Forgiveness, The First Step Towards Transcendence

Introduction

None of us is perfect, so we all know the feeling of regret about something we have said or done. Hopefully we also know the amazing experience of forgiveness. You know the feeling, like the clouds have parted and bright rays of pure beautiful golden light steam through to warm us again as we feel loved and accepted–maybe even redeemed. In that moment we relax back into inner peace and harmonic balance with the Universe.

Forgiveness Equals Empowerment

The real empowerment comes when you develop the capacity to forgive yourself. And, because you can only give to others what you have, that cultivated skill of compassion derived from repeatedly choosing self-love, self-acceptance, and self-forgiveness allows you to extend that same grace to others. Don’t worry, life provides many opportunities to practice this important life skill.

The next time you feel hurt but can’t quite find the gift in the experience, try saying…
“Someday I’m going to thank you, but today I’m just going to forgive you.”

That is a powerful statement of the realization that you are willing to forgive, but still have work to do to transcend an issue and see your part in the lesson at hand. It expresses your transgression is a temporary reflection of a limited perspective and capacity, while demonstrating intent to transcend your pattern to where blame, and therefore forgiveness, is not even necessary.

With transcendence, you are able to see the gift and have acceptance of what is instead of staying in the pain and your interpretation of what happened, defensiveness and drama you create based on personal identification with the exchange that occurred. You can, instead, step back into a neutral state of presence and awareness, remembering every moment is an opportunity to practice love–our true nature. Someday you may even be able to look back and say, “Thank you!”

Forgiveness, while highly beneficial and useful, is still a blame based function. Let’s be very clear here. Forgiveness is not accepting or condoning the behavior. It is extending love to the person, recognizing the behavior is not the end sum of that person. It does not represent the truest reflection of their true self, which may be buried so deeply beneath pain, fear, and other wounds that even they are not in touch with it yet or able to heal and transcend it as their truth.

Forgiving is really a gift to yourself. Unresolved energetic cords and negative charges you hold onto will continue drawing similar challenging experiences to you through the Law of Attraction. This Universal Law states that like vibration attracts like vibration. Until you transcend and fully heal the issue, holding the vibration of anger, blame, or resentment toward another, even if you feel justified, will attract more experiences for you to blame others. Such snowballing continues and magnifies until you get tired of the experience and decide its worth the effort to transcend the limited understanding, conditioning, and pattern in your belief system allowing it to repeat in your life as experience. This can be a bit tricky because having many similar experiences in which people say or do something you feel is unacceptable and beyond forgiveness can validate the belief you hold about being justified in your response of unforgiveness, when it’s actually a very disempowering aspect of victim consciousness.

And so, you keep your dance alive, maybe changing partners at times, until you are willing to allow the emotional charge and energetic cords between you and all those you feel are responsible are felt, owned, and released back to love. The benefit of releasing such a pattern is that you probably won’t need to resolve the perceived imbalance in another painful exchange at another time and place. Repeating patterns until we learn a lesson or balance the situation is what we know of as karma, an opportunity for awareness and transcendence of our life lessons.

The beautiful truth is that you do not have to speak directly to the one you feel out of balance with. Forgiveness is an act of love between you and yourself that takes place in your heart through pure intent. It’s an act of grace and surrender, requiring courage to let go and restore peace within.

Forgiveness vs. Transcendence

So what is the difference between forgiveness and transcendence? Forgiveness still places responsibility, and therefore power, outside of you. Transcendence takes you beyond your limiting pattern of blame and its related emotions, into unity consciousness (known by many as Christ consciousness, or Oneness). From a unity perspective you understand that we are all One and realize the one you are blaming has given you a gift of awareness. At that point it is up to you to take responsibility for what you have drawn into your experience, perhaps not by conscious choice, but by the resonance of a belief about yourself, life or others due to life experiences, lesson themes, past-lives, and other factors unique to you and your soul, or soul group’s role in human evolution.

In our Oneness, at the soul level and beyond where we exist in the energy of perfect love, we’ve made agreements to take turns mirroring for each other. The gift is the opportunity to first notice, and then take responsibility for healing the patterns that keep us experiencing separation through our limited DNA programming, imprinted beliefs and the conditioning of limited duality matrix consciousness. At the soul level, we all want to return our fragmented aspects back to their original whole-light, remembering that we are all sparks of the divine light of the One Creator, and live again in knowingness of our Oneness with Source as the pure Essence we really are.

