When we live with grateful hearts, fear cannot enter, guilt is dissolved, and there is only peace, love, forgiveness, and understanding. To me, that’s what life is all about.
— John Randolph Price, Gratitude: A Way of Life, by Louise L. Hay and Friends, p. 217
If grievance is the act of wishing for a different past, then mourning is the act of accepting that past in order to allow a different future.
— Mark O’Connell, PhD, The Marriage Benefit, p. 160
In the aftermath of catastrophic wounds, an obsessive, demonizing hatred may be mobilized to help us survive. And yet here, too, understanding eventually becomes the desirable thing, if for no other reason than we don’t want to keep feeling like victims and living in hate. It rarely hurts us to be more generous. In many cases, even if the grievousness of the wrong is never acknowledged or atoned for, we may want to feel our way back to a caring place. It’s the place we’d rather live.
— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 175-176
Noticing and counting the beautiful reasons unexpected things happen for us ends the mystery. If you miss the real reasons, the benevolent reasons that coincide with kind nature, then count on depression to let you know that you missed them. Anger, frustration, and aggressive reasons can always be imagined — and what for? People who aren’t interested in seeing why everything is good get to be right. But that apparent rightness comes with disgruntlement, and often depression and separation. Depression can feel serious. So “counting the genuine ways that this unexpected event happened for me, rather than to me” isn’t a game. It’s an exercise in observing the nature of life. It’s a way of putting yourself back into reality, into the kindness of the nature of things.
— Byron Katie, I Need Your Love — Is That True?, p. 187
When you are unwilling to forgive, you limit your growth. Forgiveness allows you to right a wrong in your spiritual self, to have understanding instead of resentment, to have compassion instead of hatred.
— Louise L. Hay, The Power Is Within You, p. 181
You don’t have to forgive because they deserve it. Frankly, they don’t. But just as Jesus chose to forgive us even before we’d repented, the choice to forgive opens the way for the most meaningful growth we can experience in life. If you think you can’t possibly forgive, do it instead to set yourself free from that pain. Do it in hopes that trust will one day return. But do it soon, and accept that it’s simply a part of living life.
— Cheryl & Jeff Scruggs, I Do Again, p. 177
Accountability may not sound like a lot of fun, but trust us, its opposite is a lot less fun.
— Rick Foster & Greg Hicks, Choosing Brilliant Health, p. 51
I think the main thing is, if there is any confusion or doubt as to what you should do, to err on the side of trusting that God can do the impossible….
God can do immeasurably more than you could ever ask or imagine. He can heal your heart, and he can resurrect your marriage, no matter what state it’s in.
As mere humans, we tend to limit God, especially in this extreme type of situation. But where there is room for repentance, there is also room for forgiveness and grace. If you can’t imagine such a miracle in your situation, choose to believe that God can and does. And in practicing that power you possess to believe God and take him at his word, you will find the strength to commit to acting on that belief. As we know from experience, reconciliation is a matter of trust, and it begins between you and God.
We didn’t have to remarry; biblically, the grounds for divorce were sound. But that doesn’t negate the truth that God created marriage to be the foundation of the family, and he created the family to be the foundation of society. The best thing we can do for ourselves, our children, and our society as a whole is to preserve marriages. If you choose to give up your right to your ego and your pain and walk the road of forgiveness and grace, you are glorifying God and living according to his purpose. You are giving an immense gift to yourself, your spouse, and your children. If you allow God to heal your heart and bolster you with his grace and love, choosing to walk the difficult path, you will never regret it.
— Cheryl & Jeff Scruggs, I Do Again, p. 174-176
The need to blame (ourselves or others) runs so deeply at times that it can feel like a basic necessity. Part of the need arises as a defense against shame. As shame encroaches, fending it off requires that someone else be proved the villain. And it is not enough that we protest what they’re doing, that we have our say. We have to nail them to their crimes, make them confess, make them feel bad and promise to be better. Only then can we finally have the satisfaction of being free of the denunciation we direct at ourselves….
Knowing oneself is integral to growing up. But, to the extent that we live in a blaming system, we do not want to know the truth about who we are and, therefore, resist growing up. We don’t want to know our own murderousness, selfishness, greed, envy, because all of these very human feeling states have been made a source of so much guilt and shame that they lead at once to total condemnation and self-rejection. We can’t know them, and we can’t know how we came to them. As a result, we miss out on the experience of self-empathy and self-care, which might be the basis for doing something new, for beginning to emerge from these things we don’t like in ourselves but which hold us prisoner.
Some of what we do is bad and should be changed — the way we bully, deny, manipulate, shirk, indict…. But if we make every misdeed or character orientation into a capital crime, into evidence that our very being is worthless, we will not be able to let ourselves know the full complexity of who we are. If there can be no mercy, no leniency, no understanding, no forgiveness, no simple tolerance for the magnificent complexity of being human — if we face every flaw or disliked quality as evidence that our blackened souls require rejection and banishment — we will not be captured by our own awareness and motivated to change. The blaming system, therefore, puts a brake on a fundamental area of growth….
Blame is very absorbent. It soaks up sadness. It dries the tears. It provides an opportunity and a target for fury which is felt as preferable to experiencing pain or loss — whether the loss is a cat, a spouse, an aspect of physical health, a loved object, a piece of work, a good night’s sleep, an election, a colony, or a war. Blaming and vindictiveness are ways of not feeling one’s sorrow or shame and, by corollary, of not caring for oneself. Blame is the anti-mourn and, hence, the anti-self.
— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 110-112
The very person you find hardest to forgive is the one YOU NEED TO LET GO OF THE MOST. Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It’s just letting the whole thing go. We do not have to know HOW to forgive. All we need to do is to be WILLING to forgive. The Universe will take care of the hows.
— Louise L. Hay, You Can Heal Your Life, p. 22