Forgive And Make Room For New Experiences

The process of forgiveness sets us free. It makes room in our lives for new experiences. When we harbor resentments they take up a lot of time and space in our minds that could be filled with other things that we would enjoy more I am sure like love, compassion, and joy. Think on the other hand if we seldom took offense how freeing that would be. It would allow us more time and space and illiminate if not entirely from our lives the need to forgive. To detach lovingly from another person when they offend you is a powerful tool. You can realize that you have the power to react or not. Not only will it give you a great deal of time and energy not to have to forgive but it will give you power by making the choice not to be offended in the first place. There are four steps to forgiveness: 1. You nuture self-justified anger blaming the other person for hurting you. You forget at this point you had a choice how to react. We want to make the person who made us feel bad undo this thing in the past that hurt us. Now that is not realistic as no one can go back and change the past we must deal with the person in the here and now. Aslong as are unwilling to forgive we give the person we won't forgive rent-free space in our minds, emotional shackles on our hearts, and the right to torment us in the small hours of the night. 2. Stage two is when you see you are hurting yourself with your anger and it no longer feels good. Perhaps you are feeling emotionally unwell or physically from the anger itself. You at this point see the other person's point of view or you decide the anger is just not worth it so you forgive. You can forgive others or yourself in this way. Understand that forgiving does not mean giving permission for the behavior to be repeated. 3.The third stage of forgiveness is when you have had some practice with forgiveness and see the benefits to you by forgiving others. You choose to only stay angry a short amount of time. You realize that it is pretty much up to you how long you stay angry. 4. You realize life is just too short to stay angry at anyone. You realize that you and everyone else is doing the best they can. Most people operate out of self-interest including myself. It is my choice how long I stay angry so I choose to let it go. There are people in our life we love and are commited to and are almost always at four with them ready to forgive and get on with life. While there are those that we hang onto the real or imagined hurts for years. This hanging on cheats us out of a lot of time and peace in life so let go and let your Higher Power take away the hurt. Now you are free to move on with your life without that burden of bitterness. Do not look back in anger.