How To Forgive

Feeling stuck in any area of your life? In your relationship?

Try forgiveness. Letting go will open up worlds for you.

Edwene Gaines, in her book The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity (highly recommended), states that forgiveness is the third spiritual law of prosperity:

“Harboring a grudge completely blocks our ability to have peace of mind. All sorts of studies indicate that negative thoughts, feelings, words, and behaviors affect our mental and physical health, our success, and our self-worth.

An unwillingness to forgive is like stabbing ourselves with a knife and expecting the person who did us wrong to feel the pain.

Forgiveness is not something we do for the sake of another person. Forgiveness is something we do for ourselves.”

But how to forgive?

That’s the million dollar question. With a million different answers.

Here is ONE of many answers, something that I haven’t discussed (or even practiced) until recently:

H’oponopono

I’ve known about H’oponopono for some time now, but honestly, rejected it likely because of a limiting belief around “things shouldn’t be that easy.” It sounded like a load of bullshit, to be honest.

I read the book Zero Limits by Joe Vitale YEARS ago, and, despite having a really hard time letting go (how ironic) of things, I DECLUTTERED it. Seriously, the one book I actually want to go back and read, I decluttered (meanwhile, there are countless other dust collectors on my shelf).

I plan to start from zero and re-read (along with the 20 other books I’ve started and not yet finished, can anyone relate?)

Anyway, H’oponopono is an ancient Hawaiian practice for healing, reconciliation and forgiveness. It essentially means to make right by someone.

A famous example of H’oponopono working its magic was when psychologist Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len used it to heal a ward of “criminally insane” psychiatric patients by practicing this simple meditation on them. (You can check out this quick post to read more about that.)

Where was H’oponopono when I was working with a similar population at a State psychiatric hospital in New York? That was a decade ago, and my by-the-books judgmental self would have thought it was ludicrous (despite my fascination with books like The Holographic Universe and of course the movie that had come out a few years prior, What The Bleep Do We Know).

Open minds open doors, and the vision of thousands of doors opening is exciting to me, so here’s to opening the H’oponopono door.

Here’s how it to practice:

Leverage the powerful forces of the Universe, Repentance, Forgiveness, Gratitude and Love, by repeating the following:

I’m sorry.

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

I love you.

People all around me have been suggesting it, more strongly in the last week or so, hopefully not because I seem to be someone who harbors a lot of grudges (thankfully nothing horrific has happened to me and forgiveness comes easily to me, I’d like to think), but because it is that powerful.

Give it a whirl, and let me know how it goes for you in the comments.

Cheers to thriving in business & love,