For those who may take offense at the use of faith and prayer and God and good and evil, even if you removed every one of those words from this page forgiveness still works. (Link to God-less version) BUT the personal, instantaneous realization of God's love for you is so profound I pray you do not miss it.
Early in my work as a clinical nutritionist I became aware that some of my clients had difficulty selecting and eating foods that were good for them. When these clients were asked to 'listen to their body' they did not understand. They could not tell if the food they were eating made them feel good or bad. They could not tell if they needed more sleep or exercise. They did not know if or when they were hungry or thirsty or what foods might satisfy their hunger, if they were able to recognize they were hungry.
It is my belief each person has the ability to know what is right for him or herself. My intent is to educate (v.-educare-to draw forth [inner knowing]) the natural wisdom of the client. I make available to the client knowledge that the client already has. It is within ourselves we find the information we need to take care of ourselves.
The more out-of-touch one is with the messages of his or her own body, the greater their dependency on the authority of others and the less able they are to take care of themselves. Such persons do not know what they really want, do not believe they can know what is best for them and do not believe that if they knew they could get what they want and need.
In 1983 I began working with adult and child victims of physical and sexual abuse. All victims exhibited the same lack of awareness and lack of ability to respond to the body's messages that I had seen in some of my clients. They could not ask for, or even know, what they wanted and needed and they were unable to refuse what they did not want.
This unexpected involvement with abuse victims recalled earlier experiences I had had in 1974 working with Peter H.C. Mutke, M.D., Psychosomatic Medicine, and Barry Goodfield, Ph.D. Of many unusual cases I was able to observe, two stand out as indicative of the probable causes of injury and the direction I feel healing must take.
During a session of hypnotic recall, a lawyer in his late 30's was put before a thermography machine (liquid nitrogen imaging). While remembering a beating he received from his father at 9 months of age heat patterns appeared and we were able to see hand prints clearly on the client's body. I believe memory is more than in the mind. I believe it is concurrently stored in the body. The memory of the beating had been stored within his cells.
The second case involved a individual born with a club foot. At age 40 an operation was performed to correct the condition. The foot continued to cause pain and disability. Using thermography the foot's temperature was found to be significantly cooler than the rest of the body and the other foot. No medical cause could be found to account for this discrepancy. When the man was instructed to "love" his foot, to forgive the foot for the pain it had caused him, to incorporate it into his thought in a positive way using focused attention, the foot healed and the temperature normalized without further complication.
An abused or injured person "leaves" his body where the memory/feeling is located. This removal of one's consciousness is done automatically whether the original incident of abuse was intentional or unintentional. This separation occurs to relieve the pain. Psychology calls this disassociation. The mind and body must be reunited. If the memory continues to contain the original feelings of fear, anger and/or pain it becomes difficult or impossible for reunification to occur.
We do not cause ourselves to be abused (whatever some may say) but are responsible for continuing to feel associated rage, self-pity, anger, fear and pain. We often believe that remembering and discussing our victimization or screaming or crying or expressing our anger, pain, fear and rage will get rid of this awful chemistry. It has been my experience that until clients willingly forgive and forget, old fear, anger and pain reflect into current events. Therapy aimed at expressing or feeling your pain, reliving the incident, simply further imbeds and petrifies the memory.
Most of us have not been taught that we have the ability to choose our feelings. Some will "bury" past negative incidents or feelings. Others will express over and over their discomfort and victimization. Family members, friends or society may encourage the burial of incidents/feelings because the feelings are too frightening to be expressed. Others continually express their sorrow and pain, endlessly to everyone and join groups or visit therapist who encourage them to do so. In some families, all members will bury their feelings "successfully" until one member becomes the "actor" for the group. Repetition of events will continue to occur until associated feelings are changed by free choice. I did not say until feelings are expressed.
If a child has been raised in a critical, abusive or neglected environment by parents who see the world in a negative, frightening or hopeless way the child will feel that that is the way of the world and discount positive experiences as exceptions to be overlooked. Likewise the loved and nurtured child sees negative experiences as unusual occurrences quickly passing.
