I’m a firm believer of positive behavior and I’m a firm failure consistent with practical and positive behavior. I have learned to overcome my inconsistencies by overcoming their negative effects. I am writing this post because I love life; you are the love of my life. Life has not been a walk in the park but it does have its way of producing beautiful sounds – I love nature and the creatures it provides; and humans have a way of producing beautiful sounds – music, salsa, bachata, tango, rock,… that I enjoy. Life has many scenes and events that I enjoy… God’s presence has been a bigger part of my life and looking back I realize that God has picked me up on more occasions than I can count. I’m sharing my thoughts because I believe everyone needs a lift: spiritual, physical, mental, or otherwise. Over the years, I have learned about convictions and how to apply those convictions in a positive manner, keeping God’s values as close to my thoughts and as close to my heart as I possibly can. Some have said, I already have God but their actions and their behavior are far from godly; Maybe you do have God or know about the existence of God but at the very least, in word and in action, learn to be positive as it has many personal benefits and personal rewards.
I am going to talk about how forgiveness changes our life. In the end, I hope to illustrate what peace can look-like when we adapt to it, and why positive conviction is invaluable by way of forgiveness. I’ll convey how a simple life-style can change our life; although, no-one will ever live it equally. I’ll talk about Forgiveness as it is both something we learn from a textbook and something we learn from years of living our lives undertaking unique personal experiences of our own. Our experience in forgiveness, in a way, is something of self-fulfilling evidence; for example, we learn what works and what doesn’t work for us. Choices we’ve made and choices we make. Personal convictions we learn to embrace providing us a mental compass – “follow the star”… is what the three kings did as the star had become their compass knowing that it would lead them to baby Jesus. I’ll convey and realize the act of bravery and how bravery is connected to conviction thereby providing a safe environment, in our person, and in any given circumstance.
Introduction
To forgive and adapt positive behavior we have to completely surrender ourselves to actions that are good and healthy but the question may be – how. How do we adapt… How do we learn to be more positive and apply positive in our behavior and in our words. When we read about forgiveness in the bible; potentially, we can walk away empty handed or think, “simple” – all I have to do is say, “I’m sorry,” in the few versus that Jesus’ disciples lead us and have given us instruction on how to forgive. Typically most of us fail to grasp the concept of forgiveness – for example, why is it important to forgive or how to forgive. In essence we learn only a surface-level understanding of forgiveness. The best level of understanding is deep-level and deep-thinking – right. We can spend years thinking that we know the acts of forgiveness until one day we reach a point in our life where we find ourselves in need – to fill-in an empty space or gap that confounds us. Then we may spring to action to learn why we are having confounding moments in our life and then we may do more research to learn why the social disconnects. For some of us, we never find the answers. We may hope to discover the answers practical or logical or informational – use case scenarios to help us adapt – to bring peace in our life. As a society, we don’t often hear about how to forgive but we do hear a lot about forgiving. For most, forgiving is taught as a matter of simply saying, “I’m sorry.” This level of understanding to forgive is only on the surface as there is so much more. In a sense we become prisoners within ourselves because we have not learned how to forgive and the benefits forgiveness provides for us – it’s power, peace, and freedom are benefits that we can learn of if we take the time to learn – how to forgive.
There are two things we love in life – Peace and Security. Though both are never guaranteed in life. People love security and in the presence of security we all want to feel safe, safe from physical or mental or spiritual or verbal attacks. Security fluctuates constantly and in the midst of people we often potentially feel secure if you feel you are within a trusting environment – trust begins with us. Additionally, I believe there are 3 fundamental basic elements that we can use now and adapt into our life. Here are the three: First – Unconditionally to LOVE, Second – unconditionally to HONOR, and Third – unconditionally to COMPLEMENT. These three characteristics will contribute to a strong social-connection between you and the people around you. Many studies have been made about the human mind, in terms of how we think; although, I am no expert, one thought I learned and truly believe is that, “people NEED people.” LOVE because it is the greatest spiritual therapeutic tool to possess. HONOR because all relationships are equally important including those people closest to us, and those furthest from us, and those that are strangers to us, and those that professionally succeed or professionally fail. COMPLEMENT(with an E), unconditionally because it reinforces our values and the importance of values we bring to people and to ourselves. So what could potentially stand in the way of experiencing a simple lifestyle? We have all the tools that we need: mentally, emotionally, and morally,… humanity – to make a difference. Let’s continue…
Failure to Forgive
We fail to step through the appropriate steps we need for adequately forgiving the way God intends us to. If we act on an idea of forgiveness, we think and may argue that we have done our part. An idea because we may have not learned what the idea should accomplish and why the idea is invaluable and how the idea can look like in our day to day practical life. How do we see ourselves? What struggles do we have? What hurdles do we have in the way that keeps us from growing? Our behavior for example, Something we may have said, or something we acted upon towards an individual may have hurt or angered that individual – you are compelled, you might say to them “I am sorry,” simple, for example. Some of us would apologize “because it is the right thing to do” or because it is out of duty, or because we may have been influenced by someone else to apologize. An apology motivated by the influence of someone else would be in vain likewise an apology based on duty. Even after we apologize, if we continue in our actions that hurt or anger individuals then our apologies, as sincere as we may wish them to be, would be received by an individual as empty and lacking substance and/or integrity.
