Practices
There are many practices that can help us to be more conscious in each moment. By bringing awareness into our every experience, we will be better able to feel when emotions or thoughts of resistance arise in us. These are points in our consciousness that have not been resolved. Awareness is a huge step in transformation, and by knowing what our unresolved emotions are, we can ask the question, “What are their roots?” We can then apply radical forgiveness to the situation and transform our beliefs about it. The first step in this process, however, is to increase our awareness, which these practices focus on first. In reading through these practices, you may find that you are attracted to some more than others. I would like to encourage you to try all of them if they feel comfortable because they may be helpful tools for yourself or others at some future time. You may find modifying these practices by changing them to fit your own personality and any practices that you know already to be potent as well. I am offering several practices to give you a broader range of experiential knowledge.
Breath is essential to human life. It is our breath that keeps our consciousness rooted in our bodies. Through our breath, we can become more aware and present for life. We do not need to set aside large amounts of time for breath work, although it certainly can be powerful to do so as well. In his book Peace Is Every Step: The Path Of Mindfulness In Everyday Life (1991), Thich Nhat Hahn offers us breathing techniques to bring mindfulness to our time driving, washing dishes, sitting at our desks, or any other experience in which we feel drawn to practice this. Thich Nhat Hahn recommends using the red color of brake and traffic lights as symbols to remember to breathe. During this practice, we take a large breath in, feeling the nourishing air fill our throats, chests, and lungs. This air can even be felt expanding our backs, sides, and stomachs. Then exhale, allowing our breaths to fall out of our bodies almost effortlessly. We can start with this, taking several deep breaths. Notice how even a few breaths can affect your body. Do you feel more present? Do you notice any parts of your body that feel resistant to your breath? Breathing into our chests and allowing our chests to rise and fall can bring much energy to our hearts. Many of us breathe very shallowly most of the time and part of this may be that we are not living our lives from our hearts. Breathing can bring us deeper into our heart spaces. Now, with the inhale we can say, “Breathing in, I know I am breathing in” and then on the exhale, “Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.” This can be shortened to saying, “In” and “Out” with our inhales and exhales. Thich Nhat Hahn says, “As you practice, your breath will become peaceful and gentle, and your mind and body will also become peaceful and gentle.” The beauty of this practice is that it can be done in many situations, and the benefits can be felt after just a few conscious breaths.
More practices that can be helpful in becoming more present to each moment involve letting go of fear, anger, sadness, doubt, parts of our pasts, and limiting beliefs. The first practice comes from Sharon Salzberg’s book Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995). Sharon Salzberg states, “The intention of forgiveness meditation is not to force anything, or to pretend to anything, or to forget about ourselves in utter deference to the needs of others. In fact, it is out of the greatest compassion for ourselves that we create the conditions for an unobstructed love.” Salzberg reminds us that forgiveness is indeed a process, during which emotions of conflict may come up. These can include confusion, shame, anger, and doubt. Salzberg encourages us to try not to judge such emotions when they arise, but instead to recognize that they are natural to the process of forgiveness. We can then move our minds back to the forgiveness meditation.
In this practice, there are three parts: asking for forgiveness from those who have hurt us, offering forgiveness to those we have hurt, and offering forgiveness to ourselves. To practice this meditation, we sit comfortably with our eyes closed, and we allow our breath to be natural. We then say aloud or silently, “If I have hurt or harmed anyone, knowingly or unknowingly, I ask their forgiveness.” At this point, images of people or situations may arise. When this happens, we can focus on each one and ask for forgiveness. Whenever the time feels right, we can turn our awareness to the offering of forgiveness to anyone or any situation that has hurt us. “If anyone has hurt or harmed me, knowingly or unknowingly, I forgive them.” Once again, we can offer forgiveness to any images of people or situations that may arise.
Salzberg notes that it is absolutely fine if feelings of love and peace are not felt. Being real with our feelings is what is most important. In this way, Salzberg states, “We are paying respects to our ultimate ability to let go and begin again. We are asserting the human heart’s capacity to change and grow and love.” Finally, we turn towards forgiveness of ourselves for any times we have not loved ourselves, hurt ourselves, or not lived up to our expectations. We say, “For all of the ways I have hurt or harmed myself, knowingly or unknowingly, I offer forgiveness.” The intention of forgiveness will play out over time in many ways.
