We’ve got to let go of the blame game.

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Forgiveness brings relationships back to wholeness.

Learning how to practice forgiveness in relationships is one of the best investments of time and energy I can think of.  It can improve the quality of every minute of every day.  

Relationship forgiveness is not what we think it is.

It’s not forgiving the other person.  

It’s forgiving ourselves for the meaning we made of things that upset us so much.

It’s forgiving our interpretations that have hurt us so deeply.  

We’re not hurt so much by what happened as we are by how we view it.  It’s our distorted lens that causes the pain.

The other people often have nothing to do with how we view things, yet we blame them anyway.

I’ve personally gone through many excruciating experiences in relationships.  My relationships were so difficult precisely because I was so resistant to learning anything.  I was so convinced that I was right and they were wrong or that they were right and I was wrong.  As long as I held to that false belief then I was unable to be free and experience peace.

What I’ve come to see is that no matter how challenging the situation or relationship is, there’s always SO MUCH for me to learn.  If I think I know everything already then I’m denying myself the opportunity to learn.  If I do that, then I am dooming myself to a life of bitter stagnation.

True forgiveness requires my willingness to see beyond the conditioned view, the hardened view, the view through the lens of the past.  True forgiveness means having no expectations, no attachments, no shoulds.

Peace lies in my willingness to see what really is: my opportunity to be free is at hand!