Message 3

Today is Day 2:
A Day of Introspection, Reflection
and Contemplation

by Carol Hansen Grey
Emailed March 4, 2003


Dear Gather the Women Participants:

Today, March 4, is the second day of our sacred global women's retreat--a day set aside for introspection, reflection and contemplation. As you quiet yourself in this energy of connection with the past, you are preparing yourself for Day 3 of our sacred week--a day of healing and forgiveness.

Tomorrow, on this third day, we encourage you to take all the pain from your inward journey--all the pain that women and children and all humanity have endured throughout the ages--and bring it into a healing circle of love and forgiveness. Without forgiveness for what is past, we cannot move forward in the spirit and energy of creating positive change in our future. Let us acknowledge our grief, mourn for what has been, release the past and move powerfully forward from a place of love for our planet and all humanity.



Release any energy you still hold in past hurts,
either done to you or of your doing.
Let go of concerns about forgetting them or not,
about their merit or circumstance.
Recognize resentment as energy trapped in your cells.

Deal gently with your feelings
in ways you feel appropriate—
write them and consign them to the fire,
transform them into poetry,
speak them to whomever you must.

Reclaim your vitality.

Pledge to expand your caring beyond your own home
to our global home, in the service of peace.



THOUGHTS ON FORGIVENESS

This is the time to study and contemplate the events that have led up to our current situation and to heal the past.
- Debbie Ford, Imagine (1999)
When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.
- Catherine Ponder
True forgiveness is reaching a place of knowing, there is nothing to forgive.
- A Course in Miracles
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
-Mahatma Gandhi
If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the whole world will be blind and toothless.
-Mahatma Gandhi
Sincere forgiveness isn't colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don't worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time--just like it does for you and me.
- Sara Paddison, Hidden Power of the Heart
I offer you this prayer for all the difficult relationships in our lives: God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the person I can, and the wisdom to know, that person is me.
- Mary Manin Morrissey

In the long run, it's not a question of whether they deserve to be forgiven. You're not forgiving them for their sake. You're doing it for yourself. For your own health and well-being, forgiveness is simply the most energy- efficient option. It frees you from the incredibly toxic, debilitating drain of holding a grudge. Don't let these people live rent free in your head. If they hurt you before, why let them keep doing it year after year in your mind? It's not worth it but it takes heart effort to stop it. You can muster that heart power to forgive them as a way of looking out for yourself. It's one thing you can be totally selfish about. Forgiving releases you from the punishment of a self-made prison where you are both the inmate and the jailer.
- Doc Childre and Howard Martin, The HeartMath Solution

Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.
- Bumper sticker by Aba Gayle whose daughter was brutally murdered. Read her amazing story of forgiveness at http://www.catherineblountfdn.org/aba's.htm
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

this quote is often attributed to Mother Teresa but actually written by Kent M. Keith (see his book, The Paradoxical Commandments, Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World. (Thank you Jeannie Breeze from InnerMission for World Peace in St. Louis, MO for this information.)

Thank you for your willingness to participate in this sacred healing journey. As each of us heals our past wounds through forgiveness, the ripple effect will create a circle of healing energy for all life.

Only Love Prevails,
Carol Hansen Grey
Executive Director
Women of Vision and Action