Positive Energy Guide

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill

With respect to Life Purpose, it is natural to consider not only what we want to GET from life, but what we can bring to it. Giving allows us to receive in special ways that put us more deeply in touch with our values, qualities, and other people.

How and why we give is a window to motivation—and to Purpose. What do you enjoy contributing? What does it do for you to contribute?

Like so many essential life skills, learning what and when to give depends on sensing inside ourselves.

Once we are able to tune in to our inner voices and body sensations, we can sense inside whether or not we are called to contribute in any given moment. Learning to notice this call is crucial to spiritual and emotional health. The same skill tells us where we need our boundaries to be in any moment or situation.

Knowing how much to give and being comfortable with our decisions makes for ease and clarity in personal relationships. It allows us to feel good about our contributions instead of feeling like we can never give enough to be acceptable, or that we might be selfish and insular.

Most of us over-give, under-give, or both in different situations. Balanced giving builds self-esteem, boundaries, spiritual values, and the wonderful feeling of Purpose and meaning that accompany heartfelt contribution.

Giving for the wrong reasons interferes with the ability to be on track with Life Purpose.

Giving to appease, please, or protect ourselves from criticism is toxic to Purpose. Over-giving tends to oblige and bind others. It is usually about control, and is therefore detrimental to intimacy. Over-giving is draining. Bleeding out energy to “contribute” to people who are not receptive is invasive.

Giving too little can lead to feeling small, stingy, disconnected, meaningless, emotionally impoverished, hard, and/or defensive.

If you over-give:

• Try altering the way that you give, even just a bit.
• Try giving different things or in different ways than you usually do.
• Change WHEN you give, even by a few minutes or seconds.
• Give to different recipients, even once.
• The feelings and insights that accompany these changes will enable you to explore your patterns gently.

If you under-give:

• Catch yourself at moments during when you are withholding or resist giving.
• Pay close attention to what you feel at these moments.
• Listen closely to your internal dialog. What is the nature of your conflict? What motivates each side of the conflict? How do your feelings change with each side? Which side do you like better?
• Try giving just a little bit more is comfortable, like stretching tight muscles. This can feel freeing and oddly relieving, and it gets more interesting as you practice.

Over- and under-givers:

• Study your discomfort, consider what you get when you give.
• What are you trying to preserve and why?
• Has your life changed since you began these patterns?
• How would giving differently impact your life?

Once you are in touch with and have done some regular work with your patterns you will be able to bypass all this by simply turning to your heart and going by what FEELS right in the moment.

What if who you need to be to live your Life Purpose requires being able to sense exactly who you really are, what motivates you, and what you can and cannot give?

What if success is measured not by external goals but by giving exactly the right amount in any situation, from nothing at all to your entire life?

How would this model of success change what you do or how you live?

How do you sense what is called for from you?

What happens when you shift your aim from trying to succeed to making a contribution?

Are your goals, dreams, and motivations inspired by heartfelt values or motivated by buried emotional issues?

What if you are already lovable, worthwhile, and even precious, without having to prove anything to anyone? If you knew this to be true–and could feel it–how would this impact what you feel you need to do in the world?

The nature and fruits of our influence in the world depends on our values. Goals and dreams are constellations of our values. Values are like the stars we use to navigate the ocean of our lives. Without values we are rudderless, driven by compulsions and the winds of momentary desire.

Purpose embodies motivation. What motivates you?

Several years back, in an email conversation within a spiritual group, one guy was avidly pushing his philosophy that spiritual values require political action. Tension grew as several people politely tried to say that not everyone was politically motivated. The political guy kept pushing.

I sensed frustration and even anger behind people’s indirect responses. I finally jumped in and wrote: Politics is divisive. Spirituality promotes unity. If you are spiritually inspired to involve yourself in politics it is your duty to do so. If you are not, your time is better spent contributing in other ways.

The tension released and I received some ‘thank yous.’

Let me clarify here and say that voting, and other societal duties are in a different category from Life Purpose. You vote. You get license tabs on your vehicle. You do not confuse this with Life Purpose. Taking an active stand in the world for a cause requires passion, purpose, and involvement. You may find Purpose in such expression. Such Purpose may or may not feel spiritual to you, depending on your values and approach. This is a highly individual matter.

