The blog
thoughts from me to you
Forgiveness in ACIM
The clearest explanation of the problem with forgiveness – from my ACIM teacher @jenniferhelenhadley :
Who taught you how to forgive?
What did they teach you?
How did they teach you?
Most of us were taught forgiveness from our family. And many of those who taught us taught us that forgiveness means you’re tired of being upset, and you don’t want to torture yourself anymore, but you’re never going to forget what happened. But that’s not true forgiveness. That’s fantasy forgiveness. And without true forgiveness there’s no way you’ll ever feel free and be able to stop the suffering and move on.
In order to understand what true forgiveness is, it helps to understand what forgiveness is not.
Forgiveness isn’t saying “I forgive” and still holding onto your opinions about what happened the past.
Forgiveness isn’t saying that what happened is okay and you don’t mind that it happened.
Forgiveness isn’t opening yourself to further hurt and betrayal.
Forgiveness isn’t something you can do with your intellect.
Forgiveness isn’t pretending that what happened didn’t hurt, or bother you.
Forgiveness isn’t just keeping calm and carrying on.
And most especially, forgiveness isn’t looking at something devastating and destructive that happened, labeling it bad and horrible and then saying “I forgive.” That’s insanity. It’s false just like the little child who says “I hate you” to his parent, but doesn’t mean it for one second. They’re just upset with what happened, they feel attacked, and their interpretation of what happened (that they were were attacked) justifies their retaliation. That’s the immature, ignorant and painful way of the world.
True forgiveness isn’t labeling something bad and wrong and then saying “I forgive it.”
That’s self-delusion.
When you say “I forgive” and it still bothers you, then you know for sure that you are clinging to your interpretation of what occurred. We cling to our opinions and judgment, our labels of things because we made them. Again, this is what children do. They hold onto something so tightly and they project their interpretation onto every subsequent similar experience.
Cont. In comments
Your heart
Your heart does not care what recognition you get for your helping. It doesn’t care what you look like when you do it, how much credibility you have or get, how much you get paid for it, or who will notice you do it. It knows that we can only truly give without attachment when we love ourselves, because we are one, and so to give IS to receive.
Your opportunity might not show up in the way your ego wanted or expected. It might not come in the form of a dream job or a volunteer opportunity at an elephant sanctuary.
But it will come, and your heart will know that this will help you, as well as others. Don’t dismiss the seemingly small opportunities to be helpful, they are what change the world
Synchronicity
I’m feeling incredibly grateful today, not just because I’m being given more and more evidence that if I just surrender, get out of my own way and stop trying to control the ‘how’, everything I need will be provided for me, but also because SO many of my clients have, completely unprompted, started asking me about metaphysics, the law of attraction, A Course In Miracles, spirituality, psychedelics for mental health and all the other things I am super passionate about practising and learning about.
I work with people from all backgrounds and beliefs, and love supporting people where they are, without any need to try to influence them. Many of my clients who don’t follow me on social media have no idea of my interests and beliefs. So I absolutely love it when I get a sign from the Universe that more people are tuning into how much better it feels to lead with love, rather than fear, and are being guided to their own tools and resources to help them with that path, outside of our work together
I will know
I will know the truth when my only motivation is to be truly helpful.
I will know that I am fully supported when I turn my focus from my outside perception of the world to my inner world.
When I recognise that I have everything I need in this moment, and trust that everything is exactly as it is supposed to be, will I know peace.
When I know peace, I can share peace.
Peace is available to me in every moment.
This is the only moment
Support
As she turned her attention away from what she needed to do to get what she thought she wanted, and instead directed her focus on to the individual small steps that she was guided to take in order to be truly helpful, something miraculous happened.
She was reminded, once again, as she was every time she detoured from the path and found her way back, that she had always been, was and would always be, provided for. There was no need to worry, no need to try to figure things out, and the more she struggled, the more she would experience struggle.
When she allowed herself to surrender, to rest in love for herself and the world, when she forgave herself for trying to do everything herself and ignoring her small, kind voice of inner guidance, she was granted the feeling of peace she hadn’t realised she was missing, and followed her nudges to places where things fell into perfect place without any effort on her part. These places allowed her to feel truly valued, truly valuable, truly loved, and truly peaceful.
