Let’s explore your ability to forgive. It often sounds easy to step into the posture of forgiveness, but it’s more challenging than we like to admit. Forgiveness becomes necessary because of the perception of hurtful words and actions towards others or our self.

To forgive you need to let go of any judgments about past comments or actions that either you said or someone has told you. Judgments are criticisms. The mind likes to hook into “bad” thoughts about other people or circumstances and create a commentary about it. This is what gets looped in mind—over and over again. It’s something unresolved.

In forgiveness, you want to release any judgments you carry about past situations that trouble your heart. Right now think of something you said to someone, or they told you that was hurtful. Bring whatever it is into your heart and hold it, like a pebble you found in the creek. Now open your heart around the pebble and welcome it into your heart.

Ask yourself, “What do I need at this moment to enter into true forgiveness?” Imagine as you embrace the pebble with your heart it softens and crumbles in your hand, eventually totally disappearing from your ability to forgive and open to love.

Grudges

The lack of forgiveness is like holding a weapon at someone for thirty, forty or fifty years. Can you imagine all the energy it takes to hold a rigid stance toward someone? It would be exhausting. We are often taught by parents to hold grudges. You might have experienced this between two parents, where the father’s actions might have hurt the mother. She then held back love or you from the father or vice-versa.

Grudges are powerful and take a tremendous amount of energy to maintain. Grudges often come with a closed heart and a lot of hurt feelings. When we hold onto this type of energy, it’s what becomes the attraction in us, and we’ll draw more and more hurt into our lives. Of course, this isn’t done consciously, but instead, it’s an unconscious action/attraction.

Examine your life and see where you are holding energy towards someone or something. Whatever it is, send love into a situation or to a person. Notice what the mind says too. Whatever comes up in mind are the subconscious blocks holding you back from forgiving someone or something.