Have you ever tried to forgive someone but just can't do it fully? They still occupy your mental space, and you just can't completely let go of what they did to you?
I was 48 before I was able to truly forgive my mother and it was life changing. It took three trips to John of God, a medium in Brazil, and many, many other avenues and routes taken before that. Each improved my life a little but none got me to the point of being able to forgive. I read books, I meditated, I did forgiveness journeys, I built my light body, you name it. Some years I decided that living well was the best revenge. Maybe , maybe not, certainly not for long. Some years I just tried to tell myself I had forgiven her and I pretended the job was done. Fake it till you make it. Only to realize I was still reacting to that pain, holding that pain and not actually moving forward. It was exhausting. It was in the second trip to Brazil that I had an experience that allowed me to finally fully forgive her.
I had a spiritual experience while there, that caused me to cry and cry and cry for days. I cried without even fully knowing why anymore, for hours, and days, I woke up and carried on crying, and through that I healed over the coming months, and forgave her without even trying too hard. It was easy and natural outcome of my healing. My journey and the route through the pain taught me much about forgiveness. The peace I feel now, my low reactivity to so many things that would have triggered me before is sheer bliss. When I spoke to my mother after she had passed (she passed a year after this event) through a trusted medium the first thing my mom said was: "Thank you so much for forgiving me! It was the best gift ever because now I am free. You set me free. I love you. " Our chat was warm and loving, and deeply healing. While alive she never acknowledged that I had forgiven her straight to her face, directly. While alive she brushed me off. So hearing this heartfelt gratitude from her was profoundly healing.
So it was with genuine curiosity that I started reading Colin Tipping's books on Radical Forgiveness and Radical Self Forgiveness. It is not easy to forgive and I was curious how anyone could read a book and then forgive. It was very much an experiential process for me, a journey. I felt the emotions. I released the energy. I found myself in the process of healing, and that was the real gift to me. So I read the books. The steps are so well laid out I wasn't even aware I had walked that path (In a bit of a zigzag certainly not a direct straight line) in my own forgiveness journey. This is what I needed to guide others down the path I walked almost all my life, for so long, I forgot some of the steps even, until I read them again! What a gift!
A major requirement of this process is accepting that you are not a victim. You are the co-creator of the situation. You both planned this before incarnating. You felt this was the best and quickest way to learn this thing you wanted to learn, or to pay back this karma you felt you owed (note only you assign karma to yourself no-one else does. So, you can release karmic bonds if its for your highest good. We can ask for this from your Higher Self in a QHHT session when the Higher self comes forward, if its for your highest good.). So truly accepting your own role in creating this is a key component. Another factor to consider is that In a psychological sense we all project our emotions (in earlier stages of spiritual awakening), so what you see in others is often yours, relationships will act like mirrors for you, and what you see is you, they reflect yourself back to you, especially in adult relationships that we chose. With the heightened awareness of hypnosis this is easier to see but if you reflect on your life in an open hearted way you'll see it as well. This process of owning your role and your misunderstandings of the situation helps you step back into your power. One way or another, you DO have the power to change this, because if you co-created it for your own learning, you can dissolve it once the learning is done. By reading this , by doing the work and realizing how you did this to yourself you are learning the lesson. This is the lesson. Connect the dots. Find your role in this. It's not as easy as to first looks. Sometimes you need some help in connecting the dots and that is fine. You have brought the learning situation, to consciousness, you grow to understand the role you played in it, you finally feel gratitude for how it has shaped you into a better person, the path it put you on, the learning and personal insights you gained. So when you have learnt the lesson, the class can be over. In that sense you are not the victim, this is for your own soul growth, your own expanded consciousness of yourself and the power you hold.
Another key step is being WILLING to see the situation differently? If not you'll carry on living what you are living now. Outward changes in circumstances will not take away your problems. They will go with you from place to place, relationship to relationship. Those with a victim mentality blame the perpetrator and change the situation only to find they are in the same situation again and blame the next person. At some point they have to stop playing the victim, telling the same stories of victimhood, and be willing to see the situation differently, and to tell a different story, reframe the story. There is no right or wrong from the higher selfs perspective. Only lessons. Remember -Learn the lesson and the class goes away. If you blame someone else you'll simply repeat this lesson again over and over in this, and the next lifetime, and the next. The sooner you let go of the victim mindset the quicker the energy tied up in this situation can be released. Granted it is not an easy thing to see it differently, you start by just being willing to see it differently.
In my work as a clinical hypnotherapist I mostly deal with trauma release, all sorts of trauma, big and small. We all carry a huge amount of trauma and it is the energy of all this trauma from this lifetime and others, that holds us back from spiritual growth, and enlightenment. Releasing the energy of the little micro traumas, and the big traumas, is very important work as it lightens your energy and sets you free from the past, forgiving breaks your karmic ties with that person and you never have to incarnate with them again. That lesson is learnt. With each trauma release there is almost always a forgiveness required of us. So learning how to do it authentically is a real life skill. In the Course in Miracles, it is stated that our role here on earth is to forgive, forgive, forgive. There is such energy healing in forgiving. A much lighter, freer person walks out of the session when they have released pain and forgiven someone no matter how big or small it was. It frees you up to be happier, more joyful.
So if you found yourself reading this article, do read the book Radical Forgiveness by Colon Tipping. It is a great self-help way to start this journey. All these steps are included in various ways in a typical RTT hypnotherapy session although a few sessions may be required for some situations, when there are many pain points and the trauma is layered in. I also have a forgiveness worksheet, or summary of the process, and I am happy to share this with anyone who emails me for that at any time. I guess that is why RTT works, and why Radical forgiveness works. It is not a theory, it is just how this energy gets released, it is how people heal emotionally, how they free themselves of the past and move forward with light, happy steps, open to spiritual growth.
You can try for half a century doing it your way, retelling your same old stories of what happened, or you can be a seeker and find approaches that inch you forward slowly as I did, or you can save yourself a lot of time. It is your time to spend. Either way once you get yourself to authentic radical forgiveness you'll have given yourself the gift of freedom, freedom from being a victim, freedom from self blame, from karmic ties, just freedom. You just have to be willing to see the situation differently, that is all.