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I want to teach you about the power of forgiveness forgiveness is a very very powerful tool that can help you to heal and to reach new levels of consciousness and fulfillment in life this is not just some new agey BS this is the real deal this is where the rubber meets the road this is real where the real work happens the real inner work so you're gonna get a taste of that here this is not gonna be a theoretical talk about intellectual philosophical stuff this is gonna be a hands-on guided forgiveness exercise and you will learn what forgiveness is and how powerful it is by actually doing it and this exercise can change your life if you apply it properly so are you open to that do you want to roll up your sleeves and actually get to work and try how this works most people are in denial about how much forgiveness they have left to do in their life I know I was like when I was first introduced to this idea forgiveness you know me being sort of rationally minded scientifically minded person you know I look at it like well forgiveness like who do I have to forgive like it sounds so intangible it sounds so airy-fairy and new agey is it really gonna produce a material change in my life like I want something concrete but forgiveness seems it's like it's almost like this sort of like girly fluffy thing that you just do to kind of puff up your emotions or change your state but actually it's not that way at all and you will discover that by actually trying it you have way more forgiving to do than you realize or that you're willing to admit this template this exercise is gonna be a template for how to heal any situation in which anyone ever in your whole life has ever wronged you or hurt you in some way now think about that that's a pretty powerful tool if they can do that because think of how many people have wronged you in some way in your life and especially of course we're talking about childhood and we're talking about your teenage years we're talking about your family situation your parents your siblings but also beyond that your relationships some people get into some brutal and nasty intimate relationships some people have falling-out with their friends or they get bullied at school I mean the list is endless there's so much to work on but really the the the meat of this work is gonna be around your family and around the first 20 years of your upbringing whatever that involved and usually of course that involves various degrees of trauma and of course people have wronged you even people that you love deeply have wronged you so many times not just once not just twice but I mean your family members have wronged you in so many ways you hold so many grudges and resentments and and that all it all accumulates and it's there sort of in your subconscious mind and so this this template I'm gonna present to you here this exercise will will sort to clear that out it's very powerful now because it is so powerful I got to issue a warning here that if you're gonna do this with me you can get emotional I might also get emotional as I'm guiding you through this this may stir up repressed trauma in your life and you know depending on how much that you've had and how serious it's been it can be very powerful to bring that stuff up maybe something repressed will come up that you've swept under the rug for twenty years we don't know now of course you probably want to start with something light we don't want to get into something super heavy right away but just as a warning keep that in mind so this is going to be rather long guided exercise it's gonna require about thirty or sixty minutes of your time uninterrupted you're gonna have to sit there with your eyes closed as I guide you through it and you're gonna be doing some visualizations and other things that I'm going to asking you to contemplate so just prepare yourself for that there's not gonna be a lot of preamble here we're gonna get right into it so if you're ready then let's get going this actually requires your earnest participation this is a live exercise okay are you ready but first before we actually begin I need you to kind of preliminary pick a person that you want to work on forgiving so we need a specific person this should be somebody who hurt you or wronged you in some way someone that you resent or are angry with to some degree someone you have some emotional baggage with someone who had a traumatic impact on your life now like I said probably you're best off picking your mom or your dad or your siblings or other family members perhaps an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend or an ex spouse perhaps some bully at school something like that if you had some really serious trauma like you were abused sexually or physically that might be something you want to hold off on for now because that can you know that can really stir up a lot of deep stuff and that might be something you want to actually have like a therapist for or whatever but assuming you didn't have such serious trauma then I'd recommend you pick your mom or your dad to work on because there's a lot of forgiveness to do on your mom and on your dad and on your siblings but pick one right now and also pick a specific situation so it's not enough just to be a person we want some traumatic event that has caused you to feel hurt or wronged like you were treated unfairly in some way and you feel like there's still some injustice that lingers and remains so probably something that happened in your childhood it could be a minor thing or it could be a major thing so if you need to pause this recording right now and take a moment to select the person and the situation and assuming you've already selected that now let's begin so I'm gonna be guiding you and I'm also going to be explaining and teaching how forgiveness works all at the same time so this is a something you're actually going to be experiencing and learning by doing it not just through theory all right so sit back get comfortable in your seat make sure you're not going to be interrupted for the next 30 to 60 minutes close your eyes and relax just take a few moments a few breaths to close your eyes and just to relax and to clear your mind now bring to mind the person that you're going to be forgiving in this exercise and bring to mind the situation with this person that you're gonna be working on there are probably more than one situation but we're gonna focus on just one for now you can focus on other other ones later so just pick one juicy one now if you need to when you're gonna be reliving this situation a little bit here in your mind you can do so from a third-person perspective sort of like an outsider looking back like you're from the future self looking back into the past self and observing that situation so that sort of third person looking from the future back into the past this gives you some distance so if it was a really traumatic event with a lot of emotions and pain and suffering you can be somewhat detached from that and look at it an observer rather than someone who's deep in it so now bring to mind the situation and observed in your mind simply what happened replay it a few times in your mind of course this situation was supposed to have hurt you in some way or made you feel resentful towards this person or made you feel wronged or like some injustice was done to you and because of that you might be angry you might be upset you might be depressed or what other other negative emotions might be there good keep replaying that situation in your mind while I'm talking notice your true feelings towards this person as the result of this situation now you might love this person but deep down