FIGURE 17: My Interpretations About What Happened
The next step after this is the Radical Forgiveness reframe—seeing that the story was perfect and had to play out that way. Watch out for the guilt, anger, depression, and criticism you might feel and direct at yourself when you find out you have created your entire life around a set of untrue beliefs. Please, do not do this. Instead, remember that everything has a purpose and God does not make mistakes. Use one or more of the forgiveness tools to work on forgiving yourself and on seeing the perfection in your situation.
If the facts still prove that something “bad” took place—for example, a murder remains a murder no matter what interpretations you may have made—the Radical Forgiveness worksheet provides the best tool to help you shift the energy around that event.
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The Radical Forgiveness Worksheet
The Radical Forgiveness worksheet has its origins in one created by Dr. Michael Ryce, a pioneer in the field of forgiveness. He was one of those who, along with my mentor, Arnold Patent, encouraged me to develop Radical Forgiveness.
From the moment I created the Radical Forgiveness worksheet in 1989, using Dr. Ryce’s worksheet as my initial inspiration, it has literally changed thousands of people’s lives. It is not easy to explain how or why it accomplishes such dramatic results except to say that it helps people to shift their energy. In fact, you could say that doing the worksheet is, in and of itself, an energy experience.
As I have already indicated, all the tools in the Radical Forgiveness tool kit are holographic in nature and require very little in the way of skill, belief, knowledge, or cognitive understanding. All that is required is the willingness to be open to the possibility that there might be a certain perfection in the situation—even if you don’t feel like saying it and don’t really believe it. The worksheet is simply a way of expressing this willingness to be willing. Your spiritual intelligence picks up on your willingness and makes the connection to Universal intelligence, whatever that is for you. For that reason, I like to think of the worksheet as a form of secular prayer.
Because the worksheet is an energetic instrument that works holographically, it is not subject to the limitations of time and space. That’s why the effect is often immediate and distance is never a factor. Doing the worksheet immediately releases the stuck energy in the situation, with the result that everything seems to resolve itself automatically.
Now that you have read this far in the book, you will understand that any time anyone upsets you or triggers negative emotion in you, it’s an opportunity to grow. Where before you would have been sucked into the drama, now you can reach for a worksheet, start the forgiveness process immediately, and get results fast.
Sometimes one worksheet is enough, but if the energy is very stuck, it might take many more. It’s difficult to tell. Just keep doing worksheets until the energy around the situation, person, or incident dissipates. This could take days or even months.
You will know when you have reached a place of forgiveness by how you feel. If you find yourself simply feeling neutral when meeting the person again, speaking to them on the phone, or even thinking about them, you are probably 90 percent there with little or no charge left around the person or the situation. You are 100 percent there when you can feel nothing but love for that person.
The worksheet in section entitled “THE RADICAL FORGIVENESS WORKSHEET” can be enlarged and photocopied, but you might prefer to download a letter-size one from soundstrue.com/radicalforgiveness.
It helps when completing the worksheet to have a reasonable grasp of the principles underlying Radical Forgiveness, and the following notes serve as a reminder of them. By way of example, answers are filled in as if Jill had completed it at the time she was going through the situation with Jeff as portrayed in Chapter 1.
When we begin working with Radical Forgiveness, we have a tendency to want to do too many worksheets on too many people from our forgiveness list, and to focus on the major issues of the past. But one of Radical Forgiveness’s best characteristics lies in the fact that we do not have to dig up the past to heal the big wounds of yesteryear. Whoever is upsetting you right now is the person who represents all the people who have ever upset you for the same reason in the past. So work with that person first, even if you’re thinking that it’s no big deal. If it’s upsetting you, it is a big deal. It could easily lead you to what really matters.
Another misconception is that Radical Forgiveness is just for dealing with the past. It is perfect for that, of course, but it becomes profoundly life-changing when you use it on a more or less daily basis. As soon as an issue arises, the idea is to use this worksheet, or one of the other tools in the book, to dissolve the energies attached to it. This prevents it from becoming a bigger issue, and the situation automatically takes care of itself. And since there must have been a purpose for that issue to have come up when it did, by moving through it using Radical Forgiveness you are healing something.
Another misconception is that a small upset is not important, and therefore not worthy of a worksheet. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially if you have a disproportionate emotional reaction to the situation or event. That’s because the small event is triggering a larger amount of energy stuck around a much bigger and unresolved event from the past. The (self-created) small event is a golden opportunity to resolve that old issue, even if you have no idea what it is. You just do the worksheet on the small event until the upset goes away. In this way, you automatically take care of the older issue. The more worksheets you do on a daily basis, the more you clear your energy field of old emotional baggage.
You might want to date and number these sheets and then file them. This allows you to review them from time to time and evaluate the extent to which your consciousness has changed. Alternatively, you might want to do a ritual burning of them as part of the process.
THE RADICAL FORGIVENESS WORKSHEET
An Instrument for the True Transformation of a Grievance
Following is a sample filled-in worksheet and instructions for each step.
