Those who can speak with compassion about the mistakes of their past are the least likely to repeat them in the future.
What’s your relationship with forgiveness?
How can we cultivate and practice forgiveness for ourselves?
And what might the impact be if we fail to address the ways that shame, blame, and guilt surface in our minds and bodies?
When we have been wronged or have experienced injustice, it can feel hard to forgive others. And as we begin to witness and attempt to peel back the layers of our own conditioning, it can feel nearly impossible to forgive ourselves. It is much easier to come to a place of compassion and non-judgement for others than for self. Yet self-forgiveness begets peace, freedom, and abundance. Growth and healing require continual, repeated forgiveness of self.
Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for the energetic stories you took on from your caregivers. Forgive yourself for the outcomes of coping mechanisms that kept you safe for years. Forgive yourself for not acting, for putting it off, for putting yourself on the backburner.
Forgive yourself for not caring sooner, for not making the phone call, for losing your temper, for making the wrong choice, for lying, for faking it, for holding the grudge, for not taking action.
Forgive yourself for the choices you made when you were doing the best you could with the resources you had at the time.
The burden of this guilt and shame can’t lift you higher. Guilt will not align you. Shame will not heal you. You can not guilt, hate, or shame yourself into expansion and alignment. These feelings will only ever trap you, suffocate your life force, and harm your body. Only from forgiveness, and in forgiveness, will you find peace and understanding. We’ve lived in a punitive system too long. There’s no space for shame here anymore.
Guilt and shame are perpetuated in our minds and bodies by the stories and emotional patterns that have been modelled for us throughout our lives. Guilt and shame are a thought pattern, not a reality.
Freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom from physical pain – all require forgiveness and understanding.
How can this be done?
Not through suppression. Not by force. By feeling.
We must learn to quiet the mind and to drop our awareness into the body. Allow thoughts and sensations to come as they may. Learn to sit with your body in high sensation. To simply observe and feel. Don’t bail out. No sensation will last forever. Change is our constant. Let sensation come, let it go. Don’t cling. Don’t stick.
Call in a moment of deep compassion for the events and unfolding of your past. Through compassion, though love, we understand. Through understanding, we may make a different choice.
Self-forgiveness is an ongoing, evolving process, not an event. Forgive yourself, daily, as many times as necessary. You are infinitely worthy of the peace on the other side of shame.
By releasing yourself from the burden of believing that the past could have happened any differently than it did, you allow the possibility of a better present.
People change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.
BJ Fogg
Loving you deeply,
Zoe
SOMA Therapeutics 