Tag: forgiveness

The Power Of Forgiveness

As We Heal Others, We Heal Ourselves

by Walter E. Jacobson, M.D.

Forgiving others is a compassionate thing to do. We know this. Nonetheless, oftentimes, we don’t do it. We want those who hurt us to suffer for what they did.

By withholding forgiveness we think we are punishing them, we think we are keeping them stuck in a prison of guilt and shame. But the fact is we’re just punishing ourselves in the process.

We’re prolonging our own suffering. We’re withholding from ourselves our own peace of mind. We’re keeping ourselves emotionally tormented. We’re keeping the albatross around our own neck. We are fanning the flame of our own discontentment and emotional suffering.

We’re, essentially, keeping ourselves locked in an emotional prison cell that is now of our own making. We are now victimizing ourselves long after having been victimized by our offenders.

Anger Hurts, Forgiveness Heals

When we forgive others we free ourselves of our anger, our judgments, our grievances, our resentments, and our bitterness, all of which interfere with our present moment joy and inner peace.

When we refuse to forgive others, we relegate ourselves to living in the past and never being in the present moment, in the Eternal Now, where all the good things in life happen.

Consequently, it is always in our own best interests to forgive.

Everyone. No exceptions.

Forgiveness decreases our anger, our depression, our stress and our anxiety. We sleep better. We relate to others better. Our general attitude is more positive, optimistic, and joyful.

All of this contributes to our physical as well as emotional well-being, and maximizes our potential to attract people, places and circumstances into our lives which will propel us towards our dreams and our goals.

 

Walter E. Jacobson, M.D. is a board certified psychiatrist, motivational speaker, and author of Forgive to Win! His primary goal is to help people build their self esteem, overcome self sabotage, and get what they want in life.  To find out more about Dr. Jacobson visit his official site.

Image courtesy of Latuff2.

 

The Dear God Project

It is said that there is power in numbers.  Why not use those numbers to help your prayer reach God?  That is the idea behind the Dear God Project, a global platform for sharing inner hopes, fears and aspirations through the medium of prayer. With just a simple click of a button, you can submit your prayer or request and have others pray on your behalf.   You can submit a prayer directly on the site, through Facebook or via Twitter.  Either way, just the simple act of voicing your prayer will bring it that much closer to being answered.

To help inspire you, here is a sampling of the top prayers.

Is the world ending? I don’t want the world to end.  I like my life and have things planned.  I know though when you have things planned they never go the way you imagine.  Its scary the stuff that goes on in the world.  I pray for Japan and all the people there, i pray all survivors will be found and saved, please rest on the land and with the people.  I know theres more to life than the mundane drill of 9-5.  i know i have to do that in order to survive but i know theres  more to tap in to, please show it to me.  Take fear away from my life and the lives of others and i pray we will all live in peace.  Please take away the fears in my heart.  I say thank you for my life, please help me to live it to the full. Please give me energy everyday and energy to others who need it. I pray love and beauty will grow in me, mylife, my relationships and in others. – 267 PRAYERS

I have been typing everything that I tried to put into words, but I end up getting tongue twisted and erased all. I miss You.. I miss talking to you in the morning right when I wake and I miss saying goodnight to you before I sleep. I miss the feeling of Your unconditional love that I consistently dwelled in. There are so many things holding me back to be the person You want me to be, and I’m here asking for help.. Life has been a wreck, full of bad decisions and built up anger and unforgiveness without You. I know that church cannot save us, but I want to be able to find people to open up to and fellowship with real believers. So here I am.. On bended knees, offering everything that is left of me. Mold me, guide me, walk beside me<3 - 114 PRAYERS

The words “I’m sorry” don’t seem to suffice the situation. I have walked away from our union. I turned my back on you and demanded a divorce. I asked that we remain friends if you can even call it that. I was abusive in the way that I expected you to fulfill my every fancy but ask for nothing from me in return. I had hoped to go on living my life without ever giving you another thought. It has been impossible. Every day revolves around you. I hear your name whispered from the lips of my friends and family. I see you in my dreams, you encase my every thought. I have known all along what I have been missing. I was afraid of what my life could become with you. I was afraid of just how high I could soar with you. I hope that you will take me back, that I can somehow reconcile our marriage. I will strive to be the kind of woman that you have created me to be. All I have to offer is myself, so that is what I will give. My heart is yours. I only hope that you find me worthy of your grace and forgiveness. I offer you my love, and hope to feel yours once again.- 126 PRAYERS

