The Everyday Mystic

I’m tickled pink to be able to share my new YouTube video with you!  Enjoy!

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With the Forgiveness and Emotional Release Telesummit coming up the first week in August, some of my guest speakers are jumping in on the Virtual Book Tour.

Pamela Bruner, a Success Coach, Certified Firewalk Instructor, and Certified EFT Practitioner, helps coaches, consultants and healing practitioners create thriving businesses to better serve the world. Last week she included an article of mine in her ezine and posted a review of A Forgiveness Journal on her blog. For the telesummit, she’ll be talking about how EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) can help you with forgiveness.

Marilyn Foreman, a parenting facilitator, teacher, speaker, and author of KidBits: Inspiration for Parents, advocated A Forgiveness Journal as a useful tool in creating better parent/child relationships on her blog, Thoughts from Marilyn. She will be talking with me about Forgiveness and the Parent/Child Relationship during the Telesummit.

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“I’ve been walking my energetic puppy every morning for the last six months, and I’ve lost 10 lbs!” enthused a friend recently.  When I asked for further details, this woman explained that she’s been pulled at the end of a leash for 30 minutes every morning since a young, hyperactive canine came into her life. The vigorous walking and the daily, repetitive nature of the exercise is what has gotten her into great shape. 

It got me to thinking about the benefits of a daily practice.

Whether your goal is losing weight, achieving mastery of a skill, building a business or seeking a closer connection with Source, the greatest benefits come after many months - or years - of steady, daily efforts.  A steady practice builds our skills and expertise.  Generally, it’s only after sustained effort that come spectacular results.

I worked with a man who, on the eve of his company’s fabulously successful initial public offering, said, “We’ve worked nine years to become an overnight success.” Inherent in his droll witticism is the truth that you may toil for a long time without seeing the fruits of your labor.  Just like nature’s fruits, the fruits of your labor take time to flower, form and ripen before they can be harvested.

The same can be said for the inner life or the spiritual journey. Habits such as a short daily mediation or prayer time pay off in the long run, resulting in greater personal serenity, increased emotional control, the ability to step back from the daily drama to see the big picture and the grace to perceive the Divine presence in your life.  The benefits of a daily spiritual practice are great, but they don’t necessarily show up right away. Yes, there can be peak moments in life, but the more you practice listening to the still, small voice, the more you open to the sacred essence in each moment.

The trick is to enjoy the daily, steady practice.

What can you do to have a daily, steady spiritual practice?  All it takes is 5-10 minutes a day on a consistent basis.  Everyone has 5-10 minutes a day! If your inner life is important to you, you’ll want to put a high priority on that sacred time.

What you do in that daily 10 minutes is up to you. You will be naturally drawn toward a type of devotion that suits you, and you may have to sample many practices before knowing what is right for you. You might:

• Sit in nature and simply observe it with all your senses 
• Sit quietly with a cup of coffee or tea, just being with yourself
• Meditate
• Pray
• Read scripture, poetry or other inspirational works
• Write in your journal
• Keep a gratitude list
• Walk slowly and mindfully, aware of your breath and your body

It’s not important what you do, but that you have a daily practice.  Then, in six months, read your journal, gratitude list or mentally review your inner journey. Marvel at where you have come, and how far - at all times remembering that this is a journey without end and that the joy is in the traveling.

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This July 4th, write your own declaration of independence!  Announce your freedom from anger, resentment, pain, bitterness and fear.  Make this the first day of your new life of freedom from these debilitating negative emotions.  How can you attain this freedom?  Forgiveness is the key that lets you out of the jail of anger and resentment. Forgiveness sets you free!

In the United States’ Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Forgiveness can help you attain these unalienable rights.  My clients report that forgiveness has allowed them to take back their life, provided them liberty from the bonds of their past memories and made them happier. 

One person reported that forgiveness allowed her to reconcile with her estranged daughters and her former in-laws. She reports that because she was able to forgive her ex-husband for turning her daughters against her, her former in-laws were finally, after many years, able to accept her. At the wedding of her oldest daughter, she was excluded from the family parties. She worked through a forgiveness process and, at the wedding of her second daughter, was thrilled to be invited to parties given by her former in-laws.  “Because I was able to forgive,” she says, “My former in-laws sensed the change in me and were able to open their family circle to include me.”

Another reported that he forgave his cruel father at the father’s death bed. He declared his independence from the bitterness he felt toward the father that had abused him.  This man forgave his father so that he could live the rest of his life in peace.

In my own life, I forgave a business partner who abandoned an altruistic project that we had worked on for years.  I got sick and tired of being angry and bitter about the situation. I found that every time something would trigger a memory about the project, I would mentally replay the scenes from this sad drama like a broken record, wishing I had done something differently or getting mad at my partner all over again. This is the origin of my seven-step forgiveness process, which I developed during this painful time. I used it to forgive both myself and the other person. I now feel peace and gratitude toward this situation.  I freed myself from the prison of bitterness and resentment.

Declare your independence today!  Forgiveness can set you free of anger, resentment, pain, bitterness and fear.

Kristin Robertson is the author of A Forgiveness Journal:Letting Go of the Past.

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Many spiritual seekers find communion with Source in nature. No wonder - nature evokes wonder and awe, gratitude and satisfaction. Its beauty is a feast for the senses. Nature reminds you of how small you are and, at the same time, how vast the interconnection is among all of life.

