Memoirs of Forgiveness.

So much of the pain we seek to heal in ourselves and our lives comes down to being able to first forgive ourselves—and then to forgive others.

This is the roadmap to experiencing true forgiveness.

However simple this may sound, it’s not an easy process. It doesn’t just happen because you say that you’ve done it. Most often, you have to do it over and over again. Each time reviewing and rewriting each incidence where the resulting belief caused by the original wound has gotten reinforced.

We all carry some kind of pain inside. It can be hard to touch it at times because we build walls to protect it; we had to do this at some point in order to survive.

When you reflect inward, you most likely notice there are reoccurring themes that repeat over and over—the players change, but the core emotions stay the same. When this is happening, it means some aspect of your energy is stuck in a belief. Maybe you replay your last conversation with a loved one. Maybe you recall something demeaning or hurtful that someone said to you, or the critical voices of your parents. Maybe there was a time you felt alone, scared, or unloveable. Maybe it was the moment someone abused or hurt you. Whatever it is, your task is to identify it and get to know it. To be able to call it by its true name instead of projecting it onto other people or circumstances. This will lead you to that place inside that is most afraid and yet longs to be healed, integrated, and present.

Remember: no one can truly be present when you’re still looking through the lens of your past.

I propose to anyone reading this that a way forward is to explore the process of forgiving by writing letters of forgiveness, first for the things you yourself need to be forgiven for, and then to those who you need to forgive. It doesn’t matter if they are alive or not; this process isn’t about receiving anything in return—that would be more of the same. This practice is not aimed at creating a desired outcome that pleases us; it’s about coming clean inside ourselves. 

This is an invitation to enter into a dialogue with yourself that is rooted in something beyond the ordinary, and it is anchored in the sacred.

There are multiple parts to this process. This work is a ”devotional” attempt to understand these different parts. It is devotional because this, in part, is the purpose of “Memoirs of Forgiveness”—to serve as a collective prayer for forgiveness.

Self-inquiry.

You begin to notice what repeats itself and take accountability for your part. This is a necessary first step. Without this step, we continue to blame others. Where there is blame, there is debt and where there is debt, there cannot be true forgiveness.

It’s not simple, nor black and white, because you must also recognize that there are situations where you have been innocent to our trauma and yet we still must in some way come to peace.

Compassion. 

There is a Buddhist quote that says, “Compassion is the flower and forgiveness is the fragrance of its blossoming.”

When we are able to understand the pain and shadow inside ourselves, we can have empathy for the pain and shadow inside others. When we’re able to see how our own pain body inflicts pain on others, we are able to better understand how it could also have been done to us. When this happens, we begin to feel a sincere desire to be forgiven and then to forgive.

This process of understanding others through honestly observing ourselves is what seeds the roots of compassion.

The unending integration of forgiveness initiates deep ancestral healing. It cleanses the soul.

How we choose to live affects all the beings that have crossed our path. When we have cleared our karma with someone, light fills the stream that passes between us and into the infinite.

This healing spreads.

It spreads from you to the one who hurt you onto the ones who hurt the one who hurt you, and so on.

This is ancestral healing.

Forgiveness is born through understanding the true depth of compassion, and it is the catalyst of grace.

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