To know our own values as pure sources of guidance we must lift them up and clean them off. Practice washing away these sources of confusion:

• Other people’s values including parents, siblings, spouse, friends
• Conditioned social “values” based on competition, superficial circumstances and material gains that have no special meaning for you personally
• Reactions and compulsions such as greed, lust, excessive concepts about security
• The need to prove yourself worthy
• Reactions AGAINST, such as proving you are NOT what a parent or teacher thought you were

Values change as we develop. Updating our concept of success and our sense of purpose as we grow supports living motivation.

What do you value now that you did not feel strongly about before?

Motivational speakers often say, “never give up and never quit.” It is one thing to give up and quite another to discover that a goal no longer suits us or feels appropriate. Killing yourself off to make something happen may occur at the cost of your happiness and health. Whether or not the goal is worth this use of your life depends whether the goal is truly your Life Purpose. Pay attention when the exertions necessary for success begin to turn you or your life into something you don’t wish to sustain.

This quote from my third spiritual teacher remains apropos:
“If it is your highest option to become a spiritual teacher and you become a garbage man, you have wasted your life.” He paused and added, “If it is your highest option to become a garbage man and you become a spiritual teacher you’ve wasted your life as well.”

Some people have destinies that require global involvement. Some people are envious of these people. Such envy is rarely tempered by understanding the burdens, sacrifices, and discipline such a life requires.

I believe that we are drawn from within and prompted by our environment when we have big work to do in the world. Pushing ourselves into positions of prominence for personal reasons rarely leads to happiness.

As we develop spiritually and open our hearts we are more likely to be inspired to contribute to humanity through service. Inspiration to serve can stem from a felt sense of being connected with others.

Following inspiration develops qualities of the heart and provides the personality with ample opportunities for growth. The motive force behind this impulse differs from a desire to be in the limelight and to find personal importance through leaving one’s mark upon life.

What if your ability to be in touch with yourself and to know yourself and your values is THE MOST important purpose in your life?

The discomfort of longing for meaning and Purpose has great value if it can get you to explore who you really are and what you really need.

What types of experience bring you meaning?

What experiences make you feel connected with yourself and with life itself?

Self-possession is a particular quality of Presence. The state of self-possession naturally expresses boundaries, a sense of dignity, and the ability to feel emotionally safe around others. When we know who we are and where we are, we define ourselves rather than letting other people define us.

Here is a story I shared that was helpful to a client learning to stay present with her feelings in group situations:

Historically I felt unrecognized in groups and found myself being shut down by the leaders when I spoke out. During a ten-day partly-Zen retreat I practiced sitting in my body and sensing while my inner wounds were active, instead of pulling away through action or distraction. The next time I became triggered in a group setting I was able to stay present. This means that I maintained body-awareness and awareness of my surroundings instead of going off in my head or being lost in the emotions that came up.

I made what I thought was a useful comment in the group. The leader abruptly and intentionally cut me off. Since I was Present, I noticed that the first three words of my comment made it seem like I was speaking about a specific person.

In the past I might have found myself spacing out while helpless, frustrated thoughts arose, disconnecting me from the group. Confident that I could stay with and support myself inside if I were to feel hurt, I stuck around. I restated my comment, leaving the out three words that may have caused misinterpretation. Instead of seeing the group like blobs in chairs like we do when lost in thought, I looked around and noticed that eyes in the group were supporting me.

Turning to the leader I said, “I think this comment is appropriate for our context.” My body language made my statement a respectful question. I remained open to her input so she would still be in control of the group. This respect for the group and her leadership gave her room to agree, and she did.

When we cannot stay Present with our experience and we check out, other people sense the energy of our distress. If they are sensitive to energy they may feel this distress as their own, and think it is theirs. The distress in the room can become magnified like a hall of mirrors. In discomfort, they may shut down to us–as we have already shut down to them by checking out.

Trying to compensate for the discomfort of feeling too open to energy creates a paradoxical state in which one is too open in some ways and too closed in others at the same time. Going head-on into the distress, grounding and balancing, and making a statement that addresses your interests or needs brings clarity back into the room.

Uncomfortable situations can transform us once if we can define, communicate, and address our needs. This starts by staying with discomfort and feeling where it goes in your body. By surrendering resistance to the discomfort, we become able to drawn on resources that allow us to break new ground.