there might be some resentful feelings that you have suppressed or just try to ignore or that you never fully aired out or communicated either to this person or even to your own self you never really deeply explored this situation and the feelings that it generated in you probably because they were negative and so you just wanted to sweep them under the rug and to avoid it but now we're coming back to face it so notice your true feelings about this situation how did it make you feel don't try to act tough or pretend like you're invincible but actually how did it make you feel you are probably more vulnerable than you want to admit what feelings about this situation in person haven't you fully expressed yet what have you kept uncommunicative and unsaid what judgements do you have about this person in this situation notice especially your judgments of them judgments are things like he was a bad person she was evil that was so gross what he did to me that was so terrible what she said to me etc how did this person wronged you or hurt you how did he or she fail you what is it that you wanted from them but they failed to give you in this situation and how do you really feel about that take off your armor and the surface level stuff and go to your true genuine feelings so if you feel hurt allow yourself to feel hurt so just keep replaying this situation with this person over and over again in your mind from a distance looking at it because this is a thing we're gonna be working on forgiving now first we need to bring this up to the surface so it's in your awareness so we have something to work on to forgive now this person in this situation is what we're going to be working on to forgive so now ask yourself do I want to forgive this person for this situation yes or no but don't feel forced to say yes let's go slowly here really your mind as I'm guiding you through these different questions your mind I want your mind to actually gain traction with the questions that means you're not just answering them mindlessly because you feel you have to give a specific answer or do something I'm telling you but rather be true to your own feelings and go at your own pace so ask yourself honestly do you want to forgive this person or not and if the situation was terrible enough you may not want to and that's okay then just say no I don't want to but before you cement your answer let's look a little deeper what does forgiveness mean here what are we asking you to do what are you saying yes or no - are you willing to let go of what they did to you without holding it against them in any way anymore are you willing to let go of the hurt and the sense of injustice are you willing to stop judging them are you willing to stop demonizing them are you willing to understand the situation from their point of view are you willing to extend your mercy to that person are you willing to let go of needing to get even so are you again replay the situation in your mind again and look at that person in the face in your owns mind's eye and just take a look are you willing to forgive this person now again before you submit your answer let's consider why would you say yes to forgiveness what's the point of forgiving this person you might feel like they've wronged you so badly that they don't deserve forgiveness why should I forgive them after what they did to me that's a very common reaction but let's really explore this notice that you are holding on to negative feelings about this person in this situation and if this is a situation that happened in your childhood and now you're an adult you've probably been holding on to these negative feelings for years for decades maybe for 40 years it's been nagging on you knowing on you notice that your hate resentment and judgment weighs you down in life it makes you a better person so my question to you is do you want this negativity to continue in your life or do you want to let it go the choice is yours I'm not forcing you to do anything here don't feel like you have to answer in some way to please me if you don't want to forgive then don't forgive I won't judge you for it but I just want you to contemplate for a moment do you want to be a hateful person or a loving person so this here is a matter of what kind of life do you want to create for yourself going forward imagine that forgiveness will make you stronger as a person so do you want to be a strong person or a weak person do you want to be big or do you want to be small so again replay the situation in your mind and considering all these extra factors that I just told you think about your answer do you want to forgive this person yes or no this is about what kind of person do you want to be going forward stop acting like a victim here set your intention what do you want do you want to forgive or do you want to keep holding on to that resentment you can you can hold on to it until you're on your deathbed if you want to the question is is that wise is that really what you want we're just trying to get you to consciously consider your options and to make a choice consciously do you want to become strong do you want to be living from your highest self or do you want to continue being small do you want to continue being traumatized do you want to continue have to have bad dreams about this for the rest of your life and to have it souring your relationship because if this is a family member you probably see them again at least on occasion and maybe even often maybe you talk with them on the phone and it's ours everything do you want to keep that going or do you want to clear the air and maybe rebuild that relationship keep looking at this situation until you realize that you want to be strong and not small which means that you want to forgive so if you're still resisting saying that you want to forgive then just keep keep keep looking deeper until your mind realizes that forgiveness is the wisest course here and if you're unsure be courageous and take a gamble after all you can forgive a person that you can you can pick pick your resentment back up later if you want to if you really think that the forgiveness was a mistake so take take a gamble you don't really have much to lose now let's look at this situation from the other person's point of view I want you to deeply contemplate why did this person hurt you did they do it because they wanted to hurt you be careful here because if the event was traumatic and very emotional then it can start to trigger you and you can start to feel as though yes the person wanted to hurt me but if you contemplate and look deeper which you'll realize that the person didn't actually want to hurt you it might feel that way from your point of view but that's not what they were doing from their point of view so take a look and try to understand what they were doing from their point of view and remember their point of view is not your point of view people are different so how you react to a situation how you might have handled that situation is very different than how somebody else might because you have different strengths different weaknesses different genetics different upbringing a different personality different capabilities the four talents different experience different resources more money less money more status less status you might be a different gender you might be an introvert and they might have been an extrovert and so because of this there are many different ways in which a situation can be handled now here is the key to this forgiveness business I want you to notice that in this situation whatever they did to hurt you they didn't do it because they wanted to hurt you and to cause you suffering they did it for five key reasons