Forgiveness is a key healing practice that took me a long time to learn how to do effectively. Because I had spent so much of my life processing my experiences primarily through my thoughts alone, I did not understand the power of this practice.
Once I learned how to fully feel and experience the physical sensations of the emotional energies in my body without continuing to think about how and why I felt them, I was finally able to release the stuck energies and receive the wisdom they held.
When I first experienced the power of this practice, I asked my coach to guide me through the process for people to whom I knew I had a lot of emotional energy repressed within me. For others, I would lay in bed at night repeating this process for everyone I felt had ever hurt, abandoned or disappointed me.
After doing this, I felt a deeper sense of peace than I’d ever experienced in life. But what I failed to understand is that I was only releasing the top layers of the energies I had within me.
Because I felt so good and so free, I went back to processing my life through my mind. Over time, I would forget for periods of time how to feel my feelings, once again reacting to life instead of healing and taking my vibration to the next higher level.
Parenting is what forced me to face the next layer of my beingness which required healing. As I have refined my practices over the past several years after our daughter came into our lives, she has pushed every button I thought I had already healed and more.
Forgiveness is one of those tools I have to continually pull out and use to keep up with her growth. If I don’t do it, I find myself reminding her of her past failings without recognizing that she’s not that person any longer. I know that if I am doing that, it is a projection of my own pain and disappointment I’m holding onto, not a reflection of who she is.
One morning last week, I realized that some of the pain I have unconsciously repressed over the course of my life however, was related to times in my life when I felt God had abandoned me. At first I felt like I shouldn’t even be having that thought, but I then remembered that even Christ felt abandoned by God when he said, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”- Matthew 27:46
If Jesus felt abandoned and cried out in this manner, wouldn’t it be normal for me to feel this way as well?
We have all had difficult times in our lives, where we may have felt abandoned by God; unable to understand why we are facing such difficult challenges with seemingly little support.
I know I’ve had many of these times in my life and have previously written about them before, calling them a “dark night of the soul.”
What I didn’t realize is that I was not allowing myself to forgive God for those times and because I hadn’t done so, I was still carrying those emotional energies, which invariably kept me stuck. I know on some level, I felt it inappropriate or perhaps even sacrilegious that I could even have these feelings about God.
What I had to remember from my Forgiveness practice though was that Forgiveness has more to do with what ‘I’ feel more often than not and less to do with someone else. So if I feel hurt, abandoned, disappointed or even angry at God, I’m the one who needs to allow myself to fully feel those feelings, so I can process and release them.
Those emotions, like others I have let go over the years will come out in layers and I am still in the middle of this process. When we have repressed emotions all of our lives, it is not possible to release it all at once. For when we release emotional energies, we also release toxins from the tissues of our bodies and I learned a long time ago that if I released too much, too quickly, it would make me sick.
When you practice forgiveness, you must also practice self-care to help your body release the toxins. Any exercise that involves the breath whether cardio, yoga, tai chi, pranayama or even walking can help.
A good soak in an Epsom salt bath will help pull these toxins out of your body. I will fill a hot bath with 16 ounces of Epsom salts, 10 ounces of baking soda and mix in some essential oils such as Frankincense or Lavender to help me relax and let go.
Another method that will help you let go of these emotional energies from your body is to get regular massages.
The key with practicing forgiveness is that when you release these old, outdated thought patterns, to replace those with new, affirming beliefs. If you do not replace the old, negatively charged beliefs with new positive, life affirming beliefs, it is quite common to practice a different version of the same thought you just released.
It helps to have someone to guide you through the process either when learning how to process Forgiveness or in creating new self-affirming beliefs.
If you need help, let me know.
Namaste
Jeff
© 2022. All rights reserved.
Jeff Scholl is a Certified Spiritual Life Coach through Holistic Learning Centers and a Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner through the American Association of Drugless Practitioners.
Learn more at: https://www.apathtopeace.org/
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