Forgiveness is really about deciding you don’t wanna carry that energy anymore.
Hey, hey, hey, it’s Olivia S. Benson. Remember, you gotta keep the S in there, otherwise you’ll be looking at Mariska Hargitay from Law and Order SVU.
I’m Olivia S. Benson, and I am the author of this book, For the Love of My Father, which is a spiritual guide for healing, for women to heal from growing up without a father. And today I wanna address a post that I made on my Facebook and Instagram and everywhere else, and it was about forgiveness. And there were a lot of comments and a good number of shares about it.
And basically the post said that forgiveness isn’t about excusing the behavior, meaning as in saying, oh, it was okay. Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean that you’re saying it’s okay. Forgiveness is really about deciding you don’t wanna carry that energy anymore.
And as I use the word energy, I am always reminded that in ancient times, a word such as energy wasn’t ever used. If you go back to the, let’s say, biblical times, they’re not talking about energy, and there are other words — energy, vibration, frequency — these words don’t even exist. And fortunately for us, we’ve arrived at a time where we can look at things in a sort of a different way.
Because Light Attracts Light
And so when we talk about forgiveness, and I say, because this is something that I wrote, it’s deciding you don’t wanna carry it. It means it’s deciding you don’t wanna carry that energy anymore. And why don’t you wanna carry it? Because light attracts light.
And if you’re carrying the energy of anger, resentment, unforgiveness — what other energies can we describe that are created by some of the experiences we have? Hate. If you’re carrying that kind of energy, that’s your frequency, that’s your vibration, and what you’re going to do is attract exactly this. Now, the bottom line is it depends on what you believe.
If you believe that there’s ultimate balance in the universe, it’s a cause and effect universe, nothing happens without a corresponding response. You put out good, you get good. You put out bad, you get bad.
The Problem Is That Timing
Now, I think that what messes us up as human beings, even though we kind of understand some of this, because this is now, people understand at a different level these days — but the problem is that timing. Because when someone does us wrong, we want to see them suffer, and we want to see them suffer now.
And there are two problems with that. First of all, one is that you may never see it. You may never see it with your own two eyes. That’s the first part. The second part is that you don’t know when it’s gonna happen. You don’t have timing.
You want it now, and you want it to be the way that you want it, and you want to see them squirm, and you want to see all these kinds of things. And guess what? That is not how it works. You may never see them suffer, and they may not suffer in the way that you think that they should.
Sometimes, and I think about this often, because in the biblical terms, there’s a thing that says that the sins, in quotation, sins, of this generation will befall the, I think it says the second or third generation, something along those lines. Don’t quote me, I’m not intending it to be exactly accurate. But in biblical terms, what it was saying was that things that are done in this generation, the consequences may not necessarily hit here.
It’s in the Universe’s Time
It could hit two or three generations down. And the reason that this is that way is because God, energy, force, spirit is eternal, and it doesn’t work in our timeline. It has all the time in the universe.
Things move, things travel. We come and live and die in what is effectively a blink of an eye. And the universe, God, energy, force, spirit, is still operating.
It didn’t forget. The universe didn’t forget that this person did this X, Y, Z thing to you or failed you in this particular way. But it depends on what you believe. If you believe that the universe can forget what happened, you know, then you would have to believe that the consequences are going to happen in a certain kind of way.
But if you understand it, it doesn’t work that way. The universe — there’s no place where the universe is sitting down, writing what somebody did wrong and doling out punishments for whatever. It’s very, very different.
It’s all about energy. It’s what you put out. You get just that right back to you. And it’s not in our time. It’s in the universe’s time. It’s in God’s time.
Your Dad Is Over There, Living the Consequences
And it’s a matter of the energy. So this person, and in the context of what we’re talking about right now, we’re talking about For the Love of My Father. So we’re mostly talking about, you know, you forgiving your father and what it takes for you to do that.
Well, if you are going to hold on to the fact that you’re mad, and I do know people who are very, very, still very, very angry about their father’s abandonment and deception and just not showing up for them so that their life could be potentially what it could have been, that is a fact. But the sad part about it is that your father or anybody else that did you wrong, for that matter, they’ve moved on. Not that they’re without consequences, it’s just that that’s a separate issue.
Now you’re sitting with this energy, which is not a positive energy, let’s just be honest. If you are angry and resentful and feeling hateful and any other negative emotions, that’s in you. That person is over there, your dad is over there, living the consequences of their behavior.
The question is, what are you gonna do with regards to these energies that now you have? And the answer is that you get to decide. I can’t tell you what to do, because each one of us is on our individual journey and we get to decide how we live it and how we resolve the issues that we face. What I share for you is that you can change your life if you decide that you are not carrying the energies of whatever happened to you for the rest of your life. And in many cases, not only will you change your life, but you will change the life of your descendants.
You can be that person. So it’s important to understand that issue, because I think the block is that many of us feel that somebody is getting away with it. Of course, it depends on what you believe.
Again, if you think that they’re gonna get away with it because God, energy, force, spirit, the universe didn’t realize what they did or will never take care of that, then you have to really consider how you’re thinking and what you believe. I happen to know that you let people deal with the consequences of their behavior, but you take care of you.
I Call It a Forgiveness Cleanse
And if you want your life to change — and I believe that when you get to a certain place, and all my spiritual teachers said it, if you have an issue, if you have a challenge, if you realize that things are not going the way that you want them to go, some kind of block, the first thing you need to do is to work on forgiveness.
I call it a forgiveness cleanse, that first step. Now, it’s the first step because you can do a big forgiveness, and in For the Love of My Father, I talk about some of the tools that I used. And you do that big cleanse, and then you wait to feel that relief.
You can feel it in the pit of your stomach, and you keep doing it until you feel that that energy is gone. You can mention the person’s name. Sometimes if somebody has done you wrong, the very idea of thinking of them can stir up the pit of your stomach.
Well, you do that work until you no longer feel anything. Now, it doesn’t mean that you don’t remember mentally, but you’re not emotionally tied to them. That’s what we’re looking for — no emotional tie to that experience.
You Are Let Off the Hook
And that’s when you know that you have cleansed, that you’re no longer carrying it, and you know that that person is not let off the hook. You are let off the hook, and then you trust that the universe, God, energy, force, spirit, will take care of that person and their actions. And when I say that, I mean that they will have their consequences separate and apart from your life.
I’m Olivia S. Benson, and as I said, I’m the author of For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon. Share the information about the book, because there are millions and millions of people out here, millions and millions of women out here who grew up without a father. And my purpose is to share with them my journey and how I overcame that issue.