To Forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. ~ Lewis B. Smedes Learn to Forgive and Free Yourself It is impossible to change the relationship we have with the world around us without changing the relationship we have in ourselves, with ourselves. This is the secret teaching of the ages. Our task, if we want to be free human beings — if we want a life in which we no longer carry around with us “what he did,” “what she didn’t do,” “what never worked out” — begins with discovering that there can be no real freedom for us until we understand the nature of the tyranny of the past that still lives within us. And one of the main areas of this unchallenged dictatorship that still holds us captive is our inability to forgive. Do you know people — maybe who aren’t even alive anymore — that you haven’t been able to forgive? Are there certain events in your life you just can’t release? You should know by now that what you can’t release isn’t the person or the condition that you see as being the source of your pain. What seems to be “stuck” isn’t an old situation you can’t release; it’s a thought. Over and over again, certain negative images — crammed full of the conflict felt in the moment of their creation — are unconsciously revisited by a part of us that actually wants that dark visitation. Why? Because this familiar pain confirms, in a very strong fashion, our certainty of who we are by re-creating what once happened to us in life. Something in our own mind actively recollects what it does from our past, regardless of how it wrecks the present moment for us. To be punished...

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