It doesn’t matter how many times you mis-step, you can always give up struggling and allow yourself to float and be held by the Universe. You are always supported. There is nothing you cannot come back from. We all have a choice – we can run the uphill race to the top of an imaginary ‘success’ mountain, or we can tune in, let go of thinking we know the best way, and allow the still small voice of our heart to lead us to somewhere far better than we could have ever imagined
*LOW COST COACHING OPPORTUNITY*
*LOW COST COACHING OPPORTUNITY*
Some of you may know that I am in the process of gaining the ICF credential for my coaching work. This is no mean feat and requires a lot of time and investment on my part, including completion of a certain number of logged (not recorded) hours coaching genuine clients.
As this has coincided with the COVID-19 outbreak and the stress many of us are feeling as our lives change, I have decided to offer either one-off sessions or a course of life coaching sessions at a massively discounted rate. My hope is that this will serve both of us powerfully – you get transformational coaching to help you achieve your potential and move you forward in whatever area of your life you are currently feeling stuck, and I get to log my client hours quickly, in a way that feels supportive of our global community during a time of crisis.
If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, please comment below or send me a DM and we can go from there.
I’m offering these sessions for £20 (around $25) each instead of the usual rate of £111.
I look forward to supporting you 💕
Grey
There is grey here. There are so many unknowns and my brain just wants to be pointed in a direction with a clear goal and told to go. Run with it. Go ‘do’. And yet, here we are, in the grey. Where there is no alignment in one particular direction, and where creating boundaries and fences and rules for myself won’t help my fundamental uncomfortableness with this situation.
Here, is an invitation to sit. To not do. To not constrict, and restrict, but to expand, to create opportunity, to allow more in, rather than block more out.
Here is where we meet the grey.
Here is where we make our choice – to run, or to stay.
To choose the unknown with an open heart, and ask it what is has to teach us, or to run blindly away and hope we already know best.
I am choosing to stay. I am choosing to sit with the grey and see what happens. I want to know what it has to teach me. Do you?
I am fully supported
I am fully supported.
I lived in fear for most of my life.
I had developed such a sense of lack in my life that even though I always had clean clothes and food to eat, I was acutely aware that it could all be taken away in an instant. I ‘knew’ money didn’t grow on trees and you had to work hard for everything you got. I ‘knew’ that even if I did that, there were no guarantees so I had to squirrel and save and never enjoy myself too much in case that somehow made me greedy and my happiness or support or money would be taken away.
I learned this as a fact. It was a belief that I felt kept me safe for years. Until I realised that it didn’t.
It gave me the impression of safety, whilst keeping me trapped in a prison of my own making. It stopped me achieving my potential, being vulnerable and connecting with others fully, because I was scared the world was out to get me, and I had to watch my back.
Changing those beliefs took a long time. It took many books, many courses, many teachers. I still drop into lack thoughts every now and again. The last couple of weeks tested me. And yet, I PROMISE YOU, it is worth it.
The thing is, if something doesn’t feel good, if it doesn’t nourish your soul and give you a sense of peace and purpose, you get to change how you think and feel about it. You have that power.
If something doesn’t feel good, there’s a belief or judgement or opinion – a meaning you’re making of it – that is coming from a place of fear, lack or attack. You can release that and ask to see with love and abundance instead.
Your choice. I can only tell you that when I notice that feeling of fear, of worry, and I consciously shift my thinking to one of being fully supported, and not having to know HOW I will be supported, I am always supported. Money always comes. Opportunities always come. Friends always come. Everything always works out.
If you’d like a coach and accountability partner to help you make love and abundance your regular state of being, send me a DM and let’s talk x
Saying the wrong thing
Don’t be afraid to say the wrong thing.
Sometimes we can let fear dictate our voices. We close down our thinking and our feeling because, ultimately, we don’t trust ourselves with the truth of our whole being, of the shadow parts and the parts we feel shame or guilt around. We fear how others may receive us, meaning we fear that part in ourselves.
We are rejecting ourselves in a time when everything we knew has shifted, and the only constant is the unknown.
There is no wrong or right here. There is only truth. We can choose to be discerning with how we share it, how we express it, but it is here regardless. We cannot change it, nor suppress it, just make our home within it. We can become comfortable with the truth of who we are, all of us.
I am inviting you to use this opportunity to accept the parts of yourself you have spent so long trying to run away from or avoid: the parts you thought were no good or broken, and the parts you thought no-one could love. EVERY part of you is lovable. You are NOT broken. You are whole and have unlimited potential. I believe in you.
Ask yourself what needs to move in order for you to love yourself, and if you need support, please reach out and ask – I’m offering on-going support via instant message, video and audio notes and am finding it such an incredible way to facilitate growth and support healing with my clients