Forgiveness (15 page)

ROUND 3

Tap 7 times on each meridian point while repeating out loud either the statements below or your reminder phrases.

Have a few sips of water. Take a deep breath in through your nose. Release the breath slowly and softly through your mouth, making the sound “Ahhhhh” as you do so.

R
ECHECK THE
I
NTENSITY
L
EVEL

Recheck your intensity level on holding unforgiveness about your mother. If the level is at 8 or higher, repeat the entire 3-Round Tapping Sequence outlined in the Bonus Tapping Script (or your self-created script.)

If the level is less than 8, tap on one of the following Modified Set-Up Statements, then perform the 10-point Tapping Sequence on the Forgiveness Statements from your daily journal work.

MODIFIED SET-UP STATEMENT

Use the Modified Set-Up Statement below (or use one that you’ve written yourself) and repeat it three times while tapping continuously on the Karate Chop point.

• Even though I still have some stubborn judgments about myself and some resistance to letting them go, I am willing to let them go, and I love and accept myself totally and unconditionally.
  

After you complete the Tapping Sequence on your Forgiveness Statements, recheck your intensity level on holding unforgiveness about your mother.

Depending on your level, continue to repeat the sequence described above until you are at a 0 level of intensity.

– DAY 5 –

I F
ORGIVE
M
Y
F
ATHER

Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan.

I forgive myself. I forgive my mind. Only by forgiving my false ideas and beliefs about others and myself can my mind recognize the truth that I am still in Love’s presence, safe, healed, and whole.

—P
RAYER FOR
A C
OURSE IN
M
IRACLES
W
ORKBOOK
L
ESSON
72

– Forgiveness Friend Story by Rev. Candas Ifama Barnes –

F
or some reason that still is not clear to me, as a very young girl I was terrified in my father’s presence. As a black man, born in the midst of the depression in 1920 in the segregated South, my father was a study in contradictions. His opinions seemed to keep him boxed in and limited, yet he had a broad view of the world. He read
The Washington Post
daily and quoted Aristotle. He had a strong affinity for family. He walked to my aunt’s, his older sister’s house, every day to visit and make sure she had what she needed. He had very particular opinions about how things should be and how people should behave. When things did not go the way he insisted, we paid the price for it. When I did not meet his standards or follow his advice, he just wouldn’t speak to me. It could go on for days.

My father did not know his father. He always regretted that his father left his life when he was very young. No one ever taught him who a father is and what a father does. He came from an era when a man was expected to provide. He did that well. We always had plenty of food, adequate clothing, and a lovely home. Yet at the same time he was frugal, almost stingy, not only with money but with his heart. Still, whenever I needed a hand, he always lent it. He just didn’t have a clue about how to share his affection. In fact, I remember telling my mother when I was very young that I did not like him.

M
Y FATHER DID NOT KNOW HIS FATHER
.

By the time I started school, everything changed. My father would walk me to the public library. It just made me happy to be with him and get my books. For a long time I could check out only a limited number of books because I had a children’s library card. When I turned 10, my father made sure that I got an adult library card, which meant that I could check out as many books as I wanted, and he always helped me carry my books home. Sometimes we would stop along the way to get Butter Brickle ice cream. Those days, those walks were pure heaven for me because I had become daddy’s little girl.

I must have been in the third or fourth grade when I had to learn the multiplication tables. My father drilled me daily, and I began to hate him for it. However, before the school year was over, I knew every multiplication table from 1 to 12 because of his relentless drilling.

When I was 15, my mom became very ill. At times, my father was not nice to her during her illness. I remember how he yelled and fussed at her for what seemed to me to be no reason. I saw my mother cry only twice in my life, and one of those times was after my father’s fussing at her. One day when she was in the hospital I called her room because I needed some information from her. She did not answer the telephone. When I got home from school that evening, I asked my father if he had spoken to her. As if he were reporting the weather to a room filled with strangers, he told me that she had been moved to the intensive care unit because she had had a heart attack. I discovered later that he’d know her condition since early that morning but had not told me. I also found out that he knew my mother was dying of cancer and never said a word.

I
CAME TO REALIZE AND ACCEPT THAT MY FATHER REALLY HAD DONE THE BEST HE COULD WITH WHAT HE HAD
.

That evening after dinner my father drove me to the hospital to visit my mom. When I got out of the car to go upstairs, he stayed in the car with my niece, who was too young to visit. When I got to my mother’s room, she was in the midst of a crisis. The medical personnel were trying to revive her. I stood there for a while feeling dazed, alone, and totally helpless. I ran back to the car to report to my father that I did not see my mother because of what was happening. He said nothing. We drove home in silence. Shortly after we arrived home the hospital called. My father told me, “Your mom died.” Then he put on his coat and hat and left the house. I was home alone. It was Halloween. I was furious with my mother for dying but even more pissed that I was stuck with my father, who was not able to share his heart with me.

