To My Magnificent Agents, Staff and Friends:
Throughout my personal and business life, one of the greatest challenges I have both faced personally and observed in others is the challenge to forgive. In our life journey others hurt us, cheat us, lie to us and take advantage of us. Often the perpetrators are not strangers, but, rather friends, coworkers or loved ones. The most common response is to lash out and seek retribution. Forgiveness is not even in our thoughts. When this happens our human nature overshadows our spiritual core. We think that by not forgiving, we hold a power over that individual who wronged us. However, in reality, by choosing not to forgive, this individual actually holds that power over us. And to go one necessary step further, it is not the individual himself who holds a power over us, but those negative thoughts that we choose to hold on to that hold us captive. We hold ourselves captive. These are the thoughts we created through our perception of the situation. This perception, which has made us a prisoner, can also set us free, for it is our spiritual selves that holds that key.
Forgiveness does not cede power to those that hurt us. Forgiveness unleashes the spiritual power within us.
Here’s a wonderful story by an unknown author that instructs us on how to put our human nature in perspective and to tap into our spiritual core when we are hurt by others:
The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:
TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE.
They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him.
After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:
TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE.
The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?”
The other friend replied “When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.”
Moral: LEARN TO WRITE YOUR HURTS IN THE SAND AND TO CARVE YOUR BENEFITS IN STONE.
Have an AWE-full weekend and pray for those who are in the wake of Hurricane Irene.
Bill