Forgiveness is important to living the life you truly desire.

I’ve always been an easy going kind of person and thought forgiveness wasn’t hard for me until I got older and life got more complicated. I hadn’t realized how much resentment and grudges I was holding against people especially myself. Through my spiritual practice I became more aware and learned that forgiveness is the key to having everything I want in life.

If you want to fully experience love, peace, joy, and freedom in your life; you want to practice forgiveness. My active forgiveness journey didn’t truly begin until late last year and has been an on-going one. It became clear to me that in order to live the life I truly desired, I needed to forgive everyone for everything. Borrowing these last few words from author and spiritual life coach, Iyanla Vanzant’s book, 21 Days to Forgive Everyone for Everyone.

This book has been a powerful tool in my forgiveness journey.

3 major things I’ve learned in my forgiveness journey

1.  The first, most important and hardest person to forgive is you. Everything begins with us, just like until you can truly accept and love yourself, you cannot do the same for another and same goes with forgiveness. I have found that the hardest it is for me to forgive someone, there’s something about me that I haven’t truly forgiven. Once I had a friend who lied to me and when I look back at our interactions, the signs and red flags were there that he couldn’t be trusted. I found it hard to forgive him as huge part of me blamed myself for trusting him in the first place and not listening to my instinct. Most of the time, you also have a part in what happened and until you can truly forgive yourself, you cannot truly forgive another.

2. Forgiveness sets you free. It is a liberating, joyous and loving feeling that allows anything to be possible. It provides a clean slate for you and whoever you’ve forgiven. I’ve experienced that when I hold grievances against someone; I’m not free and am their prisoner or a prisoner of the situation. And our relationship is strained and doesn’t grow. When I forgive, I let go and free myself and them of the grievances. I experienced this with someone I was holding a grudge against and after praying, meditating, using Emotional Freedom Technique Tapping and doing the work to forgive, our relationship was renewed.

You can also forgive and not renew the relationship. It’s really about forgiving, letting go of the grievances, pain, and no longer feeling upset about what happened and them.

3. Forgiveness is indeed the highest form of love. I’ve heard and read that forgiveness is the highest form of love but it’s another thing to experience it. I couldn’t agree more with that statement. As someone who believes that God is love and all his creatures are as well, I cannot think of a greatest expression of love than to forgive yourself and the people in your life. As a student of A Course In Miracles, I’ve learned that forgiveness is my function as the light of the world and my brother deserves forgiveness just as much as I do. I’ve gotten that when I forgive; I not only release myself from the past, I release my brother as well.

Tweetable:[tweetable]Forgiveness isn’t easy yet it is the key to truly living the life you desire.[/tweetable]

I’m always reminded of an episode of Oprah Winfrey’s show, Super Soul Sunday with my biggest spiritual teacher, Marianne Williamson. In the show, Marianne says whenever you feel something or things aren’t going right for you, ask yourself: “Who have I not forgiven?” This is so true and one of the reasons why I chose to study A Course In Miracles and stay the course and deepen my forgiveness journey is because I want to be free to allow the life I desire to flow to me and share my love and light with everyone.

I’m inviting you to consider who is it that you haven’t forgiven? How has been your forgiveness journey?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this; did anything come up for you? Please share some of your own forgiveness journey experiences with me in the comments section below.

If this stirred something in you that you’d like to explore on a deeper level, I invite you to schedule a complimentary discovery session with me by clicking here.

If you enjoyed this and found it help, please give it a share thank you!

Love and light!