Forgiveness is a powerful and profound process. My teacher, John-Roger, called it the key to the kingdom. What often gets in the way of my living the life I want, living more fully, living a life of greater loving, is my hurts and judgements. In the process of opening my heart, forgiveness has been and continues to be one of the key practices to letting go and healing my hurts and disturbances.

Recently, I have added into my nightly bedtime routine a forgiveness process. I have done this in years past, and once again find that I am in need of this process to complete my day.

It’s very simple, and I’ll break down the steps below. It is important to realize that we are forgiving ourselves for our judgements (those areas we have the hurt, the pain, the negative energy or negative ‘charge’). This is an inner process and one that is chiefly concerned with letting go of the negativity you are holding onto inside of you.

Here is a great excerpt from J-R’s book Forgiveness: The Key To The Kingdom, which is a great description of the process of forgiveness:

"Open your heart to Spirit and to all the hurt that you've experienced, and just say inside yourself, "I forgive myself for the mismanagements, misjudgments, misinformations, or whatever else has been happening that has made me feel hurtful, resentful, contracted, pulled away. I'm going to keep extending the loving again. And I'm going to keep expanding that, until one day it stays extended all by itself." At that point, you're really going to behappy that you loved through the hurts and the discouragements and the despair and th crises, because you'll find out that it's really worth it."

Here are the steps for my Bedtime Forgiveness Process

1. Open your heart to Spirit asking only that which is for your highest good take place (sometimes thinking of your pet or child, a beautiful sunset, a spiritual teacher, Jesus, Buddha etc and touching your heart can help you move into that loving, open consciousness)
2. Start saying forgiveness statements with whatever comes up as disturbances, hurts, incompletions, judgements and misunderstandings of the day (or from any other time). An example of how I do the forgiveness statement is “I forgive myself for judging_________” where you fill in the blank with how you’ve judged yourself, the other person or situation. You may find yourself sigh or take a deep breath as the imbalance releases.
3. See your loving and the loving of the Spirit going to the person or situation you judged including yourself. If you notice you were holding the disturbance or judgement in a location in your body, you may place your hand there, seeing the loving going into that area where you were holding the disturbance.
4. Repeat the process until complete