3 Vital Steps to Forgiveness and Self Acceptance

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

“When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.”
Bernard Meltzer

Forgive and Let Go

You may already be aware that to forgive another person does not condone their actions but frees you from bondage.

When you hold a grudge, you inadvertently hold yourself in a head-lock with the other person until you can forgive. So, without releasing that person through the process of forgiveness, you tether yourself to him/her/them indefinitely.

If that’s not encouragement enough to start the process of forgiveness then I don’t know what is.

However, what I want to explore in this article is self-forgiveness. A topic that can easily be misunderstood, brushed aside or not even thought of.

Surely it’s those people in our lives that have done us wrong that need our forgiveness, not ourselves?

Why You Can Be Your Worst Enemy

Funny thing is, a lot of us find it much easier to forgive others than to turn the action inwards.

It’s so much simpler to have the heart to exonerate another but we go into a flat tailspin when we start to dive into the watery abyss of all the things we’ve done to ourselves that need absolution.

You know what I mean, don’t you?

We have done so much harm to ourselves through:

Negative Self Talk
Missed Opportunities
Laziness
Fear
Stubbornness
Disrespecting Ourselves and Others (whatever harm you have done to another is a direct blow to yourself — there is no separation)
Lack of Willpower and the list goes on…

Have you forgiven yourself these indiscretions?

Steps You Can Take Today to Start the Healing Process

Do you know that we each have a shadow self? A part of us that feels unworthy, guilt and shame. Do you squash this part of yourself every time it pops up to say ‘Yo!’?

You’re not alone.

First things first — we are dichotomous by nature. We live in a third dimension of duality and we experience the yin and yang, light and dark, feminine and masculine, good and evil aspects of everyday life…well…every day!

You can’t truly be a human being if you are not experiencing these dualistic traits on a daily basis.

And there is your gold! We are ALL human — we ALL make mistakes. Goodness me, if we were all to carry the blame and shame on our backs as a physical representation of how we feel about ourselves, we would all be seriously misshapen.

Isn’t it about time to embrace your duality in order to truly feel whole?

Here’s what you can do to start making peace with your faux pas’:

Know that you are required to make mistakes in order to grow, learn and have a contrast with which to work from (i.e. how would you know what you want if you don’t experience what you don’t want?). Affirm: I forgive myself for making mistakes and give myself permission to live to my best ability even if it means making more blunders.
Cut yourself some slack — to err is human, to forgive is divine and seeing you are both, I think you have permission to accept your mistakes and find the hidden gems within your ‘unworthy’ experiences. Affirm: I forgive myself and will look for the positive aspects of my seemingly negative actions and where they have brought me on my life path.
Put the whip aside! We are all guilty, I’m sure, of being an asshole at some point in our lives — it doesn’t mean you have to flay yourself for your lack of good judgment over and over again. Be kind to yourself as you would any other. Affirm: I forgive myself and will not, from this point in time, rehash past mistakes to punish myself further. I am whole. I am human. I am Divine. I am.

You are proving your worth when you’ve tripped just by picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and carrying on down that yellow-brick road. Be kind to yourself when you stumble and know that there is always a lesson in the fall.

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Mark Twain

The true warrior always mines the mistakes for the treasures and let’s him/herself be at peace with making miscalculations. This is divine balance and the acceptance of every aspect of the self.

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Heavy Baggage Weighing You Down? How to Lighten Up!

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

When you’re sojourning overseas and you’ve got tons of luggage — it’s a real schlep, right? It’s much easier airport hopping when you’re traveling light. And a lot less to think or worry about too.

Life is no different.

Let Go Of the Bone And Try Something Fresher

You can’t expect to be light-hearted if you’re holding on to the past.

There’s a prime piece of T-bone steak waiting in his bowl but the Rottweiler is hanging on to last night’s dried up, old bone. Sound familiar?

“You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are full of yesterdays junk” ~Louise Smith

Letting go of our past isn’t easy — no-one said it was. No matter if you are grieving a physical loss or an emotional wound — we all have ‘baggage’. Our job is to unpack it.