these are universal truths about human behavior number one they did what they did to hurt you out of ignorance that means that they were doing their best to do good in that situation but given their limited understanding of life and their limited capabilities the result wasn't so good for you from your point of view and so it hurt you but they were trying to do their best they were just ignorant and so their best wasn't that good try to see that this is a very Universal point that covers many situations most of the quote-unquote evil stuff that people think other people do to them isn't really evil it's just action out of ignorance and that really that person who hurt you was probably trying to do what they thought was best for you from their point of view now this can get very twisted because if they're in a low state of consciousness what they think is best for you if they're very very ignorant then what they think is best for you might be exactly the opposite and it might end up hurting you but they don't know that so take a look at this situation with this person and just see were they acting out of ignorance another universal point point number two is that whatever they did to hurt you they did it out of weakness and out of fear maybe they cheated you somehow maybe they lied to you maybe they tried to screw you over maybe they stole something from you maybe they manipulated you whatever they did to you notice try to see what their motivations for doing it were and notice that if they did something nasty to you it's probably because they were weak in that moment and they succumb to fear some kind of fear they were afraid of something therefore they hurt you again this is very Universal and very common when people think that other people do evil things to them usually those people who are quote unquote doing the evil things are simply acting out of weakness and fear point number 3 if they hurt you they did so out of selfishness notice that this person in this situation was probably being selfish point number four they did it out of a desperate desire to get love because they lack love so if this person hurt you it's because actually deep down they were lacking in love and they wanted love from you but because they're ignorant and they're selfish and they're weak they didn't know how to properly get the love that they wanted from you so they got it in some sort of way that ended up hurting you but getting them the love that they wanted so notice that this is another very deep universal principle of human behavior so usually when somebody does something evil quote-unquote evil it's because they simply want love but they don't know how else to get it other than through this selfish action which then we call evil because it hurts somebody else and point number five they did it out of a lack of consciousness this person hurt you because this was not a high consciousness person at that time in that situation if the person had more consciousness if the person was more developed if the person was in a more conscious state they would have behaved very differently in that situation notice that so very likely all five of these points ignorant fear selfishness the need and lack of love and lack of consciousness all five of these points played out in your scenario with this person and this completely explains why they hurt you so I want you to very clearly replay the situation in your mind and just notice the real root reason why you were hurt because this person acted out of ignorance weakness fear selfishness unconsciousness and a need for love if you still can't see this keep replaying the situation and keep contemplating it deeper until you see that this is true I guarantee you that it's true it's just a question of how deeply are you gonna go inside of their minds to try to understand their motivations can you see how in this situation this person was not being evil but actually this person was trying to be good and that this person was seeking love in ignorant ways that's all that this situation boils down to that's really all that these kinds of situations where somebody gets hurt boiled down to is people are seeking love in one form or another it might be in the form of money or sex or a relationship or a favor or a business opportunity or fame or pleasure these are all just different forms of love people seek these things not knowing why they're seeking them because they think that they will ultimately lead them to so sort of fulfillment and satisfaction and they pursue these things in ignorant ways so apply this principle to your specific person and situation until you can see clearly how this is so really understand why the person behaved the way they behaved not in all the little details you don't need to go all the way into the back of their life but you also can just kind of hypothetically consider that this person for example maybe this person cheated on you or maybe this person lied to you or manipulated you and you might feel like well but they shouldn't have done that but to say they shouldn't have done that this ignores their entire life history this ignores how they were raised how they were brought up what kind of trauma they carry what kind of education they received or did not receive what kind of ideas and beliefs and ideologies they were indoctrinated into as they were growing up what kind of challenges they're facing what their health situation is like maybe they're in bad health therefore they're acting in a selfish way because they need whatever because their health is is limited or maybe they were born in a certain environment where they're their environment severely limited their opportunities for success or for sex or for money or for fame and that's why they act the way they act maybe they were born or raised in a different culture in a different country in a different generation different era where there were different standards different values they were programmed with these standards and values and now they're acting from those in this situation you see so you have to sort of consider all those factors you can't just assume that the person is identical to you and therefore they should act the way that you would have acted try to see that given their worldview given their genetics given their personality type given their environment given their upbringing given the things they were led to believe given their value system given their unique matrix of fears and insecurities that all of this shaped this person to be as ignorant as he or she was in this situation and to seek love in such limited ways that it resulted in you getting hurt can you see that and now here's the final kicker that's going to lead to you getting healed I want you to bring to mind all of the times in your life when you acted out of ignorance weakness fear selfishness unconsciousness and a need for love notice how you do this too now of course it can manifest in very different ways maybe this person cheated on you but you say well but leo I've never cheated on anybody yeah maybe not but we're really trying to go broad here and go deep as well which means we have to get abstract so look at where in your life you have acted out of ignorance weakness fear selfishness unconsciousness and a need for love so if this person cheated on you for example what was that well they needed love and that's how they got it it ended up hurting you okay but where in your life have you acted in a similar manner where you needed love and you acted in such a way that ended up hurting somebody else but you needed it so badly that you couldn't help yourself and therefore somebody else got hurt draw that direct connection that commonality between this person