What type of situation challenges your boundaries?
What do you need to embrace in yourself to face that situation fully, without pulling away or shutting down?

Being comfortable and clear relies on knowing where we start and stop, what is part of us and what is not, which feelings and sensations originate with us and which come from other people or events. The more intuitive we are the harder it is to make this call.

Mystics experience all life as one. The psychologist Jung coined the term “collective unconscious,” where personal experience merges into what is essentially the group mind of all of us together

The more expanded your awareness the harder it can be to tell your own cup of water from the ocean. In actuality, water that runs through us has been in many different people, places, plants, periods of time, and life forms. We now call the water and minerals of our bodies “I.” Atoms jump in and out and energy interpenetrates us in the sea of greater-than-self awareness.

The task of knowing who we are involves being able to sort out different levels of awareness. Telling our bodies apart is easy. Sorting my feelings out from your feelings can be easy or hard, depending on early experiences, how similar we are, and other factors. The mind world is a stickier wicket. If you’ve ever had the same dream a friend had on the same night you have an idea how hard it can be to sort out mind from mind.

The most distinctly personal levels of our minds have a distinct and separate energy frequency or signature that identifies us to ourselves and to those who can identify persons through the energy of their thoughts. Advanced Intuitives and those who are trained in Remote Viewing, for example, have this skill.

Transpersonal levels of mind are more diffuse. The thoughts of everyone are out there in the mind-cloud of general human awareness and can jump from mind to mind. In Family Constellation/ Reconstruction sessions, where group members agree to represent one person’s relatives, it is not unusual for participants to temporarily express very specific emotions and physical symptoms of persons they know next to nothing about. This is exemplifies transpersonal experience. The group mind allows for transfer of information without words.

Boundary confusion STARTS WITH energy. Energy is not a woo-woo abstraction. Energy is a real part of the non-verbal communication that actually occurs during events when boundary issues begin. When a parent or family member invades a child through inappropriate acts, for example, the energy part of the communication actually enters the fields or body of that child. This type of energy is stick and hard to throw back out because the child cannot tell who it belongs to, owning it. This is one major cause of issues with boundaries.

Boundaries are primarily about sensing/knowing what is yours and what is not. This especially includes knowing what you are and are not responsible for causing or creating. Taking inappropriate responsibility for the feelings of someone who is attempting to manipulate you emotionally is an example of boundary confusion. You do not cause their emotions and you are not responsible for stopping them. They are. You ARE responsible for finding an effective and preferably respectful way to get away, and for taking care of your own emotional needs. Your need to be liked, for example, must not overpower your need for safety.

Making sure to be consistently authentic is an act of healing if you have any issues with boundaries. This minimizes giving yourself away to try and please others, second-guessing them, or otherwise getting them in your space and you in theirs. State straight out what you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with, respectfully, and work out positive solutions that work for everyone whenever you can. Challenges can often be used to hone new skills.

“Boundaries” is another word for self-possession. Self-possession is a fascinating term if you think about like this: If you are in possession of yourself, nothing else can possess you. When you are fully in your body and in touch with your feelings, energy that does not belong to you passes through but does not take up residence.

Do you ever get confused about what is YOU and what is someone else?
What types of energy do you get confused with?
What kinds of actions help you sort yourself out?

A world of difference exists between living in your head and sensing. Sensing–attending to the flow of guidance received through your body–supports constructive responses to emotions and energies from moment to moment.

Disconnecting from the body makes us ever so much more susceptible to external influences and energies. It lays us open to them like an empty house with the doors open. When we are not fully Present our energies become less organized, focused, and clearly-patterned. This alters the function of our meridians, organs, chakras, and energy fields. Such disorganization makes us both more sensitive to external energies and simultaneously less able to take actions that increase our comfort.

Noticing feelings, emotions and needs begins with sensing feeling in the body. Getting Present allows our body to give us information about what we need, our minds to interpret this information and conceive self-soothing ideas, and our emotions to calm down and smooth out. Then our energy becomes more robust and solid around us and we are less vulnerable to external influences.

Spacing out or numbing out makes our energy fields porous and wispy, and can cause holes in them. Disowned emotions stick in the fields and attract discordant energies from the environment, like lint to Velcro.