You don’t want to go the rest of your life carrying a backpack, do you? Not only will it give you back ache but it will also slow you down, tire you out and rob you of your present joy.

Baggage Was Never a Forever Thing

Your past was never meant to be carried as a burden. What happened to you — no matter what it was — all had a soul teaching for you to move through. Your job is to get the lesson.

If you’ve experienced abuse — perhaps your discovery is that you found your strength to move on or your power to forgive. If you’ve experienced death — maybe your pearl of wisdom came in the shape and form of learning to let go in love or to find peace in vulnerability.

These are merely suggestions as we all have vastly different reasons for going through certain life experiences.

Every time I look back at the tougher times of my life, I can see there was always an illuminating teaching for me. You can very rarely feel it when you’re in it. It takes time to work through grief and heartache — which is perfectly natural and everyone’s period of mourning is different — just don’t get lost in the past.

Related article: Dealing With Life’s Traumas

A Personal Metaphor For Loss

Did you know you can download my book FREE?Click here!

In 2002 my husband and I moved to the UK and stayed there for 3 years. It was a thrilling experience but I did miss my homeland.

After a year of being there, I lost my father. It was such a devastating experience and I had to catch an emergency flight back to South Africa to help my mother with the necessaries.

When I flew back to the UK I began to shop. I bought everything and anything — it was pure compulsive behaviour. And to make matters worse, I shipped it all back to my mother to keep for me for when I returned, which she did.

I spent more posting the boxes of ‘stuff’ back than I paid for the items…true madness.

When I returned home for good, my mother led me to her garage where all these boxes were stacked to the ceiling. I couldn’t believe how much I’d sent (and spent)!

I went through all the treasures I had sent myself to find it was all…well, for want of a better word…crap!

I didn’t need it and ended up giving most of it away.

Related article: The Secret to Letting Go of Every Fear

The Diamond in the Tale

What I did learn, in hindsight, was that I was filling a void left by my father’s death — shopping was my coping mechanism.

I could have kept the boxes but I knew that would have been holding on to the past and those boxes would turn out to be made of cement, holding me back and filling space I needed for my future.

It was the most freeing thing to do when I gave all that junk away. It even turned out to make two very special ladies extremely happy!

As I was clearing out the boxes from the garage, two Xhosa ladies came walking up the road selling beautiful hand-made baskets.

They saw some of the things from my boxes and asked if I would consider trading with them. I told them they could have the stuff but they insisted on giving me two awesome baskets. They literally danced and sang in joy back down the street with boxes piled on top of their heads.

I still have those baskets and every time I look at them I am reminded of this lesson with a smile on my face.

There is gold to be mined in our experiences — good or bad. Your job is to find out what your soul wanted to take from the experience. Then leave that bag, don’t check it in at your next stop. Live lighter.

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Why it Hurts So Much When Someone Lies

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How to Avoid Misunderstanding Forgiveness

Posted on December 13, 2017 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

To Forgive is Divine

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

The topic of forgiveness harbors much resistance in some — it’s a touchy subject to say the least. The biggest misunderstanding — in the act of forgiveness — is to think that you are condoning the action, whatever it may be.

Forgiveness is actually letting go of the act not necessarily forgetting it (you may need to remember the experience later on in life so as not to be burnt again).

In letting go of the action taken against you, you free yourself from it from this moment on — you no longer carry the weight. You lighten yourself of the burden of holding onto it and give yourself permission to start anew.

Looking Deeper

This doesn’t mean that you have to be bosom-buddies with the perpetrator (you may choose to cut them out of your life completely, which may be completely appropriate in your given circumstance) nor does it mean that you indemnify their actions — it simply means you have compassion for the person. You have empathized enough to have understanding as to why the action took place.

An example would be that an abuser may have been abused — this will be your chance to step into the shoes of the ‘villain’ (who was the ‘victim’) and to see the course of events that lead to the ‘act’. You may grapple with the fact that some abuse victims don’t ever become abusers — that abusers choose their course of action. This is true — our lives revolve around choice. However, the course of action (in the case of the incident having already taken place) is set and all you can do is have compassion for the individual who, should we say, strayed from the path. When you can do this, it is easier to practice forgiveness.

“Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.” ~ Marianne Williamson

Forgiveness = compassion and understanding.

Forgiveness does not mean condoning or forcing yourself to see the person as ‘innocent’ or the actions carried out as okay.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” ~Lewis B. Smedes

Other articles on forgiveness you may enjoy: How to Forgive When You Don’t Think You Can and Release Your Resistance Through the Power of Forgiveness

Cherie Roe Dirksen is a self-empowerment author, multi-media artist and musician from South Africa.

To date, she has published 3 self-help and motivational books and brings out weekly inspirational blogs at her site www.cherieroedirksen.com. Get stuck into finding your passion, purpose and joy by downloading some of those books gratis when you click HERE.

Her ambition is to help you to connect with your innate gift of creativity and living the life you came here to experience by taking responsibility for your actions and becoming the co-creator of your reality. You can follow Cherie on Facebook (The Art of Empowerment — for article updates). She also has an official art Facebook page (Cherie Roe Dirksen – for new art updates) and her bands page is Templeton Universe.

Cherie posts a new article on CLN every Thursday. To view her articles, click HERE.

This article (How to Avoid Misunderstanding Forgiveness) was originally written for and published by Conscious Life News and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author Cherie Roe Dirksen and ConsciousLifeNews.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this Copyright/Creative Commons statement.

3 Crucial Steps to Self Acceptance

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Cherie Roe Dirksen

“When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.”
Bernard Meltzer

Forgive and Let Go

You may already be aware that to forgive another person does not condone their actions but frees you from bondage.

If that’s not encouragement enough to start the process of forgiveness then I don’t know what is.

However, what I want to explore in this article is self-forgiveness. A topic that can easily be misunderstood, brushed aside or not even thought of.

Surely it’s those people in our lives that have done us wrong that need our forgiveness, not ourselves?

Why You Can Be Your Worst Enemy

Funny thing is, a lot of us find it much easier to forgive others than to turn the action inwards.

You know what I mean, don’t you?

We have done so much harm to ourselves through:

Negative Self Talk
Missed Opportunities
Laziness
Fear
Stubbornness
Disrespecting Ourselves and Others (whatever harm you have done to another is a direct blow to yourself — there is no separation)
Lack of Willpower and the list goes on…

Have you forgiven yourself these indiscretions?

Steps You Can Take Today to Start the Healing Process

Do you know that we each have a shadow self? A part of us that feels unworthy, guilt and shame. Do you squash this part of yourself every time it pops up to say ‘Yo!’?

You’re not alone.

You can’t truly be a human being if you are not experiencing these dualistic traits on a daily basis.

Isn’t it about time to embrace your duality in order to truly feel whole?

Here’s what you can do to start making peace with your faux pas’:

Know that you are required to make mistakes in order to grow, learn and have a contrast with which to work from (i.e. how would you know what you want if you don’t experience what you don’t want?). Affirm: I forgive myself for making mistakes and give myself permission to live to my best ability even if it means making more blunders.
Cut yourself some slack — to err is human, to forgive is divine and seeing you are both, I think you have permission to accept your mistakes and find the hidden gems within your ‘unworthy’ experiences. Affirm: I forgive myself and will look for the positive aspects of my seemingly negative actions and where they have brought me on my life path.
Put the whip aside! We are all guilty, I’m sure, of being an asshole at some point in our lives — it doesn’t mean you have to flay yourself for your lack of good judgment over and over again. Be kind to yourself as you would any other. Affirm: I forgive myself and will not, from this point in time, rehash past mistakes to punish myself further. I am whole. I am human. I am Divine. I am.

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Mark Twain

The true warrior always mines the mistakes for the treasures and let’s him/herself be at peace with making miscalculations. This is divine balance and the acceptance of every aspect of the self.

Original article written by Cherie Roe Dirksen for Lightworkers World

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