I want to be an instrument of Your love and mercy, but my heart is filled with such hate and anger. Please forgive me for everytime I refused to love because I felt wronged. Please lead me by Your example so I can live a life that is pleasing to you. Lead me to do things out of love simply because it is the right thing to do. Heal me, tame my heart. – 183 PRAYERS

When all else fails, and even before, you’re there. Thank you. You are my rock, and you are my redeemer. – 226 PRAYERS

Please open up my eyes, dear Lord that I might clearly see. Help me stand for what is right, bring out the best in me. Help me, Lord, to just say “no” when temptation comes my way, that I might keep my body clean. When my teenage years are over, I know that I will see that life is lived its very best with you walking next to me. – 246 PRAYERS

 

Dear God Project:  official website, Twitter, Facebook

Love Be Thy Name

by Matt Kahn

If we take a moment to look around, we realize how life as we know it is changing in such rapid and extraordinary ways. The structures of the government, financial institutions, and even the physical landscapes of other countries are changing in dramatic fashion. Each seemingly external change reflects the inner change occurring within the unfolding odyssey of human evolution. In this evolution, we are now facing what is necessary to be faced within ourselves, as we participate in the expansion of consciousness, like a turbulent rollercoaster of transformation in the amusement park of form.

It is no surprise that if everything within and around us appears to be changing at such a dramatic rate, so would the spiritual path appear to change just as dramatically. What was spiritually relevant, even one or two years ago, now somehow seems like ancient history. We are now experiencing a time in history where nearly every belief, idea, preferred coping mechanism, or even our most-treasured spiritual tools, now appear out of date. This is happening only as a means of opening us up to a deeper sense of simplification in our lives. Through these words, you are invited into the spacious landscape of eternal freedom – to know the truth in your own direct experiences of life, versus searching for the many empty meanings only ideas have assumed to be true.

With changes in our physical, emotional, or perhaps energetic aspects of body, we perceive such changes, whether exciting or terrifying, through the surging of nervous energy expressed by the human nervous system. This nervous energy is often defined by thought, and labeled as something called an emotion. Whenever emotions arise, they are categorized as being either good or bad, and either fought or embraced depending on the given viewpoint we have about a given feeling. It is important to know that no single expression of nervous energy feels any particular way. Rather, whenever an emotion arises, we are actually experiencing our own psychological history of assumptions made about such feelings.

As we are called to wake up, we may begin to openly feel these temporary expressions of nervous energy, not to maintain the tragic tale of victim consciousness, but as a means of exploring what the truth of these emotions happens to be. The truth of any emotion cannot be defined in mind, or contained in thought, but must be realized by surrendering to the curiosity of what it feels like to simply feel such feelings.

When a feeling arises, you may ask yourself, “What does it feel like to feel this way?” Notice the difference between that experience of pure openness, and our usual experience, which often asks, “What is it like to only experience what I think about this feeling?”

Be like a child whose courage stems from the innocence and curiosity of wanting to know what it is like to feel however you are feeling, without any preconceived ideas of what is good, bad, or otherwise. Every feeling is valid to explore, whenever it is here. And, if it is here – it is here to be fully experienced. It is here to be experienced, so you may experience the truth of it, which has nothing to do with the many ideas ever imagined about any such feelings.

Verbal or written pointers such as “be present” or “accept what happens” are very helpful, but they’ve now been so overstated in our spiritual circles, they have actually lost their usefulness and potency.

In most instances, there are many of us replacing incessant mental noise with incessant spiritual noise, reminding ourselves to try and practice what only thoughts believe will earn a better reality or a more fulfilling living experience.

These words you are reading are here inviting you beyond that paradigm of conceptual confusion, knowing the true fulfillment of life you are searching for is only discovered when there is nothing for you to spiritually maintain, so that you may fully allow whatever comes and goes, to come and go of its own accord.

When something comes, you are free to explore with your feelings – what is it like to experience this? When something goes, you are equally free to explore with your feelings – what is it like to experience that?

Fulfillment is not found in any goal you attain, any dream you actualize, or any purpose a clever mind has imagined and continues to chase. Fulfillment is how deeply and vividly you are experiencing whatever you appear to experience, and how freely, you allow what comes and goes, to freely come and go.

