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First Aid Forgiveness Tools
Some of the tools included in this section are more ap-
propriate for use at the very moment when a situation
requiring forgiveness occurs. They help jerk us into an
awareness of what may be happening before we get
drawn too deeply into a drama and go to victimland.
When our
buttons get pushed,
we easily move straight
into the defense/attack cycle. Once in this cycle, how-
ever, we find it tough to get out. Use of these quick tools,
however, helps us avoid ever beginning the cycle. The
Four-Steps to Forgiveness process is one of these. It
is easy to remember and you can say it to yourself in
the moment. The 13 Steps to Forgiveness tape or CD
is also very useful because you can have that in the car
or handy at home.
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Other tools described in the following chapters are de-
signed for use in quiet solitude after we have had a
chance to vent anger and frustration. The Radical For-
giveness Worksheet works wonders in this regard. Use
them all as an act of faith in the beginning. The payoff
will prove incredible in time. Consistent use of these
tools helps us find a peace we may never have known
was even possible.
19: Feeling the Pain
F
eeling the feelings is the second stage in the for
give-ness process and usually arises as a con-
sequence of telling the story. This step requires
that we give ourselves permission to feel the feelings
we have around a given situation — and to feel them
fully. If we try to forgive using a purely mental process,
thus denying that we feel angry, sad, or depressed, for
example, nothing happens. I have met many people,
especially those who think of themselves as spiritual,
who feel that feelings are to be denied and ‘given-over’
to Spirit. That’s what is known as a spiritual bypass.
In 1994, I agreed to do a workshop in England. This was
ten years after I had emigrated to America and I had quite
forgotten the extent to which English people resist feeling
their feelings.
The workshop was to take place in a monastery some-
where in the west of England, and as it happened, most
of the participants were spiritual healers. We arrived at
the monastery, but there was no one around, so we went
in, rearranged the furniture, and began the workshop. I
began by explaining that life was essentially an emotional
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experience for the purpose of our spiritual growth and that
the workshop was designed to help us get in touch with
emotions that we have buried. Well, you would have
thought I was telling them that they had to dance naked
around a fire or something! Here’s what they said.
“Oh, no. We are spiritual. We have transcended our emo-
tions. We don’t give our emotions any credence at all. If
we have them, we simply ask Spirit to take them away,
and we simply go straight to peace. We don’t believe in
this kind of work.”
By about one hour into the workshop, I knew I had a di-
saster on my hands. It was like swimming through treacle.
I couldn’t get through at all, and there was no way they
were going to do this work. I was feeling progressively
more awful every moment and was convinced that the
workshop was going to fall apart completely.
At this point Spirit intervened. A young monk in full habit
burst into the room demanding to know who was in charge.
When I said I was, he demanded that I go outside with
him. He wanted to “talk” to me, but I could see that he was
seething with anger. He was all red and puffed up. I said
that I was conducting a seminar and that I would come
and find him when I was finished.
He went out very upset but came back almost immedi-
ately, clearly enraged. He pointed his finger at me and
then hooked it as if to motion me towards him, and
screamed. “I want to see you, right now!”
It was the gesture with the finger that got me. All the frus-
tration and tension of the last hour came rushing to the
surface. I turned to my class and said in a very menacing
tone.
“Just watch this!”
I strode over to the red-faced,
puffed-up monk and told him in no uncertain terms, point-
ing back at him with my finger very close to his face,
“I
don’t care what you are wearing and what those clothes
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represent, you don’t come into my workshop and hook
me out as if I were some little schoolboy who has of-
fended you. I’ll come out and talk to you when — and
only when — I am ready. In fact, I will be done right at
12:00 noon. If you have anything to say to me, you’d
better be outside in the lobby right at that time. Then we
can talk. Now, get out of my room!”
I strode back to my class, all of whom were sitting there
aghast with their mouths gaping. (You don’t talk to reli-
gious figures like that!)
“Right,”
I said, pointing to each
one of them in turn,
“I want to know what you are feeling
right now, in this moment, and don’t give me that B.S.
that you have given it to the violet flame and that you
are feeling peaceful, because it is obvious that you are
not. What are you feeling?!!! Get real!!”
Well, needless to say they were in their feelings big time,
and we started to discuss them. With the help of the monk,
I had broken through their wall of resistance to acknowl-
edging that humans have feelings and that they are OK. I
had busted their story. They were doing the spiritual by-
pass and I let them know it.
At 12:00 noon, I went out of the room into the lobby. The
monk was there. I went straight up to him, and much to
his surprise and consternation, I hugged him.
“Thank you
so much,”
I said,
“You were a healing angel for me to-
day. You
were my seminar. You saved the whole thing.”
He really didn’t know what to say. I don’t think he got it
either, even when I tried to explain it to him. He had calmed
down though, and it turned out that all he was so upset
about was that I had not rung the bell to let him know that
we were there. He had been sitting in his room waiting
for the bell to ring, not thinking that we might push open
the door and go on in. Can you imagine getting so en-
raged about such a small thing? Do you think he might
have had an abandonment or “not-good-enough” issue
running?
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That 7-day retreat became one of the best workshops I
have ever done. That’s because the participants got real
and became authentic. I took them into their pain, some
of which dated back to war-time incidences they had
never shared before. They came to realize that the power
to heal is in the feelings, not in talking or thinking; not in
affirmations, nor even in meditation if it includes shutting
out feelings.
Another myth is that there are two kinds of feeling, posi-
tive and negative, and that negative ones must be
avoided. The truth is there is no such thing as a nega-
tive emotion. They only become
bad
and have a nega-
tive effect on us when they are suppressed, denied, or
unexpressed. Positive thinking is really just another
form of denial.
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