Date: 8/7/09 Worksheet #:3
Subject: Jeff Whomever you are upset about.
Instructions: Identify the person, situation, or object about which you feel upset. Do not use the Radical Forgiveness worksheet for forgiving yourself. There is a separate worksheet for this entitled Radical Self-Forgiveness and Self-Acceptance (see Further Resources). The one exception to this is when you are forgiving a part of your body that has let you down by becoming sick or otherwise not functioning correctly. In this case, externalize it by giving it a name other than your own, and speak of it as if it were someone “out there” separate from yourself.
I. TELLING THE STORY
1. The situation around which I have an upset is or was ... (Tell the story totally from your victim standpoint, i.e., old paradigm. Use additional paper if necessary.)
Jeff is abandoning me by focusing all his attention and love on his daughter Lorraine—completely ignoring me. He makes me wrong and accuses me of being mentally unbalanced. He makes me feel worthless and stupid. Our marriage is over, and it’s all his fault. He is forcing me to leave him.
Instructions: Be sure to write about the person or object upsetting you in the third person. In other words, tell your story as if you were telling someone else what happened or is happening. Tell the story about your upset from the victim’s standpoint. (Victim consciousness is the old paradigm.) Don’t hold back. Describe what the situation is or was and how it feels for you right now, and/or what it felt like at the time. Do not edit or overlay it with any spiritual or psychological interpretation. You must honor where you are now, even if you know that you are in Victimland and therefore in the illusion. (Remember, we are never upset for the reason we think.) Knowing that you are experiencing illusion and need to experience it represents the first step toward escaping from it.
Even if we have already awakened to the truth (the new paradigm),
we can easily be knocked off balance and perceive ourselves as victims again very easily. Being human requires that experience. We cannot always be joyful and peaceful and see the perfection in absolutely every situation.
2a. Confronting X: I am upset with you, Jeff, because ...
You have ruined our marriage. You have hurt me and rejected me. Your behavior stinks, and I am going to leave you, you bastard!
Instructions: Be as confrontational as possible with X, and lay out exactly what you blame him/her/it for. This section’s small space only allows a few words, but let the words you choose represent the totality of your upset. If the object or situation has no name, give it one, or at least write about it as if it were a person. If the person is dead, speak to him or her as if he or she were there in front of you. If you want to write it out in full, do so in the form of a letter. (See Chapter 24.) This step allows you to address the person directly. However, keep to one issue. Do not discuss other things in the letter or on this worksheet. Reaching your objective—Radical Forgiveness—requires you to get clarity on precisely what you feel so upset about now.
2b. Because of what you did (are doing), I feel: (Identify your real emotions here.)
Hurt, abandonment, betrayal, aloneness, sadness, and anger.
Instructions: It is vitally important that you allow yourself to feel your feelings. Do not censor them or “stuff” them. Remember, we came into the physical realm to experience emotion—the essence of being human. All emotions are good, except when we suppress them. Stuffing emotion creates potentially harmful energy blocks in our bodies.
Make sure the emotions you identify represent real emotions you actually feel, not just thoughts about how you feel. Are you mad, glad, sad, or afraid? If you cannot be specific, that is okay. Some people find themselves unable to differentiate one feeling from another. If that holds true for you, just notice what general emotional quality you can feel around the situation.
If you would like to feel your emotions more clearly or strongly, pick up a tennis racket or a bat and beat the heck out of some cushions or pillows. Use something that will make a noise when you hit the cushions. If anger scares you, have someone with you when you do this exercise. That person should encourage and support you in feeling your anger (or any other emotion) and make it safe to do so. Screaming into a cushion also helps to release feelings. As I have stressed many times, the more you allow yourself to feel the hurt, sadness, or fear that may lie beneath your anger, the better.
II. FEELING THE FEELINGS
Acknowledging My Own Humanness
3. I lovingly recognize and accept my feelings and judge them no more. I am entitled to my feelings.
Instructions: This important step provides you with an opportunity to allow yourself some freedom from the belief that feelings like anger, vengefulness, jealousy, envy, and even sadness are bad and should be denied. No matter what they are, you need to feel your emotions in exactly the way they occur for you, for they are an expression of your true self. Your soul wants you to feel them fully. Know they are perfect and quit judging yourself for having them.
Try the following three-step process for integrating and accepting your feelings:
Step 1. Feel the feeling fully, and then identify it as either mad, glad, sad, or afraid.
Step 2. Embrace the feelings in your heart just the way they are. Love them. Accept them. Love them as part of yourself. Let them be perfect. You cannot move into the joy vibration without first accepting your feelings and making peace with them. Say this affirmation: “I ask for support in feeling love for each of my emotions just the way it is, as I embrace it within my heart and accept it lovingly as part of myself.”
Step 3. Now feel love for yourself for having these feelings and know you have chosen to feel them as a way of moving your energy toward healing.
