Christmas Jewels – Lesson 8 – Forgiveness
Well, thank you for getting here.
Really. I mean it.
The title – and the topic – for today are not the catchiest.
Not a warm-and-schmaltzy.
But thank you for taking a deep breath and following through with me.
You know what we’re doing here, right?
We’re each seeking the fastest, most expedient, and most reliable path to falling in love with ourselves. To feeling hugely better in our lives – working towards – if not a state of giddy euphoria, at least a sense of being so calm and so happy and so right inside that the little things just don’t bother us as much any more, and we have a calm benevolence towards all – including ourselves.
It’s that last part that’s the kicker, right?
Like you (even if you don’t think of yourself as being a teacher), I teach that which I need to learn.
We all do.
And so we’re all learning to love ourselves more.
It’s part of our job; being on this planet.
Christmas Magic – Yup, It’s Still Going Strong
Don’t know if I mentioned it earlier, but I was really into Christmas this year. Hauling up the decorations from the basement. Putting up lights, setting out branches and garlands and wrapping banisters. Making extra-special little gift packages. Cooking biscotti for housemates.
Sometimes, when the work was of a stationary sort (wrapping gifts), I did it in front of the TV.
And going for the super-schmaltz with whipped cream and cherries and chocolate shaving on top, I tuned into the Hallmark channel and watched some very wonderfully high-sugar Christmas movies.
Almost all of them (you guessed it) had forgiveness as a core theme.
Then, there’s my current heart-throb fav, Sleepy Hollow. A show (a few weeks before Christmas, and not necessarily Christmas-themed) was about the Sin-Eater. For those of you who are following this series, you’ll remember that it blatantly had the word forgive as part of the crucial show message. Prime-time, no less.
Just before Christmas, in Elementary (as in Elementary, dear Watson), Sherlock decides that yes, indeed, he will become a sponsor to someone else. (Sherlock – in this show, for those of you not following it, is in an AA program>) He does so because he’s convinced (by his own sponsor) that he needs to invest into the growth of someone else to help is own personal growth. So Sherlock – the brilliant, acidic, and acerbic – is taking a step towards personal growth. Whoda thunk it?
Lest we think this is all too tied into a single month of Christmas cheer, I turned on the TV yesterday; looking for something to keep me company while I did my morning stretches and made a raw juice. The one that I landed on was the tail end of a 1983 movie; The Scarlet and the Black. The very, very tail-end – the last 30 seconds or so? All about forgiveness. Couldn’t believe it.
In Own Your Power (forthcoming in 2014), Alicja Jones notes that:
In answering our prayer for strength, one of the means Spirit uses is books, magazine articles, the internet, and other telecasts, including music. (January 16)
We’re seeing more and more evidence of Spirit teaching us valuable lessons, using the most prosaic of means – mainstream TV!
(This isn’t new – Charles Dickens wrote for money, and money was his strongest objective when he wrote The Christmas Carol. However, its message has touched millions – and the idea of being a Scrooge has worked its way into worldwide consciousness.)
Forgiveness – from Own Your Power
This section is taken from Own Your Power by Alicja Jones, which will be released in 2014. The following are three short selections from her forthcoming book:
Through forgiveness, each man regains the power that he so blatantly gives away.
Forgiveness wipes the slate clean and allows us to move ahead. Forgiveness brings light into the darkness. Forgiveness removes us from the wheel of karma. (November 28)My teacher [Wanda Lasseter-Lundy], in her quiet gentle manner, likes to state that our feeling of being separate from God is the only thing for which we have to forgive ourselves. (November 9)
As you listen to the guidance from the “Whole-ey” Spirit, you notice that you become stronger in your beliefs. Someone else’s beliefs are not able to sway you as quickly as they once did. You have more confidence and more self-assurance. You are more firm about your own convictions, since they come from within you. You are able to withstand the barrage of nonsense that is thrown at you on a daily basis, and are able to step away from other people’s efforts to influence your decisions. You are firmly planted within your own power.
And you realize that you simply have to forgive – since everyone else means well, but is coming from a sense of lack and limitation within themselves, even though they may be ignorant of that fact. As you forgive the other, you also forgive yourself for buying into lack and limitation. You also forgive this third dimensional Universe, until you realize there is nothing to forgive, since it is all a role that you assigned for yourself prior to coming on this planet. As you change yourself, you change the Universe. All is contained in one. One is contained in all. That is part of the holographic nature of the Universe: All is contained in the One, One is contained in the All. (November 3; Message from Alicja’s Guides)
When I began doing spiritual exercises in earnest, around this time last year, it was to pull myself out of the combined trough of grief (over my Daddy’s passing), unhappiness with the overall way in which my life had worked out, and mid-winter blues.
Well, it worked.
Not that I’m happy 100% of the time. But a lot more than before, yes.
And not that I love myself completely, always, 100% of the time. (If I did, these blurts and negative thought-forms would really be gone for good.) But, I’m in a lot better shape than I was a year ago.
Mood is better. Overall much more kindly disposed towards both others and myself.
That’s worth it.
I find that forgiveness is what cracks open the logjam. It’s saved me from escalating situations that were about to go really, really bad – unless I got some spiritual discipline into them real fast.
In other words, worthwhile.
Have a go.
Final Words
More from Alicja Jones’ Own Your Power – and really worth considering:
Unless our patterns are so ingrained that we are unwilling to change, eventually most of us come to the place called forgiveness, for this is the planet of forgiveness. We learn to forgive here, and the first person whom we learn to forgive is our ego self because our Higher Self is the one who set it all in motion initially. When our ego self learns to defer to unconditional love, then our ego self incorporates into Higher Self. Ego self transforms into Higher Self: self becomes Self. As we learn to let it all go, we release the ties that bind us. When we can look at life through a cosmic lens, we come to the realization that there is nothing to forgive, since we set it all in motion in the first place. (February 18)
Previous Pages in the Twelve Days of Solstice: Falling in Love with Yourself
- Day Seven: Clearing
- Day Six: Food
- Day Five: Magnificence
- Day Four: Blessings
- Day Three: Pausing
- Day Two: The Barrier
- Day One: Stillpoint