Forgiveness Class

Resentment is a prison we build and the sustenance we eat is anger, fear and self-pity. Forgiveness is the key to let us out. But we must create a key, open the door and walk out into this new reality. We have developed this series of classes for those who want to transcend anger and resentment. Your moderators will share personal stories of how they include forgiveness in their lives and will guide you every step of the way. Forgiveness means abandoning feelings that cause pain, because holding on to our anger and resentment doesn’t punish anyone but ourselves.

Forgiveness does not mean that we forget. It does not mean that we have a relationship with the offender. And it certainly does not mean we are pardoning the offender. But it does mean that we stop drinking the poison of anger. How do we go about this? We change our perspective from being a victim to someone who has chosen to take control of their thoughts and feelings. As much as we might like to, we cannot change anyone but ourselves. We have steps to guide you through this process – we’ve done it ourselves and it works.

There is a story inside of us that was given to us starting from birth. Our parents or caregivers told us how to think, feel, and react – we learnt the lines of our script. As we grew older we started adding to this. This class starts the process to show you how to identify the thoughts, words and actions that are based on this internal subconscious script. We want to help you change that script and make it your own. Our resentments and feelings are based on what we think about, talk about, and act on. When we change the pattern of our thoughts, words and actions our entire world changes. Here we begin to talk about partnering with spirit, a spirit of your understanding, not anyone else’s.

In this class we’ll begin the practice of journaling. There are steps we need to take to get from anger and resentment to peace. Forgiving someone is a process, it doesn’t happen immediately. It takes time and there are stages we’ll go through to grow our ability to forgive. Journaling is a technique to help you take control of what you think about and it can be astonishing when you see what is actually in your head! Forgiveness is intentional and voluntary. No one can make us forgive, but the gifts we receive by doing it are unimaginable. We continue growing our relationship with spirit and this takes time and action.

As we change, we begin to get glimpses of a different way to think, feel, and act. We might even start to recognize the elusive feeling of peace within. One of the most successful actions we can adopt to make room for peace within ourselves is to remove our unconscious obsession with drama in our thoughts, words, and actions. Often, we must “act” ourselves into right thinking, which means that as we remove drama we begin to internalize and grow peace within ourselves. We have all experienced drama and tension in relationships. It takes practice to change from having a dramatic personality to having a peaceful one. We begin the homework of practicing peace by diminishing drama in our lives.

When we forgive we find peace and even a sense of freedom. When we find peace we can look up and out in life and make decisions about what really matters. So the question we look for now is, what brings us meaning? What gets us out of bed every day? If you don’t know the answer to this question, you need to find the answer. We’ll be writing about this in between our classes to explore our thoughts about finding the right path for us. We begin searching for our meaning. We do this because we need to change our script, our path, and our outlook. And we do this with a safe, spiritual partnership. Ask yourself a question: If I could change on my own, why haven’t I?

This class is just the beginning of a lifetime of change. And to help you continue and not leave you on your own, we will set up small groups to continue growth, create intimacy (we know, scary), and continue journaling and sharing with each other. Each group will have an experienced moderator who has been through the process themselves. A weekly check-in with a community of “siblings” will connect us to a feeling of safety so we can continue healing and growing. We hope this is attractive to you, because it works.

• For those who want to meet weekly to take a deeper dive into this journey, we will create weekly Zoom rooms to meet and continue working on forgiveness. Like we say, forgiveness is a journey, and it takes a while. We can’t do it alone or we would have done so.
• Questions and answers
• Invitation to join us in our work
• Offer of a wisdom counselor