It is clear that the actions and attitudes of parents, other family members and school personnel towards the child influence the way the child will perceive him or herself and the world. However, no matter what our original heredity or environment, we can consciously alter that conditioning.
There are no perfect parents, perfect societies, perfect schools, bosses or jobs. It is important to encourage good parenting and societal values but even our best attempts will at times cause offense to our children. It is necessary that all of us, adults and children alike, learn the true value of forgiveness -- the physical, cellular, forgetting of the envy, greed, anger, fear and pain associated with the past and the freedom of living a life from within.
The value of forgiveness is not in its power to grant freedom to the offender but in its power to give wholeness to the victim. Forgiveness does not mean the offender is not brought to account, though they may or may not be, but that the victim is fully restored to a state of mind and body that is without wound or scar.
Victims do not deserve to be victims but the damage can not be repaired by the offender, nor is it repaired by punishment of the offender. The victim is healed, made free, by his or her willing removal of the feelings associated with the victimization. This change of feeling may be helped by the action of others but the work of change must be done by the victim.
One stops being a victim by refusing (rejecting, deleting) the feelings of being a victim and allowing God to heal.
We understand the need to change our feelings of victimization and some persons try to over come these feelings by becoming victimizers. It appears that "getting the other guy" is better than "being gotten", but appearances are deceiving. This technique does not work because the victims core feelings have not been changed.
The mammalian or animal "way" is and has always been "power over others". The way of the conscious Christian human is "God's power within". When a person’s conceptual reality is shifted to a knowledge of having this power within, personal peace will be attained.
Only when one is at peace with oneself is peace with others possible.
When we discover that we have personal choice in our feelings and begin to use this free will, no situation, however harmful, fearful or painful, past, present or future can have any lasting effect on our being. This ability has been discovered by every healthy, happy survivor of any great disaster or tragedy.
A real survivor is one who can walk through the fire and not be burned. They retain no physical/chemical memory of the incident. The mind is free, the body memory unmarked. This may only be achieved by forgiveness. The prisoner in the most terrifying and abusive prison in this world is free if he completely rejects his imprisonment, if he refuses to see his captors as captors, if he refuses the anger and hatred, and refuses to see himself as victim.
Do not focus on the incidences, focus on the chemistry, the feelings.
Tell your body "I don't want this feeling anymore." Tell God you are ready to be free. Find the feelings that filter your view of reality. You could currently have a feeling you would rather not have that was created by a letter, phone call or meeting within the past day or week or by remembering an occurrence or relationship from many years ago. Repeat "I don't want this feeling anymore. God take it from me." over and over, again and again. Each time you experience any of these negative feelings throughout the next days, weeks and months, repeat again "I truly don't want this feeling anymore. God remove this from me."
In the 1700's a writer, mystic and philosopher by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg noted, If any man is aware of something within him unpleasing to himself and to God and will tell God he no longer wants this, God will remove it. In less time than you imagine, the feelings you no longer want will be gone, for ever, if you meant what you said (silently or aloud). God does the work, you do the choosing.
When I first became aware of this wonderful gift I spent several weeks offering my 'junk'. There was so much to be rid of. I believe most of us need to do one comprehensive past history forgiveness to clear out a lifetime of junk feelings (about as profitable as junk bonds to carry around and like junk bonds others pay the price) and then do daily forgiving to keep us on track.
PAST EXAMPLE: A thirty-five year old woman with chronic headaches from childhood remembers her mother trying to stop her crying when she was about 18 months old by choking her. CONCLUSION- If I ask for what I want I might die. DECISION- I will get a headache to remind myself to not want and not ask. It was a great survival mechanism for the infant but lousy for the adult.
Day and night she consciously rejected, over and over again, the old feelings (told her body and God she didn't want that feeling anymore) and began to experience and allow the feelings of being loved, nurtured, protected and safe (God's kid). Shortly the cell memory was deleted and the new feelings became stronger as the old disappeared. Her headaches permanently disappeared. In addition she found it possible to know and to ask for what she wanted.
