Forgiveness Is the Key to Happiness: It’S Easier Than You Think!

By Sue Pipal

Forgiveness is the key to happinessbut how do you actually do it?
When we begin to practice forgiveness, the world becomes a better place to live. Forgiveness is essential to releasing fear and living in peace. In fact, forgiveness is the single most important thing we can do to create a life of love and happiness. Without it, we are destined to live in hurt, anger and upset. With it, all the gifts and miracles of Gods love flow into our lives.
If youve tried to forgive in the past and been unable to, youre not alone. Forgiveness is not always an easy task, and most of us have no real idea of how to go about it anyway. Although each of the worlds important religions and spiritual pathways agrees that forgiveness is essential, there is very little practical information out there about how to actually forgive.
Forgiveness is the dirty little secret of Christians, spiritual people, and truth seekers everywhere. We all nod our heads and agree that forgiveness is important, but when it comes right down to it, most of us have no idea how to really do it.
Forgiveness is actually an easy and pleasurable process once you understand it. Forgiveness Is the Key to Happiness gives you the essential tools you need to forgive anyone, from the smallest of affronts to the really huge betrayals and damage we all experience at least occasionally in our lives. To learn more you can visit www.forgiveandbehappy.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452583389

Sue Pipal

Sue Pipal lives high in the Sierra Mountains at Lake Tahoe, California. She is a busy interior designer and blogger, as well as an avid skier and hiker. Sue loves the outdoors and is inspired by the nature that is a part of everyday living in the mountains. Sue began meditating and studying A Course of Miracles in the 1980s, is currently working to become a Science of Mind practitioner, and is immersed in the Way of Mastery.

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Copyright © 2013 Susan C. Pipal.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-8337-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8339-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8338-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013917830

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/21/2013

"Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

I will awaken from the dream that I

am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,

and know I am the perfect Son of God."

A Course in Miracles Workbook, (Lesson 121)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Why Forgive?

Traditional Judeo-Christian Forgiveness: Success Is Almost Impossible

Who And What Needs To Be Forgiven?

Forgiving The Past

Judgment Is The Opposite Of Forgiveness

Cast The First Stone—Self-R+eview

The Homework Is More Important Than The Reading

Forgiveness Process #1: Seeing The Higher Truth

Forgiveness Process #2: Metta Prayer

Forgiveness Process #3: Feeling The Feelings

Forgiveness Process #4: Radical Forgiveness

Forgiveness Process #5: The Way of Mastery 30-Day Process

Forgiveness Process #6: Finding A Coach Or Mentor

Forgiveness Blesses Your Life

Life Sometimes Tears us Down—or Candid Thoughts About What Put Me on this Path of Forgiveness

And Up a Notch! Taking Forgiveness to a New Level

Final Thoughts—You Really Can Forgive Anybody, Even Osama Bin Laden

My Forgiveness To Do List

A Radical Forgiveness Worksheet

Acknowledgements

I am lucky to have friends in high places that keep me inspired and motivated on this pathway. Thank you to Geri, Clifford and Sherry for showing me the way and setting an example before me with your every word and act! Helene, you have been the greatest support and contributor to this endeavor (and many others). Also, thank you to my mentors and teachers, Reverends Penny and Liz, Hope and Bonnie, as well as popular authors Colin Tipping and Gary Renard. You keep giving me the truth.

Lastly, thank you to my family. To my husband Mark, I give you endless gratitude for thirty years of adventures and much support. You are my greatest forgiveness opportunity and I thank you for making the sacrifice to be so. To my sister and mother, thanks for being the fun and partnership in my life. And to my children, Lauren and Hallie, and grand-daughter Luna, may the riches of forgiveness and love bless your lives.

Preface

Are you really, truly happy?

When I was in my early 30’s I joined a book club. One meeting, I made the remark to the girls in my book club that it seemed like all the books we had been reading were filled with angst. Where are the happy people and the happy stories? I wondered.

I was surprised that my book club friends all looked at me blankly. Sue, the world is not about happiness, they said. I was shocked. Is that true? Aren’t all of you happy? Now, this was a group that included successful career women. Many had corporate husbands with good paychecks, lovely houses, and small children with nannies to care for them. On the surface, every one of us looked like the epitome of happiness.

Not so, however! As we went around the room, one by one each woman confessed that she did not actually feel happy much of the time. Rather, they spent most of their lives fighting to navigate their monstrous to-do lists, to keep their refrigerators stocked with food, to get ahead and make something of themselves at work, to keep clean houses, to provide for their children and their husband’s needs.

Every one of them was secretly bitterly disappointed that their husbands did not love them in the way that they had once hoped they would be cherished and loved, that their bosses and co-workers did not see them as shining saviors for the companies they worked for, that they struggled with feeling unconnected and distant from their closest friends, and were heart-broken to find themselves physically separated from parents and families who often lived significant distances away.

Their lives were a constant state of worry, inadequacy and disappointment. Each one battled daily with fears of rejection and abandonment. Each one lived a surface life of success and happiness but underneath resided a deep-seated terror that the gig was about to be up. Each lived with a terrible and secret fear that their real truth would somehow rise to the surface, and the whole structure they had worked tirelessly to create would shatter to the ground.

The truth is that when the lights go out in the middle of the night and we’re alone with our thoughts, every one of us feels achingly lonely, remorseful and terrified.

What Most of us Feel is Really Guilt. However our denial of guilt causes us to run out into the world chasing accomplishments, laurels, activities, possessions and all the symbols of happiness. In reality, on the deep level of truth, most of us are simply not happy. We feel guilty because we are living separately from God. And clinging to these trappings, activities, and illusions only moves us further and further from living with God. It’s the pride of self our egos cling to that separates us from knowing our true relationship with God.

It’s by our own choice that we live in unhappiness. This is because the world is actually structured so that we can be happy. There is only one thing that we need to do to attain it. And this one thing is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the Single Thing that Can Bring us Back to God. Nothing else can do that. All the usual practices we use (thinking they will help us get closer to God) are relatively ineffective. This includes prayer, meditation, attending church services and meetings, and studying religious and spiritual materials. Only forgiveness and acceptance really move us significantly forward on our pathway home to God.

Why Me? No one could be more surprised than me that I have written a book on forgiveness. I never intended to write a spiritual book. I am simply a normal, everyday student of A Course in Miracles who has worked hard to find practical ways to make its teachings about forgiveness a regular part of my life. Because it is so hard to find practical advice about how to forgive, it was a tremendous effort for me to learn to forgive. It is my simple desire to share what I learned and make it easy for others to bring forgiveness into their lives, too.

Rather than a sophisticated treatise on Course principles, this book is an easy to use handbook that can help anyone learn and practice forgiveness. It is designed to be of help to people of any religious or spiritual practice. It is also the perfect tool for beginning Course students or any student who is struggling with how to implement the Course’s sophisticated intellectual concepts