May we surrender all known ideas of ourselves and the world we see, knowing we only perceive lack in a world we fail to explore. Perhaps the only thing that is ever lacking in our lives is the lack of adventure and exploration that we came to this planet to freely experience in the first place. Inevitably, we fail to explore whatever we have organized into the trance of conceptual thinking. We maintain these illusory thought structures by believing that any of our thoughts and ideas have something to do with truth.

Truth be told, you are that which is aware. Everything arises within the vast formless awareness that you are, and you are here exploring a lifetime of infinite possibilities in a world of many appearances. Therefore, you are that which gives life to thought, to ideas, to opinions; not what any thought, idea, or opinion ever dares to speak about. Nearly every thought, idea, and opinion assumes to be speaking about the truth. In reality, thoughts, ideas, and opinions only refer to other thoughts, ideas and opinions.

You are that which gives life to the body that experiences all temporary ideas in awareness. You are that which gives life to the incredible world this body of awareness explores and experiences. You are that which experiences a journey of a lifetime, seeking to understand all that is here, while discovering the ever present truth of one’s self, that rests in the many reflections of that you see.

May we meet as this truth by daring to be ourselves – however imperfect, incomplete, whole, unique, or seemingly ordinary that we may believe we somehow appear to be.

May we no longer require the spiritual path to be a space where problems are temporarily extinguished, and then quickly exchanged for other dilemmas. May this path be a renewed space of sacred honesty, where we may notice whenever the heart is not exploding with joy, cascading with grace, and overflowing with the purity of love, the celebration of awareness that is here in your honor is being overlooked.

Whenever you notice you are innocently unaware of the eternal love that you are, seek those who are pure of heart to assist you in dissolving any sense of obstacle, any trace of terror, any degree of difficulty within your world of perception – so the breaking free of all self-imposed barriers may be as effortless as waking up from a vivid dream you forgot was being imagined.

If you are wishing to experience the truth of fulfillment, right here, right now, and you are willing to even discard your greatest insight in order to lighten the load, and experience the profound reality of infinite possibility no thought can anticipate, or actually describe, then I am here to be with you, as you gracefully wake up from the dream of limitation, and dance in the freedom of eternal love.

May you honor these gifts that are here being offered with the utmost sincerity, and receive them into the fullness of your being through the radiant innocence of your divine heart space.

May there be no reasons or restrictions that prevent our meeting, as the gates of the heart open to the melody of freedom – singing itself into the innocence of every experience. When listening closely to freedom’s song, you may hear these gentle words:

There is no one to forgive. There is no one to forget. Love be thy name.

Matt Kahn is the author of the book, “Effortless Freedom – A Timeless Dialogue of Life’s Deepest Teachings.”

Matt Kahn is a spiritual teacher, mystic, and intuitive healer. His spontaneous awakening arose out of an out-of-body experience at the age of 8, and his direct experiences with ascended masters and archangels throughout his life.

Many spiritual seekers have experienced amazing, unexplainable healings, and have awakened to their true nature through Matt’s profound and loving teachings and his transmission of sacred heart wisdom.

To learn more about Matt Kahn visit his website at True Divine Nature

Youtube: YouTube Channel

Facebook: Sacred Heart Wisdom From Matt Kahn

A Call for Love

Everything people do in this world is an expression of love or a call for love.

by Walter E. Jacobson

When a child feels ignored, neglected and unloved because Mommy is spending more time with his little baby brother, and the child acts out, throws a glass against the wall and shatters it, it is not because he is evil or bad.

It is because he wants to get Mommy’s attention, he wants to get Mommy’s love, but he doesn’t know how to ask for it appropriately, so he asks for it in a confused, violent, aggressive way.

It is a call for love, and the best response Mommy can give to her child is to be understanding, compassionate, forgiving and loving, not angry, abrasive and punishing.

As we grow up and become adults, most of us still behave in the same way we did when we were infants. Hungry for love and feeling minimized, ignored, abandoned, unloved and unappreciated, we act out with our loved ones, attacking them in various ways.

Rather than saying, “I’m feeling insecure. I need your attention. I need your love. I need a hug,” we yell, we hit, we break things, we drink and drug too much, we drive our cars into trees.

At the next level are those who do the more horrendous acting out behaviors in their calling out for love, by mutilating and killing themselves or by mutilating and killing others.