and yourself what you need to see is that this really isn't personal it's not about you and it's not about that other person these are universal dynamics of human behavior in life that we're dealing with here you weren't hurt because somebody personally wanted to hurt you you were hurt because somebody else was acting out on universal principles of life trying to survive and working with ignorance weakness fear selfishness unconsciousness and a need for love and they didn't know how to satisfy it or they satisfied it in some unrestorable way than Aperta you so it's really not personal and likewise you've done the same thing think about times where you inadvertently hurt somebody else out of ignorance weakness fear selfishness unconsciousness or a need for love you don't even notice sometimes when you hurt somebody it's not even obvious it might seem like well shouldn't it be obvious that this person hurt me not to that person not necessarily because they have a different worldview a different value set and because they're so preoccupied with fulfilling their needs their need for love that they're just acting it out without even being aware of what the consequences are what the collateral damage is that is nutshell is ignorance that in a nutshell is lack of consciousness notice how in your life you try to be good most of the time almost never do you intentionally try to hurt others when you hurt others it's usually inadvertently out of ignorance of some kind now apply this principle to this person in this situation try to see how this person was actually trying to act good but they failed simply because they lacked enough awareness notice that when you do something quote-unquote bad in your life you are still fundamentally good the bad that you do is a mistake it's a failure it's an oversight due to your weakness fear and ignorance it's not because you're trying to be bad really all you ever want is to be good the problem is it's difficult to be good and now apply that exact same principle to this person in this situation notice that this person who hurt you is also fundamentally good and they are trying to be good but they're doing it in their own way through their worldview through their paradigm through their belief system through their education through their upbringing through their personality through their genetics through their body through their mind and just like you all this person who hurt you ever wanted really from life was love that's all they wanted if they lied to you cheated you manipulated you bullied you why were they doing all those things because they wanted love try to find that common thread between your behaviors and this person's behaviors and really all human behaviors what we all have in common is that we're all struggling for love we all fear we're all ignorant to various degrees we're all selfish to various degrees we're all unconscious to various degrees now granted there are many many many degrees of it some of us are less ignorant and others less selfish than others but why is that isn't that just because we were born in a different time in a different place to different parents with different genetics different personality different circumstances different limitations were placed upon us recognize that your parents were born in a different time where it might have been much more difficult to survive requiring them to be more blunt in their approach this is a deep existential commonality that we're drawing and you know deep in your bones you know what fear is what selfishness is what ignorant is what a struggle for love is you know this deep in your bones because this is your entire life in a nutshell this is what you've spent your whole life struggling with these obstacles these limitations you know these limitations intimately so you should be able to draw a deep common link between your struggles and the struggles of this person fundamentally the struggle is the same it just manifests itself in different ways take your and really notice this deeply in this specific person and the specific situation now here's where the magic happens now knowing all of that now that you're more conscious of what's really going on in this situation now are you willing to forgive this other person for the very same things that you struggle with how can you hold a grudge against this person for being selfish and unconscious and fearful and needy and desperate for love when you yourself are those things and have been those things your entire life are you really gonna sit there and with a straight face continue to judge this person who hurt you simply because they were struggling in their life to get by to meet their needs you're gonna judge them for that well then you're gonna have to judge everybody and yourself too because that's what we're all doing is your heart big enough to understand and accept that people struggle with life all the time people struggle with fear selfishness unconsciousness and love all the time can you forgive a human for being scared can you forgive a human for being ignorant can you forgive a human for being unconscious can you forgive a human for wanting love can you forgive a human for trying to be good but failing along the way can you forgive a human for being selfish are you willing to be so merciful so strong that you even drop the need to get even with this person with humans who are being a turrent unconscious and selfish and scared can you drop the need to get even with these people this is crucial because a selfish hurt person wants to get even a generous strong person can extend mercy without needing to get even which is the highest strength the highest strength that you can possess is to be hurt by another and to not need to retaliate to get back at them because you're secure in yourself and I also want you to notice that if you were hurt a lot of times the reason you were hurt is because the person who hurt you was him or herself hurt by somebody else so it's a chain of hurt so somebody screwed you over because they were screwed over somebody lied to you because they were lied to themselves someone cheated on you because they were cheated on in the past someone hit you because somebody hit them so I you to think about this are you willing to be strong enough to break this chain of hurt or are you gonna be a link in this chain and pass the hurt on to somebody else you see because when you hold on and you don't forgive you carry the hurt with you and that hurt bubbles up in unconscious and ignorant ways and it affects your behavior and it ends up inadvertently hurting others maybe your children maybe your spouse maybe your friends probably the people closest to you will get hurt the most by the hurt that you refused to let go of and forgive so I want you to think about this do you want to be the type of person who carries this hurt around and transfers that others onto others and infects others with it like a virus or do you want to be strong and do you want to cut the cord cut the chain right here right now and save somebody else from incurring your hurt because see now you're conscious enough to know that if you keep carrying this hurt you're gonna hurt others is that who you want to be now here you have the option to make a conscious choice now don't make the choice just yet let me give you the two options so listen to your options first option number one do you keep do you choose to keep judging this person who hurt you and not to forgive them in case notice that you are doing so if you make this choice you're choosing it out of weakness selfishness fear and ignorance or you have option number two you can choose to be selfless and good and to heal yourself and to let go of