Forgiveness (12 page)

EXAMPLE

I forgive myself for judging my life as useless and hopeless as it is right now.

I forgive myself for judging my life as

I forgive myself for judging my life as

I forgive myself for judging my life as

I forgive myself for judging my life as

– I F
ORGIVE
M
YSELF FOR
B
ELIEVING
–

EXAMPLE

I forgive myself for believing my life is a mess.

I forgive myself for believing my life is/is not

I forgive myself for believing my life should/should not

I forgive myself for believing my life may never

I forgive myself for believing my life will always

– T
APPING
S
EQUENCE
–

Review Basic Ta
pp
ing Sequence Guidelines on pages 53–59.

1. Review each of the day’s 12 Forgiveness Statements out loud. This will help you identify the specific aspects of the issue that you want to tap on.
   
2. Rate the intensity level of any unforgiveness you hold about today’s topic on a scale of 1 to 10. Write the number down.
   
3. Neutralize all subconscious resistance. Repeat a Reversal Statement 3 times while tapping continuously on the Karate Chop point.
   
4. Focus on the issue you’ll be tapping on. Repeat a Set-Up Statement 3 times while tapping continuously on the Karate Chop point.
   
5. Tap 7 times on each of the 10 meridian points while repeating out loud the key details from the 12 Forgiveness Statements. This process can be modeled on the bonus Tapping Scripts.
   
6. Recheck the intensity level of any unforgiveness you hold about today’s topic. Write the number down. If the level is at 8 or higher, repeat the entire sequence. If the level is less than 8, tap on a Modified Set-Up Statement, then perform the 10-point Tapping Sequence on your 12 Forgiveness Statements until you are at a 0 level of intensity.
   

– REFLECTIONS –

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember.

We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.

— L
EWIS
B. S
MEDES

– DAY 4 –

I F
ORGIVE
M
Y
M
OTHER

I do not know what anything is for. Everything is for my own best interests.

God created no opposites, nothing that attacks, no-thing that could harm, obstruct, or obscure love’s presence. If I am seeing something that is blocking my awareness of love, it is an image of a false idea that I created and only forgiveness will dissolve it.

—P
RAYER FOR
A C
OURSE IN
M
IRACLES
W
ORKBOOK
L
ESSON
25

– Forgiveness Story by Iyanla Vanzant –

I
didn’t know my mother. I wish I had, but when she passed on, I was two and a half, and the big people in charge thought it best not to tell me. I was 30 when I discovered that the woman I was raised to believe was mother was in fact my stepmother. She had married my father three years before I was born.

My mother was “the other woman” in my father’s life. I loved my stepmother dearly, but she could not fill the vacancy in my soul left by my mother’s departure. Once I knew the truth, pieces and parts of my life made much more sense.

Growing up, I was always in awe of the relationship between my friends and their mothers. Living with my aunt as a family foster child, I always yearned for “my mother” to be there and do the things that I saw my friends doing with their mothers. In fact, I remember being quite disturbed, sometimes angry, when my friends spoke ill of their mothers. The normal mother-daughter squabbles took on an entirely different meaning in my heart and mind. Somewhere deep inside of me, without words or sound, I knew that to have your mother in your life was a blessing. My aunt did the best she could for as long as she could, but I was not her child. When my father and stepmother sent my brother and me to live with her, it was like a double whammy. My mother, who wasn’t really my mother, was gone, compounding the unspoken yearning I had for my natural mother, whom I hardly knew and didn’t remember.
Oh Lord! What a hot mess!

I used to always say that I was not a good mother. I was a great provider and rigorous disciplinarian, both of which made me a horrible mother. I can say that about myself now because I have learned the true role and function of a mother in a child’s life. In fact, my name,
Iyanla,
means
great mother.
It is more than a name. In the cultures of many West African villages, the
Iyanla
is the eldest woman in the village who has the responsibility to provide for the spiritual well-being of the community. As such, fulfilling the duties of the title is something that I have grown into and learned with much prayer and great study. As a function of life, “great mother” is not, I’m sure, what my children experienced, nor is it what they needed or expected from their mommy.