4. I own my feelings. No one can make me feel anything. My feelings are a reflection of how I see the situation.
Instructions: This statement reminds us that no one can make us feel anything. Our emotions are our own. As we feel, recognize, accept, and love our emotions unconditionally as part of ourselves, we become entirely free to hold on to them or let them go. This realization empowers us by helping us realize that the problem resides not “out there” but in here, within ourselves. This realization also represents our first step away from the victim archetype vibration. When we think that other people, or even situations, make us mad, glad, sad, or afraid, we give them all our power.
5. My discomfort was my signal that I was withholding love from myself and Jeff by judging, holding expectations, wanting Jeff to change, and seeing Jeff as less than perfect.
(List the judgments, expectations, and behaviors that indicate that you were wanting him/her/them to change.)
I made it up that because Jeff was giving Lorraine a lot of attention, he didn’t love me. I felt ignored and belittled. I wanted him to put me first. I needed him to make me feel “enough.” I judged him as insensitive and cruel. I was judging him and making him responsible for my happiness and requiring him to be different from the way he was. I was not recognizing the truth—that I am loved by him.
Instructions: When we feel disconnected from someone, we cannot love them. When we judge a person (or ourselves) and make them wrong, we withhold love. Even when we make them right, we are withholding love, because we make our love conditional upon their rightness continuing.
Any attempt to change someone involves a withdrawal of love, because wanting them to change implies that they are wrong and need to change in some way. Furthermore, we may even do harm in encouraging them to change, for though we may act with the best intentions, we may interfere with their spiritual lesson, mission, and advancement.
This is more subtle than we realize. For instance, if we send unsolicited healing energy to someone because they are sick, we are in effect making a judgment that they are not okay as they are and should not be sick. Who are we to make that decision? Being sick may be the very experience they need for their spiritual growth. Naturally, if they request a healing, it becomes a different matter entirely, and you do all you can in response to their request. Nevertheless, you still see them as perfect.
So make a note in this box of all the ways in which you want the person you are forgiving to be different or in what respects you want them to change. What subtle judgments do you make about the person that indicate your inability to accept them just the way they are? What behavior do you exhibit that shows you to be in judgment of them? You may be quite surprised to find that your well-intentioned desire for them to be different “for their own benefit” was really just a judgment on your part.
If the truth be known, it is precisely your judgment that creates the person’s resistance to changing. Once you let go of the judgment, the person will probably change. Ironic, isn’t it? (Note: Look to see how many of these judgments and expectations you are making about yourself. This is another way of saying that what you see in another person is what you despise in yourself. Try doing that. It is very revealing.)
III. COLLAPSING THE STORY
6. I now realize that in order to feel the experience more deeply, my soul has encouraged me to create a bigger story out of the event or situation than it actually seemed to warrant, considering just the facts. This purpose having been served, I can now release the energy surrounding my story by separating the facts from the interpretations I have made up about it. (List the main interpretations and circle the level of emotion and attachment you have around each interpretation now.)
I interpreted his caring for his daughter Lorraine to mean that she was more important than me in his eyes. I went from there to interpreting that he did not love me and that I was not enough for him and that he was like all men.
Level of emotion now:
_ High _ Medium _ Low _ Zero
Instructions: This step, in which you list your interpretations of the event, recognizes that most of the pain and suffering we are experiencing i
s the result of having magnified the situation in our mind and added a tremendous amount of meaning and interpretation to the facts of what actually happened. This is by design, because our higher self wants us to milk the situation for as much separation angst as possible in order to get the most learning and growth from it. But now that we are becoming open to the idea that the situation happened for us rather than to us, and that it was self-created and purposeful, we can reduce the amount of emotional charge we experience with this situation by simply separating the facts from the interpretations.
When you have noted your interpretations, assess how much charge remains by circling the appropriate level of emotion.
7. Core negative beliefs I either made up from my story or which drove the story. (Check those that apply.)
_ I will never be enough.
_ It is not safe to be me.
_ I am always last or left out.
_ People always abandon me.
_ It is not safe to speak out.
_ I should have been a boy/girl.
_ No matter how hard I try, it’s never enough.
_ Life’s not fair.
_ It is not good to be powerful/successful/rich/outgoing.
_ I am unworthy.
_ I don’t deserve.
_ I must obey or suffer.
_ Others are more important than me.
_ I am alone.
_ No one will love me.
_ I am unlovable.
_ No one is there for me.
_ Other _____.
Instructions: This step recognizes that we nearly always take things personally, especially when we are very young. As children, we are naturally egocentric. When something happens and we attach a meaning to it relating to ourselves, such as “It was my fault,” it is only a short step to our forming a core negative belief based on that idea. Look at the interpretations listed in the previous section and see which of the core negative beliefs in your self-concept arise from those interpretations. Many of your dramas may be driven by these beliefs, especially ones like “I’m not good enough.” Jill’s story was certainly driven by that belief. Again, these beliefs create incredible opportunities for us to experience separation, but now that we have awakened to the truth, we can release them for the falsehoods they really are.
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