Forgiveness does not mean that you condone or approve of the other person's behavior. You forgive other people because forgiving them helps you to heal yourself and move forward in your life. Forgiveness is an essential part to healing your past and all of your relationships.

My name is Bill Austin and I am a spiritual healer, teacher, artist and author living in St Petersburg FL in the United States. I have over ten years of experience helping people to heal themselves and their relationships.  Often the first step in the healing process is to help you to not only forgive the other person but yourself as well.

Why Should I Forgive _______________?

First of all I want to acknowledge how hard it is to truly forgive the people in our lives who have hurt and wounded us the most. And usually the people who wound us the most are the ones we most love.  We only get hurt usually by people who we trust and are close to emotionally.

Forgiving the people in our lives who have wounded us the most - no matter hard it is - is often the first step we need to take to heal the pain and suffering we  experience. When you hold on to the anger and trauma and emotional wounds you receive from others, you are basically shutting down your heart and truly in that moment you are hurting yourself as much or more than you were hurt by the other person.

People who experience bad health often have major league forgiveness issues in their lives. When we hold negativity and repressed anger, rage and resentment in our energy fields, inevitably it expresses itself as physical disharmony or bad health. Forgiveness is one of the major ways that humans can release negativity or cleanse it from their energy fields. However it is also one of the hardest things to do as well.

When we forgive anyone or anything, what happens is that to all extents and purposes it never happened. This is how the world is healed. And when you heal one of your relationships, everyone who is in a similar situation is helped as well. Below are three very powerful techniques I use for myself whenever a forgiveness challenge arises in my life.
 

How to Forgive: Three Forgiveness Techniques that Work

Forgiveness Technique Number 1: Get into a meditative state of mind (calm, relaxed and peaceful) and think about the person, situation or aspect of yourself (self forgiveness is very important) that is bothering you. Ask your soul for a symbol for the relationship, event or aspect of yourself. Play with the symbol or image that you receive. If it's dark, add light to it. If it's closed, open it up. Working with things as energy is very powerful for as you transform the symbol, you transform the relationship, event or aspect of yourself as well. This is one of those techniques that is very effective, but I have no idea how or why this works. You can use this same technique when you want to resolve a problem or when you just want to get in touch with your inner guidance.

Forgiveness Technique Number 2: Get into a meditative state of mind and ask your soul to join you. Pretend that you are your soul. Say out loud: "I am one with my soul." Visualize your soul as a shining pillar of light. Invite the aspect of yourself or the soul of the person whom you want to forgive to join your soul. Explain your point of view to the other person's soul or the aspect of yourself that you are seeking to forgive, and ask the other person's soul or the aspect of your soul to explain his or her point of view. Please note that your souls get along fine. The forgiveness issue is a personality one. This technique can also be used in other areas. If you're struggling with an illness, visualize it as energy and talk to it.

Forgiveness Technique Number 3:Get into a meditative state of mind and think about the person, situation or aspect of yourself that you want to forgive. Think about how that person, event or aspect of yourself changed your life. How would your life have been different without that person, experience or aspect of yourself? How did they serve your growth and evolution? What did you learn from that relationship, event or aspect of yourself? After doing this, you usually will find that there were some benefits to the association. Acknowledge this and thank the other person for that gift. Often this gives us a broader perspective on what is really going on within ourselves.