It’s all a continuum, a matter of degrees. It’s all a variation of the same theme: love or a call for love, in which case, the response should always be the same: when someone is calling out for love, we look past their behaviors and we do our best to give it to them.

In terms of the people in this world who do horrific things, this doesn’t mean they should not be held responsible for their actions. It doesn’t mean we condone their behaviors. It doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences.

What it does mean is that we should let go of our harsh judgments and rage in the process.

Let’s look at this at a level that can perhaps be better understood and tolerated by our mind: If we need to go to court to resolve a divorce settlement, we don’t need to go in with anger. We can go in with calm and be just as effective, if not more so. We can get what we feel we need and deserve, but without all the aggression, judgment and animosity. We do this for our own healing, for our own peace of mind.

Everything is a choice that starts in the mind. If we choose fear, what we’ll get is fear, anxiety, depression, anger and aggression, within and without, in all its horrific and terrifying forms.

If we choose love, we will see a world transforming within and without. And we will observe miracles happening, because miracles are the natural expression of unconditional love and forgiveness.


Walter E. Jacobson, M.D. is a board certified psychiatrist, motivational speaker, and author of Forgive to Win! His primary goal is to help people build their self esteem, overcome self sabotage, and get what they want in life.  To find out more about Dr. Jacobson visit his official site.

 

 

Image courtesy of KKFreshmeat.

Self-Loathing, Projection & The Power Of Love & Forgiveness

Do you unconsciously project your feelings about your self onto others?  Do you know someone who does?

by Walter E. Jacobson M.D.

We all have, deeply embedded in our unconscious mind, a self-loathing part of us, regardless of how much self esteem we have, regardless of how much good we do in this world, and regardless of how proud of ourselves we are for our ethical and compassionate behavior.

That self-loathing, as irrational as it is for most of us who have done very little in the hurting others department, manages to generate guilt and shame which we do not wish to experience consciously because it would be too unpleasant.

So we unconsciously project it outwards onto others and see others as worthy of loathing and worthy of guilt and shame, rather than ourselves. And we feel better about ourselves, at an unconscious level, in the process.

It’s very convenient and emotionally sustaining when we project it onto people who deserve it, so to speak, by their despicable actions. And we don’t think twice about it. They clearly deserve all the judgment and animosity they get directed at them. They clearly deserve to be made to feel guilty and shamed.

But when we project it onto other people who haven’t necessarily done anything terrible to deserve our harsh judgments, with the exception of not treating us the way we wish to be treated or not thinking or behaving the same way we do, the mechanism of discharging internal angst by pointing the fingers at others becomes more obvious, if we are willing to look at it.

So what do we do about this?

Certainly, at the level of our personal relationships where judgments are flying left and right, if we remind ourselves that our judgments are actually a reflection of our own embedded guilt and shame, and if we can see those we area judging as loving beings who are confused and have lost their way (regardless of how badly they are behaving towards us), then the best approach is to catch ourselves and stop attacking them with our judgments, because we will, essentially, be healing our projections and healing ourselves in the process.

We can disapprove of their bad behavior. We can encourage them to take responsibility and we can insist on consequences. We can avoid them. We can set boundaries. There are any number of solutions available to us.

The key is to judge the actions, not the actors. The key is to demonize behaviors but not people, because when we demonize others we are demonizing ourselves at a deeply embedded level, reinforcing our guilt, shame and self-loathing.

At the level of people in the world who assault, abuse, maim and murder: again, it is in our best interests to despise the behaviors but to not demonize the people. They are not evil, despite the evil that they do.

They are mentally ill. They are children of God, like all of us, who are severely damaged in their incapacity to love because of the love they never experienced themselves.
Ultimately, when our consciousness can handle this revolutionary concept, it can evolve further to appreciate that everything in this world is an illusion, a bad dream we will one day wake up from, in which case, we don’t even need to hate horrific behavior.

When we wake up from a nightmare, thanking God that all the murder and rape we saw in the nightmare never really happened, we have no need to hate those in our dreams who perpetrated the murder and rape.

When we are enlightened and wake up from this nightmare we call reality, we will also appreciate that everything horrific in this world never happened, and there is no need for hate or for sorrow.

This is certainly an idea that most of us cannot get our mind around. We cannot tolerate this idea nor accept it to any degree because of all the horrible evil and terrible suffering that is obvious all around us and can’t be presumed not to be real.