Music also evokes spiritual awakenings.  Music speaks to your heart and soul, invites you to sing or dance, creates a whole body awareness of the beauty of the human experience.

Enjoying music outdoors in nature is a special treat for the senses, the heart and the soul.  Some of my most sacred moments have been at outdoor concerts during the summertime.  Lying on a blanket, looking up at the night sky, surrounded by the sounds of summer and music - that’s heaven on earth for me.

Why not combine nature and music this 4th of July weekend?  Here in North Texas, you can at the Fort Worth Symphony’s Concerts in the Garden, at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. The symphony plays a patriotic concert tonight and tomorrow night, July 3 and 4th.  On Sunday night, you can hear Tchaikovsky’s explosive 1812 Overture and one of the Cliburn Piano Competition finalists performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.  For more information, visit http://www.fwsymphony.org/concerts/concerts-in-the-garden.asp 

Wherever you are, treat yourself to an outdoor concert for Independence Day weekend!

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This week, Carol Merlo, M.Ed., reviewed A Forgiveness Journal on her blog, which focuses on health and wellness. In fact, she called it “A Must Read”! You can check out her review at theeightkeystowellness.com.

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As my virtual book tour starts to pick up steam, I’ve had the opportunity to “stop” by a couple of blogs this week.

The first was at the Keener Financial Planning blog, where Jean Keener talked about how forgiveness can help you with your financial life, especially in this down economy. My article, Forgiveness: 5 Reasons It’s Good for You was also posted to the blog.

Then, today, my pastor posted a review of my book at the Sunflower Chalice blog.

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Chaos Theory offers striking parallels to the spiritual life.  Chaos is the last state a system goes through before it dissolves into completely random behavior that represents the demise of the system.  In a mathematically chaotic system, there is underlying order.  You can observe the order inherent in a chaotic system - but only when you step back and view its wild permutations over time and from a multi-dimensional view. From chaos can emerge a reformed system that is stable and stronger than what was previously.  Fractals, the beautiful hologram-like patterns created by graphing the mathematical iterations of a chaotic system, illustrate the order that becomes apparent only after time.   The picture on the left is an example of a fractal and can be downloaded as a screensaver from Tech Republic.

There is a life lesson in the behavior of chaotic systems. There are phases in life in which chaos seems to reign supreme, typically caused by illness, crisis, financial devastation, death of a loved one, a dark night of the soul or depression.  Comfort comes from realizing that our lives are passing through a chaotic state in which order, hidden from plain sight, beckons from the viewpoint of a wide-angle lens. You use that lens when you step back from the present hardship and contemplate it in the context of the bigger picture or the fractal pattern of your life. Frustratingly, the wide-angle lens takes maturity and sometimes the lapse of time before you can see through it clearly. Indeed, sometimes that viewpoint is never accessible via human understanding.

Forgiveness demands that you use a wide-angle lens.  This is why it can takes years - even decades - for an individual to to forgive and become free of his or her past.  It may take that long to be able to discern the order underlying chaos, to view the hurt and the pain you experienced through a wide-lens, to see it in the context of a bigger picture. Be patient.  Just because you are interested in forgiving means that you are already taking steps toward that goal.

Your life is a fractal image of order within chaos. It oscillates between phases of seeming chaos and order - yet inherent in the chaos is order, and within order is the possibility of chaos.  The trick is to hold onto faith in both chaos and order.  For me, the order is Source’s promise to me that there is an underlying purpose, beauty and promise.  There is safety.  As the Psalms say:

“Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me.

Whither shall I go from they Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from they presence?

If i ascend to heaven, thou art there!  If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!

If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me, and they right hand shall hold me.”

-Psalm 139:5, 7-10

For more information on chaos theory and how it relates to business and life, please refer to Margaret Wheatley’s book, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World.

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This past week, I stopped by the Planting God Communities blog managed by Rev. Ron Robinson. His post talked about Letting Go of the Past, Forgiveness, and Planting. He even talked about William Faulkner! Good company to be in, I think.

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Have you been laid-off or fired from your last job? Are you looking for work and not having much success? Standard advice to job seekers includes updating the resume, attending networking events, calling your contacts, etc. What is seldom mentioned is the need to work on forgiving your last employer or manager who laid you off. Without fully processing your anger and resentment toward your last job, company or boss, you will have a hard time convincing a new employer to hire you.

What happens if you are lucky enough to get an interview and you are still full of bitterness toward your last manager? Even if you don’t say something overtly derogatory about your last job, your resentment will be felt on an unconscious level by the interviewer. What interviewer, in a very tight job market, wants to hire someone who is full of negative emotions? In a recession, employers have the pick of the field in hiring, and will almost always choose a candidate who exudes confidence, forgiveness of past employers and a broad perspective of market conditions and human frailty.

During a period of unemployment, your time would be well spent in working through your feelings about how and why you were terminated. Writing down your deepest thoughts and feelings is a good way to extract them from the inside closet of your mind and apply them to paper. In that way, your analytical brain can process them, see patterns, gain perspective and forgive the past. Forgiving yourself will be part of this process for those who feel some responsibility for losing their job.

For how-to advice on forgiving, please refer to my book, A Forgiveness Journal: Letting Go of the Past, found at www.aforgivenessjournal.com

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