The consequences of not knowing how to forgive leaves us with the type of mindset that that would have us thinking that we are greater than everyone else. It is that mentality that has never worked according to all historical documentaries that I have read/viewed – Should we feel that we are greater than everyone else then we risk living a lifestyle of dictatorship. And we probably are better off living in a communist country so to support their governments.
The opposite behaviors of the three elements I mentioned place our mindset on an island within our minds to live, in mind and in spirit, in a world of our own which can be pretty lonely i think. The opposite of forgiveness is escape and escape is fleeing and cowardly. There are many practices of spirituality in this world but in its fundamental form all that I have researched – teach similar principles for behavior and spirituality. By far Godly spirituality teaches both implicit and explicit teachings and most others are just explicit of forgiveness. Many become prisoners of themselves – are you that person.
BUILDING A WALL — Click on the links – Here are a few links representing the work of people. I added the following links to illustrate that every human being is not alone in terms of spirituality. For example, “the wall of pride“ and “the wall of pride“ are not the same. Browse through the illustrations and you’ll get a perception of what each wall represents. On one hand you build up a wall when in passive-aggressive mode and on the other hand you build up a wall when you proudly display positive good works for example.
“Forgiveness” is important as God would have intended it to be as many live their lives never realizing we need to learn how to forgive, the result of not learning is where emptiness persists. We think that if we quickly forgive we become a better person. But this mindset may lead us to grow weary.
== OUR LIVING CYCLE ==
We often live out a cycle in our lives – The cycle begins with relationships then this happens: we do or say things that is hurtful, and/or insensitive, and then this happens: we get mad at them for being mad at us and we blame them and then this happens: we disconnect from them believing they are the problem. Then this happens: the cycle begins with the next relationship and it continues again forming a pattern of behavioral disconnect.
This type of lifestyle becomes our way of life when we do not learn to forgive.
Having a HardTime
Forgiveness is something we all have a hard time with – we can’t get it right because we fall into our own mental trap. Pride has a way of keeping us in the dark for example. We often attempt to forgive and we often fail because we skip steps – thinking that we can. We often believe we are practicing good social skills, in our own way of thinking, but our actions are always viewed differently by others. The best person to ask if we are practicing good social skills correctly are at least two individuals, but more is better, other than ourselves of course. Be objective, for example, if we asked ourselves, “Am I practicing good social skills?” then the obvious answer will always be a definite YES — so ask others.
When we properly act on forgiveness, we are basically purifying our mind of the nastiness we adapted over the course of our lives; kind of like the way filters for water are designed for. Water-filters are designed to filter-out water impurities in our drinking water so the water becomes safer for us to drink – right. Imagine living year after year and for years not having known how to forgive.
Here are just a few reasons why forgiveness matters
Forgiveness filters out all the junk in our mind because we’ll have learned a lot about ourselves.
Forgiveness would have you not live in fear. We’ll forgive ourselves because we have failed ourself and we’ve become too hard on ourselves. Too hard meaning we are living one disappointment after another and that comes with frustrating consequences.
Forgiveness for peace of mind because we’ll forgive ourselves for miscommunication, and misunderstanding – not having taken the time to clearly communicate; resulting in disconnect and disengaged and the failure of understanding.
Forgiveness for peace of mind, we’ll forgive ourselves when we have been in the act of cover-up(aka deception) – that is to blame others for our bad behavior, blaming others for the bad person that we have become.
We are forgiving ourselves for not having lived by humility.
