Finding the Pauses

As the year draws to a close, I am acutely aware of the frenetic mode I have been operating in for the past seven months.

 

Having concluded my Forgiveness Workshops on Saturday, I am feeling quite racy and propelled forwards by the momentum of the last seven months. It feels like I have been going so fast that I haven’t had the awareness of the spaces between, the little pauses and full stops between the sentences and paragraphs that have been consuming me.

Life is such a circle of learning isn’t it? How necessary are the times of hibernation, times to digest, empty and rebirth. I love the lessons I garner from nature.

I am preparing myself now to complete the circle as I plan my slide backwards into the stillness, for a wonderful, guilt-free and well-deserved break over December. 

Now, is not the time to create new ideas and implement them. Now, is the time to consolidate and package up all the nuggets that we have implemented this year.  

It is time to look back and assess our year for what it was. Some of us may be disappointed we didn’t do more. Others of us may need to pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves how proud we are of ourselves. Whatever you did or did not do this year, you need to discern whether next year will be a repeat of this one or whether you will be doing things differently. 

Now is the time to practice forgiveness, by learning from what happened, letting go of attachment to the negative experiences or failures and giving yourself another chance to do things differently going forward.

Go within to the stillness and allow all your memories of this year to filter, digest and slowly sidle to a full stop. Find the pause between the last great idea and the birth of the next one.

Give yourself grace and kindness as you switch off the shopping brain with the intent to rest and self-nurture. 

Book yourself into a spa for a massage and some pampering or find a good book to escape into. Start intending and allowing the flow of energy to shift from predominantly masculine to that of receptive feminine energy.

I wish you a week of finding the pauses, being gentle with yourself, getting enough rest and listening to all your needs - mental, physical and spiritual.

All my love

Nicolette

The Power of Forgiveness

The majority of people would rather die than forgive. “Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong” says Mahatma Gandhi. Only the courageous can forgive.

The reason we so self-righteously cling to our grief is because of our minds. We need to clear our minds with loving intention in order to expose our hearts.

The belief that we are separate beings having isolated, separate experiences in this lifetime is a perception skewed by our outer fixation with everything manifest. 

The truest statement of all is:  “I am”. 

‘I’ is the relationship we have with our physical experiences here on Earth. ‘Am’ is the infinite, indestructible, unmanifest essence of who we are. Our ‘amness’ is the universal pool of energy to which we all belong. We are breathed into physical form from this energy pool and to it we will return.

‘I’ can never forgive. ‘I’ is entangled with the physical body, mind and intellect, legalities and conditions, shoulds and should nots, ego and emotions. Ego is the human playground of material wanting and one-upmanship, rightness and wrongness and persecutors and victims.

To live by law is to live by mind. Legalities forget to acknowledge the wisdom of our inherent nature which is LOVE. We need to listen to our hearts. Therein lie all the answers to our struggles - whether physical, emotional or mental.

Steer your attention away from the negativity of your mind and open yourself to the inner wisdom of your heart. Love and forgiveness are not found in the mind and in the cause and effect of our materially focused world. Forgiveness is found by bravely opening the heart in faith and surrendering to the expansiveness of ‘Unconditional Love’. 

You are the ‘amness’ having a singular human experience in physical form. Your physical experiences are impermanent. They are not who you are. Embrace change because it is the only certainty in this ever evolving world. Be brave and open your heart in faith. Face your deepest fears and surrender yourself to every experience with gratitude for the lessons to be learned, because your experiences are the evolution of you. 

When you look back in time you will realise that you manifested your fears for your personal growth, and that the mistakes you made and all the unconscious behaviour you engaged in were integral to the person you are today. 

Gratitude is the highest form of forgiveness. It says “I am thankful for my hardships and my mistakes because they made me who I am.”

How lucky I am to have lived and to have learned.

THANK YOU!

Here is an amazing video clip which I shared in my FORGIVENESS workshop on Saturday. It demonstrates the power of love and forgiveness in melting the most hardened of hearts.

Click here to view it now.
 

Love

Nicolette

P.S. Join me for the final FORGIVENESS mini workshop of 2014, this Saturday 15 November at Leafy Greens Café, 10h00 until 12h30. It is titled GRATITUDE – ‘Dance of Freedom’. 

For more details contact me via www.nicolettelodge.com or nicolette@forgiftyourself.com.