Book Excerpt Chapter Seven:

Freedom Through Forgiveness

Forgiving Parents and Other Family Members

p. 174 - You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy by James Blanchard Cisneros.

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Many people still find some kind of comfort and safety in blaming their parents for how they feel about themselves. Even as adults, they blame their parents for self-esteem issues. Understand that it was not what your parents did to you, but how you choose to carry the past that affects you now. My friend, you might now find it difficult to believe, but some day you will completely forgive and love your parents. In your perception, your parents may have acted in ways you once believed impossible to forgive and love. But as you grow, you will begin to understand the lessons that came to you as a result of their behaviors. With understanding comes peace, and with peace comes gratitude. With gratitude your heart opens, and you will grow spiritually by learning to forgive behaviors you once found unforgivable, and love those you once thought were unlovable.

Before you were born, you chose the individuals who became your parents. You were aware of the issues you would face, and the environment you were coming to experience. For example, you may now believe that you choose emotionally and physically abusive men in your relationships because your father was an emotionally and physically abusive man. Yet, you came to Earth understanding the environment in which you were placing yourself. You also came to Earth to learn about love, forgiveness and service. The first people you came to love, forgive and serve were your parents. If you do not learn to love the truth of who your father is, then you will choose men with his characteristics to assist you in learning to love, forgive and serve such beings. There may be something about your father's behavior that has blocked your awareness to the presence of love, the truth in him. If you do not choose to work with your father and his characteristics, then brothers with the same characteristics will offer themselves to you in order to assist you in releasing these blocks. They will offer themselves to you, and you will not only accept them, but you will strangely be attracted to them, because deep within, you know that there is something that you need to learn that only they can teach.

Another lesson that you might have come to learn is that you don't need to be treated in this abusive manner, that you should be treated with love, honor and respect. If you do not learn to stand up for yourself and be treated with love, honor and respect by your father, then you will choose individuals like him to stand up to, in order to learn that you can stand up to these kinds of beings. When you finally stand up for yourself, and acknowledge and demand that this is not how you want to be treated, the lesson is complete and the pattern ends. The pattern ends because your lessons are complete. There is nothing else this type of individual has to teach you; there is nothing else for you to learn together. And the next time an individual like this appears, you simply bless him and move on. There is no longer a secret need to come together. There is no need to repeat the grade once the lessons are fully learned.

Now we arrive at the most important point of this example: You cannot release an individual or situation unless you have done so with forgiveness and love. When you express yourself through judgment and anger, you will feel worse afterward. You will have a feeling of incompletion, as if something still remains to be said or done. You will carry with you the individuals or situations in which you expressed yourself through judgment and anger. You will feel weighed down and not know why. And the individuals or situations will reappear in the future. It may not be the exact form, situation or individual, but you will re-create the environment to allow yourself the opportunity to resolve it with forgiveness and love, and obtain peace. Again your patterns will be repeated until you release them with forgiveness and love.

When you see yourself attracting the same type of person, or experiencing the same kind of stress in your everyday life, I recommend that you:

• Thank yourself for bringing that situation to your life, for there is something for you to learn from the individual or event.

• Thank the individual or event in your life for its participation in your lesson plan.

• Ask your Godself why it is that you are choosing to repeat this pattern.

• Take time to analyze the pattern. Write down all your thoughts and emotions relating to this pattern. Invite your friends and family to comment on this pattern.

• Ask to be offered guidance on how to resolve this issue with forgiveness and love.

• Pray that you'll be offered the strength and clarity to act with forgiveness and love.

• Acknowledge that every moment in your life is a learning experience created by your higher self to teach you how to be a more loving being.

• Acknowledge to yourself that you are not reacting in the most constructive and loving way possible.

• Forgive yourself for reacting in this manner.

• Forgive everyone and everything else involved in the situation.

• Acknowledge to yourself that there is another more peaceful and mature way of looking at this situation.

• Ask yourself what is more important: to be happy or to be right?
   

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of the great spiritual / self development book You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy by James Blanchard Cisneros.