CURRENT TIME EXAMPLE: A client received a phone call informing her of a deadline she had missed. Her immediate feeling was fear and helplessness. She immediately rejected the feeling, "I don't want this feeling" and not only was she free from the negative emotions, she was able to find a way to still get the desired outcome "I am God's kid, there is a way".
In present time surrendering feelings always changes actions. You want a cigarette. You tell your body and God 'I don't want this feeling anymore'. You are sincere. To the extent possible you don't smoke the cigarette. You are not saying you don't want the cigarette, this would not be true, but are saying you don't want the feeling of wanting a cigarette. I have personally seen this completely remove the desire for a cigarette within three days and this remained permanently. Without the feeling the action will not occur. Whatever the feelings promoting behaviors against self, man or God they can be completely and permanently removed.
Cellular changes related to forgiveness may take days, weeks, or even months. Don't stop. Do not give up. Keep rejecting the old and allowing the new (You are God's kid). During this time God in you is repatterning your cell memory to fit your new life. Soon you will begin to see things differently and find your life changing in wonderful ways.
This process is not based on mental, intellectual ability. You do not and should not tell God how you want to feel. You need only tell Him how you do not want to feel. As you become adept you will find yourself able to recognize and surrender feelings, by choice, at will. Only what you decide about how you FEEL counts. Once your body realizes you have the authority to choose the feeling , and that positive feelings feel better than envy, pride, hatred, anger, greed, lust, fear and pain, it quickly responds.
We are what we believe/feel ourselves to be. For most, actions spring from feelings. Our current beliefs and actions are drawn from what we believed/felt to be true in our past, a compilation of hereditary and environmental input. The cells of the body are not accurate in their memory or understanding but they are faithful in generating expected chemistry. They register things like abandonment, life threat, abuse, REAL AND IMAGINED, INTENTIONAL AND UNINTENTIONAL, as personal and eternal. We expect these feelings; they are familiar to us; they and situations associated with these feelings reappear with frequency in our lives. From our past we bring forth 'evil', hereditary and personal.
Initially our parental and cultural beliefs/feelings/expectations are the seeming appearances in our lives. Later we continue to reaffirm those same beliefs/feelings/expectations and carry on the cell memories. Memory is retained as cell-memory chemistry (feeling) by consistent re-experiencing of the feeling. This is the limitation of the material self.
Spirit, God within, changes all that. When we choose to change our feelings we allow God to remake the past, present and future. We allow God to rule, not the body consciousness with its memories of envy, sorrow, pain and affliction. The greater our commitment to choosing feelings of love, joy, peace, mercy, kindness and justice and rejecting the rest, the sooner these become our new personal truth. Personal truth is made up of the beliefs and associated feelings which have total control over the way in which we see the world. Where our old beliefs and feelings were affirmed by and in our environment (the without in), our new 'chosen' beliefs will soon out-picture in our environment (the within out).
We are called to substitute beauty for ashes, joy for mourning and praise for despair. Where there was abandonment, support and comfort. Where there was abuse, gentleness and understanding. Where there was fear, feelings of safety and love. Where there was poverty, riches. Where there was ugliness let your eyes be opened to beauty. DO THIS FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS. To substitute means to replace one for another. One is removed; the other is added. The situation has not changed but the feelings have changed and outward change will follow as the dawn follows the night.
Thoughts, the things you think about and the way you think about things, create feelings as much or more than actual events. The goal is to renew the mind, to empty the self and allow God in with new, higher, thoughts and feelings. Feelings generate physical chemistry. Blood chemistry is different in people who are happy, sad, fearful, depressed or anxious.
We use alcohol, antidepressants, stimulants, painkillers and other types of drugs and behaviors, legal and illegal, to allow us to change the way we feel. All drugs and aberrant behaviors have side-effects and after-effects. These effects can be worse than the feelings we were trying to change. It is possible to change our chemistry/feeling by free will. We have the power to direct the way we think and what we think and therefore what we feel.
Hypnosis can change the way we feel but it is done unconsciously. When states are altered in the subconscious, where free will cannot operate, the new state is similar to possession and will not be permanent and will have consequences. I have seen persons using hypnosis to quit smoking or other self-destructive behaviors soon begin other more serious destructive behaviors.
