An authentically empowered person is one who forgives. Forgiveness is not a moral issue. It is an energy dynamic. When most people forgive they do not want those that they forgave to forget that they forgave and forgot. This kind of forgiveness manipulates the person who is forgiven. It is not forgiveness. It is a means of acquiring external power over another.
Forgiveness means that you do not carry the baggage of an experience. When you choose not to forgive, the experience that you do not forgive sticks with you. When you choose not to forgive, it is like agreeing to wear dark, gruesome sunglasses that distort everything, and it is you who are forced every day to look at Life through those contaminated lenses because you have chosen to keep them. You wish everyone else to see the world that way because you wish to see the world that way, and it is indeed the world that you are looking at, but it is only you who sees it. You are looking through the lenses of your own contaminated love.
Forgiveness means that you do not hold others responsible for your experiences. If you do not hold yourself accountable for what you experience, you will hold someone else accountable, and if you are not satisfied with what you experience, you will seek to change it by manipulating that person. Complaining, for example, is exactly that dynamic of wanting someone to be responsible for what you experience, and to fix things for you.
Complaining is a form of manipulation, but you are free to move beyond that into the next step, which is perception and sharing without manipulation. What is at stake is not your sharing, but the intention behind it. When complaining is used instead of sharing, that is what becomes negative, but not the sharing. It is how you cast the sharing, or shape it, before-the intention with which you share. Before you share, ask yourself, "What is my intention in sharing this? Am I looking for a particular response?" Use this as a way of centering your attitude before committing energy to words. When you assume responsibility for what you experience and share what you experience in a spirit of companionship, that is the same as forgiveness.
When you hold someone responsible for what you experience, you lose power. You cannot know what another person will do. Therefore, when you depend upon another person for the experiences that you think are necessary to your well-being, you live continually in the fear that they will not deliver. The perception that someone else is responsible for what you experience underlies the idea that forgiveness is something that one person does for another. How can you forgive another person for the fact that you have chosen to step out of your power?
When you forgive you release critical judgment of yourself as well as of others. You lighten up. You do not cling to negative experiences that resulted from decisions that you made while you were learning. That is regret. Regret is the double negativity of clinging to negativity. You lose power when you regret. If one person grieves at his or her experiences while another is able to laugh, who is the lighter? Which is harmless? The heart that dances is the innocent heart. The one that cannot laugh is burdened. It is the dancing heart that is harmless.
This does not mean that you do not learn from what you have experienced, and apply that in each moment as you make your decisions. That is responsible choice. If you are doing all that you can to the fullest, of your ability as well as you can, there is nothing else that is asked of a soul.
(Source: Seat of the soul (by Gary Zukav))
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