After my mother’s death, I lived out of a suitcase for the next year and a half, shuttling back and forth between my childhood home and my aunt’s home. My father was a minister. He had been assigned to a church in Philadelphia, which kept him away from home for long four-to-five-day weekends. While he was away I stayed with my aunt. When he returned, he insisted I come back to his house. He refused to give me permission to have a stable home with my aunt. I think he felt it wouldn’t look right. It would be like shirking his duties as my only living parent. With my mother gone it became very clear that my father would not or could not be there for me.

He had not protected me from being molested when I was younger. And he was not there for me during this crucial time after my mother’s death. I never again felt as if I was a priority in his life. I felt like an accessory, an element in his picture-perfect family. When my father was assigned to churches out of town, he simply was not there. In his absence I felt painfully alone. When he was there, I felt like a burden.

In the years after my father had a stroke, I harbored a great deal of anger and resentment about who he was and was not, about what he did and did not do for me. I was in total self-righteous judgment of him. This was fueled by a very intense belief that he should have been different than he was. In the weeks before he passed away, I came to realize and accept that my father really had done the best he could with what he had. I became grateful that even though he often forgot my birthday in the later years, he had given me life, and that was a more precious gift.

I also recognized that my father gave me what was required for me to be a good person and a strong woman. He taught me ethics, respect, morals, values, a desire for lifelong learning, and a thirst for knowing the word of God. I credit my father for teaching me to have a deep love of books and reading. As minister, I have now taken up his mantle. I want people to know the God my father loved. And I choose to be grateful for all of the contradictions.

D
AILY
F
ORGIVENESS
P
ROCESS
R
EMINDERS

For a more detailed explanation of the
Daily Forgiveness Process Guidelines
,

1. Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for at least 30 to 60 minutes.
   
2. Still your mind for at least 5 minutes or listen to the
   Stillness Meditation.
   
3. Read the Forgiveness Prayer once silently and once aloud.
   
4. Scan the
   Emotional Triggers
   List.
   
5. Write out the 12 Forgiveness Statements for each day’s topic on thinking, judging, and believing in your Forgiveness Journal (Days 1–18). Write your Forgiveness Letters (Days 19–21).
   
6. Perform your Pro EFT™ Forgiveness Tapping Sequences.
   
7. Process thoughts and feelings consciously through your Forgiveness Journal Reflections.
   
8. Listen to the
   Gratitude Meditation
   on the Forgiveness CD.
   
9. Complete the day’s practice in quiet reflection or with meditative music.
   
10. Be sure to do something good for yourself today!
    

I F
ORGIVE
M
YSELF FOR
J
UDGING
M
Y
F
ATHER

T
oday’s Forgiveness Practice is about forgiveness of your earthly father. Whether you knew him or not, had a relationship with him or not, your father is one of the reasons you are alive. While many of us may have hurts, wounds, and sorrows attached to our father’s presence or absence, forgiveness is the most powerful way to lessen the damages we believe our fathers have caused.

Very often, when a father is absent, emotionally unavailable, or physically or mentally unstable, his impact leaves us asking the unanswerable questions:
Why did he … Why didn’t he … Why me?
While forgiveness may not answer the inquiries in your heart or mind, compassionate forgiveness of your father can and will eliminate the need to know.

As with all heartfelt, committed forgiveness work, the mind becomes clear and the heart opens to a much deeper understanding of how we are loved by the heavenly Father, whether or not our earthly father was who we needed or wanted him to be. I encourage you to undertake today’s practice with a deep compassion for yourself and conscious gratitude for your biological father.

A P
RAYER OF
F
ORGIVENESS

Blessed Heavenly Father:

Today, I ask for and open myself to receive Your forgiveness for all of the judgments, bitterness, and resentments I have held about and against my earthly father. I ask to be freed from any and all heart sorrow, regret, grief, depression, sadness, or suffering that I have attached to my father and his life. I asked to be lifted above any and all hurts, disappointments and abandonments, anger or rage, and shame or blame that I have associated with my father and his life. I ask that you remind me to remember that, like me, my earthly father is a child of God, welcomed and accepted into Your love. I ask that You remind me to remember that when he wasn’t there, You were.What he could not and did not do, You did. I ask that You create in me a clear mind and a loving heart for my father and teach me how to see him from a higher place. I am so grateful to know that I have always been guided, protected, and loved by the Father. I pray for my earthly father to recognize that this is also true for him.

I rest in Thee.

I let it be!

And so it is!