It is important that this act of surrender and forgiveness be done by a person using free will in a fully conscious state. Only then will the change be permanent and without side-effects. Only then is God, Life within us, given permission to heal us so that all that is within and without becomes new.
We feel that retaining a memory with its anger, fear or pain (chemistry-feelings) is a defense that will protect us from further abuse, misuse or destruction. This instinctive behavior is a part of mammalian evolutionary development related to survival of the species in lower mammals. It is no longer a useful means of boundary keeping. Truly effective means of boundary keeping, self-sustenance and renewal will become evident as the chemistry of envy, pain, sorrow, fear or lonliness is removed from cell memory.
If you are determined to keep old feelings, of envy, anger, fear and pain, you can not be made whole, you cannot be healed. Jesus made no distinction between healing and forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness is the removal of these old feelings of victimization with need for revenge.
Sin is a condition of separation that occurs inside of us as a result of something unfortunate that has happened to us or we think has happened to us or that we project may happen to us which we then perpetuate and solidify by holding in memory. It is one or more feelings we hold inside that separate us from God, ourselves and each other. When we forgive ourselves and each other, truly forgetting the past, we begin to be connected to the life within us, God, and our body in its wholeness, and out family and friends. Only then are we able to be fully alive and aware.
By choosing those things pleasing to God, the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, we are reconnected with the "life of our self", God, and can use the instinctive mammalian wisdom within our cells to help us make wise choices about food, exercise, people, work (right lively hood) and more. We can only then trust our ability to discern what is "right" for us. Life works only when we use the 'rule of law' to guide us. We can access intuition within this frame of reference and know if a person or situation is safe in present time instead of living in the past.
Each of us must learn when to listen to our instinctive feelings and when to use our 'free will' to let them go. Is this feeling, and the action I will take based on this feeling, in the best interests of myself and others. Of course, you immediately recognized the GOLDEN RULE. Myself AND others, both must be a consideration. As long as life exists this rule will not change. It is the law of life itself. You/We are not alone.
If the feeling leads to action that is harmful to yourself or others choose to let it go. If you are not sure that the feeling-action is right or wrong consider carefully the Bible or Torah, especially the Ten Commandments. There is good and evil. There is right and wrong. When we believe that there are no absolutes, no right or wrong, only relativity, we are lost for eternity, from God, from others and from our self.
God told us to obey the commandments and live a long and happy life. He told us truth. The law does not prevent happiness, it ensures it. Happiness and longevity are never found in immorality, lies, deceit, jealousy, self delusion, hypnotic trance, envy, gluttony, adultery, lust, pornography, sexual immorality, anger, murder, or revenge.
This is the art and science of life. Discern your feelings and associated actions. Finding those that are displeasing to God you do not deny the feeling. You do not ignore the feeling. You do not bury the feeling. YOU CHOOSE TO REJECT THE FEELING (and associated action) AND IT IS CHANGED.
Some are unwilling to give up their feelings of envy, hatred, lust, anger, fear or pain. Some have told me that they feel if they give up these feelings they will not be the same person. They are right.
If you take on the challenge of forgiveness you will find some very interesting things beginning to happen around you. Do not talk about what you are doing. Just do it. During the first stage you may find yourself being overwhelmed by feelings. These are your old cell-memories generating strong chemistry. Feelings of despair, hopelessness, anger, fear, anxiety and even rage may come to the surface of your awareness. You may experience inertia, complacency, unhappiness, doubt or extreme fatigue.
Do not take these feeling seriously. Do not be horrified, fascinated or worried by them. Do not analyze them. Do not condemn yourself for these feelings. Do not attempt to fight, resist or ignore these feelings. Recognize that your old, no longer useful, beliefs, thoughts and associated feelings are being broken up and destroyed, freeing you from the bondage of evil- envy, fear, anger, pride and pain.
Tell your body (and God) "I don't want these feelings any more". "I don't need these feeling anymore". Let God take them. As the feelings surface, again and again, repeat, "I don't want this feeling anymore, or this, or this". Watch and see the miracle God will perform.
