I know God is always available to anyone–regardless of the level of perceived separation on our part. We were created to be joined to the God who gave free choice. Love is like a boomerang–send it out and it will return to you.

The first meditation technique I learned was learning to center myself. When you begin to meditation, find a quiet spot and practice breathing. With your eyes closed, think each breathe you take in. Say or think one thing for the intake breath like “Heal me” and something else on the breathe you expel like “Heal others”. With this practice you learn to breath deeper and fuller. Many believe that this proper breathing helps our bodies in countless benefits.

Deep breathing methods are generally similar. From one of the books in the Changemaker Library, Stress Control for Peace of Mind, deep breathing is included to bring on the relaxation response. Practicing deep breathing helps to make this response automatic when stress occurs. The author, Linda Wasmer Andrews, suggests the following steps:

1. Sit in a comfortable position.
2. Close your eyes. Place one hand on your belly, just below the navel.
3. Take a long, deep breath in. Try to make your hand rise slightly as you inhale.
4. Let the breath out slowly. Try to feel your hand fall slightly as you exhale.
5. Keep taking slow, deep, even breaths for a few minutes. Focus on the steady rising and falling of your hand.

She also adds, “If you have trouble getting the hang of belly breathing at the outset, try lying down and placing a book (instead of your hand) on your belly. Then concentrate on making the book move up and down with your breathing. Many people find that the visual cue helps at first. Once you’ve mastered deep breathing, you’ll be able to do it anytime, anywhere, in any position.”

Amazon link for Stress Control for Peace of Mind.

More links about breathing:

1.  From Stepcase Lifehack: “5 Ways to Immediately Regain Control of Your Day”

2.  From pickthebrain: “How to Breathe–Literally”

3.  From One Crafty Mother: “Fortress”

Photo credit.

In her post written for DumbLittleMan In this post, she teaches us how to be effective mediators by following these suggestions:

1. Sit down to talk about the problem with a willingness to resolve it. Help everyone to agree to find a compromise for the conflict. If one or both parties appears to be only interested in restating the fixed positions, agree to meet at another time.
2. Establish ground rules. Meditation helps people change the way they interact with others. Some of these may be:
3. Each side will take turns speaking. In addition, each person gets a predetermined period of time to speak, during which they cannot be interrupted by the other. If the other hears something that they want to respond to and it’s not their turn to speak, they should write it down and wait until it’s their turn to say it.
4. Only one person can get angry at a time.
5. Focus on one issue at a time.
6. Establish a statute of limitations on old grievances. That is, don’t bring up events that occurred two years ago.
7. Refrain from using phrases such as “You always . . .”, or “You never . . .”
8. Try not to blame the other person, speak for the other person, or speculate about the motives of the other.
9. Refrain from name-calling.
10. Each side should strive to take responsibility for their contribution to the conflict.
11. Treat each other with respect

She also offers additional suggestions:

• Separate the people from the problem.
• Develop the skill of active listening.
• Practice empathy.
• Learn to express yourself.

Conclusion–Don’t look for a single answer. Both sides need to feel heard and understood. Be sure to come up with a plan for change.

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“Try to forget yourself in the service of others. For when we think too much of ourselves and our own interests we easily become despondent. But when we work for others, our efforts return to bless us.”     Sidney Powell

Callings: Finding and Following An Authentic Life

Gregg Levoy

ISBN 0-609-80370-0

Amazon link

Service may come as a result of the callings that we may listen to and may make as the central theme of our life. Gregg Levoy has written about callings and includes this:

“Primarily this force announces the need for change, and the response for which calls is an awakening of some kind. A call is only a monologue. A return call, a response, creates a dialogue. Our own unfolding requires that we be in constant dialogue with whatever is calling us. The call and one’s response to it are also a central metaphor for the spiritual life.”

“They may be calls to do something (become self-employed, go back to school leave or start a relationship, move to the country, change careers, have a child) or calls to be something (more creative, less judgmental, more loving, less fearful). They may be calls toward something or away from something; calls to change something, review our commitment to it, or come back to it in an entirely new way; calls toward whatever we’ve dared and double-dared ourselves to do for as long as we can remember.”

“Saying yes to the calls tend to place you on a path that half of yourself thinks doesn’t make a bit of sense, but the other half knows that your life won’t make sense without.”

More links to continue readings about callings:

Five Blind Spots That Keep you From Seeing Your True Calling

Your Career is Not Luck

Can You Differentiate a Craving from a Calling?