Being IN and WITH the body and getting really healthy makes it easier and less painful to manage intense energies and emotions. Drugs, alcohol, non-present sexual encounters, media addiction, eating disorders, unexpressed emotion etc. monopolize space, time, energy and attention that can otherwise be used to actually address discomfort. When we numb ourselves we cut off the signals that provide effective guidance and direction.

Mastering reactions instead of running from them builds up power and energy for constructive change.

Impact, traction, power, influence, and clarity draw from Being Here fully; Presence. We begin to find words for our experiences and it becomes much easier to ask for what we want and need, like asking someone to listen or asking for some space.

Presence is the first step. When boundary issues (confusion about what is who’s) arise, there ARE more steps to take to get to personal power and clarity. Checking to make sure we are sticking around is good to do between each step. Presence is an end in itself.

Post #3 is an esoteric view of why boundaries can be confusing to intuitive people, and how boundary confusion can lead to picking up external energies.

Please share this post with those who will find these reflections useful.

What would You be empowered to do if you could manage your discomfort with compassion?
Have you ever noticed that when you go straight into your pain that it begins to dissolve?

My ebook—see cover on the right sidebar—goes into detail about managing sensitivity to energy.

This post series speaks to learning to manage sensitivity to energy. Presence and Boundaries are cornerstones of this skill. You have to BE HERE to make a boundary.

The more able we are to be Present and the better we know ourselves, the easier it is to deal with energy we find uncomfortable to experience. If we are honest with ourselves and pay attention we will find that when we absent ourselves in some way through distraction, dissociation, or diversion, we do so because we feel uncomfortable. Often some feeling we don’t like is trying to surface into awareness. We stop it by checking out.

Being comfortable feeling our discomfort is a big key to being able to stick around in the here-now moment no matter what we feel. Although counterintuitive, this skill forms a foundation for learning to manage our own energy. Once we can stay present with our own, we begin to be able to sort it out from external influences.

Bell Rock Vortex

Allowing and observing discomfort instead of trying to escape from it is a very Zen kind of practice. It is the foundation of quite a few types of foundational spiritual work. Basic self-observation—sticking around and noticing what is going on—is also key to numerous therapeutic and healing techniques.

Let’s discuss what it takes to become more comfortable with discomfort.

In response to my Post Series about feeling the energy of the world, one brave man wrote: “I do feel the energy of the world, and it bothers me sometimes. All the unrest in the Middle East caused all sorts of funny energies, restless energies to hit me. I can also feel the energy of some people around me. I just don’t quite know what to do with it, how to process these energies. It is things like that which makes me need to numb myself unfortunately.” (Quoted and responded to with permission.)

I would like especially to address those of you seek ways to “numb out” when energy gets intense and those of you who get confused about what is and is not your responsibility. The common link here is that you need to be more Present in your body. This previous 3-post blog defines and also discusses “being in your body.” (Scroll part way down that page.)

Being in your body is fundamental to being Present, and to having effective boundaries. In order to keep from getting confused about what energy, emotions and thoughts are yours and which ones come from other people or events, you need to learn to clearly and distinctly feel and identify your own sensations and emotions.

Body sensations are the easiest place to start. These sensations change with each emotion, and when we get connected with different types of energy. It’s important to have a solid baseline of sensory experience so you can begin to tell what is yours. Again, this begins by sticking around.

Dissociation or disconnection from parts of ourselves—physical, emotional, thought, or energy—is a defense against pain. But when we abandon or fragment ourselves we cannot effectively nurture ourselves and minister effectively to this pain. The survival tool of pulling away is not so useful for sticking around and doing repair. Being Present helps us to learn when to physically withdraw, and to make new, more-effective responses to our needs.

Setting boundaries means recognizing your discomfort and being able to make decisions that are healthy for you; staying whole when things happen.

Post #2 will begin to explore constructive responses to emotions, sensations, and energies.

What do YOU notice about how you respond to discomfort?
Can you stay Present and feel it, or do you find a way to avoid your feelings and sensations?

This post suggests compassionate responses and actions we can take to stay balanced during times of major change:

Don’t take the ambient energy personally. Ambient energy comes from the physics that CAUSE earth changes AND from the collective response. By ambient energy I mean the energy currently circulating around in the collective. You know—the energy-aftermath from the feelings the news stirs up.

