Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A., LMFT
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The Power of Forgiveness

1/1/2015

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Heartfelt compassion is birthed out of the belief that there is a greater reason for everything. 

There is a design for your life that is worth fighting for, a plan that holds profound meaning beyond your ego's ability to understand. 


The code of compassion invites you to know and embrace the larger reality by stepping out of your limited perspectives that everything happens for a reason.


When your inner judge begins to find evidence to hold on to the hurt that keeps you rooted in the past, filled with resentments or grudges
, you are prohibited from feeling your compassionate heart.

A voice of fear insists that the challenges you have gone through permanently scarred you.
The cost of listening to your fear can probably be most clearly seen in the patterns that plague you, whether they be repetitive cycles of self-sabotage, addiction, or relationship conflicts with lovers, friends, coworkers or family members.

These patterns might show up on your body or in your finances. 
The steepest cost of all is that they undermine your courage and your confidence.


To enter the state of heartfelt compassion,
we search out and find what is weighing us down in the form of resentments and grudges.  For many of us, this requires that we first awaken from our denial. 

We often forget that we are holding this undigested anger as we distract ourselves with the pleasurable addictions that obscure the emotional truth.
 

These are the habits and cravings that leave us with nothing more than short-lived feel good moments rather than the long term inner peace that we seek. 

Even if we are keenly aware that we are carrying grudges and resentments toward our exes, our bosses, or certain family members, we seem to use this knowledge as a defense mechanism. 
It becomes a shield that we sue to build up a false sense of confidence and make ourselves feel better, all the while oblivious to the true cost of harboring these grudges.

"Resentment is like drinking the poison and hoping the other person will die."


We open our hearts when we unburden the burdens of the past.
  We cannot allow ourselves to experience our own grace and ease when we have our hearts closed to any part of the world.  We need not wait, as most do, until our death--whether it be an emotional, spiritual, or physical death--to drop the rocks of the negative feelings we are harboring toward others. 

We can let ourselves be weighted down by the rocks of resentment from our past or
we can drop them through the power of forgiveness.


Debbie Ford - Courage




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    Author:
    Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A.
    Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist


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