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.