom Through Forgiveness

Life puts us through a lot on an all too regular basis. Most of us have experienced at least one highly traumatic situation within life, though most likely many more than one. It is situations like these that provoke significant growth and changes, altering your life course permanently. If you were to sit down and assess where you are right now, all of the pieces of your present life puzzle, most likely one or a few of the roots derive from a highly negative and difficult past experience. People don't typically change if life is going swimmingly. Change most often happens as a result of situations that cannot be controlled. It is therefor amazing how so many great things can come out of some serious crap. Humanity's love of both past and future can make it very challenging to look objectively at the present moment and appreciate it for what it is. 

But growth is good, right? Regardless of the situation that provoked it, growth is always positive. My work, whether it is coaching or readings, supports people in moving forward and making positive changes that more accurately reflect their positive Souls. These positive changes are the result of a lot of effort: assessing what created the negative habits and slowly adjusting the patterns and habits to eventually realign themselves. But at the end of it all there is one final and very difficult step that needs to be accomplished in order to seal the deal: letting it go. This might be the hardest step of all- the view of a positive lifestyle inspires growth and it's easy to call it a day once you get there. I have seen too much success get stinted because the successor is still clinging onto the past pain. Sometimes this past pain is worn with pride, like a scar, to show off what happened and how far the person has come as a result. Though this is seemingly a good thing, it is so limiting. An unwillingness to let go of the past links you to a very negative situation- it doesn't matter how you are using this negative situation. It is like running with weights around your ankle, yes it makes the victory more brag-able, but it also creates unnecessary strain. Failure to let go of the past also displays a great deal of distrust in self. You can't ever forget the wrongs that you have done or experienced because then you might encounter/do them all over again. A lesson only needs to be learned once, so let it go. You will never forget the lesson, so why do you have to hold onto the pain that came with it? Think about it this way: if you have a fishbowl and for every negative situation you put in a red marble, and every positive situation you put in a blue marble. Well if every negative situation you experience you put in a red marble and a positive result comes out of it enabling you to put in a blue marble, then your bowl is going to be full with equal parts red and blue. Therefor until you are able to begin letting go of the negative catalysts, your life will be equal parts negative and positive despite all of the positive results.

I could write on and on about what will happen if you allow too much past negativity to fester in that fish bowl, but I would like to avoid spending too much time on the negative. One of my favorite parts of both the Soul Profile and Higher Purpose Reading are the Life Themes. As I have gone through other's life themes I have learned a lot about what they mean and how they help us to grow. One of my favorite themes that occasionally pops up and I highly relate to is Forgiveness. It is important to remember that we must look at these themes from all angles. Forgiveness is so much bigger than  telling someone that what they did was o.k. Forgiveness is the knife that breaks the bond connecting you to a highly negative situation or person. Forgiveness says that you are moving on and letting it go. This does not insinuate that what happened was at all alright, kind, just or anything along those lines. It also does not insinuate that the person/people involved are now innocent people with gleaming Souls. The thing is- both of those insinuations are neither your problem nor your karma. Remember, you cannot control what is done to you, you can only control your reaction. What a better reaction than to look at a really bad thing and tell it that it isn't going to control your life any longer. This is what forgiveness does for you. Forgiveness is the ability to look at the situation/person very, very honestly and get clear on the affect that it had on you in the past, but let it go so that you may once more be the commander of your own future. True forgiveness is possibly the most liberating experience we could ever have, cutting ties forever from the situation in the past. Similarly, remember that because this situation lays in the past there is absolutely nothing you can do about it any more. Your present decisions are of your own choosing and when you forgive the situation and thus let it go, you regain 100% of that power. Whether or not you allow the person on the other side of this situation to continue to remain in your life is also entirely up to you- which is why I say that forgiveness does not necessarily tell the person involved that all is good. Forgiveness allows you to say, "I am forgiving what happened so that I may move forward with my life with greater awareness of who you are and what is possible when I am not doing a good job of placing my own wellbeing first, and because of this awareness I am choosing (or not choosing) to allow you to remain in my life." If you do allow the person to remain within your life then you also are giving the relationship a clean slate for a fresh start. This clean slate is not the same clean slate that the relationship first began with, this is a clean slate with newly refreshed software of all the lessons that you have learned from each other in the past. The software on this clean slate does not (luckily) carry within it the damaging viruses of resentment and guilt from the past... forgiveness cleans out the software. As I say in my clearings, "release the pain but hold onto the lesson."

If you can master the theme of Forgiveness once you will no doubt find the value in its healing powers and apply it many times over in your life. There are so many situations that each individual has not fully forgiven, many of them just get covered up over time as life continues until one day it becomes glaringly obvious that there is a gaping wound yet to be healed. We as a society have so much potential to grow together if we can foster our presence through forgiveness of the past. At the end of the day it absolutely does not matter what was done to you, what matters is how you are allowing this pain to limit your own present & future. What kind of future do you want? What ideals matter most to you? These experiences are presented to us so that we may walk the talk, honor our ideals and maneuver our way through in a positive manner. I truly do not believe that tough luck comes our way just to hold us back, but instead it comes to us so that we can put our words into actions and grow stronger and wiser. This is absolutely not an easy thing to accomplish and most likely if you are in the middle of a difficult time you don't even want to read what I am writing right now, but when the dust starts to settle and it's time to carry on with life then it is worth it to take another look at this theory. The sooner you can stop focusing on the pain, the faster you'll be able to grow the light within you. The easiest way to remove the pain is to grow the light. 

Interested in your Life Themes? Schedule a Soul Profile or Higher Purpose reading with me! You'll learn about your Soul Group, specializations, life themes and much, much more!

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