Another practice comes from The Pleiadian Workbook: Awakening Your Divine Ka (1996). In the first method, Amorah Quan Yin invites us to use visualization, which is a technique that has been used for at least several centuries. The symbol that we will imagine is a rose. The rose is a healing symbol that has been found in spiritual practices dating back to the twelfth century A.D. It is a symbol that helps clear us of any unnecessary energies—thoughts, emotions, or blocks—that are hindering our truest way of being. The technique that Amorah Quan Yin offers is called “blowing roses.” We first close our eyes and ground ourselves, perhaps using a breathing awareness technique such as the one previously discussed. We then bring into our mind’s eye the emotion, problem, belief, or part of our pasts that we are ready to transform. We can visualize this as a symbol. Amorah Quan Yin uses the example of someone who has trouble trusting anyone, even those people who are trustworthy. This person could imagine a picture that represents this issue, or even envision the word “distrust.” We can place this symbol or word outside our auras and imagine putting it inside a rose of whatever color comes to mind. Breathing deeply, we can imagine the energy of this issue filling the rose and then releasing it by imagining the rose dissolving. We can even visualize blowing the rose with the symbol away from us. We continue to create and dissolve roses until the final rose stays with us for at least ten seconds. We then dissolve this rose. Running energy through our bodies during this exercise can be helpful as well.
Another practice from Amorah Quan Yin also involves visualization as a way of releasing beliefs about ourselves. Amorah Quan Yin reminds us that “There are no limits, just beliefs.” This is a beautiful reminder that we create our own realities, weather it is intentional or not. Our beliefs hold great power over our realities, and the process of uncovering our beliefs is one that is essential to radical forgiveness. In order to practice this technique, we first need to listen to our thoughts enough to uncover what our unconscious beliefs are. We can then recognize it as simply a belief we have held, that it is not an absolute truth. We can come into a space of being willing to release the belief and accepting that it is a creation from ourselves, not the outside world. We then can imagine an alternative belief to the one we have held.
Finally, we need a method for letting go of our limiting beliefs. Amorah Quan Yin states, “The method I use to clear beliefs is fairly simple. After identifying a belief you would like to clear, such as ‘I’m not attractive enough for a person to ever love me,’ you close your eyes and imagine a picture of a symbol to represent your belief.” Hold the image, continue thinking about the belief, and begin to breathe deeply. At this point, the body may begin to respond to the belief by contracting. Perhaps your head will come down or your chest will cave in. Simply notice how your body responds as you continue breathing. If you do not notice any changes, this is fine as well. Then begin to breathe into any parts of the body that you notice have responded and tell these parts that the belief is false. Tell your body that it can relax now. Feel any tension melting out of your body. Then imagine the symbol of the belief turn into a piece of paper and visualize yourself stamping it, “CANCELLED.” Do this several times, rip the paper up, and burn it with a violet flame. The violet flame transmutes the energy of beliefs to higher frequencies. This whole process can be repeated several times with the same image or new ones until your feelings around the belief have shifted.
Part of this exercise that can be helpful to practice during other times of our lives is to bring awareness to different parts of our bodies and find if we are holding any tension. Tension or any other form of discomfort can be seen as messages for ourselves into how we are affected by our lifestyles and beliefs. Barbara Brennan in her book Hands Of Light (1987) states, “The simplest kind of guidance comes every day, and many times a day in the form of discomfort.” Discomfort can be experienced at the physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual levels. When we do notice discomfort, we can ask ourselves the questions: “How long has this discomfort been here? What is it saying? What can I do about it?” We can also apply the steps of radical forgiveness to the roots of our discomfort. For example: My shoulders have been tense. In asking questions of my tension, I have found out that I feel weighed down by the areas of my life that are uncertain right now. I’m having some difficulty in trusting that all will be fine. However, when I look at this from the radical forgiveness perspective, I can see that this is a wonderful lesson for me right now, even if it is challenging. Trusting in the universe is a lesson that keeps coming up for me, and everything has always worked out in the past, so why wouldn’t it now?