Ask: I want to understand forgiveness and why I give too much...


“…What I'd like to understand more is how I can understand Forgiveness - I know it's for my benefit to forgive but it seems hard..  Sometimes I will THINK I forgive but when I get anxious,  it will come into my mind what a person "did" to me & I’ll be walking round my places grumbling & playing back the past in my head & I want to STOP THAT LOL…
… if I had plenty of money I really would spread it around & help others as I do that now,  often  to my own detriment!...I give my last hundred dollars to someone who seems in need then I can't pay my rego or insurance. Do u know what that is or can u relate to doing things like that?”—CB

You are correct that continuing to be emotionally charged about another person’s actions means you have not forgiven. But remember you do not forgive others; you forgive (release) your thoughts about them.
Others act and then you tell yourself a story about their actions. This story usually supports an idea you have of yourself—as a victim of a cruel world, for example. This way you see guilt “out there” instead of in yourself. So you have to look at what you tell yourself in a particular circumstance and what this reveals about how you think of yourself. Then you can begin to deal with your own thoughts and beliefs—the real source of your pain.
As for giving more than you have to give—what you describe is known as codependency. This means you take responsibility for others who should be taking responsibility for themselves. Your motivation may be to be loved, to make yourself feel good, to make up for past “sins”…the list goes on. You have to look at what you feel when you give more than you have to give. Your thoughts can lie, but your feelings always reveal what you really believe.

>>>> 
Do you want help looking at the stories you tell yourself that keep you in pain? If you want support and guidance from someone who has been there email me at Liz@acimmentor.com to set up an appointment for mentoring. Learn more at www.acimmentor.com.

Comments

will said…
Getting out of the comfort zone of the ego’s forgiveness:

Forgiveness has taken on a greater part of my daily mental life. Not life’s forgiveness where you ask another to forgive or for me to forgive another, but ACIM Forgiveness where I recognize that my projected “Special” anger and “Special” love is a ruse to avoid my own guilt. I came upon this from a book called, Forgiveness and Jesus (Wapnick) and share it with you:

“Our guilt is not God’s gift to us. It comes from a mistaken belief about who we are and Who our Creator is. Its correction is the key step in our healing and it ultimately rests on how we experience God and our relationship to Him. Guilt as we seen cannot be separated from the belief that there is something inherently wrong with us and that nothing, but punishment is deserved because of our reprehensible nature. From this constellation of sin guilt and fear, experiencing God as a loving and forgiving Father is psychologically impossible. There is no way we can hold to this ego view of ourselves and at the same time feel assured of God’s loving Presence in us. Love must wait behind the veils of guilt and hate, just as peace cannot be experienced where there is fear and conflict.”

No this isn’t directed at anyone but myself. Those last three lines are about me. Forgiveness is about my projections. My projections of specialness and everything else. My projections on everyone and everything outside myself. My anger at God for the times I went down the wrong path and blamed him for not warning me; For disrupting my comfort zone; My hidden anger at his not saving the many Special Relationships...
5:07 AM
will said…
"Our guilt is not God's gift to us," is a reference to Original Sin.

his should of course been His.
5:31 AM
will said…
All this came out during a meditation when I finally understood what Forgiving God meant. I kept blowing it off as something that I didn't need to do or had already done. My heart suddenly welled up with the understanding. For so long I asked God "Where are you?" The quote from the book answered that for me. I felt I had to share the feelings. The sadness...
6:15 AM
will said…
"Getting out of the Comfort Zone of the egos forgiveness," is a reference to my own long struggle with co-dependency. A spiritual sickness of thought, emotion and behavior of trying to keep the wolves of guilt and shame at bay.

"Defenses do what they would defend." (T-17.IV.7:1)
7:03 AM
will said…
What I am learning from writing all this down is the need to keep in mind we are talking about extremes. Being William day to day in my life here is a very different thing than experiencing the love of God. The experience of God or at least that level of spirituality is about as extreme as you can get. So it carries all the baggage that Wapnick wrote about. But if you are here in the dream and don't care about ACIM then you have love as we experience it day to day which is pretty good in its own right.
2:53 AM
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