Have you noticed there are many ways and levels at which forgiveness can occur? You can say you forgive, but not really mean it. You can forgive someone for the moment, but then be upset with them or resent them for the same thing hours or days later. You can forgive mentally, because you know you need to or know you should. You might say you forgive someone because they are really hurting and you feel sorry for them.

Or you can forgive someone because you really understand how any of us, given a set of circumstances, could have made the same choice. When you forgive from this place of understanding, you have realized one of two things, or both:

1) most of us our doing our best most of the time, even if we seem insensitive or unaware of the harm we may be causing; and
2) that anyone who is consciously perpetrating harm is also a victim.

What causes someone to hurt someone else?

Deep wounds and fears cause us to become perpetrators. Like wounded animals, we lash out, even at those that are trying to help us. When we have been wounded, we become afraid, mistrusting, angry and hurt, and we either take our pain out on others, or we drive that pain inward and harm ourselves.

Wounded, we hurt someone else who then hurts another, and on and on the cycle continues until…

Someone in the cycle stops, reflects and gets in touch with the wound that started the cycle in the first place. When you stop and reflect in the way of the Sacred Feminine, you bring this wounded feeling to your heart and hold that feeling in compassion.

The feeling may or may not have a name. What is significant is choosing not to blame or be angry with anyone, including yourself, but rather to understand that feelings are universal.

When a painful feeling is held in compassionate love long enough, the painful feeling simply drifts away. All that remains is your love for yourself and anyone involved with when and how that original wound occurred.

Forgiveness simply happens because you understand from the depths of your feeling. More than a thought, forgiveness happens deeply when your heart grasps the significance of the frailty of the human condition that we all share.

Two ways to get to true compassion

Here are two ways you can experience greater compassion—the kind of forgiveness that is deep and profound.

Take your own wounded feelings into The Holding guided meditation.

Allow yourself to experience an Ancestral Lineage Clearing, where you release the pain you may be experiencing from family karma by making new choices within the safe parameters of an inner journey.

Most of all, you will probably find it helpful to remember that true forgiveness comes from true compassion. As you open to your compassion, you will naturally find forgiveness. This is at the heart of the Sacred Feminine—the yin energy that lovingly Holds us in the totality of our strengths and our frailty.