this resentment and to cut the chain of hurt in which case you choose consciousness wisdom and fear I mean and love over fear so those are your two options now you are ready now that you really are aware of what the consequences of your choices are you can now make a conscious choice as to how you want to proceed forward consciously do you choose fear and selfishness or do you choose selflessness and love look at your options don't feel forced here I'm not forcing you to choose anything this has to be a conscious free choice look at these options and make a free choice are you capable of enough selflessness to let this hurt go to forgive this person are you loving enough to embrace the one who hurt you because you understand that they just acted out of ignorance and fear do you want to be the type of person who judges others for their selfishness and fear or do you want to be a type of person who deeply understands the challenges of life and the universal dynamics that shape all human behavior and therefore you understand that humans will act out of selfishness and fear and a need for love and out of ignorance and yeah sometimes they'll they'll cause some collateral damage which might be you but is that gonna cause you to debase yourself now and to also become selfish as a result or are you gonna rise above that which do you choose are you strong enough to love even when others are too weak to love you or are you so weak that you're gonna wait for others to love you before you extend your love to them are you strong enough to be able to love without requiring your love to be returned back to you immediately do you dare to love a person who hurt you recognize that if you don't forgive this person in this situation right now you are being less than your highest self you are being less than you are fully capable of because you are capable of love and that if you reject this forgiveness you're doing so out of fear the fear of what would happen if you loved somebody who hurt you or somebody who is ignorant which is of course the very same cycle that led to you being hurt in the first place by this person so again right now you have the option the choice to consciously break this cycle of ignorance so do you choose to forgive do you choose fear or do you choose love make your choice whatever choice you make is fine I don't judge you for what choice you make if you still decide not to forgive then that's fine that's just where you're at now there's an additional point before you can fully forgive the other person you must first forgive yourself what do you forgive yourself for forgive yourself for all the times that you have been a turret selfish fearful and unconscious and needy for love in your life forgive yourself for all the times that you have inadvertently hurt others now why would you forgive yourself for this because that's life because life has put you in this existential bind where you have to survive and where you start life from ignorance from total ignorance and you have to figure out life but life is complex survival is complex and counterintuitive and it takes trial and error to learn how to navigate life and how to love and how to be fearless it takes work and trial and error to correct your original ignorance with which you started life so are you gonna judge yourself for having been born in ignorance does that make any sense of course not this is just how life has to be you have to start from zero from a blank slate and then you have to learn and you learn through trial and error and you make mistakes and you hurt others and this is just a part of life and of course others are doing the same thing and this generates the full gamut of what we experience in life the highs and the lows so are you willing to forgive yourself for being ignorant and selfish and fearful and needy for love why would you not this is the human condition and if you're able to hear forgive yourself then notice that you simultaneously forgive the other person as well there's no difference between forgiving self and forgiving other because the very dynamics that are running you are the same fundamental Universal dynamics that are running all others so what you're really forgiving is not a specific situation where somebody cheated on you or stole some money from you or whatever you're forgiving the general universal principles of ignorance selfishness fear unconsciousness and craving for love and these are much easier things to forgive when you frame it in this universal way because these are like forces of nature is sort of like forgiving gravity what is there to forgive gravity is just a force of nature it's not personal see you and everybody else is in this existential bind in life everybody is doing their best to try to cope with reality in whatever ways they're capable of in whatever ways they know how and a lot of people just don't know how to cope in healthy ways don't overlook that to you you might know how to cope with a situation in a healthy way but don't assume that others do don't assume that your parents or people from a prior generation to you have that kind of knowledge and wisdom remember your parents they grew up in a time where there was no internet you couldn't just Google how to cope with depression or with an abusive father or was alcoholism or something like that it was a different time they had to cope with these things without the information that you have today they couldn't go on YouTube and just search for a video for how to forgive somebody and then easily in in an hour or two forgive their mother for whatever for not loving them they had to suffer your parents probably had to suffer through that for 40 years until they had you and then of course they transferred on to you they weren't lucky enough to stumble upon a video like this they weren't lucky enough to come across self-help or personal development or spirituality or non-duality or awakening or any of this stuff they didn't know maybe the most it is there with the church where they got brainwashed that was their life that was their reality they didn't know better that's ignorance so I want you to keep replaying this situation with this person in your mind while considering these principles that I gave you until you realize that anything short of total forgiveness in this situation would be beneath you you are too good and too strong not to forgive this person keep doing that until you've completely forgiven this person and then check to see if there's any judgment resentment hurt or anger that remains and if any remains keep going through this process like a cycle keep trying to draw a deep commonality between you and the actions of this person until you realize that their actions are your actions and that to forgive them as to forgive yourself and vice versa do this a few times and you should be able to let go of all judgment resentment hurt and anger about this situation just keep contemplating a deeper and deeper and deeper you may need to do this a few times that's it that's the exercise now there's an even deeper version of this exercise for those of you who had some degree of Awakening or God realization or love realization or the collapsing of the duality between self and other so those of you who have not had a collapse of self and other have not had a mystical direct experience of this have not had a awakening then the following section is not going to make much sense to you but those of you who had let's quickly just go through this this is the ultimate step that's going to heal you so what we did up to this point is great that was sort of at the psychological level now we're really going to the existential level if you've had some degree of awakening