forgiving | David M Masters

Forgiveness is the Key

You are the result of a lifetime of abuse and victimization from the sound of your first cry for life until today, you have survived and endured judgment, false accusations, injustice, betrayal, abuse, and trauma. It’s a wonder you’ve made it this far at all.

You are a bundle of emotional wounds and garbage you’ve collected over the course of your life, which explains a lot about who you are and how you respond to the world around you. After all, nobody knows better than you, that you’re the only person you can count on to look after you. This is your primary objective.

You surround yourself with emotional tripwires and landmines to protect yourself and you try to keep all those emotional wounds hidden and suppressed, which is the highest level of self-abuse. All that unresolved trauma compromises your immune system, promotes premature aging, makes you more prone to sickness and disease. If that weren’t enough, is also keeping you separated from all the best things in life.

The fortress you’ve built to protect yourself is nearly impenetrable. You might applaud yourself for doing such a good job of protecting yourself. From inside your fortress you feel safe but if you could see from a higher perspective, you could see you have sentenced yourself to a life in prison of your own making.

Forgiveness is the Key

Forgiveness is the key to unlock every level of containment you’ve subjected yourself to.

There’s no denying the multitude of transgressions you’ve endured. The wounds run so very deep. Your pain, fear, and the repressed anger from the grudges you maintain are weapons of those who hurt you in the first place. They continue to hurt and abuse you every moment that you harbor unforgiveness.

The first thought which you might consider would be to ask the question, “Why would I forgive someone for doing that to me?” and you might rather see them punished for what they did, but contemplating retribution is another way the victimizer continues to have power over his or her victim.

Not only are you a victim of your abuser but you subject yourself to continued self-abuse by second-guessing yourself, and feeling guilty, wondering how you could have let someone do that to you? Setting up emotional blockades and numbing your own emotions so that you can’t be hurt like that again.

Playing the part of the victim does offer you emotional support from others who might feel sorry for you, which helps to ease the pain, but it also cements your position in being continually victimized by your abuser.

Forgiveness Can Set You Free

Forgiveness starts with you. You must forgive yourself first. You are not responsible for any of the emotional pain you’ve endured. You never deserved to be disrespected, mistreated, or abused. You were innocent. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or maybe you suffered the abuse because you were strong enough to take it, like a shock absorber, sparing someone else who could not have survived the abuse.

You cannot control what other people do. You are only in control of your own life and forgiving yourself, absolving yourself from any sense of wrongdoing or deservedness is implicit.

Forgive Them

You are not required to face or confront your aggressor(s), all you need to do is to realize that these people were only doing the best they could with what they had at the time. Just as you were only doing the best you could with what you had at that time.

You might even offer up a little empathy, that had you lived that person’s life, you might have committed the same atrocities.

Forgive them. Forgiving them is not about them at all, it’s more about you forgiving them so that you can go on with your life without them continually exerting additional abuse to you over time.

Your forgiveness is complete, when you can look back at the episode without pain, guilt, or anger, and can truly hope that he or she finds his or her own way to claim a better life for themselves in love, without having to strike out at others anymore.

You can learn the lessons from your past without having to carry around all that emotional baggage. No need to seclude yourself deep within your fortress.

You can be free, and forgiveness is the key.

The Freedom Weapon

There is a force so powerful that it tears down the prison walls that keep us contained, locked down, and isolated from the best thing this life has to offer. So powerful is this weapon that it could easily explode destroying the person who attempted to deploy it, so it must be wielded skillfully, if you want to be free of the chains that bind you.

This weapon is activated not from an external power source, but can only be ignited with the love from your heart to start the reaction that will set you safely free. This is hard work, and you have all the skills and equipment necessary to fire off this powerful weapon, at great risk to you.

It will cost you your ego, the holding tight to something that the primal part of you feels is so important, but this only promotes the virus that grows inside you, overtaking all your cells, resulting in your completion of your death sentence while imprisoned. Finding your way out of this prison is your only hope for escape and possibility of positive life outside these walls, where lays the chance of living a full, free life of love, fulfillment and happiness.

But you have to willing to let go and be willing to use

The Freedom Weapon

The freedom weapon is forgiveness. Forgiveness, fueled by love can take out, decimate and eliminate everything that stands between where you are and where you want to be, if what you want is to live a long, healthy and happy life, free from your emotional prison.