The Masks of God

What if God Asked You to Take a Pay Cut?

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For today I am reposting one of my posts about “Using Spirituality for Change”:

As we shift our feelings and thoughts to positive from negative, we become aware of the power that we feel inside. We are becoming aware of our soul. The soul is bigger that just our mind. It includes our dreams, our feelings as well as our thoughts.

I don’t think that we can try to attain the awakening of our soul in any other way than by choosing to put ourselves in the presence of the God of our understanding. Many centuries ago, a wonderful monk lived and wrote Practice in the Presence of God.

He taught me, centuries later, that all I had to do was practice presenting myself to my God. I didn’t have to do anything else but put myself in a place where the God of my understanding could communicate with me.

Prayer is when I communicate with my God and meditation is the practice of listening to God. Although I have tried many times to maintain the principles of meditation to my life, I have never been able to do meditation in the recommended ways.

Instead I set aside time several times a day to “check in” with Him. When I present myself to God for His answers, I come in a spirit of peace and quiet. I rarely “hear” anything. Instead I sense directions or guidances from Him. If my direction is God’s will for my life, the going will be easy. If I am trying to force something to happen, I will become stressed about it.

The difficulty is in getting out of God’s way. If I think that I know exactly the direction of God’s guidance, I have learned that it is probably my ego answering me. Another way that I use to understand God’s direction is to not do anything to force the outcome. I do the footwork and leave the outcome to Him. This is especially hard when all that maybe needed is a phone call.

If I don’t receive some kind of guidance, I realize that the answer may not be no, but rather may be later. This letting go releases great energy and feelings of belonging. “Let go and let God.”

How do you know that someone–regardless of age–is spiritual? Certainly not because they say they are. The best evaluation is to see the fruits of the Spirit manifested by them. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, kindness, self-control, patience, faithfulness, goodness, longsuffering and gentleness as listed in Galatians 5:22-23.

Wikipedia identifies mindfulness as “the practice whereby a person is intentionally aware of his or her thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmental”. Although my faith is based in Jesus Christ, I am thankful that He has given me the gift of openness to explore and implement practices from other faiths.

In 1976, when I began implementing breathing exercise with meditation practices, I immediately knew that finding my center and focusing on my breath in and breath out enabled calm and peace to flow through my body. Being human, I learned in a moment what has taken a lifetime to implement. Transcendental meditation has been found to decrease heart rate and blood pressure because the mind-body connection prospers when one experiences peace and calm.

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I have gone through the most horrific childhood and adulthoods one can imagine. I was abused by my stepfather, psychologically and physically for 24 years. I have been bullied all the way through school up until the third year of University, with a break of the bullying in High school. I have had virtually all anxiety disorders in the book, severe OCD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), GAD and Social Phobia. My life wasn’t worth living.

My OCD was mainly of the themes POCD, fear of being a pedophile, and Harm-O, fear of killing or harming others and myself. This went on for seven years. I was close to killing myself once just to end the misery and anguish I was going through. I have never harmed and never would harm an animal, child or adult. All I went through was in my mind, and I was battling my mind daily to become free of the OCD. It got to such a point that I was terrified of kids, anything associated to kids, the colour blue, pink, kids voices, prams, toys, even things not associated with kids, trucks, any sound, suitcases on the ground which my peripheral vision saw as kids sitting on the ground, anything that my mind would see as a threat. The POCD had turned into a conditioned fear, where my brain would associate anything to do with kids and even not, trees with two branches, adults at a distance etc, as something to fear, and either run away from or go into full fight or flight response, have a panic attack, blush, feel dizzy, sweat, have trouble breathing etc.

I hated my life and didn’t feel it was worth living. All days were days of complete fear. I was never afraid of hurting others, but I was afraid of being seen as a pedophile, due to my anxiousness and fear around kids. Who in society who doesn’t know that one can suffer from POCD would believe me if I said I was terrified of kids.

I went through all kinds of therapy to overcome my anxieties, hypnotherapy, CBT, Exposure Response Prevention, Psychotherapy. Nothing took away my fear. Some of the therapies had some effect but it was only to a moderate level. My fears also grew when I was forced to live in a neighborhood full of kids and teenagers.