then you know that the boundary between self and other is not real and that is permeable and so you can do this same exercise that we just did but also in addition to that add on top of it that you're going to notice that the other that you resent and are hurt by that that person is literally you so now we're not just saying that all the other person behaves in certain Universal principal ways that are similar to how I behave they are selfish and I'm selfish and therefore we're all one no no no that doesn't go deep enough that's still at the psychological level now at the existential level you need to replay that situation with your mother or your father or whoever hurt you replay it in your mind again and literally notice that your mother or father is you that you hurt yourself and that you have been resenting yourself and you were the one who were hurt so both you were the herder and the one who was hurt and the hurt that was felt but that's all possible if you have some degree of awakening some degree of non-duality and when you do that you start to understand that the reason that this hurt happened at all in this situation was because in that situation both parts of reality both parts of consciousness was asleep and was divided and fragmented and then finally what you do is you reunite the two you merge yourself with the other and that you notice that you and other are one you are the one who hurt you and you notice that all of that is you with a capital y all of that is God with the capital G and also if you've become this conscious through your enlightenment work then you might have become conscious that reality self and God are completely inevitable there's no other way that it could be so this situation that happened to you it couldn't have been otherwise not only could it not have been otherwise because reality is absolute it was also perfect because it was necessary for your awakening every little detail of your life that happened to you was all necessary for you to have your Awakening and for you to go on and have further and deeper awakenings that's the perfection of it so you can recontextualize this situation that happened in your childhood or whatever with this person who hurt you you can recontextualize that as that was necessary for you to learn about love and forgiveness and fear and suffering and to make you more compassionate to bring you to this point so that you can overcome the situation forgive let go be merciful and realize a deeper form of yourself as love and if you've had an awakening into what love is then you know that you are loved and then you know that forgiveness is nothing other than your love you being loved is forgiveness and when you have an even deeper awakening you realize that everything is love love is not some emotion or some individual expression love is the expression of the entire universe such that no matter what happens it is love so really when you realize this you realize you go full circle that there's absolutely nothing to forgive because everything that ever happened to you was love and at this point you have accepted yourself completely as what you truly are which is love and now everything makes sense and you're completely whole and you're completely healed and now nobody can hurt you and retrospectively you look back at your life and you realize that nothing really hurt you because it was all just necessary for you to learn a deeper form of love so who got hurt what was wrong now this this last part here this is some advanced stuff that I'm saying towards the very end if if this doesn't resonate with you if you think this is going a little bit too far into the stratosphere I totally get that you can just keep working on the psychological level that's powerful enough by itself but when you bring in this existential non-dual level this is when you truly have a complete healing complete and you want to get to this level because at the psychological level it's still not deep enough they're still gonna be wounds and still trauma you can sort of cauterize those wounds at the psychological level through therapy and through some of these exercises but eventually you simply need to realize that everything is love that's the only way to heal yourself completely now it's not enough to do this exercise just once you're gonna have to probably do it multiple times until you get the hang of it you don't need to do it in all the precise detail and all the steps that I went through here you can just run through this recording a couple times to get the gist of it and then once you got the gist of it you kind of understand and you can just you can just do a simplified version of it you don't have to go through every step and every question do a simplified version of it basically all you're doing is you're just you're drawing a commonality between the one who hurt you and you who got hurt and you're just your unifying those clothes you're bringing the two closer and closer together until they just merge into a unity and the whole thing just nullifies and cancels itself out and it heals itself in unity it's basically what you're doing so you don't need to go through all the detailed steps here and this is just I wanted to guide you in a very specific way just to teach you about this now that you know then you can do it faster it doesn't need to take hours I recommend that you practice this on multiple individuals significant people in your life family members those that were closest to you in your childhood those that caused you the most pain and suffering pick an individual person and run through the cycle it can be an abbreviated cycle but run through it for each individual this can take you days weeks months to do depending on how much you've had and also for certain very significant people like your mother your father your brother your sister maybe your ex spouse or something there might be so much material there that you need to do it not just for a specific person but individual traumatic events that happened with your father for example when you were five years old 10 years old 15 years old 20 years old whatever try to find those events again it's also gonna depend on how traumatic your childhood was how selfish unconscious and ignorant was your father or your mother the more ignorant unconscious and fearful and selfish they were the more trauma and hurt they transferred on to you inadvertently and therefore the more work you're gonna have to do to let it all go but also the deeper your lessons will be so don't think that if you had all this trauma that somehow you're in some terrible situation know the upside to having a very traumatic childhood is that yes it was terrible and I wouldn't want to live through that myself but the upside is that if you're able to overcome all that and to heal it all you will be so powerful so much more powerful than a person who had it easy so you have more on your plate but if you work through everything on your plate wow you can become really strong also you have more people to forgive than you think so sit down at some point in your life with a blank piece of paper and try to write down all the people that are worth forgiving in your life for major things but also minor things scan through your childhood scan through your teenage years try to find stuff try to find stuff outside the family as well make this investment in the future of your life by sitting down now spending the next week or two doing all this forgiveness work you won't have to do it forever a couple of weeks of it maybe a month of it at most should be enough to cauterize a lot of those wounds and to heal a lot of stuff and make that investment now because it's gonna free you up think