"When you are in a difficulty, it usually involves another person, or sometimes more than one person, and your tendency to blame rises up very strongly, the tendency to see the other fellow as the reason why you are in the mess you're in and to not recognize that the individual - or many individuals, whatever you are dealing with - they are there doing exactly what you requested of them, and that is a very hard lesson, a very hard lesson.
Look at your antagonists, for they are mirroring to you the lesson you asked for. You think, 'No way. Nope, nope, nope. I can't accept that. I would never do that. I would... No way.' Oh yes, you do. Why do you? First of all, most of you believe you deserve it, but more importantly, you are asking, 'Dear God, help me to know how strong I am. Help me to know the power that I have as a child of God. Help me to love my antagonist and to forgive them for what appears to be to me something unforgivable. And in that forgiveness, Father, allow me to understand that they have given to me the gift I asked of them,'
Now, that is a difficult thing. That is extremely difficult because nobody wants to be in a hard place, and everyone wants to think they got there accidentally or because of another person's mistake. And the truth being that you are always in your hard places because that is what you have chosen.
Now, when you reach into that forgiveness, what is going on? First of all, there's nothing to forgive the person for because they only gave you what you asked them to. So where does this forgiveness come? Why would one need to ask forgiveness? Because you are asking for yourself. You are asking for your own forgiveness . And since it is nearly impossible to the average human being to look at their own need, by personality standards, to be forgiven, you always project it outward onto someone else or something else... a situation, if not a person.
So, when you are forgiving, what are you doing? You are recognizing that, first of all, this is a gift, a wonderous gift, and I, in recognizing this gift, recognize that forgiveness is the releasing and letting go of every error perception that I held that caused me to draw this to me in the first place. It is a form of cleansing, of releasing, of letting go, of getting rid of all of the debris that you pulled to you, that drew this very thing that you hated so to you. So you are cleansing. You are releasing and letting go of every error perception that you held about yourself that would have made you draw to you a painful situation.
Secondly... because forgiveness is part of an error perception, when you forgive, you come up out of that realization when you truly forgive. Now, forgiveness is a funny thing. It can wear many faces. You can say, 'Oh, I forgive them. I'll never forget what they've done, but I forgive them.' If you can't forget it, then you haven't forgiven.
Now, is this to say that no matter what happens, you say, 'Oh, I forgive them. That was nothing. Nope. I'm fine?' No, it's not. You honor your pain. It's your pain. It's real to you. It's something that is a distressing thing. You don't just say, 'Oh, it didn't happen. It's all right.' That's not forgiveness. That's burying something.
Forgiveness is when you recognize a thing has happened to you. You recognize that you asked for its gifts and you recognize that whoever is involved with it is there because you invited them, and you recognize that, in the forgiveness, you are cutting the bonds that held them to you. You are releasing them and you are releasing yourself from this whole thing. And you are allowing the child of God of you to come out into the sunlight and play because there is nothing dark about you any longer. You have released it and let it go.
Do you forget it? In terms of constantly talking about it and drawing it back to you, yes, you do forget it. Do you forget it inside of you? No. You remember the blessing. You remember the lesson. And every time you think about it, you bless everyone involved in it and you thank them for their gift."
05/14/2023 Blog. Archangel Gabriel, INTRODUCTION TO PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY, Pgs. 10-12. Copyright © 2017 Rev. Penny Donovan. All rights reserved. To buy this book, please click here.
Comments