I started believing that all people in Stockholm, Sweden where I lived saw me as a pedophile. I was so afraid of this that I thought they would kill me due to their ignorance and society’s prejudice against mental illness. I was convinced that people began to fear me so much, (I showed my fear and anxiety very visibly) that they contacted the police. I began to see people react to me in anger, hatred, disgust, fear, calling names like sick bastard, pedo, perv. I had done nothing at all apart from been extremely anxious and fearful, but people interpreted my fear of kids as pedophilia.

At one point in Stockholm on a day out with my parents and sister, I counted up to 23 civilian clothed police officers, who were trying to find evidence to arrest me. I could see it in the way they behaved, how they stared, the ear microphones they had in their ears. Everything about them stood out.

My computer was hacked professionally and I have found a lot of evidence pointing back to the Swedish Police.

To save my father from more anxiety regarding my life that had come to a complete stand still and had been for the last seven years I agreed to go to hospital.

Once I got admitted, I noticed something was very wrong from the start. The hospital staff were extremely nasty to me the second I got in. After five minutes of doctor consultation I was sectioned and locked up for 18 days. I could see very clearly how the staff were probing with talking about kids to see my reaction. They refused me food if I didn’t leave my room, they refused me food if I didn’t speak Swedish. I’m half Swedish half English. One nurse was extremely hostile to the point of me feeling that he would want to kill me.

I came out of my room once to charge my mobile phone, and overheard the same nurse who seemed to hate me to the point of wanting to kill me, ‘saying… throwing stones at windows’.

Later that night I heard someone throwing stones at the windows, starting at a window far down the corridor away from mine, and coming closer all the time. I was terrified that it was someone who wanted to shoot me due to thinking I was a dangerous pedophile.

I believed some of the hospital staff were undercover police officers. I have always been able to tell if people were lying and some of the staff members were lying their faces off.

The first night I had come into the hospital they forcefully injected me with a strong anti psychotic which gave me severe cramps for over four hours. I was cramping all over my body and my mouth was clamped shut so I had to breathe through my nose. I forced a pencil through my mouth so I could breathe somewhat through my mouth. This drug could have killed me had they not reluctantly given me a muscle relaxant.

The doctor and the nurses came in and checked on me occasionally, but when they came in they just stared viscously and once my father had come to visit me later that evening, my father asked if they could not show any compassion. One of the nurses said ‘Oh I don’t know anything about that!’. She looked at me extremely coldly while saying this.

They wanted to ban my mother from talking to me on the phone. Every way they could push me they did it.

They gave me high doses of antipsychotics, the same dose for schizophrenia and psychosis. If anything I suffered from severe OCD and PTSD. They also gave me high doses of antidepressants. These drugs without food will cause an extreme adrenergic response. Fear and anxiety. The only reason I could see the staff doing this to me was to push me over the edge. If they believed me to be a dangerous pedophile I believed they wanted to try and bring that behaviour out. There was a woman in her early twenties there, who was also supposedly a patient. She spoke in a very childish voice and was always looking towards me, speaking of secondary school and kids. In my mind she was an undercover police officer who was trying to bring out the pedophilic behaviour that wasn’t there because I am not a pedophile.

All of these experiences with the hospital staff were making me as fearful as I could ever be in life. I huddled up in one corner in my room and crouched every time I needed to exit my room or go to my bathroom. I was afraid of being shot through the window.

After 18 days I was released after my father came and visited me. They had refused me food again. My father drove me straight down to my mother in the south of Sweden. When I was released I was extremely fearful and in a complete state of fight or flight, and clung to my father while he walked me out to the car. Once I got in the car, I sat on the floor with my head on the seat and said ‘Drive, don’t look at me or speak to me, just drive’. I was afraid of being shot through the car door.

All these experiences in life led up to a breaking point where spiritually I died and was reborn.

At my mum’s I was still extremely fearful and fearing that people would come to kill me due to thinking I was a dangerous pedophile.

After about one week at my mum’s I started meditating. I meditated for eight hours a day. I started having visual hallucinations, seeing the four armed God Shiva on the kitchen wall, a chest, a throne with a white skull on the right hand side of it. The same throne with a man on top of it, and two men standing below and looking up at the man on the throne.

When I took showers I was often unable to take a normal shower. I started spinning round in the shower clockwise and then anti-clockwise. I started drawing symbols on the shower walls. I walked out the front door 4.30 in the morning once, dressed and wearing my flip flops. I didn’t care about locking the door. I walked to my old school which I had very fond memories of and ran around the school’s football field in my flip flops. I didn’t get tired. I then walked up the steps of the playground ship, climbed up the climbing wall and jumped down. Walked on top of monkey bars and jumped down, then I walked down the village, blessed an ant on the sidewalk and continued my walk through the village. I greeted all people sleeping in their houses and walked back towards my house. I took a green apple from a tree, took a bite and threw it on the ground. I then got back into bed and slept another two hours.