about how much is gonna free up your life going forward it's gonna free you up with your family relationships it's gonna free you up in your intimate and sexual relationships it'll improve relationships with your brother your sister your co-workers your friends and so on and it'll make you a more loving and easygoing and peaceful person otherwise what happens is that as this trauma accumulates and it doesn't get processed fully it doesn't get forgiven and let go you carry it around and it just it robs you of energy it makes you a bitter petty depressed a cynical type of person because you've been so hurt by life that now you lash at back out at life and you want to hurt others in life and again that cycle perpetuates itself finally what I want you to notice here is the power of understanding I want you to notice and draw a connection between how proper understanding of a situation removes all the baggage that was there this forgiveness exercise was based upon understanding just by deepening your understanding of situations you're able to heal and to understand a thing fully at the existential level for what it really is will completely heal you and so if you think that reality is this terrible god-awful thing why am I here why am I so miserable why does life have to be so terrible that's simply because you don't have a high level enough understanding really a deep enough understanding existential understanding of your life and yourself and other people because if you did then it would heal you and you would not be this depressed nihilistic cynical person you would be loving God is mercy because God has infinite self understanding so the closer your understanding approaches out of God which is omniscience the more omniscient you become the the more mercy you will have until with total omniscience you become completely selfless completely fearless completely full of love completely merciful to the point where there's not even anything left to forgive anymore because you completely accept yourself as what you are which is the truth the absolute which is everything and then you're incapable of judging yourself or anybody else because you are everything when you're everything what is there to judge what sense does it make to judge or to hate anything to be resentful about anything because anything you resent would be just you shooting yourself in the foot it doesn't make sense the only way you can resent something or be hurt by something is by thinking of it as separate from you that only exists within duality realize this that forgive this is nothing other than self-love self-acceptance unity truth and consciousness that is God's mercy you're so conscious that you have nothing left to hate nothing left left to nitpick about nothing left to resent nothing left to reject because you have completely accepted yourself as what you truly are and what you are is inevitable so there's no choice but to accept yourself as what you are because to reject the absolute to reject the inevitable is insanity now I want to give a warning here and this warning goes especially to women in regards to your intimate relationships be careful not to use this technique to tolerate people who are actively abusing you right now so if you find yourself in some abusive relationship with some jerk who is mistreating you not appreciating you hitting you whatever do not use this recording to forgive this jerk and keep suffering his jerky behavior towards you and keep suffering his abuse that is a misuse of forgiveness in your situation what you have to do is you have to leave this abusive relationship acknowledge first of all that you're in an abusive relationship and this is toxic and that it's not going to work out leave muster the courage to leave and then you can practice forgiveness all you want you can forgive yourself for getting into this terrible relationship you can forgive the this boyfriend or this spouse for for being this to you and all that you can forgive later first you got a like you got a recognized hitter there is such a thing as physical danger and just emotional danger you don't want to you don't want to use giving us to just like maintain a bad such a sort of like an objectively unhealthy situation and I mean I'm guys can also suffer this not just women but I mean guys can also you know get get just stuck in a toxic relationship and just keep going at it and and thinking that well if I just forgive this person more if I just love this person more maybe they'll correct themselves it's like know at some point you got to get serious like if this person is a jerk if this person is if this person is just totally selfish and is abusing you and is unwilling to work with you then to communicate with you is not willing to work on themselves is blaming you for everything leave this is where you leave this is not where you where you used love to try to salvage this thing in this situation the most loving action is to realize that this person is not right for you and if this is not going to work out and to to cut to cut that cord before it gets out of hand because it's not gonna work out either way you're just gonna stay in there and suffer eventually it'll still break apart so you're not gonna salvage that with with some kind of unconditional love leaving don't forget that leaving a toxic relationship is love there's nothing about unconditional love that says that you have to tolerate a relationship in which you are being enslaved by somebody else see me being loving doesn't mean that I have to be your slave that's a common misunderstanding if you've done this exercise at the psychological level I encourage you to come back to it again later at the existential level to really get the most out of this exercise you have to do it after you've had some mystical experiences some non dual experience of some awakening some God realization some love realization after you've done some psychedelics or even in the middle of doing some psychedelics do this exercise it's extremely powerful because psychedelics will open your mind to God to love to consciousness to the ignorance that others are in and that you yourself have been in your entire life prior to the psychedelic cuz they're gonna open your eyes and once your eyes are open that's when the true forgiveness can happen that's why psychedelics are so great for trauma work and right now psychedelics are being approved by the FDA MDMA is being approved for for treating PTSD mushrooms are being approved for treating terminal illnesses coping with terminal illnesses and for for dysfunctional relationships and and other things these psychedelics are clinically proven to be one of the most effective tools for these sorts of traumatic situations traumatic childhood events therapies that that helps with that so I mean this is not just stuff that I'm makin up like there's really solid science in the next ten years psychedelics like MDMA LSD and mushrooms will be approved by the federal government in the US and other places to be used in clinics with therapists and licensed practitioners for these purposes because it's undeniable the science at this point is undeniable at their ability to to heal and to treat trauma and why is that simply because they raise your consciousness they open you up to the fact that everything is one and when you realize everything is one everything is love it's real easy than to to forgive others and to let that stuff go and then you're free to move about your life and you're no longer tied down by all that stuff so ultimately that's the point you want to get to you want to have so many mystical experiences and you want to have so many awakenings that you realize that just everything is