Forgiveness is Freedom

The fact that forgiveness offers freedom, isn’t a new concept. Nor are many of the concepts I talk about in my library of musings. Within these pages, I offer channelled guidance and specific angles which are hopefully inspiring for you.

Today, I felt it was time to write about a very important step along our healing journey - finding forgiveness for those who have wronged us.

This type of freedom rewards us with restoring our faith - not just in life, but in our own ability to discern. This is a great gift you can give to yourself.

In order to achieve this, we need to find a healthy balance between letting go, without letting detrimental situations back into our orbit. When we’ve been through a challenging experience, whether it be relationships or other social breakdowns, there comes a time when we are faced with forgiveness.

Of course, there is a bit of a process to go through first - and it’s a worthy journey. And the first step is to aim for self-forgiveness. This is one way to promote healing and prevent re-occurrence. Nobody wants the same stressful situation to happen again, right?

Ditch Shaming Fads, Embrace Self-encouragement

Before we proceed, I want to lightly contest the popular spiritual fad that we attract “everything” that happens to us. As a fan of quantum physics, I agree to an extent, however I am very much against those unhelpful shaming suggestions made by some members of spiritual communities that we attracted in our horrific experiences such as rape, molestation, beatings, emotional abuse, losing the roof over our heads due to financial stress or natural disasters and so on.

This is simply not helpful to the recipient of trauma! It can disempower them by creating guilt, which leads to shame, which is an incredibly toxic emotion - and the motivations of those spouting these notions truly concerns me.

What people actually need is empathy, support and practical (not harsh) encouragement along their healing path. And empowerment to make better choices on their forward journey.

Also, regardless of who or what attract we in, any others we meet have a choice whether they go ahead and commit certain acts. If we take out the notion that we don’t attract things in and shit just happens, we become truly empowered - because regardless of what invitations life throws at us, we can choose not to engage with the ones that intuitively feel icky. I believe this is where the true test lies.

Allowing our Healing to work For us

Moving forward, a healing journey is a delicate, multilayered process. I believe we deserve to have our healing handled with the utmost care, wisdom and groundedness. And the reward is full realisation that we were always our own knight in shining armour. What a great feeling that is!

Firstly, it can really help to dedicate the time to drop into our bodies and feel where the emotional pain lies. Are there any parts of your body that ache? Cry deeply into these spaces. Or allow yourself to grieve in other ways that feel right for you.

What happened was appalling and you have a right to fully acknowledge this, especially by listening to the body. This is different to wallowing, or falling into victim mentality, or even disengaging from the pain, or bottling up and exploding way down the track - you’re facing it head on in order to purge it. So yes, allow yourself the grace to break-down-to-break-through. This is how we work with the body and heart/emotional centre wisdom.

The second step is to mentally process what was learned or gained. I have often gone straight to working with the head and completely bypassed the heart/body wisdom stage above. This lead to analysis paralysis, or being too positive too quickly, then tripping up because I missed some necessary healing steps. No wonder there was re-occurrence of certain karmic lessons!

Thirdly, we need to build our self-respect and self-preservation skills. From experience, I feel this comes by increasing self-esteem, working on our worthiness, and also understanding our human right to feel emotionally and physically safe.

And finally, once our hearts, heads and self-integrity are aligned, we are able to sharpen our instinct without letting fear blur our vision. We then get super proficient at recognising things for what they are and can confidently back ourselves up and make smart decisions.

(I recommend doing the work above with a trained specialist).

Making smarter choices

Here are a couple of examples of how to make those empowered decisions:

A person, let’s call her Sue, unknowingly begins dating a textbook narcissist. It starts out extra-lovely and sure enough, a trauma bond is formed. Once Sue is baited and hooked, the narcissist begins the cycle of rewarding Sue’s obedience when she complies with his needs - and punishes her with criticism, cruelty, or temporary withdrawal when she is autonomous.

Over time, the cycle of love-punishment-love creates a dopamine craving in Sue, in the same way gamblers get addicted by sometimes getting a pretty sweet win…I believe the psychological term is “schedules of partial reinforcement”. And what more potent and addictive is affection?

By this stage, Sue’s inner voice is telling her she shouldn’t be involved with someone who is dishing out unacceptable emotional abuse. Her friends are possibly warning her too, but it has fallen on deaf ears. After all, she “loves” this person and finds ways to justify staying with them. She then resorts to abandoning her personal values to please who is now her Master…anything to receive whatever tidbits of “love” the Master decides to dish out at a time of his choosing.

Once this relationship has ended and Sue has gone through the necessary therapy (preferably with someone who specialises in narcissistic abuse recovery - because a specialist can correctly identify narcissistic patterns without jumping to conclusions), Sue still carries potentially problematic scars. Scars which create new challenges with future relationships.

Preventing re-occurrence

Sue is doing quite well now and is ready to date again (I’m not giving a timeline here, as all people heal at different rates). Yet she faces some fresh challenges.