I started sleeping only four or five hours of sleep, feeling energized after that. I didn’t need much food nor the need to go the loo more than two or three times a day.

At this time my mum was very fearful for me due to my experience in hospital and wanted to take me to the UK.

We got to the UK where we stayed with a cousin of mine and her two kids. I started doing Kung Fu outside and drew the infinity symbol in concrete with my two fingers until they started bleeding. This to me was not of any harm.

I became unable to feel any pain. I tried to take out an oven tray once at 225′C and did not feel anything other than a slight stinging sensation and tickle. I got no blisters from doing it.

I began to not feel heat or cold the same way. I could stand in a really hot or cold shower and not flinch.

I began drawing lots of pictures at a high level of skill with japanese themes, and writing japanese characters to every drawing. I began talking in different languages, ancient japanese, Ming and Qin Dynasty chinese. Perhaps current arabic and german. I spoke arabic once to a guy who replied in arabic, and spoke German to my father who is fluent in German and recognized it as fluent German. I started writing about astrophysics, neurochemistry, medicine, mechanics, electronics, religion, history, anything that came out of my brain.

I stopped thinking, everything was silent in my mind, never an internal dialogue.

I started doing Kung Fu at an advanced level for a beginner. I started doing Tai Chi power moves on people, very similar to acupressure, healing by putting pressure on the different energy joints in the body. I healed two people from intense pain in their arms and legs. I nearly completely healed a person from severe Dyscalculia and the inability to tell time. I healed a person with a chest infection and drew out the infection from him.

I became completely fearless towards anything and was unable to feel any negative emotions, apart from anger which I would feel outside my head, I would never be overwhelmed with anger. A composed anger.

It has now gone two months since my spiritual rebirth. I have been in hospital again in the UK as I was not believed about my abilities and the psychiatrists said I had hypomania, mania or psychosis. I held that I did not suffer from any of those things and that such a label did not explain the multitude of things I was able to do.

I am now out of hospital and titrating down on the anti psychotic drug which they forced me to take, and am starting to feel again the complete harmony I felt before I was on the drugs. At the moment my sensitivity to pain, sugar, heat and cold are not the same as before the drugs.

I used to be highly sensitive towards most foods, and those sensitivities have now disappeared. I am a reborn man with a will to help as many as I can. It is difficult for me to be believed regarding my theories, some of which I have posted on my blog www.dharmaga.com, but I believe with time I will gain credibility in all that I am doing.

What I have gone through in terms of my spiritual experience is a complete rebirth. My soul died after all the trauma I had gone through in life and a new one was inserted into my body along with reincarnations of previous and future lives. Time is always the present if one sees time as bending. Past time and future time are in that sense always present.

Photo credit.

Complete Guide to Pilates, Yoga, Meditation Stress Relief

Parragon Publishing

ISBN 1-4542-216-5

The first excerpt for today’s post is from the Complete Guide and is about deep breathing which is the primary emotional technique to gain control of your emotions.

“Yogic breathing, or pranayama, revitalizes the entire body, balances the emotions, and promotes clarity of mind. All the breathing exercises described here are performed sitting down, keeping the spine, neck, and head in a straight line. This will facilitate the flow of prana and create the space for the lungs to expand more fully.”

1) “Sit cross-legged (sitting on a cushion relieves tension in the lower back and knees). Place one hand on the rib cage, the other on the abdomen. Keep your back straight and shoulders relaxed.

2) Make sure that you breathe through your nose with your mouth closed. Inhale slowly, feeling the abdomen expanding first, then the rib cage, and finally feel the air filling the entire chest area.

3) As you exhale, the air will lave the lower lungs first, then the rib cage, and lastly the chest. Check that you fill your entire lungs with air and that your breathing is slow, rhythmic, and deep.”

Stress Control for Peace of Mind

Linda Wasmer Andrews

ISBN 0-7607-6468-9

Stress Control has two breathing exercises that you may use.

“Side-to-side breathing:

1) Sit in a comfortable position. Fold the pointer and middle fingers of your right hand into your palm. Inhale deeply.

2) Press your thumb against the right side of your nose, closing off your right nostril. First exhale and then inhale slowly through your left nostril.

