Self-Forgiveness

A few months ago I felt led to read 'Spiritual Mastery' by Shakti Durga.  It was such a helpful book and I learned a new language for things I have felt all of my life.  An idea dawned on me a couple of weeks afterwards as I was working on forgiveness.  I survived abuse and trauma for the first 35 years of my life and I've worked very hard over the past 12 years to heal from the numerous effects that I once thought had destroyed my life.  In time, I'd got to the point where I was ready to forgive and set myself free.  As I sat wondering how, it occurred to me that Shakti Durga's book might be helpful.  

I made a list of all the people in my life who I believed had loved me or hurt me (ever, even in a small way); all the people who have made any impact at all on my life (including my children).  Then I worked through the 12 hallmarks of spiritual mastery and asked myself to consider if there was any way that those people had helped me to grow through any of those hallmarks.

The first hallmark stood out the best as it is 'Humility' and being abused taught me a great deal about humility.  The next 2 hallmarks were not as simple until I flipped some things in my head and lined up the pitfalls of those hallmarks and then I felt amazed.  As I went through each hallmark and person, I saw that every single one of those people had helped my soul to grow in every hallmark!

My mind wanted to reject it all immediately I mean, I've been blaming these people for my pain for almost half a century, did I really want to forgive them?  Tough choice.  I decided that as I really want to BE love in all ways, I had to tell myself 'yes'.  I had to accept what my heart was telling me and love myself enough to let it all go.

Since that day I have experienced miracle upon miracle and the best part is that now that I have found forgiveness for those I was really hurt by, I have a whole new level of love, compassion, respect and admiration for myself too.   I don't know if I'm any sort of spiritual master but I do know that I now like who I am very much and that is gold to me.

xxjxx