The first challenge happens when she meets Richard. He is indeed pleasant and this pleasantness continues into the coming months. His loveliness is served with concerningly early mentions of deep committment, perhaps he even mentions feeling so good, that he “could even marry her one day”! Richard’s onslaught of love bombing starts, along with simultaneous little slip ups in character, allowing Sue a peek behind his carefully constructed curtain.

Sue is a bit flabbergasted! Her immediate thought is, “What? Not this again!!” But this time, as disappointing as it is, she is not going to proceed with this. Nor will she shame herself for “attracting it in because she hasn’t learned the lesson”. Instead, she keeps it simple and sees herself as being tested by life, with the opportunity to make some smart choices here.

She can either reignite past trauma and relive it again, but with a new person. Or she can peacefully back away and feel grateful she dodged a bullet this time. It’s as simple as that.

Since Sue has invested in her healing, partnering with her heart and head, then increasing her self-respect and polishing up her instincts, she is much better able to stop, pause and make better decisions, maybe not super-confidently at first, but she’s definitely got the skills!

One thing I know for certain, as per the lore of tapping into Body Wisdom, is that choosing yourself actually feels lighter. Yes, there is some sadness and disappointment to be expected, but overall there is a strong sense of feeling healthy and good within yourself when you walk away from an emotionally confusing menacing person.

Seeing good for what it is

Sue also faces a second challenge. If she’s learned her lessons too well, she may overcook things by not giving a good man, or herself, a chance. Or deciding not to ever date again. This is understandable - sometimes we’ve been burned one time too many and don’t want to experience that ever again! So we shut down and mistrust.

Let’s say Sue meets another person, Peter. Peter is also initially pleasant - and continues to be over time. At some point - and within reason - he opens a gentle conversation that indicates his interest in moving towards commitment, if you’re willing. But Sue isn’t having a bar of it, the moment he mentions closeness, she’s already convinced herself Peter is love bombing and gets busy looking for every red flag behind the “mask”.

Peter may well be great for her (not perfect mind you, as that’s impossible, but he could actually be good for her) and if Sue allows fear to block her ability to make calm and sensible observations, she may continue to look for things that aren’t there and miss a great opportunity.

In this situation, Sue needs to practise using the skills she’s learned - especially sharpened instinct. I feel this is the hardest step - no amount of coaching can prepare us for the wobbly feelings that may come with hope - and opening our hearts - and our deep, deep human longing for a life partner. It’s easy to get knocked off our centre!

Yet Sue actually has nothing to fear here - her instinct is her inbuilt backup power supply, her failsafe, as is her ability to gently observe and choose. She is glad she spent her time wisely in between romances. She has passed the theory test in learning to discern between instinct and fear and learning to love herself so much that she’ll always choose herself, over any unsavoury behaviour received from a man. And she is prepared to walk if she starts hearing that rhyme in her head…“when he was good, he was very, very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid”!

Forgiveness is Freedom

Now for the finale - even if we invest in our healing and do a great job of it, there is one final thing that needs to be resolved. And it requires a bit of energy work. Not the angry cord cutting, or cursing, or any of those hell-hath-no-fury things that tend to magnetise misfortune back to us. It’s the power of forgiveness. One of the pathways is forgiving yourself - and the other is forgiving the other person.

If you’re serious about your own healing journey, please find it within yourself when you’re ready - to genuinely forgive the other person, or the powers that be for sending you a challenging situation. I truly know it’s hard (yet I’ve seen people I know forgive others for appalling atrocities and they have truly benefitted from this). But remember, forgiveness offers freedom, a lightness of being and a release from unhelpful energy attachments to the past.

We forgive others because holding on to non-forgiveness is corrosive. It’s ok to go through an angry stage, that’s also a part of healing. And it doesn’t mean we allow others to disrail us. But holding onto extra baggage with toxic contents, allows those contents to fester in time - and somehow the good parts of your life catch the stench. These fumes can make you see hell, when there’s actually harmony in front of you. This is often how narcissists destroy genuine future happiness. Because they haven’t truly forgiven those in the past who have trespassed against them.

The other reason to forgive is to energetically set the other person or situation free. Your paths crossed at a point in time for both to learn something (even if all you gained was knowledge of how strong you actually were when you got tested - and the comfort that your inner strength hopefully inspires others). But you don’t want to energetically hang on to the other person. To experience a wholesome journey ahead, it’s wise not to carry energy attachments with you. Again, it’s extra baggage and it may invite in another showdown with the same person, in this life or the next. Do you really want a person who is unaware or unwilling to heal, in your life again?

So set them free - for them and especially you. It’s incredibly freeing to genuinely hope the other party finds the healing they need, so they don’t create more devastation with others on their forward journey. When the time feels right and honest, genuinely wish them well - and get on with absolutely loving your life, doing you. Trust me - walking freely into a quality vibration feels absolutely incredible!