3) Release your thumb, and press your ring and pinkie against the left side of your nose, closing off your left nostril. First exhale and then inhale slowly through your right nostril.

4) Repeat steps 2 through 3 several times as you focus on the breath going in and out.”

“Spine-tingling breathing:

1) Sit in a comfortable position. Close your eyes, and bring your attention to the base of your spine.

2) Inhale slowly and deeply. As you do, draw your awareness up your spinal cord-up your back, then up your neck, and finally to your brain.

3) Inhale slowly. As you do, draw your awareness back down your spinal cord to the base of your spine.

4) Repeat Steps 2 through 3 several times.”

The Changemaker Library recommends the following books to use for examination of  Spiritual Direction.

1.  Barefoot on Holy Ground: Twelve Lessons In Spiritual Craftsmanship

Gloria Karpinski

ISBN 0-345-43509-5

Amazon link

“A disciple is someone who recognizes, commits to, and is obedient to the promptings of his or her inner spiritual imperative and chooses to bring that consciousness into every aspect of life. Disciplines are responsible for themselves, knowing they are always in the process of growing and choosing to shape their personalities to serve their spiritual intentions. Disciples tend to be open, flexible, and teachable, inclusive in their worldview and dedicated to participating in the healing of planetary challenges.”

“Disciples are found everywhere and are identified by their being, not necessarily by their doing. Disciples have matured in consciousness from “saving the world” into serving the world.”

2.  Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics: Lifestyles for Self-Discovery

Marsha Sinetar

ISBN 0-8091-2773-3

Amazon link

“My bias is this: ordinary, everyday people can and do become whole. They can and do live in ways that express their highest and most cherished values—values which also happen to be those most prized universally and collectively throughout human history. People who become whole are the ones who find completeness by consciously integrating inner and outer realities. This is a book about such persons, and about the way in which they manage to merge their inner truths with the demands of everyday living. It is for them, and for all who long for their own wholeness, that this book is written and dedicated.”

Photo credit.

By backpackphotography

The following definition of forgiveness if from Wikipedia–

“Forgiveness is the mental, emotional and/or spiritual process of ceasing to feel resentment or anger against another person for a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution[[:Template:American Psychological Association. September, 2006]].

Forgiveness may be considered simply in terms of the person who forgives, in terms of the person forgiven and/or in terms of the relationship between the forgiver and the person forgiven. In some contexts, it may be granted without any expectation of compensation, and without any response on the part of the offender (for example, one may forgive a person who is dead). In practical terms, it may be necessary for the offender to offer some form of acknowledgement, apology, and/or restitution, or even just ask for forgiveness, in order for the wronged person to believe they are able to forgive. [[:Template:American Psychological Association. Italic text Forgiveness: A Sampling of Research ResultsItalic text. September, 2006]]

Most world religions include teachings on the nature of forgiveness, and many of these teachings provide an underlying basis for many varying modern day traditions and practices of forgiveness. However, throughout the ages, philosophers have studied forgiveness apart from religion. In addition, as in other areas of human inquiry, science is beginning to question religious concepts of forgiveness. Psychology, sociology and medicine are among the scientific disciplines researching forgiveness or aspects of forgiveness.

Instances of teachings on forgiveness such as the parable of the Prodigal Son[1] and Mahatma Gandhi’s forgiveness of his assassin as he lay dying, are well known instances of such teachings and practices of forgiveness. Some religious doctrines or philosophies place greater emphasis on the need for humans to find some sort of divine forgiveness for their own shortcomings, others place greater emphasis on the need for humans to practice forgiveness between one another, yet others make little or no distinction between human and/or divine forgiveness.”

St.Sava Serbian Orthodox by newagecrap

So, You Want to Be Like Christ? Eight Essentials to Get You There.

Charles R. Swindoll

ISBN 0-8499-1731-X

Amazon link

I have been reading Charles Swindoll for 30 years now and he never disappoints me. As he writes in his introduction: “So, you want to be like Christ? Me, too. But that kind of godliness won’t happen by hanging around a church or thinking lofty thoughts three or four times a day or learning a few verses of Scripture. It will take more–much more. Disciplining ourselves will require the same kind of focused thinking and living that our Master modeled during His brief life on earth.”

