The Role of Forgiveness in Moving Forward

It's been an incredibly emotional couple of weeks. It's a time that offers us the opportunity to really look at ourselves and our lives and honor the good while bringing the light to our shadow side. I've known a long time that the thing that keeps me stuck is my propensity to get enmeshed in my own guilt. Guilt is simply living in the past, believing that we have control over something that already happened. There's no real usefulness to guilt other then to keep us stuck in the past so we don't move forward. The one thing I can say is that it gives us the reminder that we need to forgive ourselves.

The ego loves when we wallow in guilt, because it stays in control through the mechanism of holding us hostage through our own fears. I'm a strong empath and can feel the emotions of others. I sometimes get emotional myself, and when I fall out of balance and allow those emotions to be "thrown up" on others, I feel guilty for days. Like can't-sleep, beat-myself-up, twisted-up-in-knots guilt. As a shamanic practitioner I am trained to be mindful. To find center and open my heart and stay grounded even in the face of emotional upset and challenge. I don't allow myself room for mistakes like yelling at my kids or voicing my emotions in a way that may hurt others. And in the process of feeling guilty about hurting others, I also don't honor myself. I feel like I'm not allowed to get angry or to express my frustrations in an unbalanced way, and thus I give up my power to others. It's a pretty vicious cycle. I hold myself to an unattainable goal. I strive to avoid being a hypocrite, so when I don't practice what I preach I really have trouble forgiving myself. And yet, that is a key part of this journey. The goal is not to be perfect, but to be perfectly forgiving.

So what's the solution? Step one is always to open the heart. When we have an open heart, our power center (the third chakra) can flow through the heart (4th chakra) and out of our voice (5th chakra) with compassion and love. That keeps us from "right-fighting" or trying to control another. It allows us to be heard rather than forcing people to put up a wall to protect themselves from our emotions. But when our heart isn't open? We fight to be heard, falling into a bully/victim consciousness scenario, and we don't speak our real truth, but rather the truth of our fearful ego. We then end up with digestive issues and throat/thyroid issues. Our inner child isn't nurtured and our emotional body (2nd chakra) takes a beating, ending up in adrenal imbalance.

And this is why physical healing can only occur when energetic and emotional healing is also integrated into the equation.

So what's my bigger point with this post? 1. Forgive yourself. 2. When you mess up, take responsibility for those actions, apologize, and then see number 1. 3. Healing is a three-pronged process: energetic, emotional, and physical. 4. The Universe is calling me to help others through my shamanic/energetic training, and to teach people to do points 1-3. This last few weeks is my practice session in my own life so I can help others accomplish this same goal.

What are you teaching yourself right now so that you can then turn around and help others that are on similar journeys to yours?