Photo credit: flickr.com soot+chalk
Spirituality Week begins with a focus on Forgiveness. It’s a perfect way to start the week because aren’t we all starting the new year with resolutions, an intention for a fresh beginning? Forgiveness is a good first step toward making a new start, a new year.
If you’re making a New Year’s resolution, which is typically a negative objective – “Lose weight. Stop smoking. Stop procrastinating. Erase debt.” – why not resolve to do something joyful or peaceful instead of beating yourself up? Send a positive intention out into the Universe. For example, “I will accept the positive and negative things that will happen to me in 2009 with a forgiving spirit and open attitude.”
Eckert Tolle, recently popularized on the Oprah Winfrey Show, calls this kind of positive intention “allowing to be.” He says in his book, The Power of Now:
“Allowing to be” takes you beyond the mind with its resistance patterns that create the positive-negative polarities. It is an essential aspect of forgiveness. Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment — allow it to be as it is — then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time.
Forgiveness, according to spiritual writer and lecturer Deepak Chopra, can even mitigate physical illness. He says,
The absence of forgiveness is holding a grievance or resentment and also a subtle desire to seek vengeance. In short it is hostility. Many studies have shown that…hostility is not healthy, and it is the number one emotional risk factor for premature death from cardiovascular accident (stroke and hea[r]t attack).
Make a practice of Forgiveness this year and heal not only your spiritual self but also your physical well-being. Here’s a strategy and resource for getting on the path to forgiveness:
Visit Sedona Sacred Journeys for a one day or multiple day retreat, and discover three important things: one, identify areas where you have un-forgiveness at the adult and inner child; two, clearing those areas: three, understanding how not to bring lack of forgiveness into your life. Start now… Forgiveness Retreats are available in Sedona, Arizona for February 2009. For additional information visit: Forgiveness Retreats
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Coming up on Spirituality Week – Day Two: 3 Rules for Better Spiritual Growth
[...] my daughter to be Spiritual will mean that I will model forgiveness of self and others (see Day One’s Lesson on Forgiveness.) I will shape her self-image by telling and showing her that it’s okay to make mistakes, [...]