Happy Thursday, everyone! Tomorrow, I’m heading out early to camp at Lake Livingston. The State Park has tons of bike trails, so I plan on wrestling with my bike in what, to witnesses, will look like a constant and frantic struggle to keep from face planting. The best part is that we got a little front carrying pack so that Rune can take Bella along for the ride, too. I’ve already been sternly warned by all my kids and my husband that I am not to be the one to wear the pack lest Bella wind up as flat as a tortilla when I fall on top of her. They know me all too well. Sigh. I hope you guys are going to have a great weekend, too.
Don’t forget to tune in to our radio show, Erik’s Hour of Enlightenment, tonight at 5 PM PT/6 PM MT/7 PM CT/8 PM ET. All you have to do is click on the “Listen” button on the righthand sidebar of the blog or click HERE. To ask Erik a question, call 619-639-4606 no sooner than 15 minutes before the hour.
Here’s the second part on forgiveness. I included a bit from yesterday’s post to orient you.
Me: Learned from what? For example, what I learned from the child abuse was to be more assertive, more compassionate and other things. Is that what you’re talking about or are you talking about something else?
Erik: Yeah, and you also learned how to be protective.
Me: Okay, yes.
Erik: It’s not all the positives. It’s the positive and negative. Write down what you learned from it just so you can push it aside. Most of the time, when people are looking at forgiving, it’s a situation where they can’t find the lessons. That’s flat out bullshit, people.
Jamie: He puts his hands out.
Me: That’s true. The thing that my father did at the end, I can’t find any benefit for. I can’t find any lesson in it, so I guess I need to look harder and see. Maybe there is an lesson in there, something valuable.
Erik: You need some time to pass, then look back again. Mom, it doesn’t even have to be valuable, but I guess we can say that everything in life is valuable.
Changed his mind. Didn’t know spirits could do that!
Erik: Yeah, once you can see what you gathered from it or learned from it or experienced from it, then you can strip it down and see what you took from it or that it bettered your life. Maybe it created chaos in your life that made more opportunities for you. Every experience that we look at and go, “Oh, there needs to be forgiveness,” most people just want to say it was total bullshit; it didn’t give them anything. They just want to close that chapter and pretend like it never happened. That’s a disservice to anyone. It’s time to look at every aspect of you, and if you can’t do that on your own, I really suggest doing it with somebody else: The life coach, the therapist, the whatever it is. The best friend who can listen with non-judging ears and hash things out until you can put it in a place where it’s acceptable. If you can put it into a place where it’s acceptable, then forgiveness can happen.
Me: So, basically, it’s about looking at the situation not from, as in my case, the eyes of a child, but in this new perspective many, many years later. Also, to forgive yourself for how you analyzed it and—I’m just recapping. The other thing you said, what was it?
Erik: Extract what you’ve learned from it.
Me: Oh yeah. Extract what you’ve learned from it.
Erik: Whether it’s good or bad.
Me: That’s right. Are there any mantras [we can chant] or is there any way we can tweak our perspective to help? To let go of things is so hard. Do you have any tips?
Erik (in a monotone voice as though chanting a Buddhist mantra): “Ommm, I’m okay. You’re okay. Ommm, I’m okay. You’re okay.”
Jamie and I laugh.
Erik: “Ommm, this is mine; that is yours. This is mine; that is yours.”
Me: Okay.
Jamie’s still laughing.
Me: “This is mine; that is yours.” That’s a good perspective to have.
Erik: The other thing is the awareness that you don’t need anybody else’s sorriness—
There’s that new word again.
Erik: –or approval or understanding of the situation for you to find forgiveness because you’re in control over your own emotions. The fourth thing is being able to put that memory of the experience into an acceptable place in your life, and when it’s accepted, then that’s when the forgiveness happens.
And that takes hashing it out, looking for fresh, healing perspectives.
Me: Yeah, because most people, when they can’t forgive, they blame or give that emotion [of resentment] to the person they’re trying to forgive.
Erik: Oh hell yeah!
Me: I understand that. We should think, “Hey, you’re the one that’s coming up with these emotions of resentment. It’s not in the other person’s lap.” Is that what you’re saying?
Erik: Yes!
Me: Okay. Now, one other person asked me the other day—she or he, I’m not sure, was watching the video on the spiritual basis of heart disease that we did—and she or he wrote in, “Are there any tips to healing a broken heart?” Can you talk about a broken heart? That’s along the same lines as forgiveness, so I thought I’d throw it in there.
Erik: So you mean not a physical broken heart.
Me: Right.
Erik: An emotional broken heart.
Me: That’s right. What can we do to fix a broken heart other than –I’m going to break into song any minute, I swear!
I start singing.
Me: What can we do to mend a broken hearrrrt.”
Humming follows.
Me: Okay, I’ll stop.
Jamie: Oh, he’s continuing.
She laughs.
Here’s another great review for my boy’s wonderful book, My Life After Death. Remember it comes is paperback, Kindle, Nook, Audible and Audiobook.
Get ready to devour this wonderfully vivid journey Erik takes you on. I felt as if he were there, holding my hand through each step of the way. I found myself holding onto every word and detail. Heart pounding. Heart soaring.
Erik takes you to the depths of his journey and the beyond the apex of this existence.
He has come to be a very special friend of mine before reading this book, and now after reading it, well he’s family to me. After all, one would only be so open to family as Erik was in this book. Calling it a book flattens out the experience, its more like a ride. A journey. A first class ticket to enlightenment!