I can’t argue the point. I have no proof except for my own experiences which are anecdotal and can be easily dismissed by those who wish to do so. Nonetheless, I maintain that everything we see in this world is a projection of our internal thought system.

If we keep love, compassion, acceptance and forgiveness in the forefront of our mind, we will see, to an ever-increasing degree, a world that reflects that, a world of cooperation, harmony, generosity, success and abundance.

If we choose at the core of our consciousness to embrace fear and judgment, then we will continue to see a world that is full of scarcity, lack, limitation, competition, aggression, war, famine, disease and death.

There are only two thoughts, love and fear. And everything we see in this world is a projection of one or the other.

 

Walter E. Jacobson, M.D. is a board certified psychiatrist, motivational speaker, and author of Forgive to Win! His primary goal is to help people build their self esteem, overcome self sabotage, and get what they want in life.  To find out more about Dr. Jacobson visit his official site.

 

 

Image courtesy of Morbidboy23.

Forgive to Win

End Self-Sabotage! Get everything you want!

Most of us don’t get what we want in our lives because we sabotage ourselves: We procrastinate. We resist. We don’t follow through. We don’t do the things that we know are in our best interests. The end result is a life of unfulfillment and disappointment. It doesn’t have to be that way.

When we eliminate the guilt, shame, and self-loathing deeply-embedded in our unconscious mind which generate our self-destructive, self-defeating behaviors, our world changes for the better: We start attracting people and circumstances that cooperate with our goals and propel us towards the manifestation of all our hopes and dreams. The way to eliminate our guilt, shame, and self-loathing is to esteem ourselves and forgive ourselves. The way to esteem ourselves and forgive ourselves is to esteem and forgive others.

Forgive To Win!’s Forgiveness Diet is a structured program that teaches us how to do this. It’s not complicated. And it works! By consistently practicing a daily regimen of thoughts, actions and exercises devoted to accepting, forgiving and being of service to others, our self-esteem increases, our self-sabotaging behaviors decrease, and we experience greater opportunities and more positive outcomes in all realms of our lives.

Forgive to Win – video message from the author

 

Dr. Jacobson, a graduate of Cornell University, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the UCLA/San Fernando Valley Psychiatry Residency Program, is a board-certified psychiatrist who has been in private practice in the Los Angeles area since 1999. He specializes in insight-oriented psychotherapy, cognitive-behavior therapy, spiritual psychotherapy, couples therapy, equine-assisted psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and past-life regression therapy. He’s also a motivational and inspirational speaker and a Mastery of Life Mentor, guiding people toward the fulfillment of their goals and dreams.

Visit Dr. Jacobson’s official Website

The Genius Club

What would you do if you were asked to solve the world’s problems in one night?

It is Christmas Eve and as America prepares to celebrate, a terrorist (Tom Sizemore) is threatening to blow up a nuke.  The game:  win 1000 points and your life if you are able solve the world’s problems by 6am.  The players: seven geniuses with IQ’s above 210, the US president and one Homeland Security officer.

Director Timothy Chey’s psychological thriller will set your mind spinning as the clock counts down and the geniuses struggle to come up with real answers.  A seminary student, an economics professor, a painter, a bio-chemist, a casino owner, a professional baseball player, and a pizza delivery man tackle some of the hardest questions humanity has faced:

Every war has been a meaningless waste of life.  Right or Wrong?
Why don’t we have a cure for cancer?
What do we do about world hunger?
If you were a dictator and had absolute control, what would you change?
If there was one thing you would destroy in America what would that be?
What is the greatest problem facing the world today?
What is the meaning of life?

Will the geniuses be able to answer satisfactorily or will Washington D.C. be blown to bits?  The key to diffusing the bomb could be the answer to the meaning of life?  What is it?

To get more information about the movie and watch a trailer go here.

 

Dear Woman,

 

Dear Woman,

This video is part of the Manifesto for Conscious Men.  It acknowledges the hurt, pain and suffering that men have caused women throughout history while at the same time appreciating the gifts that women bring to the table.  It invites women to unite with men to create greater miracles.

This document acknowledges many thousands of years of dominance of masculine power, and offers an apology for the suppression of women, in the spirit of a fresh start. The authors do not advocate the domination of men by women or feminine energy, but feel that a balance and equal respect for both energies will allow for a new wave of evolution on our planet.

To watch the video on Youtube go here.  To learn more about the Conscious Men project go here.