Forgiveness II

By Michael de Glanville & Viola Edward….

Any Questions for us?

Question:  Forgiveness is something that I have wished from all my heart, but how to do it. Is this a religious attitude? Just forgive? What about the anger I feel? Does the anger disappear? How?

Dear Reader,

Forgiveness is way of acting consciously to clear and change thought and emotion that leaves you feeling alienated from your natural essence. Forgiveness can set you free because, by forgiving yourself and others, you give up the need to hide the anger, guilt and shame that you feel as the result of having thought that you were a defenceless victim or that you have been relentlessly victimising others.

Why bother to forgive? When you forgive others, you are loving yourself because you release your heart and mind from judgement and resentment. When you judge others, you only judge yourself and use the same yardstick for both yourself and them. Holding on to resentment means that you are keeping your memory and emotive nature busy with a painful memory and what the resentment does is to feed this and magnify it. Forgiveness turns the yardstick into a wand that sets you free and makes you generous with yourself, your surroundings and with others. By integrating experiences from the past and being free to celebrate the present moment, your memory and emotions can thus offer themselves to serve you for a better life here and now.

Forgiveness is not suffering from amnesia but freeing the heart and mind from judgement, grief and distrust. Forgiveness is loving and trusting by using experiences from the past as a support for your discernment of the present.

There are many items of literature about forgiveness, find some that you connect with and do the exercises, it will help, of course you can work the subject with your therapist or coach even better…meanwhile you can do these exercises:

Writing a forgiveness affirmation is done in the first person, and then includes the second and third persons and more. Create the forgiveness affirmation with an open end and every time, you can finish the sentence off with an ‘emotional response ending’.

For example:

I (your name) totally and lovingly forgive myself (I forgive my father / mother / brother/ sister/ other) for …….(spontaneous emotional response example) not having respected myself (me).

I (                 ) totally and lovingly forgive myself (I forgive my father / mother / sibling / ) … for having thought that I can’t.

Forgiveness is a process because it often starts as a task or treatment and turns into a conscious practice that is connected with love. When you start the work of Forgiveness, that part of the ego that belongs to the limited thinking will do everything in its power to divert your attention. Persist and remember that commitment and courage are two essential values in any form of transformation. You can start this process by writing the forgiveness affirmation from 20 to 70 times a day for seven days, beginning with one of the five that I mentioned above. Be mindful of the thoughts, feelings and emotions that come up when writing ‘I forgive…’ and just write down the emotional response without holding yourself back. That way you will get to know yourself better and know what to do and with greater effect.

You may need to repeat the process for some people and include others in the list (husband/wife, mate, partner, children, boss, friends, parents in law, etc.)

Contact Us

If you are interested in deepening your knowledge about “Conscious relationship” you can participate in sessions with Viola and Michael, in person and online.

We would love to hear from you with your comments, experiences and questions. Contact us info@violaedward.com.     Mob. 0533 867 3685.   FaceBook: ViolaEdward Coaching

You can download a free copy of Viola’s book “Breathing the Rhythm of Success” and find a collection of previous articles in this series from   http://www.violaedward.com

About Viola & Michael.

Viola came to Cyprus from Venezuela in 2002 to join Michael who was born on the Island and returned from France in 1999. Viola and Michael are both trained therapists in Breathwork and they founded Kayana Ltd in 2003. Viola specialises in Relationship Coaching, Business Consulting and Colour and Image. Michael has an Engineering background and specialises in Massage and Watsu.