Self Forgiveness – The Why And How
Hello there. Aloha and welcome. What I’m going to be talking today about is why self-forgiveness is important, what it really is all about, what the experts say about self-forgiveness, and also how you can do it.
If you’ve got questions, leave me a comment at the end of the post. At the end of the video, I’ll show you where you can find a free download on self-forgiveness and meditation that I did.
Why self-forgiveness?
There’s a couple of reasons. Number one reason is that…
Most of us at some point in our life feel shame or guilt
There’s something we’ve done to somebody else, there’s something we haven’t done. We feel some kind of shame or guilt.
Self-forgiveness can be a really important part of releasing that, letting go of that old shame or guilt. Because it’s one thing to let go of the shame and the guilt but if you don’t forgive yourself at the same time, the trouble is that you get back into the pattern, and we need to let go of the pattern.
Another reason why self-forgiveness is important is that…
Holding on to old unforgiveness is very, very damaging both emotionally and physically.
As far as the body is concerned it acts like stress in the body. And because it acts like stress in the body, it has all the physiological and emotional impacts that stress can have.
So, you need to let go of any old unforgiveness, that state of not forgiving yourself. Those are the two most important reasons.
The problem with self-forgiveness is that it’s not very much talked about, it’s not very much written about. If you Google forgiveness or self-forgiveness, or if you go onto Facebook and look for groups, you’ll find loads of groups, you’ll find loads of books about forgiveness. How to forgive, the forgiveness books or book of Desmond Tutu, loads and loads of books on forgiveness.
But there’s very little out there on self-forgiveness. It’s like the ugly sister of the whole forgiveness story.
And because it’s the ugly sister of the forgiveness story, not many people really know how to do it, what to do. So, I’m hoping to help you address that.
Why should you listen to me?
For the past 20 years, I’ve been working on self-forgiveness and forgiveness. I’m actually in the middle of writing a book about forgiveness.
There’s a lot in my book about self-forgiveness. I’ve been researching it. I’ve been reading everything I possibly could. And as I say, there’s not much on self-forgiveness, but I’ve been reading everything I possibly could and really studying the subject so that I can help others.
Certainly for me on my journey, learning to forgive myself has been a huge part of the journey out of clinical depression.
Learning to forgive others, to stop blaming, that was important. But learning to forgive myself, to release all those feelings I had about, oh how could I have done that to that person, or, why have I not reached my potential, the shame about feeling I’m not ever reached my potential, those kinds of things. Really, really important in the journey out of clinical depression.
Onto the what about self-forgiveness. Self-forgiveness, is focused on itself. It does what it says on the tin.
One of the things you can do is you can use one of the Huna techniques that I talk about to release shame and to release guilt. That will help you hugely.
You can also use a meditation or a visualisation. You can put yourself into a nice state and imagine forgiving yourself for all those things that you believe you need to forgive yourself for. Now you can do that for yourself, or you can do it as a guided visualisation. I can offer you one of those.
People talk a lot about Ho’oponopono and forgiveness. The problem with using Ho’oponopono for self-forgiveness is, Ho’oponopono involves putting the person that you want to forgive on a stage and then forgiving them, and it doesn’t matter whether you do it the way that I teach or whether that you do it the way that Joe Vitale or someone else teaches. You create the stage and you put the person on the stage.
The problem is that forgiving yourself in that way, where you’re putting yourself on the stage and trying to forgive yourself while looking at yourself on the stage, is quite a tricky thing for your brain to compute. It’s much easier to do it as a visualisation or as a meditation.
If you want to do some self-forgiveness, as I say, imagine yourself out there forgiving yourself. Bring to mind everything you need to forgive yourself and bring yourself the blessing of forgiveness. Allow yourself to forgive yourself because that’s also important.
Very often, we can’t allow ourselves to forgive ourselves. But you have to allow yourself, you have to let it happen, you have to want to have it to happen. If you’d like a guided meditation, you can nip along to SecretArtOfHuna.com, and you can sign up for the free visualisation that I’ve got there.
If you’re interested in forgiveness, from a more forgiving others perspective, then come along perhaps to Oxford where I’m doing a one-day live, and you can experience Ho’ponopono in its fullest way.
But like I say, Ho’ponopono is very much about forgiving others, not about self-forgiveness. Self-forgiveness is a different animal. Visualisation, meditation, and releasing, in whatever way you choose to release. Releasing the old shame, the old guilt, and the old hurt so that you can also forgive yourself.
To get a real release on shame, guilt, and hurt, you need to do both.
There’s lots of information on this website and I look forward to talking to you or seeing you very, very soon.
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