Forgiveness is a type of BRAVERY(aka CONVICTION) – we’ll forgive y
ourselves because we potentially have lived in fear. One type of fear could be of many reasons for telling lies or making up inaccurate stories – only due to fear of the response of someone else, or in disgust of someone else’s response so as to get them off our back. Bravery is when we tell the truth no matter what the anticipated, good or bad, response would be. We’ll know to be sensitive in our truth when we need to be, and/or harsh in our truth when we need to be. Forgiveness is an act of bravery because in reality no one can harm us, and no one can annoy(disfigure our character, for example, when we convict ourselves to tell truth).
Forgiveness because we learn to accept, “ourselves for who we are” being who we are when we convict ourselves to reflect love, and convict ourselves to reflect honor, and convict ourselves to reflect complement(with an E).
Forgiveness calls on us to action, action to love, and action to honor, and action to complement; thus, to marry our actions with our words. Because words-alone our without substance and without integrity.
How to Forgive
By learning to forgive, we would have learned more about life than ever we can imagine. We’ll learn to mentally, and spiritually free ourselves. We may learn to be more impactful in life, implicit or explicit, in our manner of behavior. We would truly understand the value of the existence of others and the value of their happiness and we would understand self-worth. We would learn how to grasp the idea of being sensitive in our voice by listening with a gentle ear and by acting with gentle and sensitive behavior – we would learn to become real in our minds.
Forgiveness is a two-step process. It is a simple process.
STEP ONE – We need to learn who we are. On the one hand to unconditionally know who we are by identifying and understanding our bad characteristics and on the other hand by identifying and understanding our good characteristics. By learning how to forgive, we’ll come to realize that we have been doing it all wrong, we’ll come to realize that we can be the problem, and we’ll come to realize that having relationships can be easier than we think. After we have learned all that there is to learn about ourselves then we’ll possess substantial information that we can use to propel ourselves forward – the power of knowledge to learn greatness and positive. Begin the healing process – In such a way that whatever weighs us down is lifted off our mind, and our body, and our soul. Step-one is the information we learn about ourselves – spend some time with alone to think it through. It is an ongoing process and we have what it takes to perfect it – over time. Time-to-self allows us to learn and apply ourselves for a more positive and social success. Knowing how to connect with others and to remain connected is a viable skill. After of which we’ll then be ready to finalize step-one, “the process of forgiving ourselves.” To forgive is to know – What for, and Why we are forgiving ourselves. It is for ourselves; so in turn, we can forgive others.
STEP-TWO – Forgive others. Now that we know for What and Why forgiveness and we have forgiven ourselves.
In metaphorical terms — think of the process of forgiveness, step one and step two like this:
Scenario#1 — We’re in an airplane and, in case of emergency, the flight attendant instructs us to place the oxygen mask on ourselves first then on others.
Scenario#2 – We find ourselves seated in the exit aisle – and we are expected to help others to exit the aircraft in case of an emergency . If we are not able to help others because we are incapable physically, mentally, spiritually, or for whatever the reason… then we will be asked to move to another seating aisle. The objective of forgiveness is that, in order to help others, we must be able to help ourselves first and foremost.
There are so many realistic examples in life that we are called-on to help ourself first, so in turn, we can help others. This process is important as it will free us of obstinacy. If we don’t learn the process then we’ll remain a prisoner and a victim of ourselves.
Humility
Forgiveness is the result of humility: we excuse ourselves when needed, we apologize for our actions when needed, we bite our tongue, so not to hurt others, and we speak our tongue when needed, we are mindful of others, we are not afraid to engage in conversation and we never disconnect from relationships, and we do not fear approaching others, and we are in complete control as our passive-aggressive buttons are no longer active, etc… Humility has its way to honor our greatness and allow us to shine in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the public – we’ll know this feeling when we have humility. Forgiveness will lift us up when we are down and it will bring us down when we are highly thinking of ourselves before others… Humility will keep us balanced with the help of forgiveness. GREATNESS
The mindset of GREATNESS in a competitive environment is good and in that environment is where that type of mindset should begin and end – in other words, keep our greatness in a competitive environment. The mindset of HUMILITY in the midst of life is good and in life’s environment, humility and it’s greatness should begin and end. In other words, we can only be greater than someone else in a competitive environment and we will be rewarded with a trophy or with some other appropriate means. Can we be greater than someone else in a professional environment; probably best not to, but possessing the knowledge to COMPLEMENT each other with knowledge in a personal and professional environment is favorable. But we can not be greater than our neighbor. Our neighbors are those we come into contact with wherever we may be. If we have been living such a way that we are greater than life (life are those people around us; then we are forgiving ourselves for this twisted and corrupt manner of thinking) because all people are life. Essentially, we are forgiving ourselves for not having lived by humility. Humility can not exist in our character if we have not learned to forgive. I’m sure we can think of many people who do great in the eyes of the public and at the same time are driven by humility. Pick-One and follow the example; otherwise, I recommend we pick God.
