The following is an excerpt from the "Letting Go with Forgiveness" on-line course. If you would like to enroll in the course, click here.

What is Forgiveness?

As I mentioned earlier, forgiveness truly is heart medicine. It involves the healing experience of Divine contact. The Divine has many names, including the Holy Spirit, the Divine Mother, Father God, Great Spirit, Nature, or the "peace that passeth all understanding." Whenever I mention the word "Divine," please substitute any name that works for you. The important thing for us to remember is the uniting, creative force of Love. Only this Love is real, and only Love has the power to heal and reunite us with our true nature.

I sometimes call our forgiveness journey a jump into the River of Love. In this course, you will learn that Life gave us our experiences to show us that NO MATTER WHAT, the River of Love will float us home to a deep sense of inner security and serenity. This experience of forgiveness teaches us to release our sadness, and find gratitude for the lessons we've learned. It gives us the joy and freedom of knowing we are never isolated or without a friend. The River of Love shows us that the edges to all things are friendly...if we relax into the safety we share with the Divine.

In committing to make use of the River of Love on our path of freedom, we need to examine what this forgiveness is, and what it is not.

In the traditional view of forgiveness, a common element is that a crime occurred. If there was no crime, there'd be no need to forgive! So if you feel that forgiveness is what is next for you, you'll need to find the crimes in your life story. By crime, I mean any transgression that seemed to cause you pain, sadness, anger, fear, or other emotion that you did not want to feel at the time. It could have been as large as a rape or murder, or as small as a nasty look or icy silence.

I say "seemed to cause you pain" because it is never the events that cause us to suffer, but rather how we interpret the situation. It is possible for one person to feel great anguish over something that another person wouldn't mind at all. Even dramatic acts of violence can have different effects on different people, depending upon what the people involved think about what happened.