Rev. Swindoll defines the eight essentials we need to practice as:

1. Intimacy: Deepening Ours Lives
2. Simplicity: Uncluttering Our Minds
3. Silence and Solitude: Slowing Our Pace
4. Surrender: Releasing Our Grip
5. Prayer: Calling Out
6. Humility: Bowing Low
7. Self-Control: Holding Back
8. Sacrifice: Giving Over

As he states: “Notice that the first four disciplines have to do with getting rid of something, creating room in your life. The next four contribute vitality and authenticity to your spiritual life….Of course there are many other disciplines we could consider. And we could credibly argue for a shorter or longer list. I don’t claim to have the definitive path to intimacy with the Almighty. But I can say that after forty years of ministry, having prescribed these to others and having applied them to my own life, these eight disciplines fall into the category of essentials. Cultivate these disciplines, and your relationship with the Lord will flourish. More significantly, these will become paths that will lead you to becoming more like Christ.”

He has included several poems and/or quotations that are old and familiar to me.

For Simplicity: Uncluttering Our Minds:

“One ship drives east and another drives west

With the selfsame winds that blow.

Tis the set of the sails

And not the gales

Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,

As we voyage along through life:

“Tis the set of a soul

That decides its goal.

And not the calm or the strife.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox

For Silence and Solitude: Slowing Our Pace

“May not the inadequacy of much of our spiritual experience be traced back to our habit of skipping through the corridors of the Kingdom like children in the market place, chattering about everything, but pausing to learn the value of nothing.” A.W. Tozer

For Surrender: Releasing Our Grip

“When grace changes the heart, submission out of fear changes to submission out of love, and true humility is born” William Hendriksen

From Sacrifice Giving Over:

In this chapter, Rev. Swindoll writes a very personal account of his coming to the Lord while he was miserable in the Marine Corps in 1958. He read a book his brother had given him that night of 5 missionaries who had died while spreading the Word to the Aucas tribe. One of the missionaries’s wife, Jim Elliott, wrote the book, Through Gates of Splendor, after Jim’s death. The quotation for this chapter on sacrifice is from Jim Elliott: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

The sacrifices suggested are: to become a living, breathing sacrifice–personal sacrifice, relational sacrifice, and financial sacrifice.

By Tony the Misfit

“Allow yourself to pray. Just as the many times human beings find themselves in circumstances where the hurt or the pain is so great that on their own power they cannot forgive, it is enough that they pray to be given the grace, the perception, the elevated Light that will allow them to forgive.”

Gary Zukav from Thoughts from the Seat of the Soul

Preparing your soul for forgiveness both for yourself and others is a vital foundation for true self-acceptance. Some current writing about forgiveness includes:

Enchanted Oak writes: 7 Ways to Love Yourself

Jesus Did Not Say “Forgive and Forget“

A wonderful mind map by Paul Foreman: Forgive Forward

He’s Got a Ticket to Ride, But He Don’t Care (Great writing by David Dean Bottrell–I especially liked: “In order to avoid a panic attack, I did what I always do — I applied a nice thick layer of denial over the whole situation.”

In A Soulworker’s Companion, Betty Clare Moffat recommends these steps toward forgiveness:

“Seven Steps to Forgiveness:

1)  Recognition and acknowledgment

We recognize a problem, situation, event, relationship, or emotion that alerts us to the need to forgive. We acknowledge the problem, situation, event, relationship, or emotion that needs forgiveness.

2)  Desire, definition, and decision

We desire to forgive. We define the parameters of the problem, situation, event, relationship, or emotion. We then make a clear and conscious decision to forgive.

3)  Meditation and prayer

We go within and with prayerful inquiry and an open, receptive mind, we ask for truth, help, and guidance in the forgiveness situation. We ask how best to proceed to heal the problem, situation, event, relationship, or emotion requiring forgiveness.

4)  Inner and outer action

We act on the guidance we have received in prayer and meditation. We do what needs to be done to clear up the problem, (etc) that requires forgiveness.

5)  Surrender and release

After taking appropriate action in the outer world, we release the

Entire the entire situation into the hands of our Creator. We ask for the

Highest good of all concerned. We ask, “Thy will, not mine, be

done.”

6)  Understanding and awareness

We look for an increased understanding of the dynamics that led to the problem, (etc) that required our forgiveness. We look for the spiritual lesson. We determine to go forward in forgiveness with

Increased awareness.

7)  Healing and change

We accept that the situation has now changed. We accept that the lesson has been learned. We choose to look at the situation, and the world differently. We welcome healing and change through the process of forgiveness. We allow the energy of healing and change to spill over into other areas of our lives. We are changed. We give thanks.