Four Steps Of Radical Forgiveness
So how can we apply the spiritual philosophy of radical acceptance to our lives? Colin Tipping offers a four-step process that we can apply in the moment, or shortly after, something disturbing to us happens. The first step is to look at the situation and say, “Look what I created!” This takes us out of feeling victimized to the circumstances. It instead allows us to take responsibility for creating situations that allow us to heal and reminds us of our power in co-creating reality. The second step is to notice any judgments that we may feel and to send love to ourselves. This step is about recognizing that judgment is part of being human and reminds us that we do not need to judge ourselves for judging situations. The third step asks us to be willing to see the perfection in a seemingly imperfect situation. In opening ourselves to be willing, we are surrendering to the larger divine plan of life. We may not be able to understand this plan mentally, but we can trust in it to bring us perfect circumstances for our spiritual development.
This can be a difficult step because we may hold the belief that the world isn’t trustworthy because of the ways in which we have interpreted previous experiences. Nancy Only points out in her book Living By Conscious Choice (2005) that we trust that many parts of our realities will be the same day-to-day, such as that the grocery store will be stocked with food or that the sun will rise and set. Nancy Only suggests that we extend this trust to more abstract situations. When we worry over something in the future, for example, we can feel the trust that we know how to tap into and surround our future worry with it. The fourth step in radical forgiveness is to choose to feel the power of peace. Since the divine plan is being acted out in this situation, we can choose to feel peace instead of resistance. We can surrender in the perfection of life.
Gangaji encourages us to surrender even more deeply than we may be used to in her book You Are That! Volume II (1996). Gangaji states, “There may be strategic impulses to fight, to deny, to indulge, to pretend, to protect, to dismiss, and to trivialize; but deeper than all those is the call to just be. In surrender to being, an even deeper surrender is revealed. Be. Be more. Discover if you can find a limit to being. For this discovery, you must surrender all ideas of who you are, where you are, how you are, what you are, when you are, and more. Surrender all ideas to pure beingness and then see.” In addition to these four steps of radical forgiveness, there are other aspects of forgiveness that can be helpful for us to explore, and in the following sections of this course, we will look at non-judgment and acceptance. These can be used hand in hand with the four steps to radical forgiveness and together can make for a deeper experience of forgiveness.