On the other side of the walls of unforgiveness, we are able to see life as it really is. Shocking as it may be, once you are there, you become the designer, architect, builder and decorator of your new life of freedom.

There is little more uncomfortable or painful of letting go of what you’ve let encase you in negative states of victimization, guilt, depression, dissention, resentment and anger.

Dare to Forgive

Finding yourself on the other side of forgiveness, your life as a victim ceases. You let go of your need to control that which is beyond your control, are able to see the world from outside yourself and accept the ingredients offered to you by life. In your imprisoned state, the ingredients may look like a pile of rubbish, but to the freedom chef, the most magnificent four course meal or unlimited buffet can be made from the same ingredients.

This is the difference between unforgiveness and forgiveness.

If you feel like life, someone, or something is out to get you prior to forgiving, afterwards you are empowered to see it more like a game, and when you see someone or something coming at you, you can smile, twist and with the most simple movements and gestures, deflect your attacker, disarming and disempowering them. It’s like emotional kung fu. You allow the energy of others be their own undoing as it has little effect on you.

You can now see these people, situations and circumstances for what they are, and might be surprised that you can have empathy or understanding for their need to act out in such a way, feeling sorry for them, or loving them for the unfortunate life they have chosen to live.

You become lovingly courageous and unafraid in this state of forgiveness. You are able to breathe easier, enjoy greater health and vitality, even surrounded by a world lost to this idea of freedom.

This is part of the deep inner work, but it is worth it.

Your forgiveness opens the doorway to a new world of possibilities filled with love and adventure and brings your wildest dreams within your reach.

Forgiveness releases you from your own prison, where a better life awaits your arrival on the other side of these walls.

The Basis of True Forgiveness

Forgiving others is frightening business of your deep work. It’s like it just doesn’t make sense because we are programmed to live in a society where fear and the concept of punishment is prevalent. We are constantly in fear of what someone might do to us that might make us sad, be disrespectful, offensive or painful and feel as though the only thing that could possibly make things right would be punishing the offender or making them suffer for their misdeeds.

This has been a constant method of thinking that has been prevalent since as far back as mankind can remember (or at least document). This pervasive sense of crime and punishment has permeated all facets of social life including governmental at all levels from local community to the world, exclusive groups and religions, and right down to work and familial life. So, it’s no surprise when someone hurts you, all you want is retribution or revenge. They must pay for their sins.

The this crazy thing happened a couple of thousand years ago, when someone manned up in the most peculiar way that started a change in how people thought about how to react when someone treats you poorly, does something really bad, or hurts you Including breaking any of the ten commandments. This was a crazy idea at the time and not well received at the time, until after he sealed the idea by signing a record breaking decree issued from the highest court with his own life’s blood.

This was not just about forgiving others for their transgressions against you and me, this idea of forgiveness is uncompromising and far reaching to not only those who have offended us, but also to you and me, giving us a chance to live a life unbridled by any punishment for any thoughts or deeds that may haunt us from our own lives… even our deepest and darkest secrets hidden within us.

We honor the price paid for this comprehensive idea of forgiveness today. As tragic as the entire affair was at the time, we refer to it as Good Friday, because for us:

How More Blessed Could We Be?

By receiving a royal invitation to start life over, every day, free from self-deprecation or fear of punishment for any bad thoughts, wrongs or misdeeds ever possibly conceived of. Instantly, all wiped away in a complete rebooting, like the ultimate Ctrl-Alt-Delete. For those who accept this free gift can begin every day clean and anew.

So, this 2000-year-old event which was meant for evil/punishment for crimes committed against the status quo, turned out to be one of the most significant events promoting a massive pivot in this sense of a newfound freedom from fear or sin and punishment.

Of course, even after 2,000 years, we still struggle with the idea as we still feel like people who offend us or do not conform to the status quo are punished and we cannot seem to find new way to punish and incarcerate them at a rapid enough rate. Rationally, the pendulum has swung so far that the idea of forgiveness is the furthest thing from our minds or societal structure.

Think about it: If we keep throwing people in jail or prison at the current rate of growth of the prison population, in 35 years