CONCLUSION
We are not alone as forgiveness is a feeling all people in all walks of life need. If we don’t learn the process we may never get a chance to fully free ourselves. By learning to forgive we’ll have executed the power of knowledge to coexist among people providing a safe environment for ourselves and others, and best of all, without the presence of passive-aggressive behavior. Forgiveness is not for self-pity, or feeling guilt, it is for freeing ourselves and discovering our place as citizens of this world. We’ll find it in our character that we can be a safe person. A person approachable by others thereby reflecting a safe environment. Forgiveness quiets the heart, it quiets the mind, it quiets the body, and it quiets the soul and it awakens all many positive immeasurable aspects in life, freeing us, and we all know what greatness freedom can bring into our lives. Forgiveness does not put an end to our person, our ambitions, our future. Forgiveness when executed properly can transform our life. Transformation – leaving the old us behind and putting on the new us. It is inviting. FORGIVE OURSELVES; FORGIVE OTHERS.
WHAT’S NEXT
THE LIVING CYCLE — AFTER WE HAVE LEARNED HOW TO FORGIVE
We’ll continue to live out the cycle in our lives – The cycle begins with relationships then this happens: we do or say things that are hurtful(and we apologize sincerely), and/or we say something insensitive(and we apologize sincerely), and then this happens: we get mad at them for being mad at us and this happens: we blame ourselves and we correct our behavior then this happens: we communicate resolution without expectation and then this happens: we remain connected to them believing we both have problems, then this happens: the cycle begins with the next relationship and it continues again forming a pattern of behavioral connection. With every passing cycle we become a better person and realize the dynamics of good behavior.
DOCUMENTARIES
Here are a few links to a few videos – they are worst-case scenarios of opposite extremes, from God fearing to Atheism. I find most people somewhere in the middle of the extremes. The messages convey the topic of forgiveness. All messages render the same output; that is, we all need forgiveness. After watching, imagine life not in a worst case scenario but in scenarios where anger and loneliness persist – the point is this, there is no rest when we haven’t learned the process to forgive. View all videos to get an idea of how forgiveness can be adopted in many circumstances.
The following videos are at either end of extremes in terms of how we experience life, abuse to death. I believe, generally speaking, we are somewhere in the middle of extremities and our purpose in life is to survive while living the american dream. The american dream is not just owning tangible assets but also to own a sane and healthy mindset. For many this sane mindset can only be insanity because they haven’t taken time to learn how to forgive. At whatever extreme that we find ourselves to be, where love or the lack of love, we’ll learn that LOVE is a major factor that defines the quality of our lives.
Video of the Song – From the practices of Godly extremes, as you listen, to every word, we can learn of the many challenges that we are faced with and the realities that we are confronted with.
Forgiveness Part 1, the song. Enjoy
Part 2 – The purpose of the song.
In the Next video, “How to Deal with Difficult People,” I name it, “How to deal with tension” – This extreme is somewhere In between Godly and Opposite of Godly behavior where tension surfaces – he talks about all the aspects of behavior from labeling to engaging in relationships… He uses the word forgiveness in one instance and the word control and the word fear – listen carefully for the words and their use in context. I interpret this message in terms of controlling and/or DEACTIVATING passive aggressive behavior ). While we operate from Internal – labeling – behavior intelligence – using the words like, ‘we are’ in communication – self-awareness… He simplifies behavior whereby advising us to focus; that is, to prevent ourselves from getting a heart-attack.
In the next video, “Why forgiveness is Unnecessary,” I name it, “Atheism.” Forgiveness in this extreme involves abuse: mentally, morally, and physically. Her main point is to walk away and find happiness… I’ll say no more on this topic and allow the person in the video to speak of her experiences.
The video atheism represents human-level extremes and they do not represent God’s multiple and endless levels of positive extremes. I believe the three videos are sufficient to make my point with respect to forgiveness and love. Obviously, you have many options if you wish to continue to listen and view more of videos alike on YouTube that convey the messages of forgiveness. In doing so, I recommend that you base it on practical analogy and how it would look like in our day to day living.
I hope I was able to demonstrate the importance of knowing how to forgive – God Bless!
