Permission to Forgive Ourselves

27^th June 2012 – Jake – If ever I was given the chance to start my life all over again, I would rather not accept it. Why not? Who knows? In that second start, I may not have known you at all.

REFLECTION FOR TODAY: I will not compare myself to others. In comparing, I become so preoccupied with the effect I produce and what others think of me that I forget who I am. I envy their talents so much I neglect to appreciate and develop my own. God creates only one of a kind and chooses the length of time each of us needs to gain insight and understanding. The insight God gives each of us will be different because we are different.

May my Higher Power help me stop playing games with my personality and see my character defects, so I can change my negative aspects into positive ones.

Don’t compare.

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Whether we’re a doctor, lawyer, scholar, plumber, artist or factory worker, we have two ways we can carry out our work and conduct our life.

1. With Ego: thinking what we do comes from us and our gifts are thanks to our own brilliance.
2. With Humility: knowing we are only a channel for Light and in serving others, we actually help ourselves.

The first option leaves us left on our own. When things are good we think, “it’s me,” which means when things are bad “it’s also me.” But when we’re a channel, we leave room for Light to guide us, and we're never alone. The choice of course is ours.

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Releasing Guilt
by Madisyn Taylor



Dwelling in guilt is like living your life with an anchor tied to your ankles dragging you down.

Learning to accept the things that we perceive as wrong can be a difficult task for many of us. Often we have been brought up to accept that it is normal to feel guilty about our actions and that by doing so we will make everything seem alright within ourselves. Even though we might feel that we have a reason to make up for the choices we have made, it is much more important for us to learn how to deal with them in a healthy and positive way, such as through forgiveness and understanding.

When we can look back at our past and really assess what has happened, we begin to realize that there are many dimensions to our actions. While feeling guilty might assuage our feelings at first, it is really only a short-term solution. It is all too ironic that being hard on ourselves is the easy way out. If we truly are able to gaze upon our lives through the lens of compassion, however, we will be able to see that there is much more to what we do and have done than we realize. Perhaps we were simply trying to protect ourselves or others and did the best we could at the time, or maybe we thought we had no other recourse and chose a solution in the heat of the moment. Once we can understand that dwelling in our negative feelings will only make us feel worse, we will come to recognize that it is really only through forgiving ourselves that we can transform our feelings and truly heal any resentment we have about our past.

Giving ourselves permission to feel at peace with our past actions is one of the most positive steps we can take toward living a life free from regrets, disappointments, and guilt. The more we are able to remind ourselves that the true path to a peaceful mind and heart is through acceptance of every part of our lives and actions, the more harmony and inner joy we will experience in all aspects of our lives.

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