Less obvious and even more important is the energy OF the ACTUAL events the news is ABOUT. Energy generated by people in distress ricochets around the earth like a rock in a pond or an earthquake causing a tsunami and moving continents.

Do explore what is going on with you personally and the issues that arise inside, and address them. Take care not to add anything to them. The intensity that fuels your reactions may have little to do with you. (See Post #3 in series.)

Learn to take internal trauma with a grain of salt—even while you validate and honor its origins. Neutral observation brings balance. (See Inner Work series.)

Seek to participate in fully in transformation during times of trauma. Whether or not the PURPOSE of trauma is transformation, positive participation alleviates stress by conferring a measure of, if not actual control, constructive direction.

Take a longer-range view. Look beyond the last few days and weeks to note with compassion that we’re in the middle of a very long grind. We habituate to this stress mentally, and take it for granted. Our emotional and physical energies adjust more slowly, while fast-moving effects build over time.

Accept your discomfort. Grasping for joy and trying to push away discomfort digs us in deeper. It sets up a series of reactions that make authentic joy harder to access. Be with What IS as you take actions that nurture greater comfort.

Extend compassion to the parts of yourself that feel traumatized by the level of change occurring.

Surrender to the fact that change is inevitable, and seek to surf with it. Resistance drains you and keeps you stuck. Find ways to create benefit, even through loss.

Ask for divine assistance–not to GET something but to BECOME all you can be.

Do your Inner Work (Link).

Use the energy of change to transform yourself and your life by considering positive outcomes. Use any disruption you feel and your concerns about the future to motivate constructive action, personally and in service. Make a concerted effort to recreate your life while things are in a state of flux anyway.

• How would you like to emerge?
• What do you need to release or tear down to make way for a better situation?
• What can you free yourself from or give away?
• What do you need to be independent of to be happy?

Contemplate the freedoms that come with loss. Also contemplate the types of freedom inherent within commitment, the things you can express and accomplish.

Deal with any lingering dissatisfaction and your fears of going away from familiar structures and situations.

Make moment-to-moment choices that are consistent with you where you want to go.

Take responsibility–by staying as present as possible to your authentic experience.

Find practical ways to reduce overwhelm:

• put self-care at the top of your list
• set clear priorities
• revamp boundaries to fit current circumstances
• take time to relax
• spend time in nature
• exercise
• notice if listening to the news becomes too much
• take care of your spirit

Avoid random action rooted in restlessness.

Make changes based on true preference. Changes made to avoid discomfort can land you in another form of discomfort somewhere else. Impatience without a solid direction is just undirected energy.

Give energy a positive direction. If you do not have a clear sense of direction, focus on building clarity and developing lucid intention.

How do YOU manage the energy of change?
Which aspects of you adjust quickly and which ones get stuck?
What do you do when external energies become intense?

Times of change are exciting and invigorating to the extent that we use them to make meaningful discoveries, adjustments, and connections with others. The ways we respond to change depend at least as much on how we position ourselves internally as it does on our life situation.

Using the energy of change to transform depends on the way we manage our moment-to-moment experience.

How do we get from living our lives like business-as-usual to engaging fully with profound change? Strong energy signals that wake us up to the possibility or necessity of change usually take the form of some type of discomfort. These signals alert us that something different is going on. How we experience, embrace and respond to these signals is paramount. If we ignore, misinterpret, or shut them down we cannot use them for intentional transformation. Change will still occur, but with less awareness. We have more choice and possibility when we put ourselves in concert with the changes.

One way that intuitively sensitive people get clear is to ask ourselves: “What is my own in the energy, and what belongs outside of me?”

This is a great place to start when we feel strange. It is, however, easy to misinterpret uncomfortable sensations from the outer world as some sort of energy invasion. When world changes are intense, the energy fields around our bodies go through changes too. And why not? The relationship of the earth itself to its magnetic poles changed a bit with the tsunami. The government has had to change GPS settings. We really aren’t separate from all that.

