How To Forgive - Releasing the Pain of the Past
by Melanie Evans

(excerpts from the boosk Breaking The Chains Of Painful Love & Take Back Your Power)

Forgiveness is an essential ingredient to releasing and letting go of the past and eliminating the need to re-create pain in our life, which is reflected in our relationships with others.

Forgiveness does not mean ‘letting another person off the hook’. It means 'regaining' ourselves and being free to create the life we want, which includes love, success and happiness.

How do we know whether or not we have truly forgiven someone?
The answer is simple. Ask yourself if you can genuinely thank
this person or situation for the gift they gave you in life?
If the answer is "No", then you haven’t forgiven them.

Painful Experiences are Opportunities for Growth

Identifying the Hidden Gift

By understanding that all events in our lives are our creation (yes we did put them there for ourselves), we can begin to realise that everything and everyone that we experience has been an angel of healing allowing us to understand a dysfunctional belief system we have been running within ourselves.

Once this adversity is created, the pain of the experience is the motivation that can lead us to healing these false belief systems and creating a new and more empowered reality.

Without the adversity we would never have had the opportunity to do this.

When we don’t forgive, we make someone else’s behaviour "about us".
We carry their dysfunctions and make them our own. We also take a great deal of this person’s negative karma for them. 

This isn’t the lesson! If we keep doing this we are only going to re-create identical issues and pain for ourselves – because we will keep drawing the lesson that we haven’t yet liberated.

When we hold on to the past and don't forgive ourselves or others, we lose power.

The Past Life Connection

Past life research clearly demonstrates that we severely run the risk of re-creating another painful event with this same person in a future lifetime. It is usual for people to re-create many lifetimes of the same drama with the same person until the lesson is healed. The healing is - understanding what you needed to learn from these painful events and then thanking these events and individuals involved for granting your the opportunity to heal yourself.

Then (and only then) do we have the ability to move away from having to re-experience the painful lesson again.

Then, the other person is left with their dynamic of the lesson. The karma is theirs to deal with. We are no longer enmeshed in the toxicity.

How To Forgive Others

The steps to Forgiveness are:

Step 1:
Write out what this person did to you as you perceived it. Don’t hold back.

Step 2:
Write out how you felt about these incidences. Make sure you really get into the feelings. Bring these feelings up, cry, yell, belt a pillow and make sure you totally get out the pain. This is totally important and by validating these feelings you will be able to take back your power.

Step 3:
Now switch your awareness to a bigger picture perspective. Write out:

“[Person’s name], even though I don’t condone your behaviour in any shape or form, I recognise on a soul level that you granted me the gift of understanding and healing my negative belief systems.

The positive belief systems you have helped me create are...
[List the positive belief systems – eg: 'I choose to have firm and respectful boundaries. I deserve respect', 'I am lovable simply for being me', 'I deserve respect, decency and honesty; etc.]"

Step4:
Thank this person for granting you the gift of these new belief systems, release them and bless them on their journey.

Even if you cannot identify the new belief systems – powerfully know that only love and truth really exist. Fear and pain are false ideas that have nothing to do with the potential of our Ultimate Reality.

When You Forgive, You Take Back Your Power

Absolutely everything that we experience in life has come to us as a result of our soul’s highest evolution. In reality, every occurrence (no matter how it looks and turns up) is the soul’s fastest prescription towards perfect love, happiness and success.

Everything has been and always will be perfect. By simply acknowledging this and believing this you will be able to release the pain. This is our greatest goal: to move away from painful events, people and circumstances.

By liberating yourself to loving acceptance and trust in life (with healthy self-awareness and self-deservedness) this will occur effortlessly. It is our resistance, judgement and resentment that keeps the painful events and people showing up in our life.

When you have truly forgiven -
people, situations and events no longer have power over you.

Copyright © 2007 Melanie Tonia Evans. All Rights Reserved.

This article is an excerpt from the books,
"Breaking The Chains of Painful Love" and "Take Back Your Power".  A full Forgiveness Process of others and self is detailed in "Take Back Your Power".