A philosopher suggested that the Spirit of Life, God in us, is like water barely trickling from an old corroded faucet filled with rust. It looks awful when the faucet is first turned on, years of corrosion pouring out, the pain, sorrow, anger, fear, loneliness. Let it go. It is just rust. Behind all this is the pure water of Life itself, always there, always waiting for your will to choose.
Initially we are conceived by our parents and our society, born of flesh. We have the power to allow ourselves to be conceived by God. We can agree with our parents and society or we can disagree and seek to destroy them, it, or ourselves or WE CAN CHOOSE SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, to be born anew as God's kid. Our reality is constructed from what we hold within ourselves as true.
If you do not practice forgiveness regularly you will fall into the old patterns and find your feelings being controlled by your environment, your reactions to family, friends, the media and other outside influences. You will collect and carry an increasing load of fear (anxiety), anger and other negative emotions. The task of choosing God is moment by moment, day in and day out. It is a daily walk in the presence of the Holy (wholeness), God within.
True Religion is to love God (Life, the Spirit within us, Love, Good) above all else and the neighbor as the self. We must freely choose to love God and hate the demons of envy, self-pity, pride, depression, anxiety, fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, lust and pain. When the demons are destroyed within each of us, cast out by our free-will choosing, we know happiness and find peace with ourselves and each other. The Whole Spirit is always waiting to heal.
It is required, for physical and mental health, that we love and forgive, ourselves and others. Love requires kindness, justice and mercy. All are strongly related to discernment. Let God remove those demons! If you entertain, even for a moment, your demons they will destroy you. You have the choice to love good (God), to allow good (God) to recreate the cells of your body and mind.
If you do not choose to forgive, yourself and others, past and present, and change your feelings of anger, pain, lust, jealousy, envy, sorrow and fear into faith, hope and love, you will not only continue to be victimized, you will victimize others, the inevitable outcome of hatred, jealousy, self-pity, pride, depression, lust, fear, anger, envy, and pain.
I am not suggesting that bad things have not happened to you. I am not suggesting that you deserved or caused bad things to happen to you. I am not suggesting you have never done bad things. I am not promising that bad things won't happen in the future. I am saying that continuing damage from such incidences occurs because you willfully retain the feelings (chemistry) associated with the incident. God has given man dominion over the earth. You can choose evil. You can choose good. We can choose God.
Blessing not cursing- these feelings are like bacteria in a wound. Your wounds cannot be healed until the bacteria (negative emotion) is removed. Only you can surrender the feelings and allow God to apply the soap of forgiveness and the healing ointment of faith, hope and love. Reject the negative feelings. These bacteria include pride, sorrow, self-pity, anger, rage, jealousy, envy, depression, fear, anxiety, loneliness, deceit of self and others, lust, lies, greed, and gluttony. When they appear in any form, immediately lay them on the alter to be burned. Reject them out of hand. Cast them out. They are not yours because you choose that they are not yours. God will take them, burn them. You will be freed.
Forgiveness, healing, happens inside yourself. It is from God, for you, because you ask, because you desire it with all your heart. It can not happen if you insist on keeping the envy, hatred, sorrow, pain, anger, resentment, jealousy, envy, lust, deceit, OR FEAR; if you insist on holding any of the negative feelings or actions; if you insist on holding on to your wounds and scars, nurturing your pain. Holding on to these feelings or actions means you are not yet ready to forgive, to be forgiven, or to be whole.
The world contains both good and evil. Evil touches our lives, often on a daily basis. Abuse, be it physical, sexual, or emotional, comes from evil. To the degree we accept within ourselves the evil done to us or by us we are overcome by evil. To the degree we reject the evil done to us or by us we overcome evil with good. This is not heaven, where evil is cast out, but earth and evil is alive and well. We walk here freely, daily binding ourselves to heaven or hell by the choices we make signified by that which we give our attention to, that which we love.
What do you love? Human knowledge? Money? Sex? Power? Appearance? Fame? Success however defined?
23 Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches,
24 but let him who boasts boast about this,: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD. The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, (Jeremiah 9:23-24).
What will you give your time and attention to? What will you boast about? Focus counts.
Fruits of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness
The Deadly Sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride