by Carol King

Created on: July 25, 2008

Forgive Yourself
The kindest and most compassionate thing you can do for yourself and others is to forgive yourself. We are often told that we should forgive others, the old saying "forgive and forget" is thrown around constantly, so you make an effort to forgive those who you feel have wronged you in some way and you find it almost impossible to do. Why is that? It is possibly because you have not yet learned how to forgive yourself.

In terms of self-help a better saying to use would be "charity begins at home" or in this case charity begins with self. You cannot freely give to the world that which you do not give to yourself. Just as you cannot truly love someone without first loving yourself, you cannot forgive someone without forgiving yourself. When you learn to forgive yourself then and only then will you be able to forgive others. Paradoxically though, when you learn to forgive yourself you will in turn find that you have nothing to forgive others for.

When you forgive yourself you let go of a part of yourself, the part that wants to keep you trapped inside a circle of blame, shame, guilt and fear. This part of you, which essentially is part of your ego, does not want you to be free of it because ego does not want to relinquish control. Free yourself from this viscous pattern of behavior for it has the ability to murder your spirit. It is possible to spend your entire life blaming yourself for this and that, feeling guilty because you did this or that and living in fear of the consequences of this and that. This way of living has you immobilized because you are dwelling in the past (the guilt and blame for what has been) and you cannot enjoy your future (for fear of the consequences of what has been). There is only on solution, you must give yourself the ultimate gift, the gift of forgiveness.

Self forgiveness is not difficult to master, you only need to simply spend some time thinking over things that you feel badly about, things that you may have said or done to yourself or to others, thank your higher self for allowing you to see that you are in fact imperfect and there will be times when you mess up. Apologize to yourself and let it go. Practice this often, whenever you find yourself beating up on yourself about something you did or did not do, accept that the deed is done and it cannot be undone, forgive yourself and move on to find a solution if necessary, if it something that another action cannot rectify then you must let it go, for it is in fact

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