Initially, during intense world changes, when I felt the fields around my body going through strange changes I had to really pause and evaluate what was happening. Like others experienced in working with energy, I went through a mental checklist to rule out common types of energy interference. I’m talking about the kinds of influence sensitive people take on from others. For example, when someone is throwing anger at you from a distance, pulling on your energy out of neediness, or projecting onto you issues they are unable to acknowledge in themselves, you may sense this energy coming at you and feel invaded. Even those who are fairly skilled may not find it easy to check our own subtle energy when our energy systems are compromised.

After ruling out the usual suspects I discovered that the fields around me were going through the equivalent of being stretched and thinned in places and pulled different ways, like a pizza crust in the hands of a chef.

As we become more sensitive and also more connected with the entire world our energy goes through changes. Unfamiliar sensations occur. These sensations are not totally unfamiliar, so we initially interpret them according to what we already know. We are unable to interpret them based on what we are not yet familiar with, so we make our best attempt. It is essential to stay open to new possibilities and to stretch toward new understanding.

Here are some unusual sensations that may occur when our fields are stretched, pulled and impacted by world changes. Some feel similar to energy invasion:

• fields feeling wispy, or weak
• disproportionate tiredness, which may feel like being drained
• bouts of dizziness
• nightmares
• periods of disorientation, brain-fog, or inability to focus
• inconsistent motivation
• sadness, shame, anger with yourself or others; the showing up of really old issues or inner wounds
• restlessness
• inability to access usual channels of guidance
• sense of losing your bearings or that life tools no longer work
• feeling that there is something in your fields that doesn’t belong or hasn’t been there before

Mental and emotionally you may feel:

• Nothing applies or makes sense
• Doubt
• Wondering whether we made a mistake
• Handling stress poorly
• Feeling unhappy with what you’re doing or like leaving your current circumstances
• Situations we have put up with for years may feel intolerable
• Strong desire for change, perhaps with no idea what to create
  
  This type of sensation may come and go. When the cause is energy it’s important to remember that nothing is wrong. As you relax and adjust the sensations pass. Kind self-care is the best plan. 

  In Post 6 we’ll explore the relationship between dynamic, changing energies and responsibilty, following in Post 7 with compassionate responses and actions that help us stay balanced through times of major change.

  How does monumental world change impact YOUR day-to-day energy?
  What do you do to increase your inner balance, clarity, or ease?

   

   

   

   

This Post follows the Social and Mental Forgiveness Tips from Part 1. You can move from Mental toward Transcendental Forgiveness like this: Realize that forgiveness and even love need not be held hostage to understanding. We may have no clue why loved ones let alone strangers act as they do. Being willing to extend compassion for their humanity whether or not we understand is a transcendental act.

Now we continue with Emotional and Transcendental Forgiveness Tips:

Emotional Level

• Acknowledge and accept your pain. Release judging or shaming yourself for feeling pain.
• Be kind to yourself, especially when others are not. Extend compassion to yourself when you are in pain.
• Notice the way stuck rage and pain poison and pollute you.
• Notice the ways you fight off receiving forgiveness—and soften.
• Make friends with your pain. It guides you to healing.
• Seek to release getting mad at yourself for getting mad at yourself.
• Be consistently loyal to your authentic feelings, whether or not you choose to share them.
• Discover the vulnerable feelings beneath your anger. Face them gently and find out what you need to treat the vulnerable part kindly.
• Cry, letting your tears purify your heart. (If you would like a recording of my )****
• Use flower essences or homeopathic remedies that address your exact emotional patterns.
• Get support for issues you repeat over and over. Energy-based therapies help such as EFT-type methods, Thoughtfield Therapy, and EMDR.
• Set up circumstances where you can experience totally safe touch, like massage or reflexology.
• Pay attention to the way you hold your pain in your body and breath.
• Practice compassion for people’s vulnerabilities and compensations, including your own.
• Give your sub-personalities each a voice. Allow the hurt and angry ones to express. Let the parts that long to forgive to speak too. How do you feel in your body when each voice speaks? See yourself as bigger than your wounds so your healthy parts can support you.