yourself everything is love so there's nothing left to forgive because no wrong was ever done alright that's it I'm done here please click that like button for me if you liked this episode and come check out actualize that org that's my website you'll find my blog with exclusive content you'll find the book list with great ideas for books to read and I do have an emotional healing sort of category how to master your emotions I have an emotional mastery category in my book list with great books on on that front if you're interested in more of this kind of work the life purpose course check that out and you can support me on patreon by going to patreon.com shipping in a small amount which helps to give me funds to do more research and to bring you better content in the future that's it I will say one final thing which is that all too often people treat enlightenment or non-duality as some dry old philosophical nihilism that's not what it is at all what people don't realize is that enlightenment is healing with enlightenment you become complete you become God you become loved practically the point of enlightenment or awakening is to heal yourself and to make yourself whole again your birth was like a fracture in the universal mind a split in the universal mind and with your awakening or enlightenment that fissure that split is healed and all the pieces are put back together again or with your death it's the same thing with awakening you don't awaken to some bleak nihilistic reality you awaken to love you awaken to the fact that God is love and that you are God that's real awakening Buddhists and so forth they talk about emptiness of course love is emptiness love is nothingness consciousness is nothingness so everything I'm talking about here is emptiness it's just that the word emptiness has a lot of bad connotations to it it's often confuse with nihilism and people who've never really fully deeply experienced emptiness don't really understand that it's love so for me one of the most shocking things that I realized when I awoke deeply enough is is that is that emptiness is love see I wasn't I wasn't out there looking for love see I talk about love a lot now people might think the coldly oh you you're so like lovey-dovey and you're so new agey and hippie because you're talking about love love love and all this sort of stuff but it's like so you must have been that way your whole life's like no I was cynical atheistic rational scientific logical skeptical there was no love in my worldview for most of my life I had a rude awakening to love to the point where it was undeniable then I had to admit it and then I had to accept it and embrace it and of course that was challenging to do given my sort of materialistic scientific atheistic skeptical cynical nihilistic worldview that I sort of had previous to that but all of that changes with awakening that's the power of awakening see reality is not this neutral thing that materialists and scientists have taught you to believe like oh well reality must be neutral no it doesn't it doesn't have to be neutral reality can be love why can't it be love that's the that's the miracle of awakening you see Awakening is so good that when you realize how good awakening is literally it's goodness is what kills you awakening another way to say it is that you die by drowning in an ocean of infinite goodness and then you become nothing you become God and then you're awake and then it's so obvious that when you look around the room and you look around the city and you look at TV and you look at everybody around you you look at everything you look at your family you look at your past you look at the future everything you see everything that's happening around you you realize of course it's all love how could it not be love what kind of sick twisted universe would this be if it wasn't pure love the twisted nough sickness of it wasn't in the universe itself it was in your perception of it it was your ego that was twisting it and distorting it so when we unravel your ego once that is out of the way then you see reality as it is just pure love that's the point of awakening people sometimes ask me well the open but if awakening and death are the same thing then why why not just like why work so hard to awaken I'll just wait to die on my deathbed and it'll be the same thing as working really hard for enlightenment today so why don't I save myself the effort so you're saying that you want to live for the next 50 60 80 years you want to live a miserable life where you never see the love that is all around you the infinite love that is everywhere you want to completely miss that for 80 years and to only realize on your deathbed that it was all love that's here's life strategy Oh what kind of life is that you're consigning yourself to hell that's the most tragic life you could live is to live your entire life it would be like this it would be like imagine you were born you were born and your parents who died right before your birth let's say your parents died and they left you they were billionaires they left you with a hundred billion dollars a trust fund of a hundred billion dollars you were born and people told you that there's this you have trust fund go look in your trust fund there's something awesome there and you're like ah trust findable what iWhat that's some I don't need no trust fund and you just I'm just gonna live my life I'm too busy I'm gonna keep living life I don't care about this trust fund and you're gonna be living life you're gonna be struggling you're gonna be going to a to a minimum-wage job and you're gonna be just like struggling to pay your bills your entire life and then on your deathbed you will finally wise up up wisen up enough to go actually check your trust fund and then you realize that it was it had a hundred billion dollars in it and then you're dead see that would be the most tragic situation but that's exactly what you're doing when you're postponing your awakening because every minute that you're not awake you're living through an unnecessary hell not realize the love that is all around you that is your god-given birthright in a sense that you have simply just like ignored given your ignorance so I mean you could do that if you want to if you're a masochist but I recommend you awaken sooner rather than later so that you can appreciate the love what do you do after awakening you appreciate the love and then you radiate the love and you participate in the love and that's how life should be what else should life be but love if you sort of think about like if you could design life from scratch let's say you were God and you were just sitting up in the clouds and you were thinking about like huh what kind of what's the best kind of life that I could invent her for people what would it be it would be infinite love but the problem is you see is that humans are so scared of love that they spend their whole lives running away from it and God can't force the love on you God can kind of nudge you towards the the love as they say you you can you can lead a mule to to water but you can't make them drink it's like that God is leading you to love but God can't make you realize that your love if you're in denial about it like I've said before denial is a very powerful force fear also is a very powerful force so as long as you're in denial about truth and as long as you're full of fear and selfishness even God Himself cannot make you realize that it's all love you have to open your mind and let go of your fear and let go of your hurt and your frustration and your bitterness and all that forgive yourself and others make yourself whole and then you'll realize it and that's the point of blanking you