Blog

Forgiveness from the Big Intentions Cards - Guidance for Embodied Purposeful Living by Erin Lee & Tracey Keturah 

Supta Baddha Konasana — Reclining Bound Angle Pose

If we have control over the design of our life, there would be many events and situations we would prefer not to experience.

Adversity happens in the moment of time, yet it's common for us to carry the weight of suffering for years, months, years, even lifetimes beyond the event. It's a paradox to willingly hold onto the memories that we feel most resistant to.

We don't want to carry them, but we do.

We don't know how not to.

To be free of the burden of the past is to forgive.

FOR-GIVE = To Give.

Some of us may try to force forgiveness by attempting to think our way through it, bypassing or overriding core emotional wounding, but that's not true forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a mental or willful process.

Forgiveness is an emotional movement that happens in the heart as an automatic response once the emotion has been released.

How can we deal with emotions of the past?

Identify the emotion.

Is it anger, fear, sadness, or shame?

Be with the emotion.

How does it present in your body, breath, and thoughts?What does the emotion feel like? Once you can feel the emotion, hold yourself gently. The act was not okay, but the emotion is.

Allow.

Honor the emotion by giving it time and space to release.

Notice.

Acknowledge the space you've now created in your soul where the burden once lay. Sense and feel the space within, through which divine love and grace can enter. Now there is nothing left to forgive. The process is complete. With wisdom in your heart from the experience of the burden, new life choices can now be made.

Give thanks.

Now that you've resolved the emotion and integrated the event, express gratitude for the whole experience and for the growth that it has brought your soul.

Forgiveness is liberation, marking the milestone of our soul's maturity.