If you are going through recent or severe trauma, see:
“Self Care for Serious Betrayal of Major Transitions”

Transcendental Level

• Find the place inside where you are willing to let your protection layer be removed.
• Open yourself to grace, even when you cannot feel it.
• Forgive the soul, not their actions.
• Discovering new dimensions of your inner experience by going deeper.
• Practice Positive Vulnerability (see Post 7 in series).
• Before sleep, set your intention to experience forgiveness in your dream state.
• Keep the company of profound and loving people.
• Pray. Or somehow open your heart to larger-than-self assistance. If you are too angry to do so, work with the Emotional Level tips first.
• Learn to recognize the difference between the good clean pain of your heart opening and the crushing heartache of being treated cruelly. Welcome a breaking heart when it means developing greater tenderness and compassion.
• Explore what it means to be fully and completely human.
• Learn to broadcast authentic energies and sensations of forgiveness.
• Work with a group of people who combine their intention toward forgiveness. Make sure they are authentic and admit their wounds.
• Dedicate every bit of energy you release to healing the kinds of issues that caused your wounds, for all beings.

Take your time to forgive, going ever more deeply through the spiral of experience that covers the same ground over and over, yet every time with more of yourself Present.

Which Forgiveness Practices work best for YOU?
Which discoveries have surprised you about yourself as you’ve explored forgiveness?

Please share YOUR tips and insights about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is totally tied up in our personality structures and belief systems. This post contains potential action-steps from the Forgiveness series. Tips and tools in this text help create conditions that support authentic forgiveness from the inside out. Each person may need a different prescription, so I am including a Holistic selection.

Tips are categorized with respect to the Modes of Forgiveness in Posts 1 and 2. These suggestions areprimarily Inner Work (see related post series). Forgiveness is internal. When we forgive inside, and forgive ourselves, authentic external expression naturally follows.

These behaviors and exercises help us to respect and release our wounds. They begin with practices that help us to avoid setting ourselves up for resentment, and work toward more profound strategies for managing and releasing pain. Part 1 covers Social and Mental skills and tips. Part 2 goes into Emotional and Transcendental.

If you have been through horrific experiences of loss and abuse you may need additional support. Practice forgiving yourself in all the ways you are able until you can take on challenging incidents involving others, or life itself. The frustrated rage of torment can make us push away the energy and possibility of forgiveness. Whenever you can, stay open to even small experiences of relief and release. No matter where you start to eat the elephant, you will make progress.

Social Level

• Change “What’s wrong?” to “What do you need right now?”
• Place more value on what you think of yourself than on how others perceive you.
• Acknowledge and communicate your needs–without making others responsible for them.
• Acknowledge other people’s needs–without assuming inappropriate responsibility for them.
• Take careful note of people’s capacities before making yourself vulnerable. Expect a learning curve, and possible inconsistency under different circumstances.
• Set boundaries with compassion for yourself.
• Make yourself vulnerable and open where compassion is abundant. Talk about your wounds only with people who can relate, understand, and make a caring response.
• Notice when and why you begin to blame or become defensive. What is going on inside? Seek to use clear boundaries instead of defense.
• Notice when you feel like you need pretense. What do you need from yourself at that moment, in order to be authentic?
• Resolve disagreements whenever possible–and attempt to even when you’re not sure you can. Life goes by quickly. People can die before you forgive them. Forgive whether or not you care to spend time with someone again. You can release them in peace.

“Never let the sun go down on an argument.”

Mental Level

• Remember that lack of forgiveness binds you to the people who hurt you. Consider exactly what it costs you to maintain a grudge. Free yourself.
• Learn from your mistakes—especially if they hurt. Let the lesson be about insight and understanding, not a way to be hard on yourself but a way to move forward with grace.
• View pain as a form of guidance. What needs does the pain speak for?
• Find the gifts in your wounds–authentically.
• Think, visualize, imagine, intend, and wish for authentic forgiveness (but do not fake it).
• Notice claims you make against yourself and assess what kind of personal development would allow you to release them.
• Read my Post series on Betrayal.
• Notice your internal talk. Never talk to yourself in ways you wouldn’t dream of addressing someone you care about. If you speak harshly to yourself, invite a compassionate voice to come forward. Do this every single time, if you can. The nasty voice is not “you,” but only a part of you. You need not to take its comments to heart. Talk back to that voice, balancing its harsh assumptions with loving truth.
• Put yourself in the place of others and seek to understand the circumstances and conditions that formed their fractures.

Which of these tips stands out for YOU?
What can you do to help yourself to remember to practice it when you need it the most?