Soul Lessons from God: Forgiveness is a Grace on the Spiritual Journey

When my journey began, I spent the first month doing a lot of research, trying to figure out exactly what was happening to me. It didn’t take long for me to realize that what I truly needed was a path to healing. It was during this time period I received my first Soul Life Lesson in forgiveness. 

Eight years prior, I was betrayed by someone I trusted. This was a huge deceit and one that I still carry the physical scars. Throughout these eight years, I felt nothing but hate, rage, and vengeance towards this person. I even visualized ripping this persons heart out with my Bear hands and shredding it. 

During that period, nothing anyone said or did would have changed my feelings on this. That is, if I was not so humiliated to share what had happened to even approach any kind of support from anyone. 

I chose to embrace my Saboteur shadow archetype- my Cooper’s Hawk shadow spirit animal and my shadow kings, the Five of Swords and the Knight of Swords as I continued to separate from others and hold this secret inside out of shame and humiliation.

As I embarked on the spiritual journey, the first thing I realized was that not forgiving someone is like living in a prison, hidden away from others out of shame, ingesting large doses of poison filled with the hate and anger you feel, yet secretly hoping that it is the other person that dies a slow, painful death. 

When you realize all the hate you felt for so many years was just your own and it literally had no impact on the other person, it gives you quite a jolt back to reality. Unforgiveness is a prison of our own creation and one that only we hold the key to unlocking. Forgiveness is not about forgiving the other person, it’s something that we do for ourselves. It is about freeing yourself from the anger, depression, guilt, shame and humiliation of the experience. 

The day I realized all of this was a profound experience. Suddenly, for the first time in almost a decade, I felt that I could forgive and let this go. I was baffled at how easy it was to do this, but I also knew it was because of the discoveries I had made that this was truly all my own making. I created my own reality as a result of my own fears and insecurities. 

Forgiveness is connected to self-love, our ability to love ourselves. Part of self-love means caring enough about ourselves to forgive the people that hurt us so the wounds from the past can no longer cause pain and chaos in our lives. Our wounds do not hurt the other person, they only hurt us. 

When we forgive, we open our heart to empathy and we can begin acting out of love, compassion and understanding. Forgiveness liberates our heart and soul and provides clarity. It gives us the ability to let the pain from the situation go and find the lesson the experience is trying to teach us. On the surface, the lesson may be forgiveness, but as we dig deep and peel back the layers, we discover it is also a lesson in love, compassion, emotional and spiritual healing. 

Forgiveness is a Soul Life Lesson that we all share. Throughout our lives we all must learn how to forgive others as well as ourselves and learn to release the pain of the past and our lesser need for self-determined justice. Forgiveness can be complex, at times we need to forgive another person for the hurt they caused us, or we may need to forgive ourselves. 

Self-forgiveness is just as critical as forgiving another. As we learn our lessons on the inner work path, we discover just how brutally we have treated ourselves. From negative self-talk to controlling the narrative of all things, we discover that we treated ourselves in this way to suppress our emotions, to attempt to protect ourselves from the pain. 

To forgive someone who has betrayed us is not always easy, especially if there was a difficult or painful childhood. When we are children, we are unable to stand up for ourselves, we must trust and rely on the support of the adults in our lives. Many times, we may end up in physically or emotionally damaging situations and the wounds and scars run deep as a result, especially when it is related to family bonds. 

When we are unable to forgive ourselves or another, this enables the Wounded Child archetype to emerge in shadow form. The Wounded Child is part of the Inner Child Archetype and is an archetype we all share, and this archetype holds the damaged, stunted patterns of our childhood, including traumatic memories, negative attitudes, and dysfunctional self-images. 

Until we address the Wounded child within us these patterns will manifest as fears in our adult lives such as fear of abandonment, rejection, or judgement. All of which will cause damage to our physical bodies, emotional relationships, as well as our personal and professional lives.

Each one of us holds the power of forgiveness in our hearts. Although it may not be possible to contact the person who hurt us, either because they have transitioned, or it could cause further damage, there are ways to heal. 

We first need to set our intention to forgive, to call our spirit back from its negative mission and then release the pain from the experience. We can choose to speak to someone we trust, speak it out loud to ourselves or write about the experience to release the hold it has over us. 

Forgiveness opens our Heart Chakra to our emotions, to love, empathy, compassion and understanding. It paves the way to liberation from fears, self-limiting beliefs and negative behavior patterns so we can live a more balanced and harmonious life. 

Back to Top

Back to Soul Lessons with God