Today’s Mandala Message: Forgive and Move On
This week I’m working through Principle #29 from Jack Canfield’s “The Success Principles” entitled “Complete your Past to Embrace the Future”. I set my intention today to ponder the idea of forgiving and moving on. To many, this may seem easier said than done—mainly because we tend to equate forgiveness with condoning…they are not the same.
Neil Farber M.D, Ph.D., CLC, CPT on PsychologyToday.com writes “There were words or actions which in some way caused you harm; your forgiveness does not erase that harm or encourage it to happen again. You accept the pain and hurt, but not the behavior.” — from his post entitled: Forgive Me, Forgive me not – 8 things that forgiveness is and 8 things it is not.
Forgiveness is a tough one for me and I’m intrigued by how this topic showed up at this time. I’ve come a long way and would definitely benefit by going deeper with it now. I received a lot of help from therapists over the years and from studying “A Course in Miracles” (ACIM). It essentially puts forth the notion that forgiveness is the process of coming back to unconditional love—because holding on to past grievances, whether about ourselves or others, causes more harm than good. For more on the ACIM approach to forgiveness, you may find this post from TheJoyWithin.com helpful.
From Canfield, he states: “When you do forgive, it puts you back in the present—where good things can happen to you and where you can take action to create future gains…Staying mired in the past uses valuable energy and robs you of the power you need to forge ahead in the creation of what you want.”
A good mindfulness practice would be to consider the possibility of forgiving yourself and others.
So how about you? Are you holding on to grievances from the past? Are you harboring any grievances about yourself? Is it possible to start letting them go?
“To forgive
— Lewis B. Smedes
is to set a prisoner free
and discover that
the prisoner was you.”
Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
All Things Mandalas
An Invitation
I invite you to color along with me this year as part of what I’m calling “The Year of Self-Exploration and Expansion” with all of my “Mandalas of the ___” (day, week, month, year). If you’re interested in more of a self-exploration approach to coloring, check out my “Coloring Mandalas as Meditation”. You can download this mandala at MandalaoftheWeek.com.
Mandala of the Day 