grudge | David M Masters

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.

Maintaining unforgiveness in your heart anchors you to the past and prevents you from moving on in your life. Remaining in the state of unforgiveness, or holding a grudge for something in the past, promotes a negative vibration. Chronic unforgiveness can prevent you from ever experiencing true joy, while forfeiting all the good things this life is holding for you.

It takes a great deal of effort to remain focused on something that happened in the past, and if you get accustomed to remaining in this negative vibration, you solidify your victimization holding and embracing fear-based emotions of resentment, retribution, and unhappiness. After a while you can become emotionally numb, incapable of ever experiencing joy.

On the other hand, if you can find the ability to forgive someone or something that has harmed you in the past, you release all these negative connections, breaking the power of these invisible chains from causing you further pain and suffering. This leaves your heart in a permeable and open state ready to experience all the good things in life.

It’s not enough just to speak words of forgiveness, you must do the inner work of letting go to truly forgive, releasing the grip that unforgiveness has on you. This is the only way to prevent yourself from psychological deterioration due to increased levels of stress, frustration and anxiety leading to the inability to feel good about yourself. As you further isolate yourself from otherwise positive states of mind, you will find yourself feeling ashamed, lonely and falling into deeper states of depression.

Your ego insists on harboring unforgiveness and wants to seek revenge, so it will be interrupting your otherwise healthy state of mind, reminding you about this thing that happened to you in the past, and every time your mind is quickened by these thoughts, you revisit the pain associated with this event in your past.

Unforgiveness is self-destructive, reduces your immune system and promotes the erosion of your otherwise healthy physiological state. People who hold grudges are more likely to suffer negative health ramifications of unforgiveness including, but not limited to, the deterioration of brain cells, ulcers, and promotes the growth of cancer.

Unforgiveness is the cause for up to 80% of the strife and disease suffered by the majority of us. So isn’t it about time you thought about forgiving and inviting love to come into your life?

Guard your heart and mind against the negative state of unforgivness by learning to forgive and let go. And remember this: Forgiveness is not for the person who wronged you, it is not approving of their behavior or endorsing them in any way. Forgiveness is for you. You forgive them, so they no longer have control of your thoughts and declining health conditions.

Forgiveness empowers you to get back in the driver’s seat of your life.

How can I forgive the unforgiveable?

It may not be a once-and-for-all type of forgiveness for you; it may take time and a concerted effort on your part to wrap your head and heart around the idea. It is a process. But as you find ways to hone your skills of forgiveness, you will be able to actually feel the results of your letting go.

You’re holding space in your thoughts for the good things in life, the things that bring you joy and your body feels increasingly better with every passing day, because you’re casting off the negativity of unforgiveness and making room for love in your life.

To really forgive someone means you can look back on the person or incident without pain or anger. To accomplish this, you must face your fears head-on. Get to the bottom of these emotions, identifying the transgression in detail. Be brutally honest and don’t try to sugar coat it. It may be helpful to write it out in detail.

Then try to look at it from another perspective, using your imagination, see why the transgression may have made sense from a different perspective.

Seeing the transgression from another point of view, outside of yourself, will have you well positioned to forgive and let it go. As much accustomed to the guilt and pain as you have become up until this point, you realize in order to have any sense of happiness or ability to enjoy life, you must let it go.

Forgive and let it go.

Gather up your self-respect and move away from this event and find new ways to let love into your life.