It is not always easy to see the “gift” of a painful experience, especially in tragic circumstances where there is abuse, great pain, or loss. The greater Divine Plan explaining why a painful experience happens, is not always available to us at the mind level for understanding the age old question of why bad things happen to good people. It is in that dearth of understanding that defies logic when trust, faith, forgiveness, and compassion can be the most difficult to access–but also when they are most needed. Peace through transcendence is always just around the corner, but surrender of the rigid perspective of. “I’m right!” (self-righteous), or “I’ve been wronged!” (victim) is necessary to get there. Forgiveness, while it may be difficult, is a stepping stone to empathy and compassion for yourself and the others involved.

A Heart-full shift to empathy, compassion, and forgiveness engages the engine of grace, the healing salve that can lead you back out of the darkness and despair of grief, anger, emptiness, loneliness, denial, blame, resentment, self-pity, and victim consciousness.

We may think it is justified (and it’s certainly easier) to blame another, but the hurt becomes trapped in the tissues of the body diminishing the healthy function of our cells and organs. Unresolved anger and victim consciousness sap all joy and drain the life force and light of hope out of us. The situation, if unresolved, colors our perspective of all aspects of life until the narrow gray tunnel vision of the hurt begins to define us. Blame and judgment are toxic and will poison all they come in contact with. It is never a good way to live and it keeps you in bondage to the pattern, locked into repeating it in variations until it is transcended.

They say time heals all wounds but you can choose your time to heal and be proactive. As soon as you are able, try to step back and begin wading through the debris of inner pain and blame. Seek grace through prayer and surrender. Read inspiring books offering wisdom and new perspectives, seek counseling, healing, or friendship to help pull you out of a nose dive. Trust your love to be greater than any transgression.

We are all here on Earth to awaken from the painful dualistic experiences of separation and evolve into unity awareness, remembering that we are One, not only with each other but with the planet, nature kingdoms, and indeed the Cosmos and entire Universe. We are each emitting unique vibrations based on our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings into the whole of existence. If you want to experience Heaven on Earth you must begin to create that experience within yourself first. You can only do that by taking responsibility for your vibration. The outer world is a collective reflection of our individual unique inner realities. When you choose and create a peaceful inner experience of benevolence, love, creativity, health, joy, compassion, forgiveness, trust, and abundance you will begin to experience all of that in your outer world.

It takes a great deal of energy to sustain the vibration of anger and blame because they are not our true and natural states. And they leave you in a losing game, a revolving door of pain and suffering. Forgiveness followed by transcendence gets you out of the nightmare. You have the birthright of free-will. No one can rescue you against your will. And no one can force you to forgive. It is you who saves yourself by choosing compassion and forgiveness, placing you back in the driver’s seat, restoring you to the balance and love’s peace and empowerment in the game of life. Forgiveness allows you to get off the detour you took into the quicksand and dense stuck energy of blame.

So why not choose to forgive, transcend, and come back to the wonderful experience life was meant to be. You can become the demonstration for others of what is possible when you make the empowered choice to forgive all beings, no matter their transgression. Such a choice is really an outer world reflection of the inner act of loving grace you have chosen to bestow upon yourself for your own transgressions across all time and space, and all dimensional aspects of yourself.

You see, each such personal act of grace restores the fragmented aspects of yourself that have been scattered throughout time and creation through many “past lives” and existences back to wholeness. And, since we are actually coagulated particles of matter from the same Source, each unifying action for yourself helps restore awareness of eternal wholeness to the fragmented collective consciousness re-awakening together now. This means every step you personally take back to wholeness blesses all life throughout Creation!

Conclusion

As parting gift, I will share a very special Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness that I have successfully used many time personally, and in assisting clients. Ho’oponopono is very simple, only takes a moment. It is a remarkably easy, yet incredibly powerful practice. Simply repeat the four statements below with an open heart and pure intent until the difficult feelings have dissolved back to love and peace. I consider it a form of divine alchemy and grace that is cleansing and freeing, as you offer forgiveness to yourself, all others, and life itself. Read MORE about Ho’oponopono.

The four phrases are…
I Love You, I’m Sorry, Please Forgive Me, Thank You

May you know the grace and restoration of peace, joy and wellbeing experienced by forgiveness and transcendence.