In our Western culture, we learn it is a virtue to 'forgive others for their trespasses' and 'to error is human, to forgive, divine'. And while these concepts are helpful, they leave out the most important person who needs forgiving. Your 'Self.' According to many religions, the only person who can ultimately forgive you is God, or your priest, minister, rabbi or imam acting on God's behalf. If you transgress the rules of being 'good' and do something bad to another person, you eventually get forgiven if you ask for it sincerely. Or, you go to hell. In either scenario you have little control over the outcome. That is left to forces outside of you. the ones who make the rules.
The difficulty is that most established rules are wrong! They do not take into account the mindfulness of the individual in contributing to his or her own personal freedom and self-awareness, but instead prey upon fear and insecurity of the collective unconscious to maintain control in a misguided attempt to avoid civil unrest or outright anarchy.
To live a more enlightened life, we have to first accept responsibility for our own thoughts and actions which includes the need to heal ourselves from the negative self-judgments we have unconsciously made in our past that we so innocently and so perpetually allow to influence our lives. One way to do this is by forgiving your Self for the erroneous self-judgments you have made in the past.
All your experiences in this life are based on how you feel from moment to moment and the energy you share with the world around you as you go about your life. And how you feel is a direct result of how and what you think. But what happens when you process your feelings incorrectly through no real fault of your own because of flawed thinking? What if you were simply too young, too upset, or too angry to really get it right?
When I was a little boy in Kindergarten, I had a vivid imagination which probably came from the fact that I enjoyed hours and hours of playing alone. I never seemed to need many playmates, and instead enjoyed my own company and the imaginary experiences I created to entertain myself. So it was not surprising that one day after school (in the days when children walked to and from school twice a day) I decided to take a detour through my favorite park on the way home. To me, as a five-year-old imaginative kid, the tall grass, forested boundary, and pathways were a magical place where I could fantasize and have a fun after-school adventure. When the sun began to set, and I realized that I was getting hungry, I meandered slowly home from the park to find my mother outside our house, very upset and talking with two tall police officers. As it turned out, much to my surprise, it was me they were waiting to greet. Apparently, I had been AWOL for about six hours. I was sent to my room, where I could hear the continued upset below my bedroom window.
As a little boy who was simply having a fun time playing after school, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. What I did understand was that my Mother was very upset, and that I must be bad, because the police were called. From the moment on, I judged myself as a lot of things, including 'bad', 'forgetful', 'stupid', and 'undeserving'. Although at the time, I probably summed it up in my five-year-old mind as just plain 'naughty'. My response toward my family and friends after that event was to be somewhat timid and unsure of myself. After all, if I was stupid, forgetful and naughty, I was not as good as anyone else. In fact, I had better do everything I could to make people like me. When people approved of me, nobody was upset, the police were not called and I felt safer and accepted by everyone. So, I began to seek approval, acknowledgment and praise from my parents and brothers, friends and teachers by trying hard to make them laugh or feel good. A nice painting, giving away my lunch, doing somebody's homework, etc. Later in life, I began to work so hard at accomplishing my desired result (acceptance and approval) that areas of my life began to suffer. In the words of an old friend, I was not giving until it felt good, I was giving until it hurt.
If things are going wrong in parts of your life, and you feel a drain of energy - a disruption of any kind that causes you to feel sad, angry, depressed or any other low vibratory feeling, it is most likely that you need to forgive yourself for some circumstance in which you judged yourself falsely. Some common self-judgments that can cause major energy disruption in your life are; I am not worthy, I am not pretty, am stupid, I am foolish, I am naive, I am ineffectual, I am uneducated, I am no good, I am lazy, I am not sexy, I am not good enough ... and so on.
Chances are good, that when you made these erroneous self-judgments, you were incapable or unaware of understanding that they were false, and by treating them as true, your were unknowingly creating a belief system that actually changed your brain's wiring. You were unconsciously planting impulses that would grow into patterns or programs (neuro-programming) that would begin to run over and over in your mind, forming your 'reality' about who you are - your self-image and your concept of Self.
To heal yourself from these false self-judgments, you must first fully realize and believe a few simple truths. They are; You are good. Your natural state of being is happy. You are God in human form and you are essentially therefore perfect. Yes, it is okay to think of yourself in these terms. Contrary to what society says, it is not conceit or an ego-driven superiority complex to believe in yourself as being divine. (Please refer to Conscious Energy 028 to understand this clearly.) Remember, the more universal or cosmic your sense of self, the bigger will be your world! -Deepak Chopra
Exercise: If you have a photograph of yourself as a child, find the photograph and sit down with yourself as the little boy or girl in the photo. Have a conversation with your child-self as you would with any young child. Notice the natural innocence, love and care-free nature of your child-self. Do you see how loving and beautiful your child-self is? It's helpful when dealing with self-judgment and forgiveness to realize that you are the same being as the child in the photograph. You are the same soul in a larger body. That's all!
So, if you are good, perfect and divine, how can you be any of the negative judgments you make about yourself ? You have to believe one or the other. The trick is to cause your energy to vibrate in the higher frequencies of contentment, happiness and bliss instead of anger, sadness and resentment. And there are some very effective ways you can forgive yourself for judging yourself as this or that in the past.
In the next post "The Energy of Self-Forgiveness II" I will describe an exercise you can do to forgive yourself of the false self-judgments you have made, clear up your energy, heal yourself and get on with living your life in a more effective, rewarding and contented way....The life you are here to live!
The park where I spent too much time is the same park where I met my friend Manfred in a spiritual dimension while meditating one morning in 1993. He is a guardian spirit being or angel. I am sure he was with me that day after school !
