Forgiveness

Forgiveness means doing the work necessary to process and understand the feelings of pain from an experience, allowing it to move through you, then coming out the other side ready to forgive but not forget.

🌼 Forgiveness is something you do for yourself.

Remember that forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to tell the other person that you forgive them.

🌼 You forgive to set yourself and your heart free, and this does not mean you have to re-establish a relationship.

🌼 You absolutely do not have to let them back into your life.

🌼 Forgiveness does not mean forgetting.

It also does not mean what happened was okay.

🌼Forgiveness sets you free from the trauma and the other person.

🌼 Forgiveness is for you not the other person.

🌼 Forgiveness gives you your power, and love for yourself and your life back

🌼 Forgiveness means you have all the teachings you need from the experience and now you’re living life fully alive and free.

(It’s ok to forgive people, and still deny them access to you.-R.H. Sin)

True Joy

 It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it. 

-W. Somerset Maugham 

Eknath Easwaran's Commentary

We must be careful not to mistake agitation for fulfillment, excitement for joy. When our mind is not turbulent for a little while, we tend to think we’re in a slump and start groping about for something that can stir it up again: a thrilling movie, a stiff drink, a spirited quarrel, anything to “get the juices flowing.” Taken one by one these may seem like fairly innocuous forms of indulgence, yet in their long-range cumulative impact, they deplete us and deflect us from our real goals. 

When we fix our eyes on a higher goal, we begin to see beyond the immediate appeal of short-term satisfactions. Confident that a far greater joy is ours, we can hold out against the voices from all sides that cajole, “Eat this; drink that; watch this; buy that.” True joy is found when the mind is still, not when it is excited. 

Spiritual path - Fear and Security

On this path, effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear. 

-Bhagavad Gita 

Eknath Easwaran's Commentary

To be truly secure, we must begin to find a source of security within ourselves. Even the bravest among us have many fears. Behind the attachment to money or possessions, for example, you will always find the fear of loss. Attachment to prestige brings the nagging fear of what others think of us. The thirst for power feeds the fear that others may be stronger. Every self-centered desire brings the fear that we may not get what we desire. 

One could make a Sears catalog of these fears, but all stem from one fatal superstition: thinking of ourselves as merely physical creatures, separate from the rest of life. As our sense of oneness with the rest of life deepens, we step out of the world of fear to live in the world of love.